Excerpt from How to See the Vatican
The revolt of the French Government with regard to the constitution of the Church which has made the word Vatican a household word for months past can best be compared to the revolt of Henry VIII. of England in the sixteenth century.
But the Vatican, i.e., the Papal Government of to-day, is as different from the Vatican of that day as the ship of to-day is from the obsolete vessel of the sixteenth century with its clumsy castles at bow and stern, and primitive rigging. The Vatican Hierarchy, with its elaborate machinery of Pope and Cardinals; Princes in attendance on the Throne; its Privy and Honorary Chamberlains, lay and clerical, of a dozen different orders; its Cancelleria, its Dataria, its Rota, its Sacred Congregations and Pontifical Commissions, its Cardinal Secretary of State, and its Maggiordomo, is a piece of machinery as elaborate as the great ocean-liner of to-day. The Propaganda Fide, the Holy Office (of the Inquisition), the Index Expurgatorius of Books, are by no means of the past.
Yet, as fortune would have it, this prolonged and strenuous crisis between the Vatican and France finds us without any recent English work explaining this half of the Secrets of the Vatican.
To meet this deficiency I have written chapters on the ceremonies which accompany the Death and Election of a Pope, and the Creation of Cardinals; the Duties of the Papal Secretary of State, and his predecessor, the Cardinal Nephew; Audiences with the Pope, and his Secretary of State; the everyday life led by the Pope; the Papal Court and the High Officials of whom it is composed; and the Sacred Congregations and Pontifical Commissions, which are the everyday business of the Cardinals who live in Rome.
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