r The Catholic Democracy of America,64 - Digital Repository Services

30 Romani Catholicism in America.
ica could find no room for a religion of reactionary tendency,
and the fact that the Catholic Church has taken root in that
land and is flourishing is the best proof that in the United
States she is abreast with the democratic movement and with
liberal progress.
If France is the eldest daughter of the Church, America is
destined to be her strongest and biggest child, and it will be
interesting to watch this youngest daughter maintaining the
position she has already secured in the intimate councils of
the .Church. If the elder branches were well advised they
would look to America to provide the Church Universal with
a ruler. All the best friends of the Papacy, outside the
" Italian ring " which fences it round, are agreed that the time
has come when it would be for the highest interest of the
Church to break down the tradition of the last three centuries
and a half which prescribes that the occupant of St. Peter's
chair shall invariably be an Italian. We have seen how the
Church has gained a stronger title than ever to its claim of
universality, but the constitution of the Sacred College is
Italian and not cosmopolitan. The full complement of that
august body consists of seventy cardinals. The present number,
since the recent death of Cardinal Schiaffino, is sixty-five.
Ten of them are Austrian, German, Hungarian and JPolish;
seven are French; five are British subjects (of whom one is
French Canadian); four are Spanish; two Portuguese; one
Belgian, and one American : thirty representing all the nationalities
of the world, and thirty-five being Italians.
With this Italian preponderance, the other nationalities
would have less ground of complaint if at the Vatican there
were a corresponding council of state, in which the non-Italian
Catholics were represented even in the inadequate proportion
of thirty to thirty-five, but the intimate advisers of the Sovereign
Pontiff are all Italians, who, with one or two exceptions,
can neither read nor speak a word of English. For
charm of manner, a polished Italian prelate is unrivalled, but
his knowledge of the English-speaking world is that of a