Another visitor said, “My attention was completely captivated by his
expression and his eyes.” And another, “You cannot go near him without loving
him.” But all who met him almost universally commented, “He is a saint!” One
visitor told him so in Italian, and the Pope genially replied, “You have made a
mistake in your consonants. I am a Sarto, not a santo.”
How fortunate were those ever to be in the presence of Saint Pius X, to
have some relic of his, or to receive his blessing.
Many were miraculously cured of their infirmities. One nun, dying from
abdominal cancer, swallowed a particle of the Pope’s clothing. All pain
instantly vanished and she was restored to health. The Mother Superior of a
girls’ boarding school in Ireland contracted a disease of the hip, which gave
her excruciating pain and forced her to take leave of her work.
The disease spread rapidly, and before long she had to be continually on
her back. One of her students, a six-year-old, wrote to the Holy Father to ask
him to pray for the afflicted Superior. One evening, a short time later, the
pain suddenly left the ailing nun along with all traces of the disease.
A man once brought his child, paralyzed since birth, to a public
audience with Saint Pius X. His holiness beckoned to the man, “Give him to me,”
and sat the youngster on his lap while he talked to other visitors. After a few
moments the small child slipped off the Pontiff’s knee and began running about
the room.
There were many such miracle associated with Pope Pius X, all of which
the Saint humbly attributed to the power of “the Keys,” dismissing his own
personal sanctity. One of the more dramatic of them is worth telling.
A cab once carried two Florentine nuns, both suffering from an incurable
disease, to the Vatican. They asked the cab driver to wait while the two, badly
afflicted and barely able to walk, met in private audience to beg the Pope to
cure them. “Why do you want to be cured?” asked the Holy Father. They answered,
“So that we may work for God’s glory.”
Laying his hands on the nuns’ heads and blessing them, His Holiness
said, “Have confidence; you will get well and do much work for God’s glory.” In
that same moment the nuns were cured, but Pius bade them to keep the matter
silent.
As it turned out, the charge immediately presented some difficulty, for
when the two now healthy women returned to their waiting cab, the driver
refused to admit them. They insisted that they were the same sisters he had
brought, but the man could not be convinced: “The two I brought were half dead.
You are not the least like them.”
The compassion of Saint Pius X was indeed Christ-like as well. We have
already mentioned how the blessed man would weep at the sight of suffering.
Consequently there was nothing that could arouse his anger more than cruelty.
Once, as Patriarch, he heard from the streets the cries of a small child
being unmercifully punished. He rushed toward the direction of the cries and
yelled up to an open window, whence they came, “Stop beating that child!” A
woman appeared at the window, then quickly retreated at the sight of the
infuriated Cardinal-Patriarch on her doorstep. Needless to say, the beating
stopped.
So much the greater was he agonized as Pope, witnessing the inhuman
treatment accorded to South American Indians; the Sultan ruler who took
perverted pleasure of having his victims tortured to death; and the barbaric
persecutions inflicted on Christians by Communist revolutionaries in many
different countries. And in every instance he tried to intervene with all the
might and indignation of his sacred office.
Perhaps the most painful of such afflictions was World War I. Pius
prophetically had foreseen its coming years before the actual outbreak, and his
soul bore that terrible vision as the body would an unhealing wound that
progressively deepened as the war approached.
Cardinal Merry del Val recalled that as early as 1911, Pope Pius spoke
to him of the matter:
“Your Eminence, things are going badly; there will be a terrible war! I
am not speaking of this war [the Libyan campaign], but of the big war!”
The Cardinal, not really knowing what this meant, tried to console the
Pontiff with more optimistic observations. But the Holy Father raised his hand
in gesture to indicate the gravity of the matter: “Things are going badly; we
shall not get through 1914.” Dr. Bruno Chaves, a retiring Brazilian minister to
the Holy See, heard these comments in his last audience with the Pope on May
30, 1913: “You are fortunate, Dr. Chaves, to be able to return to your home in
Brazil. Thus you will not be here for the world war.”
Dr. Chaves assumed that the reference was to the then ongoing Balkan
conflict, but Pope Pius X, seeming to read the minister’s thoughts, added:
“The Balkans are but the beginning of a world conflagration that I am
helpless to prevent and which I shall not be able to withstand.”
In his last months Saint Pius X became increasingly preoccupied with the
thought of the impending cataclysm. While walking one day with Monsignor
Bressan in the Vatican Gardens, he stopped before a statue of Our Lady of
Lourdes and exclaimed in words that seemed cryptic to his confused guest:
“I feel pity for my successor. I shall not be here. Truly ‘devastated
religion’ is upon us.”
In 1913 the Federal Reserve Bank was
born, with Paul Warburg its first Governor. Four years later the
US entered World War I, after a secret society known as the Black
Hand assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and his Hapsburg wife.
The Archduke’s friend Count Czerin later said,
“A year before the war he informed me that the Masons had
resolved upon his death.” [5]
That same year, Bolsheviks overthrew the Hohehzollern monarchy in
Russia with help from Max Warburg and Jacob Schiff, while the Balfour
Declaration leading to the creation of Israel was penned to Zionist
Second Lord Rothschild.
When in July of 1914 the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated,
the great Pontiff knew that the time of the inestimable human suffering which
he had long anticipated had finally arrived. Pius lapsed into a state of such
aching sadness that it could only be compared to Our Lord’s agony in the garden
of Gethsemane.
Within a few weeks, on the Feast of the Assumption, Saint Pius X became
ill. It did not seem serious — a mild inflammation of the throat that settled
into his chest. But on the nineteenth of August the meek, white-robed figure
collapsed.
In a few hours the great bell of St. Peter’s was tolling the Pro
pontifice agonizante.
“Holy Viaticum and Extreme Unction,”
Cardinal Merry del Val records, “were administered to him…in the
simplest form possible.
On a little table by the bedside, covered with a white cloth, a crucifix
and two lighted candles were the only evidence of the ceremony. I could not
help thinking that after all Pope Pius X was receiving the rights of the Church
in the way most congenial to him…. It was not unlike the scene one might have
witnessed in the humblest cottage of a dying laborer, without pomp or splendor
of any kind.”
In this modest disposition the quiet little Saint, who had courageously
and firmly stood up against Satan’s soldiery like a colossal warrior, happily
was to depart from this world, clutching a small crucifix, in the same poverty
and simplicity in which he was born.
At about one o’clock on the morning of August 20, 1914, in the gentle
peace of sleep, the magnificent fatherly heart that had loved and suffered so
much was stilled by the Finger of God and beat no more. The glorious and
beautiful soul of Pope Saint Pius X at last was blissfully where it had always
longed to be — with the Heavenly Father. And his body was left perfectly incorrupt till this
day as relic and testimony of his exceptional sanctity.
Pope Pius X died in the early hours of August 20, 1914. His last act was
to kiss the crucifix he is shown holding. In the sleep of death his countenance
was peaceful and almost seemed youthful again.
One cardinal announced, “The Holy Father has died of a broken heart.”
That was very true. But Cardinal Merry de Val also reported that the saintly Pontiff
possessed an “extraordinary serenity” in his last moments of life. And we are
certain that this was because Saint Pius was immeasurable happy, knowing that
in Heaven he could now interceded for us ever more powerfully against the wiles
of the devil.
Pope Saint Pius X,
Pray for Us.
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