Venerable Pope Pius XII

Today, the 19th of December, 2009, the Holy Father, Benedict XVI, has received in private audience His Excellency, Archbishop Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. In the course of that audience, the Holy Father has authorised the Congregation to promulgate the decree recognising the heroic virtue of Pope Pius XII and declaring him to be Venerable.

In the modern era, the process of Canonization, of which the decree of heroic virtue is the first step, was firmly established by the Decrees of Pope Urban VIII and Pope Clement XI. By a Bull of 5th July, 1634, Urban VIII definitively reserved to the Holy See the faculty of granting cultus to individuals and prohibited their veneration prior to the judgement of the Holy See.

It had previously been the practice, despite, it must be said, a Decree of Pope Alexander III in 1170, renewed by Pope Innocent III in 1210, for Bishops to render people Blessed at least to be honoured in their own Dioceses, although it was for the Pope to extend such devotion to the Universal Church, which is, to render them Saints in the technical sense. However, the Pope could also make localised Decrees in some cases. For example Blessed (now Saint) Rose of Lima, who Pope Clement declared to be patroness of Peru, and Pope Clement X declared to be patroness of South America, the Philippines and the East Indies, and also Blessed (now Saint) Stanislaus Kostka, who Pope Clement X declared patron of Poland and Lithuania.

Special mention must be made of the monograph of one Prospero Lambertini "the cleverst man in Christendom," once Promoter of the Faith, an official of the S. Congregation of Rites, who would later become Pope Benedict XIV. The monograph was entitled De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione and for more than two centuries remained - and to an extent remains - the basic text on the subject. The two examples of Rose of Lima and Stanislaus Kostka are mentioned at lib. I, cap. xxxix of that monograph. Two early editions (1743 and 1749) are available at Google Books. (See if you can spot the reference to vampires when Lambertini discusses the post mortem state!)

The document relating new procedures introduced by Pope Benedict XVI gives a summary of the history of the procedures involved.

Venerable Pope Pius XII, pray for us!

Ireland and the Immaculate Conception

The feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, or Giniúint Mhuire gan Smál in the Irish Language, is one of the dearest feasts to Gaelic hearts.

Devotion to Mary's Immaculate Conception, although it is to be found in the earliest days of the Church, was not placed upon the Universal Calendar of the Church until 1708 by Pope Clement XI. Likewise, although the feast of the Immaculate Conception was being celebrated in Ireland long before 1708 (it is included in the calendar of the Martyrologium of Tallaght, c. 790, and the Féilre of St. Aengus, c. 800, and Synods in 1614, 1631 and 1685 declare it a holyday), we can trace the devotion in Ireland from before 1708, largely through the Franciscan Order and the friendship with Spain, whose Monarchs prided themselves upon their zeal for the Immaculate Conception.

The Irish Franciscan, Blessed John Duns Scotus, known as the Subtil Doctor (Doctor Subtilis), was the first to posit the solution to the great obstacle to the universal acceptance of the doctrine, namely, how could Mary be conceived free from all sin before the Redemption that her Son was to accomplish on Calvary had won the freedom of Mankind from sin.

Fr. Luke Wadding, O.F.M., had learned the pratice of devotion to the Immaculate Conception from his family. He had written a life of Blessed John Duns Scotus, the Vita Scoti. In 1618, King Phillip II of Spain appointed Fr. Wadding as theologian to the embassy that he sent to Rome to promote the definition of the Immaculate Conception as a Dogma of the Catholic Faith. Fr. Wadding was a mere thirty years old at the time.

Writing from Spain in 1625, Count Philip O’Sullivan Beare, nephew of the great O'Sullivan Beare, hero of Dunboy, makes reference to Ireland’s devotion to Mary and in particular to her Immaculate Conception. Likewise, the Irish College in Seville (founded in 1617) was dedicated to the Immaculate Conception.

Hugh MacCaghwell, O.F.M., Archbishop of Armagh (d. 1626), composed a tract and a litany honouring the Immaculate Conception. Several other Franciscans such as Florence Conry, Archbishop of Tuam, John Ponce or Punch (professor at St. Isadore's in Rome with Wadding), Anthony Hickey (pupil of the great Archbishop MacCaghwell and professor at St. Isadore's) and Bonaventure Baron (also of St. Isadore's) wrote tracts in Our Lady’s honour on the same theme.

The link between St. Isadore's and present-day Ireland is a direct one in that, when the Papal States were invaded in 1870, many precious manuscripts that had been lodged there, having been saved from destruction at the hands of the heretic invaders at home, were returned to Ireland, to the Franciscan Convent at Merchant's Quay, Dublin, where the Church known as 'Adam and Eve's' is more properly called the Church of the Immaculate Conception.

On the eve of the feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1650, the Catholic Confederation, sitting in the City of Kilkenny, and which then governed almost the entire Kingdom of Ireland solemnly consecrated the Kingdom to the Immaculate Conception of Mary in the following terms:

“By a unanimous vote of the Supreme Assembly it was decreed that the Virgin Mother of God, under her title of her Immaculate Conception, should be solemnly and publicly proclaimed Patroness of the Kingdom of Ireland, and that as a perpetual memorial to the happy event, the feast of the Immaculate Conception should be solemnly observed in Ireland from that day forward until the end of time.”

*The image of the Immaculate Conception in this post is by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), dated 1767-69, housed in the del Prado Museum in Madrid.