Word: pius
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...last week Rafael Merry del Val stepped reluctantly out of the shadow of the retirement in which he has lived since the death of Pope Pius X, his beloved friend. He celebrated the silver jubilee of his elevation, at the hands of Pius X, to the cardinalate. He celebrated a high mass. He attended a banquet in his honor. Then once again he withdrew into the cloister of his memories...
With infinite trepidation the new, tenth Pius looked about for some more worldly figure on whom to lean in the grave duty of administering affairs of state. At that time young Merry del Val, only 38, had acted as secretary of the Conclave of Cardinals and was director of the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics at Rome, where he had studied for the priesthood...
...Master of the Robes and Privy Chamberlain, and one of the youngest members of the papal household. He had ample exercise for his patrician tastes. He liked horses, liked dancing; he was an excellent shot. In ecclesiastical matters however he was not widely known. And when the new pope, Pius X, in his emergency, selected Merry del Val as ProSecretary of State the decision came as a distinct shock...
...course, that the appointment would be only temporary. On the contrary, three months later the Pope made Merry del Val a Cardinal and gave him the full secretary title. Thereafter for eleven years Merry del Val at the Vatican counselled, conferred, carried out the policies of the peasant Pius. He enunciated his Pope's vigorous disapproval of all modernistic tendencies, in religion and in society. He became a world figure...
Strangely ill-mated as the two seemed-the simple, ascetic Pope and the flashing knightly young Cardinal-they soon became united by the strongest bonds: dependence and admiration on the part of Pius, affection on the part of Merry...