Pius IX’s “preview” of John XXIII’s Speech to the Moon

 

Last Thursday evening week, thousands of faithful holding candles gathered under the Pope’s window in the heart of Rome. 

People were burning with enthusiasm for that Successor of Peter who was able to harness the winds of change. 

As the Pope appeared at the window of the Apostolic Palace to bless the crowd, emotions ran high among the faithful. John XXIII’s Speech to the Moon, on that legendary night of 11 October 1962, which called on those present to ‘go home and give a caress to our children” is not the only such story.  

A very similar speech was made in Rome on 22 April 1847 by Pius IX, the last Pope-king who became an emblem of the traditionalist world with a document published under him, entitled “Syllabus”.

The story was told by the Frenchman, Antoine Frèdèric Ozanam, a precursor of the Church’s social doctrine and founder of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. A professor of foreign literature at the Sorbonne, in Paris, a liberal Catholic and a friend of Abbot Henri Lacordaire’s, Ozaman went to Italy on a study mission and followed with enthusiasm the first few months of Pope Mastai Ferretti’s pontificate, when Italy’s neo-Guelfs saw Pius IX as the man who was going to unify Italy. 

It was particularly the liberal reforms being made in the Pontifical State that roused hopes. And it was one of these reforms – the establishment of the Council of State, a representational political body – that led to a thanksgiving torchlight procession, held that evening in the centre of Rome.

“We were returning home - Ozanam wrote in a letter to brothers Alphonse and Charles, dated 29 April 1847 – when it was announced that he whole city was preparing to thank the Pope for the new edict and that a torchlight celebration was going to take place.” He mentions there being about six thousand people whom he joined in Rome’s Via del Corso, in a procession towards Piazza del Quirinale, where the Pope resided at the time. When Pius IX saw the crowds gathered, he appeared at one of the windows. 

“He seemed moved by the appreciation shown by the faithful and waved to the right and to the left with great grace - Ozamam said - The Pope made a gesture and the only word that was said was zitti (quiet) and in less than a minute silence fell across the euphoric crowd. Then the Pope’s voice could be heard, as it rose, blessing the faithful. After he pronounced some solemn words stretching his hand out and making the sign of the cross, the whole crowd shouted Amen and the word echoed from one corner of the square to the other.” 

Ozanan added that “nothing could compare to the beauty of this entire city praying with its bishop at that late hour of the night, underneath the light of the stars and that magnificent sky.” 

Later on – almost presaging the words John XXIII was to pronounce more than a century later – he concluded: “These Romans were like children, who wanted to say goodnight to their father before going to bed.”

This spontaneous event shows how the torchlight procession up to the Pope’s window marks a long tradition in Rome and was obviously vividly remembered in the years of the Second Vatican Council. 

But the similarity between the two occasions also brings to mind John Paul II’s choice to beatify Pius IX along with John XXIII, in a rite celebrated on 3 September 2000 – a choice which aroused a great deal of controversy. 

 The Pope of the First Vatican Council (interrupted very suddenly in 1870 by the breach of Porta Pia) and of the Second Vatican Council. Almost as if to say that in the Church, the relationship between tradition and modernity is a little bit more complex that the Catholic derby between fans of the two rival teams we are so used to today.