Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/514



508 THE RELIGIOUS CONGREGATIONS IN FRANCE.

your advice, backed as it is by the integrity of your lives. There are, above all, the bishops who honor you with their confidence, and who consider you as tried teachers of their younger clergy, and who recognize in you the true friends of their brothers and their people, offering as you do for them to the divine mercy your incessant prayers and expiatory sacrifices.

But no one appreciates the exceptional merits of re- ligious orders with greater justice than We Ourselves who, from this Apostolic See, are watching over the needs of the universal Church.

Already, in other acts, We have made particular men-, tion of all this. Let it suffice now, to call attention to that splendid ardor with which these religious bodies follow, not only the directions, but the least expression of wish of the Vicar of Jesus Christ; undertaking every work which may contribute to the advantage of the Church and society whenever He indicates it; hurrying to the most inhospitable shores; braving every suffering and accepting death itself, as many have done in the most glorious manner in the recent upheavals of the empire of China.

If, among the dearest remembrances of Our long Pontifi- cate, We count the fact that by Our authority We have raised a great number of the servants of God to the honors of the altar, those remembrances are all the more dear to Us because the majority of those saints belong to religious orders, either as founders or as simple religious.

We, moreover, wish to recall for your consolation, that among people of the world, distinguished by their position, and by their knowledge of what society needs there have not been lacking many honorable and up- right men who have come forward to praise your works, to defend your inviolable right as citizens, and your still more inviolable liberty as Catholics. Surely, one must be blinded by passion not to see that it is unwise and dishonorable to crush those who, hoping for nothing