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THE CENTENARY OF ST PETER: AND PREPARATIONS FOR THE COUNCIL.

one who has watched with any attention the pontificate of Pius the Ninth will believe that the definition of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff was the work of any parties or intrigues. Faith may move mountains, but cliques and cabals are agencies too human and too narrow to move Œcumenical Councils. Not just men only, but thoughtful men, will seek for wider and more adequate causes of such effects. And such causes lie on the surface of the history of this pontificate.

I. 1. Before the Council of the Vatican assembled, Pius the Ninth had three times called the bishops of the Universal Church to Rome. In the year 1854, 206 cardinals and bishops assembled for the definition of the Immaculate Conception; in 1862, 265 bishops came for the canonisation of the martyrs of Japan; and now a third time 500 bishops assembled from all parts of the world to celebrate the eighteenth Centenary of St. Peter's martyrdom. No pontiff from the beginning, in all the previous successions of 256 popes,