Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/456

 THE CURIA

enjoy many holidays and long vacations. The method is really ad- mirable, and the Curia proceeds always with noble, superior calm and self-assurance. This is not surprising when one remembers that here is an institution which, as a Russian has said, "usually thinks in centuries, often in generations, but only under the pressure of extraor- dinary circumstances in years, and never in shorter spans of time."

Apart from the Secretariate of State the offices of the Curia are four purely executive bodies. Once they were of great importance, but they no longer are. Thus the Apostolic Chancellery publishes the Bulls, those documents inscribed on parchment to which a leaden seal is affixed, in which the decisions of the Pope and of the Consistorial Congregation are made public. For some decades past the mediaeval leaden seal has been replaced, as a rule, with a red stamp. The Secretariate for Briefs i. e., princely briefs and Latin briefs does what its name implies. The Pope's letters are drawn up in that solemn, conventional Latin which is the official public language of the Curia as a whole. The Dataria bestows the benefices of the Holy See, examines the applicants, and supervises the successful incumbents. The Apostolic Camera, which administers the worldly goods of the Holy See, has little to do now; but at the Pope's death its presiding official, the Cardinal-Chamberlain or Cameralingo, is in charge of the temporal ruling authority of the Pope for the short time during which the See is vacant. But there still exists today an "Administration of the Property of the Holy See." This is a commission comprised of four members, all of them Cardinals, among whom the Secretary of State is one. The lower officials are laymen. For a long time the Popes themselves have been accustomed to live in monastic simplicity, but the expenditures for the Curia and the Court are large. Probably half of the money is supplied by the interest on the remnant of the Papal fortune. A part is derived from taxes and fees, but the greater part of what remains to be collected is derived from the Peter's pence, the voluntary offerings of the faithful, France was once the greatest donor, then it was Germany, and now it is the United States. Pius X fearlessly swept away old injustices and misuses of money. His suc- cessors have faithfully kept the Roman administration of finance, which caused past times so much trouble, clean and healthy.

The. ecclesiastical interest in the sciences is served by permanent

ARISTOCRACY