June 18, 1859 -- Bl. Pius IX, beholding the inexorable march across all Italy of the anticlerical forces of the Risorgimento, addressed the Encyclical Qui Nuper to the entire hierarchy of the Catholic Church, in which we find the following, still relevant words:In the midst of such turmoil We sent you the present letter in order to seek some consolation in Our sorrow. Moreover, on this occasion We also exhort you to make it your concern to do what we read that Moses prescribed once to Aaron, the high priest of the Hebrews (Nm 16): "Take the censor, fill it with fire from the altar, put incense in it and hurry to the people to perform the rite of atonement over them. For wrath has come down from the Lord and the plague has begun." Likewise we exhort you to pour forth prayers as those holy brothers, Moses and Aaron, who "threw themselves face downward on the ground, and cried out, 'O God of the spirits that gives life to every living thing, will you be angry with all the people for the sins of a few?'" (Nm 16).
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We openly affirm that endowed with virtue from God as the result of the prayers of the faithful, We will suffer any danger and any bitterness before We forsake in any way the apostolic office. Nor will We permit anything against the sanctity of the oath by which We were bound when, however undeservingly, We ascended the supreme seat of the prince of the apostles, the citadel and bulwark of the Catholic faith.
150 years later, the Holy Father once more sees before him the march of the forces of revolution -- not the armed forces of a political potentate marching through Italy, but the more insidious and powerful influences of secularism and heterodoxy engaged in a long march through the institutions of the Church. May Blessed Pius IX intercede for Pope Benedict XVI, that he may find the fortitude to "suffer any danger and any bitterness" rather than fail in his duty. And may the words of this great Pontiff remind us to redouble our prayers and petitions, preferably through the liturgical rites and devotional forms that most concretely embody the spirit of atonement and propitiation.
