Vatican Notes

Foot Wrenched. Pain sharpened the lines of His Holiness' usually serene and always amiable face last week. Descending from the papal automobile for his diurnal promenade in the Vatican gardens he wrenched his right foot. After a day in his private quarters he forced himself to give his usual audiences in the throne room. The pain continued. So public, but not private, audiences have been suspended for the present. Before his election to the Papacy he was a doughty mountain climber. Age, not immuration, is responsible for his present frailty. Next May His Holiness will be 72 years old. U. S. Numbers. To the Vatican, whose thick old walls fraction the blaze of Italian summer into cool nooks for the serene observation of world happenings, went the news last week that in ten years the U. S. Catholic population had increased by virtually 20%. In 1916 the numbers had been 15,721,815; in 1926 they had been 18,604,850. These were finally authenticated figures of the U. S. Department of Commerce.* At last estimate the world contained 331,500,000 professed Roman Catholics. Bound "Bouquet. " News as pleasing, in a different sense, reached the Vatican also last week--that the Right Reverend John J. Dunn, bishop auxiliary vicar general of the archdiocese of New York had just departed for the antipodes, bearing a book containing 72 pages of illumined vellum, bound in white calf with a raised chalice of gold cunningly repousse, jeweled in French enamel and surmounted by a Host in white enamel. Inscribed on the vellum leaves were "flowers," the record of 22,145,089,361 acts of devotion--masses said, holy and spiritual communions, benedictions, "little offices" and ejaculations. The "flowers" made up a spiritual bouquet, like the one offered to the Pope at the 28th Eucharistic Congress at Chicago two years ago (TIME, May 31, 1926). This one Father Dunn is to present at the 29th Eucharistic Congress at Sydney, Australia, in September. Thence politic Cardinal Cerretti is to bear it to His Holiness. U. S. Politics. Cardinal Sincero must not divagate to the U. S. after he inaugurates the Cathedral of Montreal next month. So the Pope, circumspect about the present U. S. political campaign, commanded him last week as he was about to leave Rome for Canada. But Cardinal Cerretti, who intends to cross the U. S. from the Eucharistic Conference at Sydney, Australia, may wander about the states all he pleases. He will not arrive at San Francisco until after the election. Prince Rebuffed. The Governor (mayor) of Rome, Prince Ludovico Spada Potenziani, was refused an annullment of his marriage by the Tribunal of the Sacred Rota,* which rejected his contention that he is not really the husband of Princess Potenziani because their marriage ceremony was "performed without her full consent."

* Latest Department of Commerce figures show for various denominations: Congregational...................................... 901,846 Protestant Episcopal ...........................1,858,966 Disciples of Christ.............................. 1,377,595 Northern Baptist Convention............ 1,290,438 Presbyterian......................................... 1,894,000 Methodist Episcopal Church, South..................................... 2,487,694 Methodist Episcopal Church, North...................................... 4,080,777 Jewish................................................... 4,087,357 American Baptist Association............... 117,858 Church of God, Holiness............................ 2,278 Free Church of God in Christ.......................874

*Protestants deem the Tribunal equivalent to a ''divorce court," but Catholics indignantly explain that it merely has the power to declare the nullity of marriages which are already null due to some technicality. Thus is maintained the principle that the Holy Roman Catholic Church never grants a divorce.