Prisoner of the Vatican [antikvár]

'PrologueThe prime minister could no longer deny the obvious: a political disaster was taking place in the streets of Rome. The small, private funeral procession carrying Pius IX's mortal remains to their final resting place was turning out to be neither small nor private. As midnight approached, he learned that 100,000 people had converged on St. Peter's Square, spilling into the surrounding streets. Agostino Depretis, who had come to power five years earlier in the historic victory of the left, had agreed to the late time, thinking that a procession at that hour would attract less public attention. He now saw how wrong he had been. How could he not have realized the potential for pandemonium in the dark? Outside the great basilica of St. Peter's, in the flickering light cast by their torches, stood the massive crowd of rosary-carrying, prayer-chanting devotees of the last pope-king. The prospect that thousands of loyal partisans of Rome's deposed pontifical ruler were about to try to march through the heart of the city made the elderly Depretis shudder.For years now, the government had banned all Church processions in the Holy City, deeming them a threat to public order, a dangerous provocation to patriotic Italians. Yet, as the midnight bells rang, the coffin containing the pope's body emerged from St. Peter's, leading a procession such as Italy would never see again.Scores of police surrounded the four official horse-drawn carriages as they began to move out. Two hundred carriages of the wealthiest Catholic faithful formed a line behind them, followed by three thousand candle-bearing marchers chanting Latin and Italian prayers and reciting the rosary. But the solemn mood did not last long. Scores of anticlerics some screaming angrily, some playfully if maliciouslyset upon the marchers and tried to drown out their prayers. Angered by the effrontery of the scabrous anticlerical songs and enraged by the cries of "Long Live the King!," "Long Live Garibaldi!," and "Long Live the Army!," some of the faithful, unable to restrain themselves, took up the defiant cry "Long live the pope!"ix