Catholicism the inextinguishable thirst of absolute power. And thus the
destiny of the papacy is linked to that of Rome, to such a point indeed
that a pope elsewhere than at Rome would no longer be a Catholic pope.
The thought of all this frightened Pierre; a great shudder passed through
him as he leant on the light iron balustrade, gazing down into the abyss
where the stern mournful city was even now crumbling away under the
fierce sun.

There was, however, evidence of the facts which had dawned on him. If
Pius IX and Leo XIII had resolved to imprison themselves in the Vatican,
it was because necessity bound them to Rome. A pope is not free to leave
the city, to be the head of the Church elsewhere; and in the same way a
pope, however well he may understand the modern world, has not the right
to relinquish the temporal power. This is an inalienable inheritance
which he must defend, and it is moreover a question of life, peremptory,
above discussion. And thus Leo XIII has retained the title of Master of
the temporal dominions of the Church, and this he has done the more
readily since as a cardinal--like all the members of the Sacred College
when elected--he swore that he would maintain those dominions intact.
Italy may hold Rome as her capital for another century or more, but the
coming popes will never cease to protest and claim their kingdom. If ever
an understanding should be arrived at, it must be based on the gift of a
strip of territory. Formerly, when rumours of reconciliation were
current, was it not said that the papacy exacted, as a formal condition,
the possession of at least the Leonine City with the neutralisation of a
road leading to the sea? Nothing is not enough, one cannot start from
nothing to attain to everything, whereas that Civitas Leonina, that bit
of a city, would already be a little royal ground, and it would then only
be necessary to conquer the rest, first Rome, next Italy, then the
neighbouring states, and at last the whole world. Never has the Church