Just a Google translation, using a text download from the Archive link. The result is not great, so I edited it a bit. Not proofread!! Not Official!! Not Approved! I should continue after Holy Easter...
My fear is that history could be repeating itself, perfidious laws coming down the pipe.
SEPTEMBER XXVII MDCCCLII.
SPEECH FROM N. S. P. POPE PIE IX
PRONOUNCED IN THE SECRET CONSISTORY OF SEPTEMBER 27, 1852.
Venerable Brothers,
Today we want to share with you, Venerable Brothers, the cruel pain that We have felt for a long time in the depths of our souls, for the serious damage which cannot be sufficiently deplored by which, since for several years, the Catholic Church has been oppressed and afflicted so miserably in the Republic of New Granada. We would never, We could not expect anything similar: everyone knows what testimonies of goodwill this Apostolic See has lavished on this Republic, and with what eagerness Our predecessor Gregory XVI, blessed memory, not only recognized it before the other republics of these regions, but even still established an apostolic nunciature there, in order to provide spiritual good of this people and to strengthen with them the bonds of reciprocal friendship.
OUR pain is all the more acute as we have seen the means employed by Our predecessor and by Ourselves with this government, with tireless perseverance, so that it can remedy the great evils done to the Catholic religion in this country, and so that it abolishes certain laws that the civil power has promulgated and sanctioned there to the detriment of the faithful, laws contrary to the divine institution of the Church, to its venerable rights, to Her freedom and to the supreme authority of this Apostolic See, no less than the authority of the sacred pastors and other ecclesiastical persons and clerics.
In 1845, during the month of April, a law was promulgated in New Granada, which carries, among other prescriptions, that when secular courts admitted an accusation against persons or ecclesiastical people, these people, and not only priests and other clerics, but also the Bishops themselves whom the Holy Spirit has established to govern the Church of God, must immediately cease all functions of the sacred ministry and entrust to others the exercise of their office. The same law punishes with prison, exile and other penalties anyone who refuses to remember to comply with these prescriptions.
Our predecessor learned of it, and immediately he addressed a letter to the President of the Republic, energetically representing to him how much such a law was worthy of reprobation and asking with insistence that it should be abrogated and that the rights of the Church remained in their integrity. For Us, raised by the impenetrable judgment of God, on this Chair of the Prince of the Apostles, We hadn't taken the government of the universal Church that very early We feel inflamed within Ourselves the sole desire for assisting souls, to provide for the needs of the holy religion in this country, and for this purpose in 1847 we sent letters to the President of this Republic. We expressed on the one hand all the ardor of Our concern for this part of the...
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Topic: Where to find Pius IX Acerbissimum Vobiscuм (Read 374 times)