Word: lateran
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...procession halted in the courtyard before the Lateran Palace. There, while ranks of Roman aristocracy knelt in homage, and Swiss Guards presented halberds, Rome's Vice-Governor, Prince Francesco Dentice d'Accadia, welcomed the Pope in the name of the city. Within the Palace, respectfully around the Pope, gathered his relatives, the former King of Spain & family, the entire diplomatic corps, high government and army officials, high lay dignitaries...
Thence, in his sedia gestatoria (portable chair) the Pope proceeded to the Basilica of St. John Lateran and the real business of the day. In a three-hour complicated ritual, he ascended and descended four Papal thrones, accepted two keys to the Lateran, gave his Cardinals special commemorative medals, laid an offering in a crimson velvet, gold-embroidered purse on the high altar. The long rite over, he appeared to the patient crowds on the balcony of the Basilica's portico. Mussolini's Italian guards struck up the papal hymn, the Pope's Palatine guards blared...
Probably nobody living that day had ever before witnessed that ancient, elaborate ceremony, last performed 93 years ago by Pius IX. The late Pope Pius XI quietly took over St. John's without pageantry after the Lateran Treaty of 1929. More significant than its spectacular pageantry was the political meaning of this "taking possession." To Catholics throughout the world it marked a new militancy in the Vatican, a new deference from Mussolini. In Catholic eyes it was not so much a procession as a triumph...
...year-old Mario Politi was removed as administrator of the Vatican Library, sentenced to four years and four months in the trim little Vatican jail, where he is the only prisoner. Mario Politi expected a pardon from Pope Pius XI last week, on the 10th anniversary of the Lateran Treaty. Day before, Pope Pius died...
...year-old Pontiff would have lived longer, said his physicians, had he not been confined to the Vatican until 1929 when the Lateran Treaty was signed. He remained within the Vatican grounds for seven hot, debilitating summers as a protest against Italian expropriation of papal property...