*Sigh*

Via the Telegraph:

The Scout Association has been reported to the equality watchdog for allegedly discriminating against atheists by making them swear an oath to God.
Ever since Lord Baden-Powell founded the 100-year-old organisation, the promise by scouts to do their duty to God and the Queen has been as much a part of their movement as jamborees, woggles and the three-fingered salute.
Now, however, it has become the latest target of secularists when the National Secular Society and the British Humanist Association complained to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
They are furious that the Scout Association is refusing to scrap the pledge required of every new member, which they said was excluding "a growing number of children without belief".
Members in Britain, where there are nearly half a million scouts, have to promise to "do their best to do their duty to God and to the Queen", to help other people and to keep Scout law.
To accomodate the movement's 28 million members around the world, the words can be modified to encompass non-Christian faiths.
The Scout guidelines state: "The phrase 'to love God' and 'duty to God' implies belief in a supreme being and the acceptance of divine guidance and therefore the word 'God' can be replaced by 'Allah', 'my Dharma' or others as appropriate to suit the faith or religion of the individual concerned."
But the two secular bodies said in a joint letter to Derek Twine, the chief executive of the Scout Association, that the requirement for members to have a faith should now be made optional.
They said that the Association's stance was "completely unacceptable" for an organisation "that is so committed to personal development of young people and that claims to foster mutual understanding between different beliefs, which of course should include those of no belief."

The intention would seem to be to deprive religious believers of the right to organise.
I'm just waiting for the Secular Society to turn its guns on Alcholics Anonymous. The 12 Steps sound dangerously excluding of avowed atheists:

1 We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable.

2 Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3 Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4 Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5 Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6 Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7 Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8 Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9 Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10 Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11 Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12 Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Jean Preston

I've blogged previously about Jean Preston, the deceased Oxford woman in whose attic were found two Fra Angelicos. One of her relations said: "Auntie Jean knew everything there was to know about medieval literature, but not a lot about art." The Cranky Professor and I found that statement dubious at best.
Well, there's an update to the story, and it seems that Jean Preston was quite the collector:

A collection of paintings found in a pensioner's modest house was worth more than £2.7 million.
After Jean Preston died two years ago, two paintings by the Renaissance artist Fra Angelico were found behind the door of the spare room in her two-up, two-down terraced home in Oxford. The works sold for £1.7 million at auction, a record for a sale outside London.
Guy Schwinge, of Duke's auction house in Dorchester, Dorset, said: "Her family told us that there may be some interesting works of art inside her house. That was something of an understatement.
"In almost every room there were works of art that were quite staggering in their sheer quality and importance."
A rare edition of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, worth nearly £100,000, was found in her wardrobe.
Two pre-Raphaelite masterpieces worth more than £1 million were also discovered - a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the kitchen and a work by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones in her sitting room.

Personally, the pre-Raphaelites leave me cold.

Israel Apologises

Let's not start a debate about what Israel might or might not need to apologise for... But given the State's controversial role on the world stage, there's more than a little surreality in this:

Israel is to apologise formally to the surviving members of the Beatles for cancelling a 1965 concert by the band.
The country plans to deliver letters of apology to the two surviving members of the group and relatives of the deceased members for cancelling the concert back in the group's heyday.
The reason given at the time was because the Israeli government could not afford to host the world-famous band.
But other sources suggest Israel was concerned it would not be able to cope with Beatle-mania and feared that it might corrupt the minds of Israeli fans.
"We would like to take this opportunity to rectify a historic missed opportunity which unfortunately took place in 1965 when you were invited to Israel," the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper quoted the letter as saying.
"Unfortunately the state of Israel cancelled your performance in the country due to lack of budget and because several politicians in the Knesset had believed at the time that your performance might corrupt the minds of the Israeli youth."
Israel's ambassador to Britain Ron Prosor was due to meet Julia Baird, the sister of the late John Lennon, on Monday during a visit to Liverpool.
He was expected to use the occasion to invite the surviving members to play at Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations in May this year, Yediot said.
Other copies of the letter would go out to Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, and the relatives of the late George Harrison.

Prayer of St Thomas Aquinas

Source:

Grant me, O Lord my God,
a mind to know you,
a heart to seek you,
wisdom to find you,
conduct pleasing to you,
faithful perseverance in waiting for you,
and a hope of finally embracing you.

Amen.

Blessed are the pure in heart - they shall see God.

News from Naples

I wish that I had this news from a more reliable source than the Telegraph, but this is interesting and possibly worrying:

An appeal for divine intervention in the rubbish crisis in Naples appears to have failed after a phial said to contain the blood of the city's patron saint failed to liquify.
For several weeks the city has had to cope with thousands of tonnes of uncollected rubbish because of a dispute about disposal.
In a prayer vigil to solve the crisis - led by Crescenzio Sepe, the city's cardinal - thousands gathered in Naples's historic Duomo to pray to St Gennaro, who died in 305AD.
As part of the ceremony, a phial containing the saint's blood was put on display and venerated by worshippers.
The phial of dried blood is usually displayed on the first Sunday in May, when it is reputed to turn to liquid, ensuring the city success and safety.
But it is also brought out in times of crisis - most recently in 1979 when the city was in the grip of a cholera epidemic.
Worshippers at the vigil, which began on Friday, were asked to pray to St Gennaro for help but after three days the "miracle of the blood" has failed to happen - prompting increased fears for the future.

The Truth about Shergar?

In the Telegraph there is this interesting, but gruesome article claiming to reveal the truth about the kidnapped racehhorse Shergar. For those of you who've never heard of this mystery, here's a brief explanation:

Shergar (born 1978. Sire: Great Nephew, Dam: Sharmeen) was an acclaimed racehorse, and winner of the 1981 Epsom Derby by a record 10 lengths, the longest winning margin in the race's 226-year history. This victory earned him a spot in The Observer newspaper's 100 Most Memorable Sporting Moments of the Twentieth Century. A bay colt with a distinctive white blaze, Shergar was named European Horse of the Year in 1981 and was retired from racing that September.

Two years later, on February 8, 1983, he was kidnapped by masked gunmen from the Ballymany Stud, near The Curragh in County Kildare, Ireland. The generally accepted account is that Shergar was abducted by an IRA unit who killed him a few days later when negotiations for a £2 million ransom had stalled and the horse was becoming uncontrollable. His remains have never been found. The incident has been the inspiration for several books, documentaries, and a movie.

Ain't Waugh Wonderful?

One of my favourite passages from his Helena:

When she heard mass in the Lateran Basilica -- as she often did in preference to her private chapel -- she went without ostentation and stood simply in the congregation. She was in Rome as a pilgrim and she was surrounded by friends. There was no way of telling them. There was nothing in their faces. A Thracian or a Teuton might stop a fellow countryman the streets, embrace him, and speak of home in his own language. Not so Helena and the Christians. The intimate family circle of which she was a member bore no mark of kinship. The barrow man grilling his garlic sausages in the gutter, the fuller behind his reeking public pots, the lawyer or the lawyer's clerk might each and all be one with the empress dowager in the Mystical Body. And the abounding heathen might in any hour become one of with them. There was no mob, only a vast multitude of souls, clothed in a vast variety of body, milling about in the Holy City, in the See of Peter.

Incompetence in the Russian Navy - 1904

This article caught my eye:

Zinovy “Mad Dog” Rozhestvensky was charged with taking 46 warships of the Russian Baltic Fleet 18,000 miles round the world to relieve Port Arthur, in Manchuria, from Japanese forces. This operation got off to an inauspicious start when one of the warships opened fire on an approaching steamer carrying a message from the Tsar promoting Rozhestvensky to the post of vice-admiral.
Within days, the manoeuvres had almost succeeded in unintentionally triggering war with Britain. Passing through Dogger Bank, the Russian fleet sighted some small craft on the horizon. The logical and correct explanation was that they were Hull fishing boats. However, the Russian sailors decided they must be Japanese torpedo boats (off Grimsby) and started shelling them. One trawler was sunk and four others damaged. Only the bewildering inaccuracy of Russian marksmanship (the Orel fired 500 shells and missed with every one of them) prevented serious slaughter.
In Britain, there were calls for vengeance. The Royal Navy was put on alert and a cruiser squadron dispatched to “escort” the Russian fleet as far as the Bay of Biscay.
After the Russian fleet docked at Tangier to resupply, its departure was marred when an anchor ripped-up the telegraph cable connecting North Africa to Europe. Several days of intercontinental radio silence ensued. Off Madagascar, illness and disease took its toll. A live shell was fired to mark one sailor's funeral but was not aimed away from the fleet and scored a direct hit on the battlecruiser Aurora.
Clearly in need of gunnery practice, a line of stationary targets was attached to a support vessel. The shelling missed the targets but hit the vessel. The torpedo practice was no less farcical. One torpedo started whizzing round and round in circles, forcing the fleet to disperse in fright.
Amazingly, the arrival proved worse than the journey: at the Strait of Tsushima, the Russian fleet was pulverised by the Japanese, and Rozhestvensky taken prisoner. But as far as preventing international incidents are concerned, it is perhaps right to be more fearful of the underpractised navy than the one that goes in for expensive war games.

Roman Gardens

Mary Beard pays tribute to a deceased colleague:

I had missed the sad fact that Wilhelmina Jashemski died just before Christmas, aged 97. Hardly a household name, she had been Professor at the University of Maryland for almost 40 years, retiring in the 1980s. It was, however, thanks to her that we have a reasonably good idea what the average Roman garden once looked like. I never met her .. and our only contact was when she asked me to write an article on ancient cucumber frames (sic -- which I regretfully declined). But I find that I’ve been using her more and more while I’ve been writing about Pompeii.
Jashemski’s triumph was to see that you could do a proper archaeology of Roman gardens. That meant not just picking up all those microscopic traces of seeds and pollen that earlier archaeologists simply didn’t spot. Jashesmski did for plant roots what Giuseppe Fiorelli did for dead bodies.
That is to say, where Fiorelli in the late nineteenth century saw that you could pour Plaster of Paris into the cavities left in the lava by decaying corpses and reveal the shapes of the bodies, Jashemski saw that you could do the same with the roots of plants … and so see what big trees/shrubs had been growing.
[snip]
The other one that I’ve found really interesting is in the “House of Julius Polybius”, just a few doors away from "Chaste Lovers". The space is roughly the same, and it’s also in an open court in the centre of the house. Bt this time Jashemski’s work revealed a quite different plan. This plot was not an ornamental garden at all. It was packed full of fruit trees and probably a couple of olives, and against the boundary wall more trees were espaliered.
The guess is that these might have been something exotic, like lemons. The evidence? Well around the roots, there were still fragments of the terracotta pots in which these trees had been planted out – and that’s the kind of process that Pliny recommends for more delicate plants.
It was in other words a working garden, not an elegant place for a promenade at all. Further proof of this was found in the print of a ladder some 8 metres tall found on the surface of the soil. It tapered towards the top, and Jashemski’s workmen instantly recognised it as the kind of ladder they used for picking fruit.

Very touching story

Via the Telegraph:

A mother who refused cancer treatment to give her baby the best chance of life has died just weeks after giving birth.
Lorraine Allard, 33, was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer when she was four months pregnant and was offered a termination.
But she refused and delayed her treatment, giving birth to Liam 15 weeks prematurely.
She told her husband: "If I am going to die, my baby is going to live."
Mrs Allard, of St Olaves, near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, spent just two months with her son before losing her fight for life eight days ago.
Her husband Martyn, an oil field technician, yesterday paid tribute to her as the "best wife and mum in the world".

Prodi Resigns

Via the Times, more proof that politically Italy is a joke:

Silvio Berlusconi was poised to make a remarkable political comeback last night after the collapse of the Italian Government led by Romano Prodi.
Only 20 months after defeating Mr Berlusconi in a close-fought general election, Mr Prodi, 68, fell from power in a senate confidence vote, losing by 161 to 156. The Prime Minister went immediately to the Quirinale Palace to tender his resignation to President Napolitano.
An exultant Mr Berlusconi held a celebratory champagne party at the Palazzo Grazioli, his residence in the historic centre of Rome, after hearing the news. “We need to go to the polls in the shortest time possible without delay,” he told reporters.
However, the ambitions of the flamboyant media tycoon, whose centre-right political movement enjoys a comfortable poll lead, may yet be frustrated by the President, who will begin consultations today on how to proceed. He could decide to appoint a caretaker administration to overhaul the Italian electoral system before new elections are held. Walter Veltroni, the leader of the largest party in government, argued last night that early elections would “push the country into a situation of dramatic crisis.”
Mr Veltroni, regarded as Mr Prodi’s successor in waiting, is said to want an interim administration and a new electoral law to give the Left time to prepare for the battle with Mr Berlusconi.
Mr Prodi, fighting to stay in power against the odds, had opened the confidence motion debate in the senate by appealing to senators to back him so that he could complete “urgent reforms”. In a reflection of the tense atmosphere, a senator from the Christian Democratic faction — the party that sparked the crisis by deserting Mr Prodi’s coalition — fainted after being assaulted by fellow party members when he declared that he was supporting Mr Prodi after all. In extraordinary scenes, Nuccio Cusumano was spat on and insulted and had to be taken out of the chamber on a stretcher. He later returned, but his vote was not enough to save Mr Prodi.
President Napolitano can now call new elections, appoint an interim caretaker government or ask Mr Prodi to try to reform his coalition, as he did when the Prime Minister lost a senate vote a year ago on the deployment of Italian troops in Afghanistan. Potential candidates for the post of caretaker Prime Minister would include Mario Draghi, the widely respected governor of the Bank of Italy.
Mr Prodi, who had gone ahead with the vote despite the prospect of defeat, said that he had done so in the spirit of the founders of postwar Italy, who had devised a democratic constitution whose 60th anniversary is being celebrated this week. This provided for votes of confidence to confirm or dissolve governments, and not for “extra-Parliamentary crises”. He said that Italy could not afford the luxury of a power vacuum.
Opinion polls indicate that the Centre Right would win elections handsomely. Mr Berlusconi has already fought four elections as centre-right leader, winning two of them, and a fifth election bid for the premiership would be an Italian record. Mr Prodi’s problems were sparked by the resignation last week of Clemente Mastella, head of the UDEUR Christian Democratic faction, as Justice Minister after magistrates began a corruption investigation involving him and his wife, Sandra. Some on the Left have accused the Vatican of persuading Mr Mastella to sabotage the Prodi Government — the 61st since the Second World War — because its policies on issues such as abortion and gay civil unions are against Roman Catholic doctrine. Vatican officials and Mr Mastella deny this.

Bam!

Diogenes hits the nail on the head when he quotes Danielou on the subject of pluralism and non-Christian religions:

For syncretism, those who are saved are the inward-looking souls, whatever the religion they profess. For Christianity, they are the believers, whatever level of inwardness they may have achieved. A little child, an overworked workman, if they believe, stand at a higher level than the greatest ascetics. "We are not great religious personalities", Guardini once said; "we are servants of the Word." Christ himself had said that St. John the Baptist might well be "the greatest among the children of men", but that "the least among the sons of the kingdom is greater than he." It is possible for there to be great religious personalities in the world even outside of Christianity; it is indeed very possible for the greatest religious personalities to be found outside Christianity; but that means nothing; what counts is obedience to the Word of Christ.

Christian Epigraphy

Many early Christian inscriptions are quite crude. This burial inscription from the Basilica of St Agnes outside the Walls (click on the photo to enlarge) is typical. What's interesting is the spelling - it seems to give an indication of how ordinary folk actually spoke. The two things that spring out at me are the last words of the 1st and 2nd lines - Nobenbres and bixit respectively. Spelled correctly they should be Novembres and vixit - amongst the some of the common folk, at least, 'v' was pronounced as 'b'. This reminds me of the manner in which present-day Spaniards speak Italian.
If any of my readers would care to add anything about the inscription, I'll happily update this post to incorporate comments. I was going to post a full translation, but I lose my way a little in the middle when I have difficulty breaking the inscription up into individual words.

Turin holy water theft blamed on Satanists

Via the Telegraph:

Satanists have struck at one of Turin's most famous churches, stealing a vial of holy water and a missal, or prayer book.
The items were taken from behind the altar at the Chiesa della Gran Madre di Dio, or Church of the Great Mother of God, at the end of last week.
A source at Turin police said a special team of carabinieri military police are investigating the break-in, and that the "most likely explanation" was that "the items were stolen to be used in a rite of black magic".
The holy water, from the river Piave, was in a crystal sphere which was around 14 inches wide. It was mounted on a marble base. The missal was around 20 years old and was lying on a prayer stand.
Father Sandro Menzio, the priest in charge of the church said the job had been done by professionals.
"They forced open exactly the right door and took their targets in the most rational way. They also avoided setting off the alarm. The things they stole were just symbolic, so it is difficult to find an explanation for their behaviour," he said.
Experts in the occult said the church, which was built in 1814 to celebrate King Victor Emanuel I's return to Italy, is one of the most important sites in the cosmic battle between white and black magic.
Sitting on the banks of the river Po, it forms one point of a "triangle of good" and is linked to other points in Lyons and Prague.
Twin statues stand at the base of the stairs leading up to the doors of the church, representing Faith and Religion. The statue of Faith holds a chalice in its hand and is looking at the location of the Holy Grail, which is buried in the city, according to legend.
"This church is full of important symbols to practitioners of the occult," said Giuditta Dembech, the author of Turin: Magic City.
"But only the theft of the prayer book makes any sense. You can organize a black mass with the prayer book, but I do not know what the thieves would do with the water."
She added: "For the objects to have any power for Satanists, they would need to come from a church, and this is one of the most important magical sites."
Turin is said to lie on the 45th parallel, an invisible line that runs around the globe and is halfway between the North Pole and the Equator. But a "line of evil" also intersects the city, and connects it to London and San Francisco.
The city allegedly has the highest concentration of Satanists in Italy.
The Piazza Statuto, a short way away from the church, is a shrine to devil-worshippers, who believe that the gateway to hell lies underneath. Thousands of criminals and deviants were executed in the piazza in Roman times, because it was believed to be a cursed place which often lay in shadow.

There is certainly a stronger awareness of Black Magic and Satanism in Italy than there is in most of the Western world. I'm not quite sure what to make of this story, however. It seems strange that Satanists would limit themselves to stealing an altar missal and a vial of holy water. It is certainly to the Italian Church's credit that it's very aware of Black Magic, however, there also seems to be a tendency amongst some Italian clergy to blame everything on Satanism and Freemasonry.

More on St Agnes

My St Agnes posts are here and here.
Amy Welborn gathers links together here, along with a great picture of the Holy Father and the lambs.
Don Marco gives a beautiful homily for today. (Such a shame that I've never heard him preach!)
Fr Z also has a devotion to St Agnes and gives his own Patristic/Latinist's slant. In particular, this is interesting:

Pope St. Damasus composed a panegyric, an elogia, inscribed in gorgeous letters on marble (designed and executed by Dionysius Philocalus) in honor of Roman saints, including Agnes. This was the period when the Roman shifted from Greek to Latin. Damasus was also trying to make a social statement with these great inscriptions, set up at various places about the City. The panegyic of St. Agnes was placed in the cemetery near the saint’s tomb, but through the ages it was lost. Amazingly, it was at last rediscovered in 1728 inside the basilica, whole and complete: it had been used upside down, fortunately as a paving stone!

Now it is affixed to the wall in the corridor descending to the narthex. Its discovery was a find of vast importance.

FAMA REFERT SANCTOS DUDUM RETULISSE PARENTES
AGNEN CUM LUGUBRES CANTUS TUBA CONCREPUISSET
NUTRICIS GREMIUM SUBITO LIQUISSE PUELLAM
SPONTE TRUCIS CALCASSE MINAS RABIEMQUE TYRANNI
URERE CUM FLAMMIS VOLUISSET NOBILE CORPUS
VIRIBUS INMENSUM PARVIS SUPERASSE TIMOREM
NUDAQUE PROFUSUM CRINEM PER MEMBRA DEDISSE
NE DOMINI TEMPLUM FACIES PERITURA VIDERET
O VENERANDA MIHI SANCTUM DECUS ALMA PUDORIS
UT DAMASI PRECIBUS FAVEAS PRECOR INCLYTA MARTYR

It is told that one day the holy parents recounted that Agnes, when the trumpet had sounded its sad tunes, suddenly left the lap of her nurse while still a little girl and willingly trod upon the rage and the threats of the cruel tyrant. Though he desired to burn the noble body in the flames, with her little forces she overcame immense fear and, gave her loosened hair to cover her naked limbs, lest mortal eye might see the temple of the Lord. O one worthy of my veneration, holy glory of modesty, I pray you, O illustrious martyr, deign to give ear to the prayers of Damasus.

[Click on the photo for a closer view]
I snapped a photo of this stone, with the intention of doing a post at a later date about early Christian inscriptions. The lettering style is very distinctive - these are the so-called Damasine letters which were the work of Furius Dionysius Filocalus who was the Pontiff's calligrapher. Pope Damasus did a huge amount of work related to the preservation and veneration of the martytrs' relics, and frequently composed monumental inscriptions which were then carved into stone in this distinctive script.

Pauline Year

There was a press conference this morning concerning the forthcoming Pauline Year. I'm sure there will be reports in English available shortly, but one thing struck me. There was a little bit of controversy recently when it was announced that the now-defunct baptistery of St Paul outside the Walls was being converted into an 'Ecumenical Chapel'. Today offers some clarity concerning what this involves. The chapel will serve as a place of prayer for non-Catholic pilgrims who visit the Basilica, either individually or in groups. It will also be open to groups of Catholics and non-Catholics who wish to pray in common. However, it will not be used for the celebration of sacraments.

Behold the lambs...

Whilst out at the Basilca of St Agnes outside the Walls, I managed to get a picture of the lambs which were solemnly blessed this morning and will be used to make Pallia.

I also venerated the sacred relics of St Agnes.

The Miracle of Bl Piux IX at St Agnes Outside the Walls

I made a pilgrimage this morning to the Basilica of S.Agnese Fuori le Mura and came across the following fresco in a chapel which leads off the courtyard just inside the main entrance from the Via Nomentana.
I had read previously that Bl Pius IX had miraculously escaped injury whilst visiting the Basilica, and a little digging turned up the following article from the New York Times of 13 April 1905:

To Canonise Pius IX
Pope Receives Surviving Witnesses of Supposed Miracle of 1855.

ROME, April 12. -- an interesting ceremony took place this morning in the Basilica of St Agnes, 2 miles outside of Rome. The building stands over the catacombs, where, among others the body of St Agnes is buried.
While Pius IX on April 12, 1855 was receiving the College of the Propaganda in the Basilica the floor gave way and all present were precipitated into the catacombs, 20 feet below. Nobody was injured, and this, by some persons, was considered a miracle.
The only survivors of the accident the Rev. Dr. Richard L. Burtsell of Rondout, N.Y., and Archbishop Rubian, the resident representative of the Armenians in Rome. In the Basilica this morning Dr. Burtsell celebrated high mass and Archbishop Rubian intoned the Te Deum and bestowed the benediction on the members of the College of the Propaganda.
The Pope later in the day received Dr. Burtsell and Archbishop Rubian. The Pontiff took the occasion to speak of Pius IX. He says that many persons were urging him to begin the informative process towards his canonisation.
"Miracle of the Basilica of St Agnes," the Pope continued, "is one of the events which will be brought forward to establish the fact that Pius IX performs miracles. It is a good thing that there are living witnesses to give evidence."

On either side of the picture are lists of those who survived the incident. To the left are the various dignitaries who escaped, and to the right is a list of seminarians from the Propaganda College who survived, including Burtsell and Rubian. It would be interesting to establish whether the figures in the painting true to life. Bl Pius IX is, of course, clearly recognizable and I suspect that at least the senior dignitaries portrayed are intended to be realistic. If you look at the figure of the Cardinal who is lying underneath a fallen beam in the bottom left of the picture, you will see that he bears a more than passing resemblance to Cardinal Antonelli who was certainly present.

Edited to add:
I forgot to mention that there's another interpretation of what happened to Bl Pius IX. Some superstitious sorts believed that he had the 'evil eye' - not that he himself was evil or malevolent, but that he was an involuntary bringer of ill-fortune. This book explains:

Ask a Roman about the late Pope's evil eye reputation, and he will answer: "They said so, and it seems really to be true. If he had not the jettatura, it is very odd that everything he blessed made fiasco. We all did very well in the campaign against the Austrians in '48. We were winning battle after battle, and all was gaiety and hope, when suddenly he blessed the cause, and everything went to the bad at once. Nothing succeeds with anybody or anything when he wishes well to them. When he went to S. Agnese to hold a great festival, down went the floor, and the people were all smashed together. Then he visited the column to the Madonna in the Piazza di Spagna, and blessed it and the workmen; of course one fell from the scaffold the same day and killed himself. He arranged to meet the King of Naples at Porto d'Anzio, when up came a violent gale, and a storm that lasted a week; another arrangement was made, and then came the fracas about the ex-queen of Spain.
"Again, Lord C------ came in from Albano, being rather unwell; the Pope sent him his blessing, when, pop! he died right off in a twinkling. There was nothing so fatal as his blessing. I do not wonder the workmen at the column in the Piazza di Spagna refused to work in raising it unless the Pope stayed away!"

Sagrada Familia under threat?

Via the Telegraph:

The construction of a high-speed train tunnel that could threaten the foundations of Barcelona’s most popular tourist site is set to begin within months.
The train line will pass within yards of the Sagrada Familia
Spain’s government is to go ahead with controversial plans to build an underground train line that will pass within yards of the church of the Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi’s surreal and still unfinished opus.
The move will come as a blow to architects working to complete the world-famous basilica that Barcelona’s most famous son Gaudi began 125-years ago.
Jordi Bonet I Armengol, who has worked on Gaudi’s daring cathedral for 40 years, has said the planned excavations “could prove fatal” and cause “irreversible damage” the landmark, which is a Unesco World Heritage Site.
Giant tunnelling machines will bore a 39ft wide tunnel through the sandy, waterlogged earth passing within yards of the cathedral’s foundations causing a “risk of subsidence or flooding” according to Mr Bonet.

It's not to everyone's taste, but I'm a huge fan of the Sagrada Familia. Check out the front portal.

St Agnes' Eve

The Seraphic Single passes on a superstition about tonight. As Keats writes:

They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve,
Young virgins might have visions of delight,
And soft adorings from their loves receive
Upon the honey'd middle of the night,
If ceremonies due they did aright;
As, supperless to bed they must retire,
And couch supine their beauties, lily white;
Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require
Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.

Seraphic kindly translates this into prose for us:

Single gals may dream about their future spouse. Just don't eat your supper, and then don't look behind you or upwards when you go to bed. And, um, ask the intercession of St. Agnes, I guess.

Of course, this all seems very ironic when you actually do some research into the martyrdom of St Agnes...