PAPAL STATE: Two Firsts

One day last week Pope Pius XI, in his youth a daring sealer of high peaks, was sinformed that:

Bounce. A certain Marcello Nitrati, Italian tourist, had just scaled St. Peter’s dome and jumped off. After bouncing once against the side of the dome he plunged to the roof (308 ft. below), became the first suicide in the newly constituted Papal State (TIME, Feb. 18, 1929).

Flag. Two priests, one Swiss, the other Italian, climbed last week to the topmost crag of the Matterhorn (climbed 40 years ago by the present Pope, then a priest) dragging after them a portable altar.Setting up the altar, they said mass, then unfurled for the first time outside the Papal State its flag: yellow and white, emblazoned with the Papal Tiara and Crossed Keys.

Delighted by the priests’ success, His Holiness despatched to them the Apostolic Benediction.