Religion: Merry del Val Jubilee

For a day last week Rafael Merry del Val stepped reluctantly out of the shadow of the retirement in which he has lived since the death of Pope Pius X, his beloved friend. He celebrated the silver jubilee of his elevation, at the hands of Pius X, to the cardinalate. He celebrated a high mass. He attended a banquet in his honor. Then once again he withdrew into the cloister of his memories.

It was a political tangle which precipitated Merry del Val on his so-glittering early career. Cardinal Rampolla was expected to succeed to the papacy when Leo XIII died in 1903. But objections were raised and the election finally went to Giuseppe Sarto, a simple priest, peasant by birth, peasant-hearted to the end of his days.

With infinite trepidation the new, tenth Pius looked about for some more worldly figure on whom to lean in the grave duty of administering affairs of state. At that time young Merry del Val, only 38, had acted as secretary of the Conclave of Cardinals and was director of the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics at Rome, where he had studied for the priesthood.

No peasant was Merry del Val, but scion of an ancient Spanish family, grandee by birth and inclination, rich, sophisticated. He was the son of Don Rafael Marquis Merry del Val, secretary to the Spanish ambassador at London. His mother, the granddaughter of Brodie McGee Willcocks, onetime M. P., had mingled a strain of English blood with Merry del Val’s paternal Spanish. Born in London, Merry del Val had been educated at Baylis House. He completed his theological studies in Rome and was ordained priest at 23.

Under Pope Leo XIII Merry del Val was Master of the Robes and Privy Chamberlain, and one of the youngest members of the papal household. He had ample exercise for his patrician tastes. He liked horses, liked dancing; he was an excellent shot. In ecclesiastical matters however he was not widely known. And when the new pope, Pius X, in his emergency, selected Merry del Val as ProSecretary of State the decision came as a distinct shock.

It was expected, of course, that the appointment would be only temporary. On the contrary, three months later the Pope made Merry del Val a Cardinal and gave him the full secretary title. Thereafter for eleven years Merry del Val at the Vatican counselled, conferred, carried out the policies of the peasant Pius. He enunciated his Pope’s vigorous disapproval of all modernistic tendencies, in religion and in society. He became a world figure.

Strangely ill-mated as the two seemed—the simple, ascetic Pope and the flashing knightly young Cardinal—they soon became united by the strongest bonds: dependence and admiration on the part of Pius, affection on the part of Merry del Val.

In 1914, when Pius died, Merry del Val seemed by all odds the likeliest candidate for St. Peter’s throne. But a new force had arisen in the Catholic hierarchy, Giacomo della Chiesa, Archbishop of Bologna. Cardinal della Chiesa had delivered a striking address on the outbreak of the War, in which he insisted that the Holy See observe the strictest neutrality, yet make every effort to restore peace and mitigate suffering. The fine periods of that address were still echoing when the Cardinals met to elect a new Pope. Ten ballots were cast and as the smoke of their burning ascended from the Vatican, it was della Chiesa, not del Val, who experienced the emotion of becoming God’s spokesman on earth.

Then Merry del Val withdrew into the relative obscurity to which he has clung ever since. One dearest labor of these last years has been in the hope of achieving the canonization of simple, faithful, saintly Pius X.

Although Merry del Val is 63 he is still the youngest Cardinal in the Curia. In 1920 he became Cardinal Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church (administrator of the property and revenues of the Holy See). Should the present Pope die, Merry del Val as Cardinal Camerlengo would be in charge during the interim before the new Pope was consecrated.