The Miracle Performing Pope who really Rocked?

YET ANOTHER POPE IN ROME, THIS ONE A GENUINE SAINT, WHO SPOKE UP FOR BLACK AMERICANS!

In the early 1900s, when Black Americans were in danger of being lynched, it almost seems that they knew better than to waste their time in seeking more than a sort of symbolic help from that somewhat equivocal, so-called Anglo-American Catholic Church, but were too polite to come right out and say so in their letter to the Vatican.

Instead, they got a United States Senator to take their case directly to that miracle-performing, wonder-working Italian saint in Rome, Pope Saint Pius X (1903-1914).

Because they knew, as one Italian author tells us, that he followed in the foot steps of Pope Leo XIII, (1877-1903) who had likewise taken "action against lynching."

Igino Giordani tells us in his book, Pius X: A Country Priest, Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1954, page 136:

"Among the congratulatory messages that came to the Pope at the close of the year 1903 were those from Negro editors of America who, recalling the action of Leo XIII [1877-1903] against lynching, asked his successor, himself of lowly orgin, to help encourage amicable relations between Negroes and whites in the United States, especially since the Protestant churches for the most part remained deaf to pleas of racial justice."

In a footnote, the author then quotes "From La Civilta Cattolica, January 17, 1904 (Vol. I, fasc., 1286,p. 249): "

"Some time ago the Federation of Catholic Societies made a solemn protest against the lynching of Negroes. The Western Association of Negro Editors, in their convention this August at Denver, sent the following petition to Pope Pius X:

We have resolved to express our profound sorrow at the death of Pope Leo XIII, a friend of humanity, who spoke out vigorously against the lynching of Negroes in America ... Since there are many Catholics among the Negroes in the United States, who along with others of their race are subject to unspeakable outrages upon the slightest pretext, so that often innocent and guilty suffer alike, we beg His Holiness to use his authority...

Since the Protestant churches in America, excepting a few individual cases, are deaf to our appeals and seem disposed to remain silent, though not approving the terrible outrages to which we have been subject, we have requested senator Burton of Kansas to present this our letter to the representative of the Pope in Washington for the purpose of having it transmitted to His Holiness in the Vatican."