…the fate that has overtaken those kings, ministers and
ecclesiastics, in the East as well as in the West, who have, at various stages
of Bahá’u’lláh’s ministry, either deliberately persecuted His Cause, or have
neglected to heed the warnings He had uttered, or have failed in their manifest
duty to respond to His summons or to accord Him and His message the treatment
they deserved, particular attention…
Pope Pius IX, the undisputed head of the most powerful
Church in Christendom, who had been commanded, in an Epistle addressed to him
by Bahá’u’lláh, to leave his “palaces unto such as desire them,” to “sell all
the embellished ornaments” in his possession, to “expend them in the path of
God,” and hasten towards “the Kingdom,” was compelled to surrender, in
distressing circumstances, to the besieging forces of King Victor Emmanuel, and
to submit himself to be depossessed of the Papal States and of Rome itself. The
loss of “the Eternal City,” over which the Papal flag had flown for one
thousand years, and the humiliation of the religious orders under his
jurisdiction, added mental anguish to his physical infirmities and embittered
the last years of his life. The formal recognition of the Kingdom of Italy
subsequently exacted from one of his successors in the Vatican, confirmed the
virtual extinction of the Pope’s temporal sovereignty.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes
By’)
