Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/833

PROPAGANDA, or Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide, is the name given to a commission of cardinals appointed for the direction of the missions of the Roman Church. The idea of forming such an institution was conceived by Pope Gregory XIII. and other pontiffs, but it was Gregory XV. (1621-1623) who, after having sought counsel from cardinals and information con cerning the state of religion in various countries from apostolic nuncios and superiors of religious orders, pub lished, 22nd July 1622, the bull Inscrutabile by which he founded the Congregation of Propaganda and provided means for its continuance. The cardinal vicar and the cardinal secretary of state were amongst its first members. Additional privileges were granted it by other bulls ; and all the pontifical colleges founded up to that date as well as those which should afterwards be founded for the propagation of the faith were declared subject to the Propaganda. The deliberations of this body, embracing a great variety of important questions, when formulated in decrees and signed by the cardinal prefect and the secre tary were declared by Urban VIII., in 1634, to have the force of apostolic constitutions, which should be inviolably observed. The cardinal prefect is the head of the Con gregation, and as such governs the Catholic missions of the world ; the secretary is assisted by five subalterns (minu- tanti who act as heads of departments, and these again are assisted by inferior employees (scrittori). The more important acts of the Congregation, which are discussed in weekly meetings by the cardinal prefect and the officials, are submitted to the pope for his supreme decision. The archives of the institution were transferred, in 1660, from the Vatican to the Palazzo Ferrattini in the Piazza di Spagna, Rome, which is the seat of the Congregation. They form a valuable collection of historical, ethnographical, and geographical documents, embracing a period of two hundred and fifty years, and serve as a record of past events and of precedents to be followed in decisions on questions that may arise. The funds of the institution were supplied in the first instance by Gregory XV. and by private bequests. Cardinal Barberini, brother of Urban VIII., provided for eighteen places in perpetuity for students, Mgr. Vives for ten. Pope Innocent XII. be queathed to it 150,000 crowns in gold; Clement XII. gave it 70,000 crowns. In the second assembly of the Congregation it was proposed, and accepted as a rule, that prelates on being raised to the dignity of cardinal should pay for a ring offered them by the pope a sum which was at first fixed at 545 golden scudi, and which is now 600 Roman scudi. Large donations were made to the Propa ganda by Catholics in England, Scotland, Ireland, the United States, Spain, and Italy. The cardinal prefect administers the property of the institution in the name of the Congregation. To provide for the affairs of the Church of the Oriental Rite, Pius IX., in 1862, appointed a special Congregation with its own secretary, consultors, and officials. The primary purpose of the Propaganda being to secure laborious and pious missionaries, colleges for their education and training were established. Chief amongst these is the Propaganda or Urban College in Rome, so named from Urban VIII. It is a general missionary seminary for the whole world. Here students are received from all foreign nations, and there are special foundations for Georgian, Persian, Chaldsean, Syrian, Coptic, Brahman, Abyssinian, Armenian, Greek, and Chinese students, as well as for students from England, Ireland, America, and Australia, although these last have special colleges in Rome. After the age of fourteen each student takes an oath to serve the missions during his whole life in the ecclesiastical province or vicariate assigned to him by the Congregation, to which 809 he must send annually an account of himself and of his work. He is maintained and clothed free of expense. His studies embrace the full course of Greek, Latin, and Italian letters, some of the chief Oriental languages, as Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, and, when necessary, Chinese. There are also schools for the teaching of rational and natural philosophy, a complete course of theology, and the institutions of canon law. Besides this principal seminary, the Propaganda has colleges dependent on it both in Rome and in other countries, under the direction of regular and secular priests. From its begin ning it had at its disposition national colleges, such as the English, founded by Gregory XIII. ; the Irish, by Cardinal Ludovisi in 1628 ; the Scotch, by Clement VIII. in 1600 ; the German and Hungarian; the American, of the United States, opened by Pius IX. in 1859 ; the Greek, founded by Gregory XIII. ; the Armenian, recently established by Leo XIII.; and the Bohemian, opened 4th November 1884. The jurisdiction of the Propaganda extends over the English colleges of Lisbon and Valladolid, the Irish college of Paris, and the American of Lou vain. Until recently it had the Chinese college of Naples, transformed by the Italian Government, and the Illyrian college of Loreto, suppressed by the same Government ; and it still has the Albanian pontifical college of Scutari. Besides these, other colleges serve for the education of missionaries for the Pro paganda, as the college of SS. Peter and Paul in Rome, founded by Pius IX., in Milan the seminary of St Calocero for all foreign missions, and at Genoa the College Brignole Sale for Italian emigrants to America. The institutions at Verona for central Africa are the support of the missions in the Soudan. Chief of all the seminaries is that of Paris which, for two centuries, has supplied missionaries for India and China. To these is committed the vast college of the island of Pulo Penang, where young men from China and neighbouring countries are trained to the priesthood. In Paris many missionaries are taken from the French seminary directed by the fathers of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost, who go to French colonies. At Lyons is the college for African missions. In Belgium there are the colleges of Foreign Missions, of the Immaculate Conception, and of St Francis Xavier for Chinese missions. In Holland there was recently established the college of Stiel, whose students go to China. In All Hallows College, Ireland, the students are educated for the missions in Australia, Canada, and the Cape of Good Hope. In England a seminary has grown up within a few years at Mill Hill, which has already supplied priests to the missions of Borneo and Madras. Previous to the late changes in Rome, the Propaganda had dependent upon it the college of Reformed Minors in S. Pietro in Montorio, the Carmelites in S. Pancrazio (suppressed), the Minor Observants of S. Bartolomeo all Isola recently re established, the Conventuals (suppressed), and the Irish Minor Franciscans of St Isidore. Outside of Rome there were also colleges of regulars for the missions, as Ocana in Spain, Sernache in Portugal, and others. The Propaganda, in the establishment of vicariates or new episcopal sees, has always encouraged the formation, as soon as circum stances would permit, of seminaries for the education of a native clergy, and frequently these have flourished, as the community of the " Houses of God " (case di Dio) in Tong- king, the seminaries of Sze-chuen, of Peking, and of Nanking. The first step taken in a new mission is the erection of a chapel, followed by the opening of a school and an orphan age. As numbers increase, and more priests come to the new mission, they are tinited under a superior invested with special powers by the Propaganda in fact a prefect apostolic. As churches increase and the faith spreads, a vicar apostolic, who is a bishop in partibus, is appointed,

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