PROPAGANDA 433
and a bishop appointed from the Augustinian Order is sacristan of the Palace. One o the most important offices held by the Jesuits is in the College of the Penitentiaries.
The Divine task of the Church to "go and teach all nations" is confided to the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith) , which is an especial part of the Con- gregation for the Missions. It is in control of all territories which are not organized into dioceses having full rights. That means most of the earth's surface. Before the reform of the Curia, the Prefect of the Congregation of the Propaganda had sole authority in the territory, to the exclusion of the other Congregations and indeed partly of the Pope himself. He was not incorrectly termed the "Red Pope." The reform deprived him of important territories the British Isles, Holland, Luxembourg, Newfoundland, Canada and the United States, in all of which ecclesiastical conditions had long since been so settled that the term "missionary region" could no longer be applied to them. In 1917 Pope Benedict XV also took away from the Propaganda the subdivision for Oriental rites and made of this an independent Con- gregation. The Congregation of the Orders also extended its rights to include the missionary Orders, and so the Propaganda retained absolute control only of the purely missionary societies and seminaries. The oflices 1 entrusted with the faith and canon law became, as their nature implied, qualified to control the whole Church. Therewith the supreme power of the Propaganda had been reduced to a bearable degree. Nevertheless it still has the right to legislate and administer the tremendous world of the missions in an almost sovereign way, and manages by reason of its systematic work and its well-co-ordinated strength to make energetic inroads into peoples of other faiths. A small group of courageous souls first sets foot on new missionary ground, and then nuns and other missionary priests follow. The boundaries of the new foundation are fixed in advance. If it seems likely to succeed it is elevated to the rank of an Apostolic Prefecture. Later on, as Church life and charitable activities grow, the mission becomes an Apostolic Vicarate, the superior of which is similar in rank to a coadjutor bishop. Finally, when it is certain that the founda- tions will prosper in an orderly way, that the district can maintain
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