Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1915 — WHY POPES NEVER PREACH [ARTICLE]

WHY POPES NEVER PREACH

Tradition of the Church, That Hit Seldom Been Broken, Forbids Presence in Pulpit.

The preparation and delivery of sermons which impose such a heavy burden of toil upon other ministers of God have no terrors for the pope, for the good and sufficient reason that the traditions of the church forbid his preaching. Of all the many strange restrictions which hedge about a pope, one of the strangest is that he should not be allowed to preach. Only once in 300 years has a pope delivered a sermon, and that was under most exceptional circumstances in 1846. On the Octave of the Epiphany a celebrated preacher, Padre Ventura, was to have occupied the pulpit in St. Peter’s, but was suddenly taken ill. To prevent disappointment to the vast crowd which had assembled Plus IX broke through the custom of ages, and ascending the pulpit delivered a simple, homely sermon that perhaps impressed its hearers more than the finest eloquence might have done, because of its uniqueness.