The Pope’s Army Comes to New York, 1868

Founded in 1785, St. Peter’s Church was the first Roman Catholic church erected in the State of New York. The above drawing dates back to 1878. The church now stands across now from Ground Zero. 

PAPAL ZOUAVES.
Celebration of High Mass at St. Peter’s Church— An Address by Archbishop McCloskey— Departures of the Zouaves for Europe.
The New York Times, February 23, 1868

Yesterday morning at 7:30 o’clock St. Peter’s Church, Barclay-street, was well-filled by both sexes, on the occasion of the celebration of a Solemn High Mass in behalf of the Papal Zouaves, en route from Canada to Rome to join the Pontifical Army. The Zouaves, numbering 130 and in full uniform, occupied reserved seats on each side of the middle aisle.

At the hour appointed, Archbishop McCLOSKEY came forward to the chancel and addressed the Zouaves, as follows:

I think that I am not to call you Catholic brothers, or Catholic friends; I will call you Soldiers of the Cross, before taking your departure from our American shores, to kneel before God’s altar, to join in the Holy Sacrifice about to be offered thereon in your behalf, and to ask God’s blessing. I have come, not so much to address you, as to unite my prayers with yours, and sincerely from the bottom of my heart to invoke upon your heads and the noble enterprise in which you have embarked, Heaven’s choicest benediction.

I have come to have what I esteem the pleasure and privilege of looking into the faces of that noble band of Canadian youths who bid adieu to their common friends, for a time only we trust, in order to go forth animated as they are with chivalrous sentiments of Catholic faith and piety to offer themselves, and, if need be, to offer their lives for the sake of our common Holy Father, the father of all Catholic Christians, who are going to enroll themselves under his sacred and glorious banner and have the honor of being numbered among those names have already filled the Catholic world with their glory and renown. The Papal Zouaves, Zouaves of the Holy Father, Zouaves of glorious PIUS IX., whose very name inspires every heart not only with love but with enthusiasm and with courage.

And that name itself will be enough to sustain you in any hour of danger or conflict which it may please God’s providence to send to you. You are going to take part in a holy as well as noble cause. You are going, not to wage any unjust or aggressive warfare, not to take part in the overthrow of any legitimate throne or properly constituted authority. You are going, not to be the plunderers of other people’s property, or to invade the territory of sovereigns, not as invaders of filibusterers, but you are going to stand: with others like you, as a rampart of defense and a tower of strength around the presence of your Holy Father to protect his safety and defend his rights, with which, the safety and the rights of that Holy Church to which it is your privilege to belong, are identified; for those who have been and are still attacking his temporal sovereignty, but they are aiming to attack and mean to attack the Church of which he is the head.

This is not the design of all, but it is the design of the leaders. But, thanks be to God, through the prowess of the Papal Zouaves of the Catholic Church, the anniversaries not once, we hope, but forever. You are going, then, as I said, to protect that safety and that life against the efforts of those who are attacking the temporal power of the Holy Father, not simply as such, but because, as he believes, it is identified with the preservation of the spiritual power. The Church can never die. The Church is sustained by a power which no man can overthrow. Its power is essential to the very action and life of the Church in the fulfillment of the mission to which God has called it. You have, then, I repeat, young men, chosen a noble part, and I do not doubt you will perform it nobly. You have entered into a glorious cause, and I have no doubt you will prove yourselves worthy of it, and reflect by your conduct hereafter honor upon your Catholic names.

Canada has reason to be proud of you already, and I trust she will have reason to be prouder of you still. You have set a beautiful example, and I may say there are hundreds of thousands in this city and country who envy you your lot, who would be ready to join your ranks, ready to throw themselves also into the same holy cause. If I am asked why it is not so, my answer is simply this: that if their services are needed, if from any proper quarter the word should come for their aid, I say, let them go, and not one of them but would be forthcoming with a will.

But as far as the war has advanced we are led to presume and to believe that, after what has been already done, and what is being done toward raising troops, the Holy Father does not, at this moment, call upon us so much for men as for pecuniary aid, for the means of supporting and sustaining those who have already gathered around him, and who are dependent upon him for their support. Not so with you. You go not to be a burden on the Papal treasury. You pay your way and give your services as volunteers.

And as for the Catholic Christians of the United States we will venture to say that they, though they may not appear in the ranks of the Papal Zouaves, their hearts are true to that Holy Father, true to the sentiments of his temporal sovereignty, and true to his Catholic memory throughout the world. We will answer for the Catholics of the United States, whatever others of its fellow citizens of their creed may be disposed to say of them. They are American citizens, and they are as strongly devoted to the sustenance and maintenance of the temporal power of the Holy Father as Catholics in any part of the world; and if it should be necessary for them to prove it by acts, or more openly by words, they are ready to do so.

The American government has had no part in the iniquities perpetrated against our Holy Father, no part in the evil, sin and unjust aggression of sovereigns to which he has been made subject, in part, in Papal affairs, and it probably will not be allowed to have any part, as the people are well disposed in the matter of sustaining his temporal power. Its policy has been in no way to intervene in affairs of Europe, in its government or people, and so long as that policy lasts, we will rest content; but if that policy should ever change to a sympathy with the Italians as against the Holy Father, then Catholics must be prepared to show their readiness, by acts as well as words— to give their lives if necessary for their Holy Father.

I have then only to say to you, young soldiers of the Cross, God speed you; may you prosper, may the cause which you go to defend prosper; and may you come back laden not only with the blessings of the Holy Father, as you will do, but with the blessings of the whole Catholic world. May you come back to rejoice the hearts of your country, your parents and your friends. But if it should be God’s will that on Italian you should have to lay down your lives, you cannot do it in a more sacred or holy cause, and prayers will go up for you from Catholic friends from every portion of the world. Your names and memories will be held in veneration, and you will be numbered among those eminent Catholic Zouaves whose names are already associated with glory.

The Archbishop then gave the Zouaves his benediction, and on leaving the chancel said, “Farewell, happy boys— a safe return.”

The Zouaves then sang, “Ave Maris Stella,” after which Rev. Mr. QUINN, pastor of the church, offered the sacrifice of the Mass, and gave the benediction of the Blessed Sacrament to the Zouaves. At the close he addressed them as follows:

I cannot deny myself the pleasure of expressing the sentiments of gratitude with which my heart is filled, for the honor that has been conferred on me and this congregation, by your presence here this morning, immediately before taking your departure for the distant land to which you are tending. The spirit of Christian chivalry is not dead. It arouses you, and many others like you, with sentiments not unlike those which were inspired by PETER the Hermit; and for a cause as great and as noble as that in which he was engaged. What will be your joy, when, in a few days, you will present yourselves before him whose presence commands alike your respect and the reverence of friend and foe— the glorious PIUS IX.? We envy you the happiness of such a meeting. We pray now that you, our brave Canadian young men— children of the same continent, brothers of the Faith— may have a prosperous passage, and we pray also that you may return again, after the time of your service will have expired, safe and well covered with glory; and that we may be permitted to live to receive you on your return, and to offer up acts of praise and thanksgiving to God for His mercy and for His protection.

The services at the church having closed, the Zouaves proceeded to the steamer St. Laurent, lying at Pier No. 50, North River. There a large number of friends had gathered to bid them farewell and wish them a prosperous voyage. At 12 o’clock the Zouaves formed in line on the pier and gave an exhibition of their peculiar drill. They then marched to the quarter-deck, where a hollow square was formed, with the Canada Committee, and Right Rev. Bishop PINSONCAULT, of Montreal, Rev. WILLIAM QUINN, of St. Peter’s Church, and Rev. Mr. Thiry, attached to the Jesuit College of St. Francis Xavier, in the centre. The Committee, through the Chairman, addressed the Zouaves, and then the Bishop spoke to them, (in French), and in a way to win repeated cheers. The Bishop closed his address by bestowing the benediction, the entire company kneeling at the time.

At 1 o’clock the lines were cast off, and the steamer moved from the ship amid the hearty cheers of those assembled on the pier and the enthusiastic responses of the Zouaves on board.

NOTE
The 1800’s saw the Italian peninsula move from a series of independent kingdoms into a united nation. But not everyone approved the unification movement. For over a thousand years, the popes were political as well as spiritual leaders, ruling that portion of Italy known as the Papal States. (This is referred to as the “temporal power,” as opposed to the pope’s spiritual authority.) Throughout the century, popes bitterly opposed unification, more than Blessed Pius IX (1846-1878). His fear was that the papacy’s loss of indepence would lead to its being too closely associated with one particular political regime.

As the movement gained ground, Pius issued a call to Catholics worldwide to come to his aid. Catholic volunteers came from all over the world, many from Ireland but some from as far away as Asia. By 1868, there were nearly 5,000 foreign volunteers, including 135 Candians and 14 Americans. A few weeks before the Mass described above, the Freeman’s Journal, an independent Catholic newspaper based in New York, started a controversy when it expressed the hope that some Americans would volunteer. Writing from Italy, C. Carroll Tevis, who had been a brigadier general in the American Civil War, berated American Catholics “as the only race recreant to its duty.”

The American bishops, however, were hesitant to lend their endorsement. In his history of the Papal Volunteers, Charles Coloumbe writes: “Anti-Catholicism was still strong in 1860’s America… Nothing would, in the bishops’ minds, fan that particular set of flames more hotly than recruiting American Catholic veterans for service under Pius IX.”  

On the other hand, the response from Canada was much more enthusiastic. Historian Howard Marraro writes: “In the meantime, great interest was excited in Canada as a result of the appeals made from every Catholic pulpit for aid for the Pope… The movement speedily became popular. Every pulpit preached the Nineteenth Century Crusade. The cause, endowed with attributes of romance and religious enthusiasm, enlisted the sympathies of every Catholic in Canada.”

During their stay in New York, the Zouaves stayed at the College of St. Francis Xavier on Sixteenth Street in Manhattan (now Xavier High School). As described in the article above, they left from New York harbor and arrived in Italy on March 10, 1868. After the fall of the Papal States in 1870, many of the Canadian volunteers returned to North America by way of New York, where a reception and a Mass at St. Peter’s Church was held in their honor. (The Italian government guaranteed the Vatican’s independence in the aftermath, although Pius IX refused any interaction with the regime.)

A word about the term “Zouave.” It originally referred to an elite French army unit created in North Africa during the 1830’s. Their uniform included a kepi or fez and baggy pants (usually red). The style was copied by other armies, including both the Union and the Confederate.