Page:On papal conclaves (IA a549801700cartuoft).djvu/163

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OF PAPAL CONCLAVES.
147

the case. Cardinal Andrea, who is, or at all events was, Bishop of Sabina, after having vainly sought several times the Pope's consent to his going to his native city, Naples, on the ground that impaired health required this change of air, finally went thither, in June 1864, of his own authority. This step was branded in Rome as an act of illegal flight and desertion, and after minor preliminary proceedings, the Pope, in a Brief of 12th June 1866, suspended Cardinal Andrea, in his quality of Bishop, from his See, on the ground of insubordination and a violation of his official oaths. Against this sentence Cardinal Andrea, on the 6th July 1866, protested from Naples, in an appeal addressed to Pius IX., and made public, wherein he 'respectfully and solemnly appealed to His Holiness melius informandus.' If the Cardinal was ever sanguine enough to think that the pleas put forward by him in this appeal would have any effect in making the Pope pause in his proceedings, this expectation must have been rudely dispelled. After an interchange of several more or less formal summonses and replies between the respective parties, Pius IX., on the 29th September 1867, issued a Brief, which, served on Car-