Damascus, I saw this clause from Orientalium dignitas, framed over the place where I was to vest. It was further pointed out to me by the rector of the church; I shuddered to think of what would happen to me if I hinted to one of my Uniate friends that I consider it better to be a Latin than a Melkite.
This Constitution contains laws in protection of the Eastern rites which go further than any Pope had gone before. For instance, in spite of the dislike which the Roman authorities have for any vagueness or change of rite, a Uniate who has adopted the Latin rite because of the impossibility of finding clergy of his own where he lives, must return to it as soon as the cause of his latinization is removed. A woman who has followed the Latin rite after marrying a Latin husband, may return to her own use after the husband's death. Any Eastern Catholic who has turned Latin, even by virtue of a Papal rescript, is now free to go back to his original rite. Schismatics who become Catholics are not to become Latins, but are to keep their rite. The greatest possible difficulties against their turning Latin are made.
In colleges where students of the Roman and Eastern rites study together, the Pope abolishes all privileges by which, for the time of their studies, the Easterns are allowed to follow the Roman rite. On the contrary, the superiors of such colleges are bound to make provision that each may follow his own. Eastern students are to be taught the use of their rites carefully, because, says the Pope: "There is more importance in the conservation of the Eastern rites than might appear at first sight."
Two years later, in March, 1896, he returns to the same subject, and enforces again all the rules of Orientalium dignitas.[1]
Moreover, Leo XIII showed practically his care for Eastern rites. In 1883 he founded the Armenian college at Rome; in 1897 he established a Coptic Uniate college at Cairo. In 1895 he sent the French Assumptionists to Chalcedon, with the mission to study the Greeks, and he founded through them colleges at Philippopolis and Adrianople for the Bulgars. He opened the college of St. Anne at Jerusalem, under the White Fathers, for the Melkites. He founded a Greek Catholic Lyceum at Athens in 1889. He separated the Ruthenians from the Greek college at Rome, and gave them a college of
- ↑ Motu proprio, Auspicia rerum secunda, March 19, 1896; op. cit., vol. xvi, p. 74.
