Michael J. Matt | Editor
The urgent need of a saintly and courageous Pope to govern and guide the Church in the early years of the ill-fated 20th century is evident from the description of the sad condition of the times that was given by Pope St. Pius X himself in his first Encyclical, E supreme apostolatus Cathedra, in which he wrote that on ascending the Chair of Peter (1903) he was “terrified beyond all else by the disastrous state of human society today.” “Who can fail to see,” he asked, “that at the present time society is suffering more than in any past age from a terrible and radical malady which, while developing every day and gnawing into its very being, is dragging it to destruction. You understand, Venerable Brethren, that this disease is apostasy from God.”
“Truly,” he concluded, “nothing is more allied with ruin, according to the saying of the Prophet (King David): For, behold, they that go away from Thee shall perish (Ps. 72.27).”