This I
say, because many have said that your being named was all my
doing. I do not say that the Pope did not know that I thought you
the only man eligible-- as I took care to tell him over and over
again what was against all the other candidates-- and in
consequence, he was almost driven into naming you. After he had
named you, the Holy Father said to me, "What a diplomatist you
are, to make what you wished come to pass!"
'Nevertheless,' concluded Monsignor Talbot, 'I believe your
appointment was specially directed by the Holy Ghost.'
Manning himself was apparently of the same opinion. 'My dear
Child,' he wrote to a lady penitent, 'I have in these last three
weeks felt as if our Lord had called me by name. Everything else
has passed out of my mind. The firm belief that I have long had
that the Holy Father is the most supernatural person I have ever
seen has given me this feeling more deeply. 'Still, I feel as if
I had been brought, contrary to all human wills, by the Divine
Will, into an immediate relation to our Divine Lord.'
'If indeed,' he wrote to Lady Herbert, 'it were the will of our
Divine Lord to lay upon me this heavy burden, He could have done
it in no way more strengthening and consoling to me. To receive
it from the hands of His Vicar, and from Pius IX, and after long
invocation of the Holy Ghost, and not only without human
influences, but in spite of manifold aria powerful human
opposition, gives me the last strength for such a cross.
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