Storia do Mogor 366.2.6

366.2.6

After having stated all this, I leave it to you to think what will be said at Rome when it is seen that the Lord Bishop and the reverend Jesuit fathers so lead astray the court of Rome that they want it to be believed there are thirty to forty thousand Christians where there are not even two thousand. We leave it to you to think what will be said by the Sacred Congregation when it knows that none of the reasons requiring the suspension of the decrees were to be feared or anticipated. Far from that, the rarest benefit that could have accrued to the Malabar Christians of Pondicherry would have been the restoration of that mission into the hands of the Capuchin fathers. Nothing in condemnation of the Capuchins was ever reported to Rome, nor was any Patriarch deputed, as had to be done about the reverend Jesuit fathers. But what will they say at Rome, gentlemen, when they see that a superior, a friar of twenty-five years' missionary work, has been declared excommunicated and accursed, and doubly accursed of God Omnipotent, et cetera, and that, too, in a city where there are fifty thousand idolaters. Will not this strike them as an excellent way to attract men to our Holy Faith, and a lofty example of virtue for the instruction of those who have already embraced that faith? Is this, gentlemen, the scandal, the sedition, and the tumult from which they ought to flee?