Balkan Hierarchy Desired By Pope.

New York Times 100 years ago today, December 8, 1912:
Negotiations Believed to be Going on in Regard to the Position of the Roman Church.
FERDINAND ONCE CATHOLIC
Also His First Wife — Only a Few Apostolic Vicars Now Represent the Church In Southeast Europe.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    ROME, Dec. 7.— Most animated comments continue over the fact that the Pope, contrary to all custom, omitted to deliver at the Consistory of Monday last an allocution to the Cardinals. Some ecclesiastics of the old régime, as they call here those who have remained faithful to the ideas and traditions of the late pontificate, exclaimed:
    "Fancy Leo XIII., with all that is going on in the Balkans, with the imminent disappearance of Turkey from Europe, not making his voice heard in such a solemnity as a Consistory!"
    They are certainly right from their point of view; but, on the other hand, those who think they know what is now going on behind the scenes state that, if Pius X. did not speak, he had good reasons, as he looks much more to the substance than the appearance of things, and for the vanity of an ephemeral success in having his words quoted throughout the world would not sacrifice the important negotiations and arrangements which are going on and which may lead to the Catholic Church having an important influence in those Balkans which are now the object of general attention.
    It must be kept in mind that Southeast Europe, where the Balkan conflict has been raging, is in the hands of only a few Apostolic Vicars, and that the greatest ambition of the Holy See would be, as was plainly shown by Leo XIII., to bring about a reunion of the Eastern Churches with Rome and the establishment of a Catholic hierarchy there.
    In the whole of Macedonia there is only one Apostolic Vicar, Mgr. Scianow, of the Greco-Bulgarian rite, who was appointed by Leo XIII. with the dignity of Titular Bishop of Livias, in Palestine. The whole of Thrace has also only one Apostolic Vicar, Mgr. Michael Petkow. Finally, the most important of Vicarates, that at Sofia, is intrusted to Mgr. Robert Menini, who is also a kind of official representative of the Holy See in the Balkans. His post is one of the most delicate, and, at the same time, most difficult.
    It must be remembered that King Ferdinand was a Roman Catholic, and so was his first wife, who was the mother of young Boris, the Heir Apparent to the throne. Understanding how much more popular it would be if his descendant were to belong to the same creed as his people, the then Prince Ferdinand came to Rome to ask the Pope's permission to have Boris turn orthodox. Pope Leo, however, indignantly refused, so the Prince brought about his conversion without permission and immediately afterward, in a spirit of reprisal, Visited King Humbert at Rome — thus being the first Catholic sovereign to set foot in the Quirinal after the fall of the temporal power.
    Now, as the Romans say, much water has passed under the bridges, and, as what is done is done, Pope Pius would at least like to forget the losses of the past by the establishment of a Catholic hierarchy in the Balkans.