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CAPUCHIN GENERAL MINISTER PACIFICUS CARLETTI OF SEGGIANO 521 The report on the performance of the students in the opening year of the col– lege was very positive. The general Minister was keen that more provinces should, therefore, adhere to the project of the international college. As founder of the col– lege, he rightly felt paternal pride in the achievements ofthe students. The Capuchin students were able to hold their heads high in the Roman athenaeums frequented by the clerics from the entire Catholic world. The religious decorum, discipline and academic performance of the Capuchin students were all high and not one was be– low par48. But within months of the inauguration of the college there seemed to appear dark clouds on the horizon 49 . Fr Pacificus promptly responded to pre-empt every attack on the burgeoning institution. On 3 February 1909 he appealed to the Pre– fect of Propaganda Fide: "The sad times in which we live unfortunately make us be alarmed about new persecutions of religious Orders at any moment". Therefore he wanted the Holy See to step in and take at least the newly erected general Curia 50 under its protective wings. In fact Pope Leo XIII had declared the friary on Via Boncompagni No 71 as the Capuchin headquarters 51 • On 5 February 1908 itself natura atque ratio in omni ipsius temperatione spiret. [...] Ceterum de his rebus omnibus videmus in Collegii Statutis optime esse cautum''. 48 Collegium Seraphicum Urbis Ordinis nostri, in Analecta OFMCap 26 (1910) 110. 49 Here Fr Paciflcus appears to be referring more to the then-mounting anticlerical and so– cialist ideologies than to concrete threats to the ecclesiastical institutions. It would be the Lateran Treaty of 1929 that would normalise the relationship between the State of Italy and the Vatican City. 50 In the wake of the decree ofsuppression of religious institutes in Rome and in the prov– ince promulgated on 19 June 1873, the Capuchin general Minister was allowed to function from the friary ofthe Immaculate Conception on today's Via Vittorio Veneto, Rome. On being elected the Order's general Minister, Fr Bernard ofAndermatt too was permitted to exercise his function from the same headquarters by paying a fixed rent. But in the morning of31 March 1890 he was forcibly evicted from the house. He took up residence on Via S. Nicola da Tolentino. Meanwhile the work began on the construction of the new curia with the church and the friary dedicated to St Lawrence ofBrinidisi on Via Boncompagni. The Curia was shifted here on 26June 1897. Here the international college was built in 1910-1911 and the place served as the Order's headquarters till 9 May 1953, when the Curia was moved to its present site. 51 AGC, FGl, Leo XIII, Litterae apostolicae quibus Domus ad Sancti Laurentii Brundusini de Urbe declaratur Generalitia Ordinis Minorum Sancti Francisci Capulatorum, 5 May 1896: speaks of"Nunc autem de mandato totius Capituli Generalis in hac alma Urbe die IX Maji men– sis anno MDCCCLXXXIV celebrati, post diutinas durasque exantlatas difficultates, et plurimas ac fervidas ad Deum effusas preces, iidem dilecti fllii hodierni Minister, Procurator Deflnitore– sque Generales secundum nacti occasionem, acquisita, praevia Apostolicae hujus Sanctae Sedis licentia, area cum fabricis e dimidio extructis in via vulgo 'Boncompagni' ad Hortos Sallustianos,