The Beatissimus Pater, Pius XI, was reported last week from Rome to have excommunicated in the second or more serious degree** Leon Daudet (son of the famed author Alphonse Daudet) and Charles Maurras, both leading members of the French Royalist party. The excommunicated had stigmatized in their Paris newspaper, L'Action Francaise, all Republican Catholics—asserting that true Catholics are Royalists. The Pope not only excommunicated M. Daudet and M. Maurras, last week, but despatched an official rebuke to the French Cardinals Lucon (Rheims), Charost (Rennes), and Billot for upholding L'Action Francaise in various letters written by them.
**Excluding them from all ecclesastical privileges and from entering Roman Catholic churches, whereas excommunicants in the first degree may enter churches, though deprived of all privileges.