In the prayer composed by Pope Pius XII for the Jubilee Year of 1950, there is one petition that comes strikingly back to my mind as I am invited to write on the subject of the Holy Ghost. It is: ‘grant unto orphans, affectionate protection'; and it is particularly by the gift of the Holy Spirit that God answers such a petition. Indeed it Would be better to say that it is with no less a gift than that of the Holy Spirit that the prayer is answered. We who are ‘orphans’ as far as the lives of our spirit are concerned, have ourselves to blame if we do not benefit always by that affectionate protection with the giving of which the mission of the Holy Ghost is concerned.

In the Encyclical ‘Divinum Illud’ (9 May, 1897), specially devoted to the Holy Ghost, Leo XIII deplored the fact that the third Person of the Trinity is so little known and his divine mission so little appreciated by us.