34. We, certain on the point of being concerned with and restricting Ourselves to the field of religion, have never been able to believe that We could be considered as a "foreign power," especially by Catholics and by Italian Catholics. And thanks to this apostolic power which is now, unworthy though We be, entrusted by God to Us, the good Catholics of all the world consider Rome as the second country of each and every one of them. It is not so long ago that a statesman, who will remain certainly among the world's most celebrated men, a man neither a Catholic nor a friend of Catholicism, in a full political assembly said that he could not consider as a foreign power that authority which twenty million Germans revered, honoured and obeyed. To say then that "no Government of the world would have permitted the continuance of the situation created in Italy by the existence of Catholic Action" it is necessary absolutely to ignore and to forget that in all other States of the world, as far as China, Catholic Action exists and lives, and the organizations frequently resemble even to the smallest details the Italian Catholic Action. In some countries the organization is even more highly developed than in Italy. In no State of the world has Catholic Action been so hatefully treated, so truly persecuted (We do not see what other word conforms to the reality of the truth of the situation) as in this, Our Italy, and in this, Our episcopal seat of Rome. An "absurd situation" indeed exists, but it has been created against Us, not by Us.