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The Chess Column 04 May 1907, Sat The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) Newspapers.com
POPES AS CHESS PLAYERS.
Chess has many votaries among the clergy of all denominations from the earliest times. It has suffered from the attacks of enemies, and has received the unstinted praise of devoted friends of the cloth; but, as a rule, those who have objected to it did not play. Especially has it been a diversion of the Catholic clergy; and there are many records containing allusions to the game from the eleventh century down to the present time. In 1061 it is recorded that Cardinal Damianus in a letter to Pope Alexander II., mentions the imposing of a penance upon a bishop whom he found diverting himself from duty to chess. In Spain at one time clerks were forbidden to play under pain of excommunication, and similar penalties were inflicted in France. It is stated that Pope Leo X. was an ardent devotee of the game, and even invited literary and scientific men to visit him and play.
Leo XIII. was a constant player for over thirty years, and his skill at the game was by no means mediocre. His Holiness' favorite opponent used to be Father Guila, with whom he was in the habit of playing when he was Cardinal Pecci. On being raised to the Pontificate he summoned Father Guila from Florence, where he was then stationed, and gave him apartments in the Vatican. Father Guila was said to combine a rare mastery of the game with an exceedingly irascible temper. Sometimes during a game with His Holiness, he would burst out into an ungovernable fit of rage. On such occasions Leo XIII. immediately interrupted the contest, and proceeded to deliver a little homily on the virtues of Christian resignation and self-control.
