Note 300 — Chapter XIII · 1600-1753. AMERICAN MISSIONS.
Reading edition
The office of this personage in the canonisation is to raise, pro forma, objections to its accomplishment, by questioning the virtue of the man, the reality of his miracles, and so on. In Italy he is called the advocate of the devil; and our Gioberti, with perhaps more wit than Christian charity, says, “In the case of Palafox, the name (advocate of the devil) may have well become him, as he was the advocate of the fathers.”