Washington Post (Washington, D.C.)
14 March 1905

Prince Maximilian of Saxony, who is a Roman catholic priest and professor of theology at the famous Roman catholic University in Friburg in Switzerland, is at Rome and almost daily at the Vatican. Although he is closely related to King Victor Emmanuel, whose grandmother, the old Duchess of Genoa, is a sister of the late King George of Saxony, he has not called upon his cousins at the Quirinal nor given any sign of life there. He is understood to be at Rome for the purpose of invoking the intervention of the Pope in the scandal, by annulling the marriage which still exists between the ex-crown princess and King Frederick Augustus of Saxony, in the eyes of the Roman Catholic church, which does not recognize their divorce. But it is difficult to see on what canonical crounds the Vatican can possibly decree the dissolution of the marriage, no matter how anxious they might be to comply with the wishes of Prince Maximilian of Saxony, and it is doubtful whether the Pope will see his way to do anything whatsoever in the matter.

This prince, by the by, entered holy orders as the result, it is said, of an unfortunate affaire de coeur, having up to that time been a brilliant cavalry officer. He has persistently declined all ecclesiastical honors, bishoprics, archbishoprics, and even the hat of a cardinal having been already offered to him. He spent the first two years of his ministry doing missionary work in the Whitechapel slums of London. Afterward, for a short time, he acted as mere curate of a church in Nuremburg, and then, finding that he could not escape in Germeny the honors due to his rank as a prince of the blood, sought and obtained the professorship of theology at Friburg, in the Swiss republic, where his royalty goes for nothing.