WELCOME EXTENDED.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 77, 28 February 1938, Page 11

WELCOME EXTENDED.

BISHOP LISTON’S SPEECH. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Feb. 27. A welcome to His Excellency, the Apostolic Delegate (Most Rev. J. Panico), who presided over the Pontifical High Mass, celebrated this morning in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and to the visiting members of the Catholic hierarchy overseas, was extended by Bishop Liston in the course of an addyess during the ceremony. He spoke of the ideals of Bishop Pompallier and of the faith which inspired the church. “It is our joy here amid the scenes Of our Catholic beginnings to welcome you to this sacred commemoration,” Bishop Liston said. “In your person we venerate the Holy Father, a.nd through Your Excellency we express our attachment to the faith and See of Peter, and our devotion to his august person. We trust Your Excellency’s presence among us for these days of remembrance will strengthen in our hearts the sense of dutiful affectionate loyalty to the Vicar of Christ. “We ate honoured, too, and encouraged in the coming of the archbishops a.nd bishops of Australia and the Pacific. We cherish the fraternal courtesy that brings the distinguished. Bishop of Oklahoma to represent the hierarchy of the United States and wo feel the Catholic soul of all these southern lands is profoundly moved by the presence of the Venerable Archbishop of Tuam, straight from the heart of the Mother Church of Ireland that has formed and fashioned us. ONE IDEAL.

“The Church of God lives and moves and lias her being in one ideal, that all men may come to the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ and, conscious of her mission from above, she walks the roads of every land, in the pursuit of this ideal. Under the authority of Pope Gregory XVI, John Baptist Francis Pompallier came to Western Oceania. He was zealous in hjs priestly work in Lyons, but afar Off were thousands to he brought to the light of God, and the same divine impulse that drove Francis Xavier from the secure triumphs of the University of Paris to the unknown toils and mean bodily labours, hardships and dangers of the East made the young Abbe Apostle and Father in God of the church in New Zealand and beyond. His memory shall not fail and his name shall be recalled from

generation unto generation. “The bishop came not alone. Priests of the Society of Mary and Marist Brothers were his first helpers, and the memory of their holiness and sacrifice honours their own native land. These and a thousand others that fill to overflowing each of the 100 years are our husbanded remembrances of the faith and goodness of priests and laity and of God’s watchfulness, mercies and graces. The years are before us, and if a.t this time we grow more conscious of our spiritual power_ and responsibilities, we must take joyous resolution for our tasks. Our veneration for the past, for the bishops, priests and laity now with God, does not consist in mounting guard over their tomb, but in pressing forward to win for Christ the souls of Maori and pakeho, Catholic and non-Catholic. His sacred person. His message, the very thought of Him a.re for us the heart •of things. We do believe that in Him will everyone find peace of soul. In the spirit of our Father in God, Bishop Pompallier, we ask to-day the blessing of Jesus Christ in our land and all its people through the length of days.”