Return to Rural Life

Manawatu Times, Volume 68, Issue 205, 30 August 1943, Page 4

Return to Rural Life

A two-day conference of Catholic

clergy and laity was held last week at •St. Patrick's College, Wellington, to consider the establishment of a movement to foster iuterest in rural life. The conference was formally opened by his Grace Archbishop O'Shea. Both North and South Islands were represented. Conference expressed tjie view that, at a time when widespread interest and attention were being devoted to the campaign for Christian Order, it was imperative that man should study how to make proper use of the land that God had given him as his natural heritage. The economic and social factors that had brought about the drift of population from country to city and urban areas, with consequent depopulation of the land, man's natural habitat, were a grave danger to the life and happiness of the nation. The main theme of the conference was how to restore the • Christian attitude toward the land, and how to improve the conditions of rural life, so that those already on the land might be filled with the desire to stay on it, and those in urban and city life who were fitted for rural life might be imbued with the desire for it.