CONVERSION OF PRINCESS ENA.

Otago Witness, Issue 2722, 16 May 1906, Page 67

CONVERSION OF PRINCESS ENA.

— The conversion of Princess Ena of j Eattenberg to the Roman Catholic Church j would at one time have aroused far more loud comments than it has done : but still what has been said shows some ignorance of the facts of the case. Princess Ena is by no means the first of the King's nieces to change from the Protestant Church in which they were all reared in order to fit j lu>t own to her husband's form of religion. ! If it comes home to us more in this case because this particular granddaughter of j Queen Victoria has always lived in our midst, that does not alter the fact that the King lia-d no more call to interfere in j this case than in the other exactly similar cases in his family that have preceded it. ' The young Princess is a granddaughter of I the late Queen, and had a German Protestant father ; in just the like position ■ were the Czaritsa, the Grand Duchess SerI «ius. and the Crown Princecs of Greece — 1 tl;© fiv«t two daughters of our Princess Al'ce. the la&t-nanted the daughter of our' Princer« Royal. The three elder Princesses have all joined the Greek Church, which is ' at leabt as olien from Protestantism as the Church of the Kins; of Spain. Nobody wondered that our King did not interfere or expostulate with his other nieces : and his Majesty has no more obligation to do so in this than in the earlier cases. Tha '

Kaiser, who&i sister is -the Crown Princess of Greece, was very angry when she decided to join her husband's communion, as it had been specially arranged before her marriage that she should not he required to do so — just as it was settled for the late Duke of Edinburgh's Hussian bride that she should be free to remain in the Greek Church after marrying an English Prince. But Princess Sophie of Prussia, after she had married the heir to the Greek throne, experienced the obvious inconveniences of refusing to share in the form of worship carried on in the nation over which her husband is expected to rule, and she voluntarily decided to adhere to the Greek Church accordingly : and though her brother, the German Emperor, objected,, neither he nor anybody else could prevent her conversion. Such steps must be personal to the individual.