THE LATE MONSIGNOR NARDI.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 215, 8 June 1877, Page 9

THE LATE MONSIGNOR NARDI.

There was, unfortunately, but too much truth in the announcement by cable of the death of Mgr. Franceaco Nardi. E very one knows to what an eminent station his activity, talents, and influence entitled him among the defenders of the Church. He was an adept in jurisprudence. He had studied every question of politics and legislation. This knowledge enabled him, at a time when the whole temporal order is the object of the nK>st violent attacks, to take his place in the thick of the combat and inflict deadly blows on the enemy, which were infallibly directed by his powerful dialectics. He was ever in readiness, because he familiarized himself by study with the position held by his adversaries. A3 Auditor of the Kota the canon and civil laws were the special object of his labours, and no one had a more thorough knowledge of the juridical institutions than he. Tn him the Holy See and the Catholic world lose an eminent mun, a, defender who was equal to every task which the situation might call forth. He was born at Vazzola, diocese of Ceneda, in the ancient republic of Venice, on the 18th of June 1 80S, and had consequently well-nigh completed his six^-ninth year. On the 2nd of May, 1559, he was appointed Auditor of the S icred Rota, and Secretary of the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars in the Consistory of the 12th of March last, a promotion which ensured hi 3 elevation to the cardinalate, had he lived to enjoy that honour. He was the editor of the Toce della Yerita, a journal which, under his management, was a power in Italy. This journal has published the testamentary dispositions of the late distinguished prelate. He has left ten thousand francs to the Cardinal Vie ir, to be distributed among the poor and to provide for the wants of Catholic schools. He has left a silver chalice, richly gilt, to the church at Vazzola, in which he was baptised, and another very beautiful one in silver to the Holy Father. The rest of his effects he bequeathed to his brother, Mgr. Carolo Nardi, protonotary apostolic and arohpriest of Vazzola. His remains were buried from tlie church of Santa Miria- in Portico, on Saturday, March the 26th. i£ay he rest in peace. — Catholic Iteniew.

The curling wreaths of smoke Irotn the guns of the Russian fleet in the harbour of New York, and the crash of their cannon saluting their Easter Day, which mingled with the notes of the bells of a hundred Catholic churches of New York and Brooklyn pealuig the Angelas, added on Low Sunday a new charm to a magnificent scene for those who viewed from the reservoir heights of Prospect Park in Brooklyn the unsurpassed landsc ipe which, in the clear blue of the brightest of the days of an American April, takes in the ocean from beyond Sandy Hook, Staten Island, and the Narrows, the harbour and city of New York, with its noble rivers, the street-covered and spire-adorned slopes of Brooklyn, the distant Orange Hills and the plains of Jersey, and the. rock-cut line of the Hudson flowing by the Palisades. But these guns did a little more than add a single charm to a scene already needing little additional to strike the senses. They suggested to the observant some very practical reflections, not the least useful of which was that in despotic Russia they can do some things a little better than we do the same things in the United States. On what American public vessel on last Sunday, or on Easter Sunday even, did the poor Catholic sailors — numbering, we have no doubt, nearly one-half of the marine of the United States — feel that there was more than toleration, by ignoring, of his religion ? On what vessel of the American navy is there a Catholic chaplain, or when do its guns honour the most precious of the affections of the saibrs who are pledged to die tor th«'ir flag, and who, by their religion, are strengthened to do so unflinchingly ? — Catholic Review.