CATHOLICITY IN THE ARCHDIOCESE OF TUAM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 237, 16 November 1877, Page 9

CATHOLICITY IN THE ARCHDIOCESE OF TUAM.

A CORBEBPONDENT of the Dublin Freeman, writes : — The venerable Metropolitan of the West, Most Rev. Dr. M'Hale, has just returned to St. Jarlath's after a lengthened and laborious Confirmation tour over the wildest and most western portion of his extensive diocese. He has visited the deaneries of Ballinrobe, Clifden, and Connemara districts of Tuam, administering in his course the sacrament of Confirmation to 2,000 persons, aud travelling more than 200 miles. In his Grace the vigour of youth appears to add its freshness to a glorious old age ; labours of the confessional, toils of travel, from which younger persons might be inclined to recoil, were borne by his Grace with a prompt willingness that by the lustre of its example to the priests of the districts visited helped to impart a livelier plow to zeal that wns already fervent, and spur energies that were already aroused. It was truly edifying to witness the frequent crowds gathered from many a mountain valley and rugged hillside of Connemara to greet their beloved Archbishop, whose hand had been so often raised to help them. It was almost a reward of the long, glorious, and eventful war he waged in the kindred interests of faith and fatherland to experience the grateful love shown to him by the people of Connemara. They remembered well that it was he who had cheered them on in the days of gloom and sorrow, who had encouraged them to hope for a bright prospect when the horizon was all dark, and they knew that efforts of genius and patriotism had helped very much to realise that hope. On Sunday week he arrived at Clonbur. a pretty village that lies in the bosom of a well-wooded valley on the shores of Lough Mask ; Benleve, with its frowning crest, arose in the rear — a meet sentinel of his giant brethren further west. Thence his road lay along tho valley of Maam, where the Corrib first swells into a lake ; by the Joyce country hills, from which a hundred silvercrested torrents were rolling ; by Muilrea, the monarch of western mountains, from whose hoary brow the veil of mist is seldom removed ; by Kylemore, the princely seat of Mr. Hen ry, where nature aided by her hand-maiden art, has done so much to treat the traveller to a vision of beauty that the memory must love to recall ; on to Kenvyle — a distance in one day of thirty miles. Confirmation was, administered by his Grace in the parishes of Clonbur, Ballinakill, Roundstone, Carna. Killecn ; and on Sunday evening last he set out for Arran, although at the time the sea was " white with the foam of its wrath," and the deck was often washed with spray, making the passage as disagreeable as a sea passage might be ; but he could not disappoint the hopes of the people of Arran to see their Archbishop among them, and right royally they received him. A hundred boats, gay with many a pendent bearing scrolls and devices, strange and new, but religious and national, came to the island to act as a convoy of honor ; but the bravest greeting of all was given by a fleet of canoes, rowed by the stalwart sons of Arran. The sea, angered into foam by the rapid beat of the oars, reminded one of the vivid picture of Claudian, in which he describes how the seas of Britain were agitated by the invading squadrons of Irish.