General News.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 284, 11 October 1878, Page 16

General News.

His Holiness Pope Leo XIII. has just erected, by a brief of June 21, a new Vicariate Apostolic in China. It is the Vicariate of KanSou, and is composed of the province of that name, of Keu-Kou-noor, and of all the western part of Tartary not already occupied by missionaries. The administration of this vast territory is confided to the priests of the Congregation of Scheutveld-lez-Bruxelles, aTilk?. lerdmand Hamer, priest of that congregation, is appointed^cOTApostohc with the title of Bishop of Tremitha inpartibus. ,n , V °_ ld " Catholic " Priest, Feig, lately residing at Stuhlingen (Grand Duchy of Baden), but now seriously ill at Weinheira, has returned to the unity of the Catholic Church, and has notified this both to the Government and to "Bishop" Eeinkens. Very few Baden priests joined the Old- Catholic movement. Only three now remain involved in it. Herr Feig has realised that whatever it may be about living, it is well to make sure at least of dying a Catholic. • Mussulmans, Jews, schismatics and infidels have nothing but words of praise for the devoted sisters who are engaged in nursing the victims of the late war in the overcrowded hospitals of Constantinople. No less than 2000 patients, of all ages and sexes, are writhing in the agonies of typhoid fever in these abodes of sorrow. So great is the mortality that beds sometimes change their occupants by death two or three times within twenty-four hours. By day and night the corpses of the victims, scantily covered, are brought on litters to the shores of the Bosphorus and thrown into the sea. Four sisters have already achieved a glorious martyrdom by dying at their posts, and fourteen others are lingering between life and death in consequence of their heroic efforts on behalf of the patients.— Are Maria, Fkoji Chang-hai, China, we learn that in Pe-tehe-ly the famine has introduced contagious diseases. Typhus and typhoid fever are killing those whom hunger spared. The new scourge has entered the episcopal residence and the seminaiy of Tchang-kiatchouang. Thirty scholars have been attacked. Brother Pelte, who had devotedly nursed Rev. Father de Eabaudy, Superior of the mission, followed him to the grave in eight days. Since then P. Edel, director of the meteorological observatory, and Mgr. Dubar, Vicar-Apostolic of SouthEast Pe-tche-ly. have died, and Rev. Father Brueyre and Brothei Temple were at last accounts grievously ill. Within the last few weeks a man*dred in America who deserves a little notice on the part of Catholics, It is Herr Eugen Tahisco von Beust, a nephew of Count Beust, who was formerly premier of Saxony, and after the war of IS6G became prime minister of the Austrian monarchy. Count Beust is a staunch Protestant, but his nephew who had emigrated to America, there embraced the Catholic faith, and remained poor all his lite time, earning a scanty living by giving music lessons at St. Louis, Missouri, where he died lately in the hospital of the Alexian Brothers. The Amcrilta, a Catholic journal published in German in the United States, remarks on the subject :— lt seems a remarkable destiny to witness the return to the Catholic Church of the nephew of the very man who at the time when he was most powerful attempted to ruin the Catholic Church in Austria by destroying the Concordat concluded between the Holy See and the Austrian empire. — Universe. The Paris ISUnivcrs of July 2i announces that the Semaine Bchgiexise of Frejus reports the conversion of a Protestant family. The father, a Mr. Wardrober, was an Anglican minister, and first had his doubts raised by reading a life of the Cure d'Ars. His wife was the first to enter the true fold, and on Thursday, the 30th of May, he made his abjuration in the College of La Seyne, Provence, France, and on the following Sunday his four sons were received into the Church. Count Ladilaus Plater writing from Zurich, under date o* of June 7, on the Russiau Persecution of Catholic Poles, says:— "l will soon be able to furnish the public with the names of the ecclesiastics either hanged or massacred by the Russians. The facts are so horrible that no one could believe such barbarism possible in our af c. The history of the martyrdom of the Uniates has just been published in Polish. It is \witten by a resident of the country. What wonderful devotion to the Catholic faith ! Men, women, and children died like martyrs praising God. The survivors are pining in exile at Cherson, a prey to the most abject poverty. The cup of iniquity is full ; the day of deliverance will come." Many of the American and Colonial Protestant bishops are at present on a visit to England. They have come at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and they naturally discuss religious matters. We do not know the substance of their conversations, for it has not been published to the world ; but we have heard thus much —and it is an intimation of tbe general tone— that one subject for discussion is •• the best mode of maintaining union among the various chuichcs of the Anglican communion." If this be so, we should be afraid that, in that one sentence there are three delusions which had much better be brushed aside. It is impossible to maintain a union which does not exist ; it is impossible that there should be " various churches'* in one communion, and it is impossible that there should be a real " Anglican Communion," seeing that there exists no communion among Anglicans.— London Tablet. Berlin has gone back to the darkest days of police despotism by the reintroduction, by order of Prince Bismarck, of the passport system. By such measures, which show his real nature, the Chancellor is making himself very unpopular. Since the second attempt was made on the life of the Emperor, 250 policemen have been added to the police force of the capital. They say that now every tenth man in the streetof Berlin wears a helmet. A German paper announces the arrival at Ems of the Empress Eugenic. She is accompanied only by the Duchesse de Mouchy, and occupies, under an assumed name, a villa hired for h«r and called " Petit Elysee."