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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 5, 23 May 1884, Page 13

We are continually receiving paragraphs extracted from provincial papers, containing the wildest inventions concerning the will and property of the late Mis. Stapleton-Bietherton. It having been found impossibe to substantiate the original statement that that lady had bequeathed an enormous sum to the Pope by her will, it is now alleged that before her death she sent to his Holiness through Mr. Brriugton, M. P., as intermediary, £400,000 or £500,000. There is not a word of truth in ihe whole story. All the statements to this effect are entirely false. We know for certain, upon undoubted authority, that Mrs. Stapleto i-Bretherton left nothing to the Pope in her will, and that she did not during her lifetime make over to or for his Holiness any sum of money whatever, except a small offering (of a few hundred pounds) as Peter's Pence, more than a year a»o. It is obvious that no such sum as that alleged to have been sent through a private channel could have been abstracted from her personal estate without the fact being known aud traces being left of the transaction. We cannot conceive of any motive for the putting forth of such baseless fictions if it be not a desire to appeal to Protestant bigotry and to cast odium on the Catholic Church and its head, and we cannot too strongly reprobate such malicious inventions. -Loadon Tablet.