CATHOLIC NEWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVI, Issue 24, 5 October 1888, Page 31

CATHOLIC NEWS.

Many noble ladies of England have formed themselves into a " Catholic Needlework Guild," whose object it is to make clothes for the poor. The Archbishop of Paris has refused to allow Verdi's Requiem to bo given in Notre Dame on the ground that ladies of the opera wonld sing in it. The Italian Government, in a circular to Catholic missionaries in Asia and Africa, threatens to withdraw the subsidy to them unless they accept the patronage of King Humbert' and permit a Government inspection of their curriculum and books, A concordat has been ratified between the Vatican and the United States of Columbia. At the request of the Archbishop of Chalcedon, the Holy Father has granted an indulgence of three hundred days to all the faithful who, with contrite heart, recita devoutly the " Aye Maris Stella." There are now some 10,300 Catholic churches in the United States, with a hundred or two of new ones constantly in course of •rection. The R«v. Walter J. B. Richards, D. D., Diocesan Inspector of Schools for the diocese of Westminster, England, in presenting his annual report to Cardinal Manning, notes with just satisfaction that the latest Government report records the Catholic schools as again at the head of th« schools of the country in the matter of secular instruction. The actual percentage of passes in the elementary subjects is as follows:— Catholic schools, 8806; Board schools, 87"82; Wesleyan, 86-24 ; British, 85 95 ; Church of England, 84-39. A priest writes to the North-western Chronicle to correct the impression recently givca by it that there was only one Swedish Catholic in Minnesota. He says : Permit me to say that there are in the State a goodly number of Scandinavian Catholics, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. Until very recently we had a Danish priest, the lamented Father Sorensen, of Peter 'p. For the sake of Catholic journalism, the Pilot regrets that Mr. Maurice F. Kgan, editor of the New York Freeman's Journal, is about to close his connection with that paper. But the loss of journalism is the gain of Catholic higher education, for Mr. Egan goes to Notre Dame University, Ind., to take the chair of English literature and belles-lettres, and there is no man in the country more fit for the place. We congratulate Notre Dame. The cause of beatification of the Venerable Jean Peyboyre, martyr, is being followed with lively interest by French Catholic?, both because Father Peyboyre's heroic death is of such recent date, and because he is the first missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Faitb on whom will be conferred the title of the Blessed. Twenty years ago there was neither prie3t, monk nor nun in Wyoming Territory. There may have been a few Catholics, for Catholics can be found everywhere ; but there was no Catholic church, no Catholic school, no Bi3tera' hospital. Nov Wyoming has a Catholic Bishop, ten priests, two religious Ordera'of men — Jesuits and Franciscans, and two religious congregations of women — Si9ters of the Holy Child Jesus and Sisters cf Cnarity. The Catholic population of the Territory cannot be less than tea thousand. The New York Star says one of " the most devoted of the pioneers in the movement for the Catholic Uuiversity has been Bishop John Lancaster Spaulding, of the Peoria Diocese. A Kentuckian by birth, a thorough American in feeling as well as by tradition, bis dominant idea has long been the creation of an institution in which the Americanism of the Catholics of the United States would receive the fullest development." A number ot doctors, including a well-known Liverpool physician, were recently eye-witnessea of the miraculous cure ot a deaf boy, Desire Melin, aged sixteen, from Bierges, in Brabant. He was born deaf and dumb. Two doctors, Vanpee and Trousset, both of Wavre, had previously certified as to the nature of the affliction, and declared it incurable. A suspicious piece of news comes from Warsaw. It is stated that 875 Catholics who recently emigrated from Bohemia to Russia have just been received into the Orthodox Church. Such wholesale conversions to Russian orthodoxy raise a question as to the means by which they are erfecteJ, Bribery on the one hand, peraecution on the other, are the traditional methods in Russia. Bishop Strossmayer is preparing a defence of his conduct, in which he will contend that the act oi' seeking to unite the Catholic and Greek Churches ought to meet with the approbation of the Pope, and, further, that he does not consider his Siav eympathies incompajjlle with his duties as an Austrian prelate. On July 23rd, was unveiled at Sorreze, France, % statue erected by some of Lacordaire's.old pupils in honour of the great orator, writer, and teacher. The statue, by the well known sculptor Girarde, represents Pere Lacordaire giving instruction to a boy of some fifteen ,

years of age, habited in the costume of the Borrezo College. The Cardinal -Archbishop of Toulouse presided over the ceremony, assisted by several other prelates. Discourses were delivered by Mgr. de Cab- | rierer, the Bishop of Montpellier, and the Due de Broglie, who iucceeded to the chair of the Academy, left vacant by the death of the great Dominican. Cardinal Howard, says the London Star, is in a most deplorable condition, both physically and mentally. Ha does not remember his oldest friends, and sometimes will not taka a meal for days together. It would be difficult to recognise in his pinche I and emaciated frame the gay young Lifeguard9man who was chosen tot his good looks and fine physique to le*d the procession at the Duke of Wellington's funeral. In those days he looked! every inch a soldier, and it was greatly to his friends' surprise that they learned of his going to Rome and entering the ecclesiastical state. He now occupies the dual position of Archpriest of St. Peter's and Bishop of Frascati. These offices have never been united in the same indivi mal since they were held by the Cardinal of York, last of the House of Stuart. In the Via Quirinal there is a large building where the young Belgian students who wish to become priests are educated. The Pope, seeing how useful it is to have these students educated in Borne, has s«nt 100,000 francs to the college, asking tbe rector to use them for seven young men, who will be sent to Rome by the seven dioceses of Belgium for their ecclesiastical education. The gift is accompanied by a very beautiful letter in which the Pope speaks in the highest terms of Catholic Belgium, and of the Belgian clergy and student!.