CATHOLIC NEWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 38, 26 June 1891, Page 20

CATHOLIC NEWS.

(Prom the Liverpool Catholic Times). A suitable monument is about to be erected over St Patrick's grave in the old burying ground attached to the cathedral at Downpatrick. The Italian Government has just prohibited the taking of the Blened Sacrament through the streets of Rome in •olemn procession. Despite the prohibition the Catholics follow the Blessed Sacrament in larger numbers than ever. There is no foundation for the report which has lately been going the round of the papers that the Holy Father has expended a million francs in saving a Catholic banker from suspending payment. The Holy Father bas no such sum of money to spare. The English college at Borne suffered considerable injury by the recent explosion. At the time it occurred the rector, Mgr Giles, was giving Holy Commnnion to the students. Great damage was done to the windows, and a huge fissure appeared in the room, while a temporary party wall, recently erected was thrown down by the force of the explosion. Our readers will rejoice to learn that the Holy Father suffered no injury whatever through the explosion of the powder magazine outside the Porta Portese, Rome, though the shock caused considerable damage at the Vatican. Graphic descriptions of the effects of the explosion are given elsewhere by special correspondents of the Catholic Txmet. The German Ministry has finally withdrawn the new Education Bill. To organise the opposition to this Bill was the last act of Windthorst's life. Its withdrawal is a new tribute to the power of the departed leader of the Centre. A Spanish contemporary, El Siglo Futv.ro, of Madrid, says : 14 Our compatriot the Very Rev Father Patricio Panadero, has been appointed Procurator-General of the Franciecan Order in Rome." If he be all Spanish, how did he get the name of Patrick ? There was an impoang demonstration of Catholic workmen at Angers, in France, the other day. The occasion was the close of a mission. After the closing service .the mission cross was taken from the church and carried in procession by J6OOO men to a hill overlooking the town, where it was erected as a memorial of the mission. There is only a single Catholic church in Copenhagen. DuriDg Lent this year it could not contain the crowds who wished to attend the Lenten sermons. The Danish Catholics have resolved to bnild a second church in the capital, a sign of progress in what was lately an entirely Protestant city. The new church will be dedicated to our Blessed Lady. Monsi?nor Scalabrini, Bißhop of Piacenza, has been speaking ia Milan on the emigration of Italians. He is dead against their leaving the country. There are, he says, two millions of Italians in the Americas. Of the majority of these emigrants, Munsignor Scalabrini remarks tbat their lot is to suffer the most abject misery and to become the victims of infamous traffickers in human flesh The Prince Regent of Bavaria has sent a personal donation of 10,000 marks in memory of Windthorst to the new church which is being erected at Hanover. This act of the Prince has produced a very favourable impression among the Catholics of Germany, who take it as an evidence that the anti-Catholic system of the late Herr Lutz bas no longer any influence in the Court of Munich. An immense moral weight has been given to the cause of Beatification of the Cure cf Ars through the formal petitions which have been drawn up and signed by the hierarchies of England, Ireland America, Canada, and Australia, and forwarded to the Holy See! Now that the process of Beatification is nearing its completion, the material help of the faithful is the more pressing, and we are sure that many will generously respond to the earnest appeals made for this object by the Rev R. J. C. Wolseley, O P., of Holy Cross Priory, Leicester. The Holy Father has a second time sent his special blessing to Father Wolseley and all who help bim in promoting the Beatification. Our Dublin contemporary, the Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette, a Protestant periodical, has just had something sensible on the logical, or rather the illogical conclusions of the bigotry which is fond of ascribing the backward condition of Ireland to the religion of the majority. To such there is nothing pathetic and praiseworthy in the fact that the Irish race have held on with wonderful fidelity and firmrets to their own form of Christianity; and that this very faithfulness was for very long period the causa of severe sufferings and disabilities which heavily weighted them in the race for temporal prosperity. Referring to the spiritual condition of England, which is forcing itself on the public mind, the writer Bays •' Thousands, perhaps •yen some millions, of people are o/actically heathens in Protestant England; Whatever we are in Ireland, we have not, so far as we know, anything like a corresponding macs of infidelity, indifference, and practical heathenism to what there is in England. We doubt also the wisdom of making material prosperity such a test of religious truth. We may be very proud of mills and machinery, and yet it

might be innnicely better that the majority of the mill hands were leading simple, natural lives in the open air, under the blue sky ; far better for them bo h morally and physically. Temporal success and the acquisition of wealth do not of themselves recommend the individual to God, neither do they recommend the community." The prejudice which the Irish paper assails bas been often refuted by reference to the prosperity of Catholic countries abroad and the success of enterprising and self-respecting Catholic Irishmen m America ; but prejudices die bari. The cause of the Beatification of Father Dominic, C.P., who received the late Cardinal Newman into the Church, is making slow but steady progress. The principal postulator is Father GernfLis C.P., Rome, the well-known antiquary whose researches in sacred archaeology have attracted much attention, particularly his discovery of the precise spot where the martyrdom of Saints John and Pan] mentioned in the Canon of the Mass, took place in the long-buried' house directly underneath the church on the Ccelian Hill. The subpostulator for theEe countries is Father Pius Devine, C.P., of Harold's Cross, who ia collecting evidence for the process at present before the Congregation of Rites in its initial stage. When the heroicity of his virtues bas been established to the satisfaction of the Congregation it will, from an ordinary, becomt an apostolic process, being then before the Holy See. He will then be declared Tenerable. At least two miracles will have to be proved for beatification, and two more, subsequently wrought through his intercession, for canonization' There is only one witness, Father Sebastian, C.P., in Ireland, but there are several in England.— two in Birmingham, and two in London, and others elsewhere. The Right Rev. Dr. llsley, Bishop of Birmingham, has been the recipient of a special communication from Rome on the subject. The evidence is nearly fit to be sent forward* but very few of the witnesses had anything to disclose pertinent to the salient points upon which information is most desired. Father Dominic's life has been wiitten by Father Pius Devine, but i s publication is being purposely delayed until the Pope shall have signed the Decree, and the subject of the memoir, which will be an interesting biographical pendant to Cardinal Newman's Apologia— the historj of one who has had sa much to do with the inner lifo of the great Oratorian at a critical turning point in his career— will be entitled to be Btylei Venerable.