CATHOLIC NEWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 37, 1 July 1892, Page 15

CATHOLIC NEWS.

(From the Liverpool Catholic Times) ON April 30th Mgr Stonor presented to the Pope three young English gentlemen, converted to the Catholic faith by the sermons of F.ev Luke Rivington at San Silvestro. Mr Frederick Harrison has just been talking on Catholic morals and comparing the mediieval saints of Chriatendom with the heroes of modern history, much to the advantage of the former. At a great Paulißt mission in St Patrick's parish, Montreal Canada, which concluded at Easter time, there were 10,300 Communions, and 4,734 total abstinence pledges. Margherita, the Queen of Italy, is reported to have said, speakine of the marriage of her son, that « if a Protestant Princess entered the Quirinal Palace as his wife, Bhe would go out of it." The Liberal party here opposed to the Church talk of the Queen as being " far too clerical." The Bißhop of Mende, who was condemned lately to have his salary suspended, has received 50 000 francs by private subscriptions from his flock. This sum he is going to offer to the Holy Father The corner stone of the] Philosophy Hall of the Catholic University, Washington, D.C, was laid on the 27th April. This building made possible by the magnificent gift of the Rev James McMahoo' late of New York, now resident at the University, will be completed and opened for students in 1891. According to the "Annual of the Missions," published by the Propaganda Press the number of Catholics in the United States is

8,913,610 ; in Canada, 2,075,366 ;in the Chinese Empire, 569,551 ; in Australia, 610,080 ; in Ihe whole of Oceania, 780, 630. Mr Septimus P. Wood, an ex- Anglican clergyman, who was received into the Church in 1884, died at Florence on May Bth. He was sixty-five years of age. He had been for some time a resident in Florence, and died an edifying death after a long illness. Last year the leper settlement of Gotemba, in Japan, lost by death its devoted chaplain, Father Testevuide. Another priest o* the Congregation of Foreign Missions, Father Vigroux, has taken his place, giving himself to the service of these afflicted people, and affording one more proof that the heroism ;of Father Damien was no isolated manifestation of Catholic Charity. The eminent Swiss National Councillor, M. Decurtins, wsb received in special audience by the Holy Father a few days ago, and presented to his Holiness a work on the social question, which he bas just published. It was M. Decurtins who first really suggested the holding of the Berlin Labour Congrefs, and it will be remembered that an important letter on the social problpm was addressed to him by Cardinal Manning, Just now Exeter Hall is a Bort of Protestant Mecca, only the pilgrims do not go so much to pray as to make speeches or listen to them. Mrs Jellaby and her Borioboolagha missions are not the rage at present, nor is it contemplated by any existing association to send flannel waistccats to the inhabitants of tropical Africa ; but a society to Christianise Christian Rome is scarcely mora far fetched in its object when one comes *o examine it. Judging from the reports of the British and Foreign Bible Society every year, say for the last ten years, there ought to be at the present moment several tons of Protestant Bibles and tracts in the Eternal City. The whole of Italy, in fact, has been deluged with Bibles and is being saturated with tracts ; but for all that the Italians are not becoming Protestants, and the population of the peninsula is Btill mainly, indeed almost entirely, composed of Catholics on the one hand and agnostics or anti-Christians on the other. In the city of Cagliari, in Sardinia, a curious ceremony, which has been repeated annually since 1657, took place the other day in honour of their patron, St Elfizio. Tne rural police, in quaint costumes, led the way on horseback with banners ; then came the local militia in red corsets and old-fashioned uniforms, and armed still with flint muskets ; then the confraternity, guardians of the Saint, as guard of honour, all in modern evening dress suits and hats 1 The car on which the statue is placed is drawn by bullocks garlanded with flowers, and their horns and hoofs gilt ; three priests, also on horseback, and representatives of the municipality follow. A vast gathering of the populace from the surrounding districts assemble to witness the procession. Tne saint is taken out to a suburb called Pula, and the statue is restored to its niche with the same pomp. In the chief piazza the native Sardinian dances were performed in the evening by torchlight to the music of the very primitive bagpipe there in uae ani called Conedda. la the outlyiog parts of Italy the old religious processions still take place, though in the capital itself they are forbidden. In four days a single newspaper received 20,000 francs for the Bishop of Nancy, whose stipend ha 9 been stopped by the Government. The Archbishop of Avignon, and the Bishops of Montpelliar, Valence, Nimes, and Viviers have experienced similar treatment at the hands of the btate authorities. Tne Archbishop of Aix is to be proceeded against before the Council of S:ate for bis Pastoral of April 20 . The Archbishop of Aix, in a pastcral letter jast read from the different pulpits of bis diocese, alludes to the beatification approaching of of Mme. de Pinezon de Bel, foundress of the Congregation of the religions of St. Thomas de Villeneuve. Thecou ventof this Order iv Paris possesses the famous Btatue of the Blessed Virgin, Notre Dame de Bonne Delivrance, before which St Francis de Sales, when a student, in anguish of heart and almost in despair, prayed and obtained peace. Canon Moyes, writing to the Mancliester Guardian on the American Education question which that journal has been discussing, says the Roman decision ia Archbishop Ireland's case does not, when the circumstances are taken into account, imply nearly so much of a concession to the State as one might be tempted at first to anticipate. It would, be observes, be premature, not to say rash, to conclude that the American case presents an analogy that is ever likely to make itself felt at home on this side of the Atlantic.