CATHOLIC NEWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 48, 30 March 1894, Page 26

CATHOLIC NEWS.

(From Contemporaries.)

The beatification of the Venerable D'Avila will coincide with the vißit of the great Spanish pilgrimage to the Eternal City in April. In one diocese of Sicily the Bishop found that the poor people had pawned the coverings of their beds for an aggregate of £320. From his own poverty, and by the help of others, he baa restored all these 'o their owners. The rapidity with which the Sisterhood of Mercy has grown, in America since the time its first convent was founded, half a centnry ago, at Pittsbnrg, can be estimated from the fact that it now numbers more than 200 houses in the United Btatea. General Melline', wbo became Grand Master of the French Freemasons in 1870, was renonciled to the Church before bis death, which took place lately. He passed away embracing the crucifix. The Bey Gabriel Corkemsz, a Maronite priest of Mount Lebanon, Syria, has arrived in New York with the object of becoming a missionary among the Arabic speaking Catholics of the United States who worship according to the Maronite rite. The Anti-Catholic Press of Italy has been trying to make on* that the priests were fomenters of the disorders in Sicily. What the Bishops and priests are doing is spending every penny they can scrape together in helping the starviug people to find food. So far from fomenting disorder they are in this way helping to remove its chic* canße, and they are impoverishing themselves and their churches in order to do so. The following four Anglican clergymen recently received into the Catholic Church, bave bad the Sacrament of Confirmation administered to them by Cardinal Vaughan : The Beys Sutherland Macklem, of 8t Cuthbert's Earl's Court ; Richard Somerville Wood, M.A., chaplain to her Majesty's Forc»e ; Hush C. Briggs M.A., of 8t Stephen's Devonport, and All Saint's, Plymouth ; and Horace Chapman, M.A., fcr many yearo rector of Donhead, St Andrew, near Salisbury. A window of the time of Henry VII. bag been discovered embedded in the wall of Gray's Inn. formerly a Catholic ChurchAlso a holy water stoop of the epoch of Mary, which waa bricked np in the process of age and infidelity. This latter has of course not been restored to its original purpose. There is no knowing but it may be yet. Success to the English Bansomers. Mgr Livinhac, Superior of the White Fathers, has published an account of the doings of Captain Logard in Uganda, wherein he slates that the fury of Protestant missionaries instigated many acts of barbarism against the poor na ive Catholics in July, 18t>2. Catholic buildings were destroyed and the conmunities of neophytes dispersed. To-day the fruit of that abominable conduct is being reaped tenfold. Tbe Mussulmans brought in to oppose the Catholics have turned round against tbe Proteßtar's and their Engiißh supporters. The events which have happened north of the Nyanza fully justify the predictions made by Mgr Hirth three or four years ago. The Executive Committee of the Jubilee Fetes has arranged the details of the closing ceremony in connection with the Pope's Jubilee year. The ceremony will consist of a Mass celebrated by his Holiness in St Peers, in grand statf, fol'owed by the Te Deuin. Sixty thousand tickets are to be given out for this final ctlebration. The Interior of the vast Basilica wi 1 be elaborately decorated with red and gold hangings; and special tribunes will be erected for the diplomatic corps, tbe Boman aristocracy, ard the heads of tbe different religions orders. Ihe entrance < f tbe Pope into the church, followed by all tbe members of the Pontifical Court, and all the Cardinals present in Borne, will be announced from the dome by a musical blast from the silver trumpet. Thp Pope has consideiably improved in health, but his docors desire that he should not overexert himself. The massacre of Catholics by the Cossacks in the Church of Kroeche, in the Province of Kovno, appears to be only one among many outrages lately inflicted on (he Catholics of Russia. List year three cbarches were destroyed at Kudvynce, in Podolia ; in Volhynia another was \ artly destroyed and tbe presbytery confiscated ; a third was razed to the ground in Lithuania. "In tbe Government of Minsk," writes a correspondent of the Chronicle, "churches are changed into taverns. In one of these I read the old insciiplion, • Gloria tibi Domine /" and under it a metal placard, • brandy sold wholesale and retail.' Priests may not go beyond a second parish without special permission, Tbe Catholic bishops are completely controlled by the generals in command, and can do nothing in their dioceses without fear of the fate of ihe Bishop of Vilna, Hrymewiecki, who was banished to Siberia. Mi Harry de Windt may sneer at the " highly-coloured, blood-curdling J state of affairs pictured by Mr Kennan, but the truth is that Mr Kennan minimises rather than exftggi rates the horror of the scenes to be witnessed in Russia. We ourselves, sa>s the Catholic T\met, have positive evidence both from correspondents in Russia and Butsians now living in this country to the effect that the outrages to which the member! of the

Roman Chinch are subjected by the Russian officials surpasses all description. In the midst of the depressing accounts which are telegraphed every day concerning the eocial condition of Italy, it is pleasant 10 be reminded from time to time that there is another side to the picture. In spite of all tbeir troubles, the picus Italians reßclved tb«t the Papal Jubilee should not merely cfbr an occasion fur a momentary outburst of devotion to the Holy See, but that it should bear permanent ftuit in the foundation of good woiks throughout the whole country. The Ctvilta Cattolica has jutt commenced publishing in instalment the exceedi' gly leDgt'iy list of all these c mmemorative undertaking?, a list wbich cannot fail to fill with generous envy the hearts of a scattered Catholic community such as we in England form. Churches and chapels, echoo's and cunvents are being tuilt, free houses for seminarists have been established, s'a'uesand monuments erected, and — what in the present condition of Italy must give to the agtd Pontiff the greatest consolation of all, as btirjg eep daily needful — an immense Dumber of Catholic asaociationi for young men and of free Catholic libraries have been formed, beside* societies innumerable for religious and philanthropic purposes. Such generosity in good works, and sorh a ppontaneous demonstration of affection towards the person if the Holy Fa'her, surely iff r tbe most effective of all answers to the dominieiing pretensions of the Italian freetbought party. The controversy regarding the immuring of nw.n is, as we learn from the Catholic papers received by the last mail, piactically at an find. Father Thurston has, to quote the W( rds of a contemporary, disposed of Mr Rider Haggard'a original statement in a moat effective way, and nobody else has come forward with a single scrap of evidence in support of this grotesque charge. Mr Haggard when in Mexico saw the dessicated body of a young woman, and was asßured that it had been found immured in tbe walls of a religious building." As it happens, however, a statement has been received from the direc or of the museum, who bad been previously communicated with, and from it we are made acquainted with the following facts : — First that there is no foundation for tbe story that the remains are those of an immured nun : secondly, that they, with some others, have been preserved only in order to illustrate the well-known phenomenon of the preserving influence of the Mexican climate oa dead bodies ; and lastly, that these, together with some other remains, were found in two of the common cemeteries when the latter were closed gome

time ago. As Father Thurston in a le ter to the Pall Mall Gazette very rightly observe?, further comment oa this matter is now absolutely needless. Religious fallacies are hard to kill, but it might have been thought that the theory that St Patrick profesaea the creed of Luther and Qaeen Elizabeth had been lorg since abandoned by the leading divines amongst our Protestant fellow countrymen. That the contrary is the fact we are reminded by the ab e letter wbich tbe Rev Francis McElvogue, of the Cathedral, Armagh, has addressed to the Armagh Guardian, and which we reproduce elsewhere. Father Mcßlvogue's letter, it will be seen, was called forth by the rtcent imprudent utterances in the pulpit of tbe Protestant Cathedral of our Primattal city by (he Very Re? Dean Chad wick and the Rev Dr Kicg Irwin. The Dean, iudepd, went fo far as to speak of the Catholic Church as an " Italian Schism " 1 Tbis, which was after all only impertinence, he followed up by a cbalienze to the world a* large to stow how the Church to wbich be belongs originally became possessed of tbe vast estates of which Disestablishment has bereft her. Tbe Dean triumphantly asked : " What act ever tore these from other bands to transfer them to ours 1 " Father McElvogue quotes ample evidence to Bhow the nature rf the legislation which lobbed the Catholic people of this country of their landß and estates to transfer them to Protestant owners ; while as to the Dean's challenge with reference to the church lands it must surely be needless to remind him that Ihe enaciicg of the king's supremacy, the enforcement of the king's litargt, the preferment of men of the king's morals to high ecclesiastical and prelatial place— imposed and sustained as such measures were by the sword and gibbet— were quit* sufficient to secure tbe possession of our cathedrals and churches for Protestant Lands without direct enactment of confi cation. Ibe "Italian Schism "to which the D an referred was the refusal — cost what it might— of tbe worthy priest and the honest layman to abandon the Faith of Patrick in exchange for the doctrines of the apoßtate Monk of Auzsbuig. Farther McElvogue has done well, he has battered the Dean tnd tbe Doctor with the artil'ery belonging to their own camp, aid gives good evidence that tie is quite prepared to " keep them on tbe run."