CARDINAL VAUGHAN'S SILVER JUBILEE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 38, 21 January 1898, Page 4

CARDINAL VAUGHAN'S SILVER JUBILEE.

HIS EPISCOPAL CAREER.

The silver jubilee of Cardinal Vaughan's elevation to the episcopate took place during November, and although in deference to the wishes of his Eminence the event was not celebrated by an auspicious ceremony, he was the recipient of a number of felicitations from a wide circle of friends from all creeds, classes, and countries. _ There are few bi&hopd who live to celebrate their episcopal jubilee, because as a rule the Church does not raise striplings to the purple, aud there are fewer still who, if they do happen to reach such a patriarchal age as to celebrate such an event, bear fewer marks of the conflict with the scythesman than his Eminence the Cardinal- Archbishop of Westminster. Cardinal Vaughan is not a young man, but anyone familiar with his appearance, the springy step, energetic movement, and indefati" able industry of the Archbishop would venture to say that he was still young. Yet he is sixty-five years of age, and more than that, for he was born at Beaufort Buildings, the Spa, Gloucester, on 15th April, 18:52, his father being Colonel Vaughan of Courtfield, and his mother Miss Rolls of Hendre, Monmouth, the aunt of the present Lord Llangattock. By his father's side the Cardinal comes from a family connected by marriage with half of the oldest nobility of England and Wales, the Pembrokes, Cliffords, Stourtons, and others, who, like the Vaughans themselves, had KEPT THE FAITH THROUGH EVIL REPORT AND GOOD REPORT, through sun and shade, from the days of the Conqueror down to our own time. The Cardinal was one of 18 children, six of whom were priests and four nuns. At an early age he was sent to a college at Monmouth to be prepared for Stonyhurst, and even at that tender period the Rev. Thos. Abbot, master of the College, described his youthful pupil as a lad of excellent disposicions, both of piety and talent. In due time he went to Stonyhurst. and afterwards to the College at Bruyelotte, Belgium. He remained there two years, and then returned to Downside, where no doubt was engendered that devotion for the Benedictine Order with which the Cardinal is still imbued. Young Vaughan was intended for the army, but when he was 21 years of age, and just on the point of receiving his commission, his mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, passed from this world, and a more serious purpose took possession of her son. He determined to become a priest, and with this view he entered the Academia Ecclesiastica in Rome, where he remained two years. He was ordained on 28th October, 18.V>, so that he is 40 years a priest. Returning from Rome he was sent by his superiors first to St! Edmund's College, Old Hall, near Ware. There an old professor still lives who was in the College when Father Vaughan came back from Rome, and the old man alludes to his one time youthful colleague as a model of what a youni; priest should bo. Leaving Old Hall he became an Oblate of Sc. Charles at Bayswater, as others have done who have also risen to the purple, and AS AX OISLATE HE LABOURED there for six or seven years. At an early period in his career Cardinal Vau»han manifested ureat zeal tor the work of the foreign mission. St. Joseph's College, Millhill. London, together with its branch house of St. Peter's at Freshfield, Lancashire, where the work of the foreign mission is now systematically and vigorously prosecuted, are evidences of the Cardinal's labours iv this field, a labour which has never decreased, notw ithslanding the many accruing cares and anxieties for the responsibility showered upon him in later time. On the 28th of October. 1 h72, which, by the way, was the anni\ ersary of his ordination, he was consecrated Bishop ot Saltord, receiving the Episcopal order at the hands of Cardinal Manning. He, took up his residence in Salford. and for 20 years las work there was of a kind which, notwithstanding the modesty of its owner, compelled the devotion and admiration of the whole Catholic body in the country and of many outside the fold. When Bishop Yaughan took up his work in Salford. th.3 dio;e»e needed fir^t of alia seminary and a commercial college or school ; there was an exceedingly heavy debt on the missions ; the leakage caused through the pro-*elytism of Catholic children was something to rend the heart of their spiritual father, and religious orders were few comparatively speaking. To the remedying of all those drawbacks the Cardinal devoted himself, systematically taking the one after the other, and working without rest or without a piuse until the last of them had been accomplished. In IS7.J he opened a Diocesan Seminary : in 1577 he .started st. bi:de's collide, ma:nciies>ter, which is practically the only Catholic commercial college in England. When he went t> Salford there were I'M) priests, when he left it there were 2in : in 1*72 there were 7.l churches; twenty years later there were 111. There were 20 houses of religious Orders at the earlier period, and ihe>e were more than doubled by Bishop Vaughan. who left 12 behind him. The debt on the missions of the diocese when ho tookito\er w.is ClOo.ooo. and of this he paid no less than C.i 0.000. (Jyeat as the^e works were, one which many people thought more important still was to follow. This was the work of rescue initiated by Bishop Yausjhan. Uneasy at the large number of children dinting away he organised a system of methodical observation, w ith the result that the appalling discovery was made that no fewer than sixty children were lost to the faith annually through the absence of suitable provision to preserve to them their spiritual heritage. The leakage question is now a matter of universal di-cusMon, and it was in connection with Bishop Vaughan's work that the term leakage has come to be applied to this matter. Enlisting the sorvices of the laity, a "Protection and Rescue Society' was organised; the aid of religious Orders was invoked ; home-! and schools were set up, and gradually the system came into vogue of the Poor Law Guardians entrusting

to the care of these schools Catholic children, who thus would not be brought up under the numbing atmosphere of the workhouse, or exposed to the dangers of isolated boarding out. The work is now being carried on in the other dioceses of England. More than this, the VIGOROUS .SYSTEM PO'KSUED IN MANCHESTER had the effect of bringing other parts of the country to a sense of the danger surrounding the children of their poor, and as a consequence myriads of little ones are saved to the faith, who but for the Cardinal's zeal might have been exposed to spiritual destitution. After twenty years' such work in Sal ford the Bishop was transferred to the Archbishopric of Westminster on 2i'th March, 1892, receiving the pallium at the Oratory on ibth August following ; while on Kith January in the subsequent year he was created a Cardinal priest of the Holy Roman Empire, with the title of St. Andrew and St. Gregory. The work of the Cardinal since then is well known. It is not too much to say that he is viewed with cosmopolitan interest, and all Catholics of all lands with joyful pride admit and proclaim that this prince of the Church, who represents her in that modern Babylon which is the pulse of the world, is. so far as human agent can be, not unfit to hold the high office and supreme dignity with which a (\irdinal of the Catholic Church is invested. — Edinburgh Catholic If/ raid.