THE BISHOP OF DUNEDIN IN EUROPE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 50, 14 December 1899, Page 19

THE BISHOP OF DUNEDIN IN EUROPE.

A PLEASING RECORD OF SUCCESS.

A long- and cheery communication has reached Father Murphy, Administrator of St. Joseph's Cathedral, Dunedin, from the Right Rev. Dr. Verdon. It is dated Dublin, October 29, and contains a record of his Lordship's travels and labours in the interests of his diocese. We learn from it that after landing in Ireland, Bishop Verdon proceeded to Maynooth just in time to see 80 students of that famous Alma Mater of the Green Isle raised to the priesthood. He afterwards, by special invitation, conferred Holy Orders in the great foreign missionary college of All Hallows at Drumoondra, Dublin. His next visit was to the Irish College, Paris. His Lordship has met with gratifying success in connection with two of the chief purposes of his visit to the Old Land— namely, securing a supply of priests for the needs of his diocese and for making an early start with scholastic work in the fine Ecclesiastical Seminary which his prudence and foresight has secured for the training of secular priests for the whole of New Zealand.

Among the new subjects secured by his Lordship for the diooese of Dunedin are the following : Two promising young priests — Fathers Hearn and Geary — who were ordained in St. John's Coll ge, Waterford, in June, are now on their way to Dunedin, having left by the Austral the week previous to that on which the Bishop, wrote. They are expected in Dunedin within the next few days. On November 10 two other young priests, from Thurles College took steamer for Dunedin. As they intend to make a stay at Naples and Rome on their outward journey, they are not expected in Dunedin till the new year. At his old college of Clonliffe— of which, by the way, his Lordship was for many years President, and where his memory is still held in affectionate remembrance — he secured another student, whose ordination is fixed for Christmas. He, and probably another young piiest as well, will accompany his Lordship on his return journey to Dunedin. In June next year two other students will be ordained for the diocese of Dunedin, the one in St. John's College, Waterford, the other in St. Patrick's College, Maynooth. An announcement which will be received with much pleasure by the Catholics of the Colony is conveyed in his Lordship's letter. It is this : that the Ecclesiastical Seminary will be opened as soon as he returns to Dunedin. This happy consummation is now not many months off, as his Lordship, who is now in Rome, expects to sail from Naples by the Omrah on February 25, and to arrive in Dunedin early in April. We may state that, by his Lordship's instructions, the furnishing of the Seminary will shortly be proceeded with. The opening of the new Seminary will be one of the most marked of the many evidences of the fast-growing life and energy of the Catholic Church in New Zealand, and should in due course once and for all settle the perennial difficulty hitherto experienced of finding a constant and assured supply of labourers for the Vineyard of the Lord in this young land.

Bishop Verdon reports a fine summer and a very abundant harvest in Ireland. He likewise writes in terms of grateful enthusiasm of the generous hospitality extended to him on all hands both in America, Ireland, and elsewhere during the course of his travels — especially from the Archbishops of New York, Philadelphia, aud Dublin, and by his many old friends among the secular and regular clergy. Altogether his Lordship's letter is a pleasant record <Sf successful achievement not alone for his own diocese, but, in the matter of the Seminary, for the whole of New Zealand.