ALLEGED PILLAGE OF THE NEWCASTLE CONVENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 14, 5 April 1900, Page 4

ALLEGED PILLAGE OF THE NEWCASTLE CONVENT.

We have recehei a long letter from a correspondent (says the < athohc him \) in which he dwells upon the hostility of the LJoers towards the Catholic religion, aud repeats the charge made in the letter from Mr, I>ird which we published last week to the effect that they pillaged and desecrated the convent at Newcastle. He quotes the following passage from a lector of the Dominican nun, lister Mary Reginald, who is now at Pietermaritzburg : — 'After having loottni our convent and destroyed everything sacred therein, the Buers vented all their rage on the chupel, breaking statues and crucifixes, ami then trampling them under foot. It is awful to think of the fiendish desecration they carried on in the House of God, and this is but the literal truth.' In fairness to those who are thus accused, we ptated last week that Father Hammer, who entered Newcastle as chaplain with the Boer force?, in mentioning tht; abandonment, says nothing of any pillaging, and that Father Baudry, who is also with the Boer forcfP, says in the Petitest A n iiol i <t that "the Government and all its officials have been kindness and courtesy it-elf to the priests and religious. 1 The same charge was made against the Boers in a letter from a German Dominican nun at Pietermantzburg published by our contemporary, the Ktii his, In \ ollvzittunti. Thereupon Father Tresch, 0.M.1 , a Tran-vaal Missionary, now in Germany, wrote as follows to the paper 'Yesterday I read with real astonishment, that is to pay in a i unbelieving spirit, the article in your paper under the heading '•Sufferings of the Dominican Nuns in South Africa," but was pleased to cc c that you questioned some of the statements. Permit me therefore to give you some information. The Sister in question says in her letter, " One evening late, about eleven o'clock, the order came suddenly that all the Sisters must be off in half-an-hour." Certainly, but by whom was the order given / By the Boers .' No, but by the Rev. Father Ford, the chaplain to the Sifters, who is an Englishman. lam personally well acquainted with Father Ford and the Sisters at Newcastle, and last April I visited the convent. The Sis-ters left through fear, at the order of their chaplain. Had they remained in the convent, they would, as you mtiiniile, Lave remained quite undisturbed. We have a number of convents in South Africa, and nowhere has a single convent suffered anything ho far at the hands of the Boers during the war. In the Transvaal the Government has sought the services of the Sisters as nurses, and these services have been gratefully accepted. '1 he Boers are waging war. but not persecuting women. Of that I can assure you on tny word of honour. As to what is said to have taken place in the convent chapel naturally I can know nothing, but. as you remark, proofs are wanting to sustain the charges made."