IRISH COLLEGE AT PARIS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 44, 1 November 1900, Page 29

IRISH COLLEGE AT PARIS.

Rev. D. S. Puelan, editor of the Western Tl atrhman of St. Louis, in a letter from Paris to his paper, a.iys : I must tell you bomething about the famous Irish College of Paris. It is an old institution. The old Lombard C >llcge was given over to the Irish bishops in Louis XlV.'stiuie, and today, although the present College is a modern structure, it is supported out of the revenues of the lands and houses belonging to the Loinl.rrd College. For 700 years there has been au institution of learning on the hill of St. Genevieve specially devoted to the education of candidates for the sacred ministry in the Irish Church ; and the Irish College of to-day ia the heir of along line of saints and scholars. Up to the year 1871 the diocesan priests of Ireland conducted the College. Cardinal Logue was a professor there for some years. Thirty years ago the Irish bishops made a compact with Uie

Lazarists to conduct the College, and they have charge of the institution at the present time. The funds are invested by the French Government, and the College must be maintained in Paris. There are about 80 young men studying for the different dioceses of Ireland in the College, and they hope to increase the number when some necessary repairs made in late years are paid for. The College is one of the oldest institutions in Paris, and is situated on Rue dea Irlandais — 'The street of the Irish.' This brings to my mind the splendid reception given to a number of Irishmen and their ladies who visited the Exposition the other day. It is unusual for the Paris Press to pay any particular attention to the nationality of the hundreds of thousands of visitors to the World's Fair, but the announcement of a body of people from Ireland coming to Paris seemed to call for a special notice, and it was given with a will. U Eclair fairly brimmed over with welcome. • The brave, generous Irish — the faithful friends of France — the only people in Europe who sympathised with France in her misfortunes of 1870 — the people of France welcome them.' The Irish have figured conspicuously in the ecclesiastical history of Paris. Two Irishmen were Archbishops of Paris. An Irishman was president of the Sarbonne. Irishmen may be said to have founded that great institution. Not only did Ireland furnish for several hundred years the professors of the schools of France, bat she opened the halls of her own great schools to the scholars who flocked to her shores from France in quest of an eduoation they could not get at home. For 1000 years St. Patrick's Day has been observed in Paris, and during the penal days it was the only city in the world in which March 17 was kept as a public holiday.