St. Joseph's Foreign Missionary Society.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 40, 2 October 1902, Page 5

St. Joseph's Foreign Missionary Society.

RIS Eminence Cardinal Vaughan is sending the Rev. Father Cullen of St. Joseph's Foreign Missionary Society, London, across the Atlantic to continue in the New World the good work he has been doing in Great Britain. Father Cullen, by his energy and selfsacrifice, has won the esteem of all who know him, and he iB sure to meet with a cordial reception from the Catholics of America, bo many of whom are hia fellow-countrymen. The Cardinal has entrusted him with an interesting document in which his Eminence says :—: —

* I warmly commend the Rev. Terence Joeeph Cullen, a priest of St. Joseph's Foreign Missionary Society, to all whose assistance he may need. While the small Catholic population of England generously maintains and educates a society of priests for the evangelisation of heathen countries, it is unable to support and develop the distant missionary fields to which these priests are sent. We are at present training in our Foreign Missionary Colleges _ over a hundred promising pnbjects, and are sending laborers in tens and twenties into the harvest every year. I make no appeal to Catholics in America or in other distant lands, to help us to carry on this work. Every church ought to contribute its contingent of apostolio men to evangelise the heathen. My appeal is rather on behalf of those pagan countries that are yet unable to help themselves.

1 We have been charged by the Holy See with preaching the Gospel to the Maoris of New Zealand, to the Dyaks and headhunters of Borneo, to the natives of Cashmere, Eafiristan, and the Punjab in Northern India, to the Tamil and Telegu races in the Madras Presidency, and to the natives of Uganda in Central Africa. We have sent out hundreds of missionaries full of' zeal and selfsaoriftce, bnt without those material resources that are essential in order to establish strong churches among the heathens. Wealth seems to lie rather in the hands of the English and American Proteßtant associations than in our own. We seek not resources equal to theirp, but we are bound to collect of the faithful alms in order to found our churches in the promising centres to which we are sent.

' I have, therefore, conceived the idea of inviting Catbolicß in countries that have not yet founded their own Foreign Missionary Colleges to co-operate with us by giving alma to plant the Church in heathen countries. By so doing, they will assuredly take a substantial part in the apostolic work which the Church is bound to carry out among the unevangelised races, and they will receive the blessing of those whom they have saved from perishing and of their Heavenly Father. m

' I oommend Father Cullen to my colleagues in the episcopate, to the olergy and to the laity. I ask the archbishops and bishops whom he may approach to give him their blessing, with liberty to make known the trying necessities of the races that depend upon our zeal for enlightenment and salvation.'