Another Sensation

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2, 12 January 1905, Page 2

Another Sensation

We have referred to the ' Daily News ' as the souroding-board of Uie atheist and anti-religious press o& the Continent of Europe. Another of the foetid tit-bits of No-Popery which it recently picked up was a charge of aimless and diabolical crueity against the Sis,ters who conduct the Orphanage of Providence at Aix in Provence, France. It is quite sufficient refutation of the story to state that it originated in the rabid columns of the ' Matin,' of Paris, whose similar charges against the Sisters of St. Dominic, at Tours, some nine months ago were sihown to be envenomed fabrications unrough and through. The famous lace. making nu?ns of Aix are, with the characteristic looseness and contradictoriness of siuch tales, variously, described ' Sisters of the Good Shepherd ' artd ' Sisters) of the Order of St. Thomas de Villeneuve '—two wholly distinct and separate religious congregations. Again : The chief ' witness ' of the ' Matin ' is Madame Elodie KicarM, whom it pretends to have interviewed and from whom it professes to have elicited a tale of callous brutality. But the Madame was promptly upon the 1 Matin's ' tracks. In a letter to the ' Provence Nouvelle ' ishe gave the ' Matin ' romancer a backhander to the following merry tune : ' The ' Matin ' has attributed to me a deposition I have never made. I have nev€)r had to complain of a single Sister during my stay in the convent, I protest against the use that tine editor of the " Matin " has made of my name.'

For the rest : the Aix Orphanage is under the control of the 'Government and is frequently visited by their Commissioner. No adverse report, no whisper ol evil was made against it till the forgers of Madame Kicard's name got a grip on the lobe of the ' Matin's' ever willing ear. And even then (says the Paris correspondent of the ' Glasgow Observer ') ' neither the police nor the Parquet (the Government Prosecutor's Office) have found that there was sufficient evidence to warrant their taking up the case.' In France a sensational tale by the l Matin ' is voted one-third to threethirds false. In New Zealand, of course, the lineal descent of its news staff from Ananias and Sapphira is not so well known. And hence there may be many here who might think that there was something really serious behind the palpable exaggerations that encrust tone surface of the story from distant Aix in Provence.

Many of our readers will remember the envenomed persistence with which, during the months ol June and July of last year, the rag-tag-and-bobtail news-sheet that is the Organ of New South Wales Orangeism, charged tone Sisters of the Catholic Orphanage at Manly (Sidney) with starving, over-working, and otherwise cruelly ill-treating their young charges. An investigation was demanded by Cardinal Moran. It was granted by the See Government and conducted by Mr. Green, Chief officer under the Children's Protection Act, and Sub-Inspector Tindall, of the Police Department,. The

Rev. Dill-Macky's gutter-journal was invited to substantiate its shocking charges. The invitation was mot accepted. The matter was, however, Rushed by the Commissioners. After a lengthy game of hide-and-seek they came face to face with a mysterious creature of the female sex who had invented the charges. They brought her to bay after she had failed to keep no fewer than six appointments. There was not so much as a scrap of evidence to support the wretched woman's foul slanders. The inquiry was a triumph for the Sisters and a deadly exposure of the cowanlly methods of the Orange association. In reference to the Aix convent affair, it must be borne in mind that the Paris ' Matin » is the organ of a clique whose hatred of the Catholic Cuurch and its institutions is even more fanatical and aggressive tihan that of the oath-bound Knights of the Saffron Sash. The rest of the tale is told by Thackeray in his ' Vanity Fair ' : • One of t<he great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object, in order to bo consistent. 1