Archbishop Redwood

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 16, 22 April 1909, Page 609

Archbishop Redwood

Just over ten years ago the Most Rev. Francis Redwood, S.M., Archbishop of Wellington and Metropolitan of New Zealand, celebrated his episcopal silver jubilee. And last week his priests joined in festive solemnity to congratulate him on the virile freshness with which he has entered upon the new region of life that is supposed to start with three score and ten. The Archbishop's history is, to an extent, the history of the Catholic Church in New Zealand. He saw the Church in this Dominion expand from the few scattered Catholics of his boyhood days, with the single pioneer Bishop, Dr. Pompallier, down -to the rich growth of the present year of grace, with some 130,000 of the faithful, 260 priests, 62 religious brothers, 820 nuns, 2 ecclesiastical seminaries, 32 colleges and boarding schools, 17 superior day schools, 110 Catholic primary schools, 15 institutes of charity, and some 11,000 children receiving the benefits of a religious education. In the work of organisation, expansion/ and progress his Grace has borne a great and honorable part, and he has lived to see the garnering of these fruitful blessings in a green and virile middle life. *

We have said a ' middle life ' ; for age counts not so much by the new-year mile-posts that -one has" passed, and one may be seventy years young as well as seventy years old. And while, after seventy, new privileges enrich and refresh life as it looks towards the setting sun, there is work galore, and often of the highest quality, in those years that make the calm eve of earthly existence. In his ' Morituri te Salutamus,' Longfellow sang as follows of the golden aureole of achievement that often adorns the brows of those who have approached or passed the normal span : ' Cato learned Greek at eighty ; Sophocles Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides Bore oft the prize of verse from his compeers When each had numbered more than four-score years. And Theophratus, at four score and ten, Had but begun his Characters of Men. Chaucer, at Woodstock with his nightingales, At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; Goethe, at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty years had passed. Something remains for us to do or dare; Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear. For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress.' i>

We wish the mitred septuagenarian of the Wellington See many years in which to 'do and dare ' for God as in the days of ' youth itself, though in another dress.'