INCONSISTENCY OF FRENCH RADICALS

New Zealand Tablet, 8 June 1911, Page 1041

INCONSISTENCY OF FRENCH RADICALS

...The inconsistency of some of the anti-clericals in Franc© r is illustrated by a couple of incidents related by the Paris correspondent of the Gorriere d'ltalia. ' The Sisters of Charity who until six years ago looked after the sick in the civil hospital of Avignon, and who were . brutally expelled from it, returned silently at the beginning of the present year. A decree of Briand called them back. But do 5 not think that the act of the ministry was spontaneous.*;' The Sisters have gone back for the simple reason that the radical deputy and all the communal councillors, radicals to a man, asked the head of the department to bring about a return to the status quo. Laicisation applied to the hospital of the old City of the Popes had produced a series of financial and: moral phenomena which had to be cut short and the radicals of Avignon are practical above everything. The other; episode is the following. A fortnight ago a Religious who is at the head of a congregation -'• of missionaries (one of the extremely rare ones who have succeeded in saving something. from the Jacobin storm), received a visit from a Radical-Socialist deputy, representing one of tlm French colonies. Without any' long preamble he explained he wanted— viz : the organisation of a Catholic mission in his electoral fief. 'Things have been going to the dogs with us, he explained, ever since the white priests,, as; a result of the law of separation, were obliged to return to France.' The Religious replied that ,he- would be delighted to comply with the request, but that before, coming to him the deputy should have obtained a guarantee. from ;the .Minister ■ of . the - Colonies that no obstacle would be put in the way of the missionaries. The deputy promised, but that very evening Briand's Ministry fell on the charge of having showed itself too weak towards the religious Congregations— and among \ the deputies who voted against it was the gentleman who wanted the missionaries. This did not prevent him, however, from putting his claim before the new Ministry, with the result that the Minister of the Colonies has given the necessary order, and the missionaries are now on their way. '