People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 6 June 1912, Page 41

People We Hear About

Last year the noble convert. Mother Katherine Drexel, Superior-General of the of the. Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, Conwells, Pa., contributed personally £15,000 to the Catholic Indian Missions. " - '

On April 10 Right Rev. John J. Hogan, D.D., Bishop of Kansas City, celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of his ordination to the holy priesthood. On May 10 he celebrated his eighty-third birthday. Bishop Hogan was born at Cahir-Guilamore, near Bruff, Limerick,' on May 10, 1829, The United States Treasury Department has granted permission to place a tablet on the Custom House, Bowling green, New York City, as a memorial to mark the place where the first Mass was celebrated on Manhattan Island, Old Fort James stood on the present site of the Custom House, and it was in this fort, in 1681, that Mass was first said in New York.

‘ My brother was a priest, and as such it was his duty to remain until the last/ So declared Mr. William E. Byles, Brooklyn, in abandoning hope that his bxother, the. Rev. Thomas R. D. Byles, of Ongar, Essex, England, was among the Titanic survivors. Father Byles was on his way to the United States to officiate at the marriage of his brother. ‘lfit is true that hundreds drowned when the boat went down how could he have been saved ? As a teacher of the Gospel his place was to remain behind and administer the last rites to the other poor souls. He knew his duty and I am confident he fulfilled it.'

Mr. Hilaire Belloc was born in 1870, and is the only son of Louis Swanton Belloc, French barrister. From the Oratory School he passed as the French citizen he then was (he naturalised as an Englishman in 1902), to serve in the French army. He left that service to continue his studies at Balliol College, Oxford, of which he was senior Erackenbury scholar, and whence he took a first class in honors in 1895. He subsequently began journalism in London, and was quickly known as one of the most brilliant accessions to London letters. He married, in 1896, Miss Elodie Agnes Hogan, a Californian. In 1906 he joined the Catholic Education Council as a nominee of the Bishops. Mr. Belloc undertook the editorship, of The Eye Witness in 1911.

His Eminence Cardinal Farley celebrated his seventieth birthday on Saturday, April 20. The Cardinal spent nearly the whole of the day in the New York hospitals ministering to the victims of the Titanic disaster. His Eminence was born in 1842 at Newton Hamilton, Co. Armagh, Ireland. He was educated at St. Macartan’s College, Monaghan, 'and went to America as a youth. He continued his studies at St, John’s College, Fordham; at St. Joseph’s Seminary, Troy, and at the American College at Rome, where he was ordained on June 11, 1870. When he returned to America he was assigned as. assistant to St. Peter’s Church, Staten Island, and two years late, in 1872, he became secretary to Cardinal McCloskey. In 1884 he was made a Private Chamberlain, and in 1892 he was promoted to the dignity of Domestic Prelate. In 1895 he was made a Prothonotary Apostolic, and in 1891 was chosen Yivar-General by Archbishop Corrigan. He was consecrated as Auxiliary Bishop of New York diocese on December 21, 1895, * and became Archbishop on September 15, 1902. In 1904 he was made an assistant at the Pontifical- Throne by Pope Pius X. and was created a Cardinal on November 27,, 1911. ' ; : ' •