IRISH-AUSTRALIAN’S CHARITABLE BEQUESTS.

New Zealand Tablet, 9 January 1913, Page 41

IRISH-AUSTRALIAN’S CHARITABLE BEQUESTS.

In the Chancery Division, Dublin, before Mr. Justice Ross, an originating notice was heard recently in the matter of the will of the late Mr. Daniel Thomas Mulligan, formerly of Queensland and', latterly of Monkstown, Co. Dublin, who died worth £25,000. The trustees, Yen. Archdeacon Gorman, P.P., Dxumcondra, and Mr. John Scallan, asked for the opinion of the Court in a number of questions that had arisen in the course of the administration of the estate. The income of the property, after payment of certain pecuniary legacies* went to the testator’s cousins for their lives, and, after their deaths, it was to be divisible amongst charities, including the Mater Misericordise Hospital, Jervis Street Hospital, Cork Street Hospital, St. Michael’s Hospital, Kingstown; Royal Hospital for Incurables, Mercer’s Hospital, and St, Vincent de Paul Orphanage, Glasnevin. A bequest was also made to the Archbishop of Dublin for the benefit of charitable institutions for the deaf, dumb, and blind persons belonging to Catholics in the diocese of Dublin, and a similar bequest was made to the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin for the benefit of Protestant institutions of a similar kind. . There was also a bequest of £7OOO to the Corporation of Dublin for" the erection of baths and wash-houses and for the benefit of technical schools. All the relatives who had benefited were now dead, and the matter came before the Court in order to facilitate the distribution of the assets among the charities. The Most Rev. Dr. Walsh had, it was stated, declined to accept the trust conferred on him by the will. His Lordship said he would make a decree for the administration of the personal estate in so far as it was disposed of by the testator’s will for the benefit of the charities. WEXFORD RECORD. A relative of the Rev. Mother Rossiter, who perished in the flames at the San Antonio Orphanage, writes to the Freeman-. If an instance were wanted of heroic self-sacrifice; of the spiritual devotion, and, I might add, almost absolute martyrdom, of our Irish nuns, surely it is typified in the part which the Wexford, Kildare, and Dublin nuns played in the recent fire at the Orphanage of St. John’s at San Antonio, Texas, A few years ago, Sister Mary Rossiter and some six other Wexford ladies, and a contingent of some seven others from Kilkenny, Kildare, and Dublin went out as novices to the State at the call of the Bishop of the diocese—himself an Irishman, They were soon after their profession placed in charge of the large orphanage and convent of St. John’s, Antonio, where for some years past they ministered to the wants of some hundred -little orphans and deserted children, doing God’s good work in that silent, humble way! without any display or show, which is the rule of life of so many of our Irish religious women. They left their home and friends to spend their lives in a hard, toilsome task, without any hope of an earthly reward, and, as proved in the case of six of those devoted ladies! to lay down their very lives for the little ones in their, charge. No greater example of heroic devotion k) duty has ever been recorded, and the friends of the Rev. Mother, while lamenting her sad end, can console themselves with the thought that the reward of such heroism and tender love will meet with an equal reward in the. world to which she has gone. Wexford has always given generouslv of her sons and daughters to the Church and the religious life. The Australian continent at the present moment has two archbishops and two, if not three, bishops, besides a host of priests and a little army of nuns, two of them being Rev! Mother-Generals of their Order— Wexfordians. As for the United States, Canada, and the Southern Continent of America, and the islands in the West Indies some forty to fifty Wexford priests rule in those’ countries, while the Irish Franciscans guard the Holy inaces in Jerusalem, and in the far-off Philippine Islands the same Order has just been placed in charge of the Catholic population, with an Irish Bishop at their head; and Wexford certainly takes the lead in the number of devoted sons and daughters who .generously give their lives to God’s good work in His Church.’