HEROIC SOLDIER PRIEST

New Zealand Tablet, 31 December 1914, Page 47

HEROIC SOLDIER PRIEST

RENDERS THE LAST RITES TO A DYING COMRADE.

9 • *• ;~ Mr. Thomas Naylor, Paris correspondent of Lloyd's Weekly, tells the following deeply moving story: In the hall of a great railway terminus in Paris a number of wounded were laid out on the straw waiting to be taken to an hospital. Eight of them were very badly hurt, and somo of them were evidently not lon°for this world. One of them seemed to be very uneasy! A nurse went up to him'and offered to rearrange his bandages. His reply was, ' I want a confessor very badly.' ' ' ' Is there a priest here?' asked the nurse. Just then another wounded soldier lying mortally wounded plucked the nurse by the sleeve. 'Madame,' he said, 'I am a priest; I can give him absolution. Carry me to him.' The nurse hesitated. The soldier was suffering from the effects of a horrible shell wound, and the least movement gave him excruciating pain. But again the feeble voice quietly said : ' You are of the faith, and you.know the price of a soul. What is one more hour of life compared with that?' And the soldier raised himself by a supreme effort to go to the side' of h : t comrade. But the effort was in vain. He had to be carried The confession did 'not take long, and th,e strength of the soldier-priest was ebbing rapidly away. When the time came to give the absolution he made a sign to the nurse. ' Help me to give the sign,' he said. The nurse held up his arm while this was being done. Death followed quickly for the soldier-priest and his penitent. They died hand-in-hand, while the nurse and the ambulance men fell on their knees on each side of them. .