THE HOLY LAND

New Zealand Tablet, 4 November 1915, Page 47

THE HOLY LAND

GERMAN AND TURKISH DESECRATQRS. Rev. Father Kennedy, 0.F.M., Waverly, N.S.W. (Commissary of the Holy Land for Australasia), makes the following‘appeal for help in view of the descratiou of Holy Places by the Turks (says the Sydney Morning Herald of October 14). Yesterday’s cable message, if confirmed, is calculated to send a thrill of horror vibrating through every Christian heart in the world. There seems to be good- reason to accept the authenticity of the statement of the Temps correspondent at Alexandria, that a wicked sacrilege is being committed at Jerusalem, and at other places throughout the Holy Land, by the Turks, supported and encouraged by the Germans. Rheims x was demolished, Louvain was burned down, the Lusitania was sunk, women were outraged, nuns were insulted, priests were murderedthe. greatest sacrilege of all was flashed over Christendom yesterday. We were not prepared to hear that the sacred places, hallowed by the birth and life and death of the Founder of our common Christian creed, would be desecrated ; but evidently they have. The cable says that musketry butts are erected on Golgotha convents have been turned into barracks, recruits are drilling on Mount Olivet, and all through the country, under German officers : and all roads in the Holy Land are full of caravans, bearing munitions and supplies. There is no danger of a massacre of the Christians, but they stand face to face with utter starvation, and, in many instances, with captivity and death. Ther? are 55 shrines in the Holy Land, 60 convents and hospices, 42 parishes, with 100,000 of a Christian population, almost all depending on alms from outside; 58 schools for boys and girls, five orphan asylums, with 300 children ; seven large pharmacies, which distribute medicine free ; besides other smaller dispensaries, attached to every hospice ; several doctors, who tend the sick without distinction of creed or nationality free of charge: 100 male teachers and 57 female teachers, eight large rasa novas (hoarding-houses), for the reception and accommodation of pilgrims; 496 houses, in which 2560 poor -families live, and are entirely supported by the custos of the Holy Land. The condition of these poor people at the present moment must be appalling. The European countries which formerly contributed to support them are now stricken down with poverty, suffering, and grief themselves, and consequently are unable to afford them help. Father Kennedy concludes by appealing to the generosity of the Australasian public, non-Catholic as well as Catholic, to come to their aid. Knowing that a period of dire distress was approaching for the Christians under Mohammedan rule, Father Kennedy has had a booklet printed within the last month, entitled, The Crusader hoping by that means to raise funds to meet the urgency of the case.