The Catholic World

New Zealand Tablet, 4 November 1915, Page 53

The Catholic World

ENGLAND A BENEFACTOR OF DOUAI COLLEGE. The death took place on September -2, after an operation, of Mr. Edmund Granville Ward, of Northwood Park, Isle of Wight, Lord of the Manors of Northwood, Debourne, and Weston. Born in 1853; the eldest son of Dr. William George Ward, of Northwood Park, Mr. Granville Ward was educated at Old Hall and Stonyhurst, and succeeded his father in 1882. He was appointed in 1888 Private Chamberlain to Pope Leo XIII., who afterwards created him a Knight Commander of the Cross of St. Gregory. Mr. Ward took a special interest in the English Benedictines at Douai, where he built himself a house and spent .£IO,OOO in adding a new wing to the college; the entire property, however, was sold by Cue French Government on the dispersal of the religious Orders in 1903. One of Mr. Ward’s brothers is Mr. Wilfrid Ward, the biographer of Cardinal Newman and Cardinal Wiseman, and editor of the Dublin Review, and the other is Monsignor Bernard Ward, Domestic Prelate at the Vatican and President of St. Edmund’s College, Ware.

FRANCE A REMEDY FOR LIBELS. A priest belonging to Haute Marne, in France, has just dealt in a very effective way with a libeller of the clergy (says the Catholic Times). The editor of the Petit llautmarua-is, who is an anti-clerical, stated in an issue of his paper that of all the Catholic clergymen in Haute Marne not one had gone to the front. The statement was untrue. Not to mention others, Father Sommelot, a local priest, had been killed at the front; the Abbe Girard, another priest from Haute Marne, had been wounded and had lost a limb ; and ths-ACbbe Kohler, from the same place, had been mentioned in orders of the day and had received the military cross, with palm. A Haute Marne priest who was serving in the trendies wrote to the editor informing him of these facts and adding : ‘To defend you, sir, I have been risking my life night and day for over a year. More than a score of times I have narrowly escaped death. I will not allow you to insult me. I require that in your issue of September 1 you retract your odious accusation and give the facts. If you refuse to do so I shall not have recourse to the legal measures I am entitled to take, but I shall be on a holiday in September and you may rest assured that at the front the priests have hardened their minds and their muscles.’ The retractation and correction were duly inserted, for the libeller, like all of his tribe, was too great a coward to risk heavy punishment.

ITALY PRIESTS IN THE ARMY. There were 19,320 priests under General Cadorna, Commander-in-Chief of the Italian Forces, on the day he marched to the north of Italy. Seven hundred and forty-five held the grade of military chaplains. Of the latter forty-five have been hit by the enemy while ministering to the troops under fire. Twelve of them have been killed and thirty-three are lying in hospitals more or less grievously wounded. So courageous has been the conduct of many of the military chaplains in times of danger that the Commander-in-Chief has in person consigned to the Right Rev. Bishop Bartolomasi, Ordinary for the Army and Navy, a list of the names of chaplains who have been proposed for the reception of medals and other awards for valor.

ROME THE SACRED COLLEGE. Mention of the rumor as to the creation of another English . Cardinal reminds me of the reduced membership

of the Sacred College (writes a Rome correspondent). Since the last Consistory of the late Pontiff, which was held in May, 1914, a very considerable number of Car—eleven is, I think, the exact total—have passed away. But notwithstanding the depleted condition of the College of Cardinals, it is not anticipated that the Pope will decide on summoning a Consistory before the month of December, at any rate. The fact of the nomination of an. Administrator Apostolic of the suburban diocese of Ostia, which the late Cardinal Serafino Vannutelli, Dean of the Sacred College, ruled, points to a decision not to hold a Consistory for a considerable time. Two of the dioceses which must be filled by Cardinals of the Order of Bishops are provisionally ruled by Administrators Apostolic, pending the eventviz., Albano, by the Most Rev. Andrea Caron, Titular Archbishop of Chalcedonia, who resigned the Archbishopric of Genoa several months ago; and Ostia, by the Right Rev. Mgr. Quadrini, Canon of St. John Lateran, who had for years been Vicar-General to the late Cardinal S. Vannutelli.

ANNIVERSARY OF THE POPE’S CORONATION. As there was no official celebration in the Vatican Palace on September 3 in commemoration of the election of Pope Benedict XV. to the Chair of Peter, so there was no commemorative ceremony on September 6, the anniversary of the coronation of his Holiness (writes a Rome correspondent). The decision of the Holy Father that the anniversary of his coronation shall be postponed until the 22nd of December will hold good, not for this year only, but for the whole reign of Benedict XV. To the absence of prelates from Rome in August and September and also to the heat, which would make a function in the Sistine Chapel exceedingly unpleasant during these months, the postponement of the celebration is to be attributed. To the heart of Benedict XV. the 22nd of December is a date particularly dear. It was on December 22, 1907, Mgr. Della Chiesa was consecrated Archbishop of Bologna in the Sistine Chapel by Pope Pius X.

DEATH OF A CARDINAL. His Eminence Cardinal Benedetto Lorenzelli, Prefect of the Congregation of Studies, died in Rome on September 16. lie was a native of Badi in the archdiocese of Bologna, and was born on May 11, 1853. On the completion of his special studies in Canon and Civil Law in Rome he was appointed Professor of Philosophy in the Propaganda College by Pope Leo XIII., and when the Bohemian College was founded he was appointed rector. In 1893 he was sent as Internuncio to the court of Holland. Three years later he was consecrated Titular Archbishop of Sardi and appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Bavaria, and in 1899 he was sent in a similar capacity to Paris, where he remained until the breaking off of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and France in 1904. On his return to Rome he was appointed Archbishop of Lucca and in the Consistory of April 15, 1907, his Holiness Pope Pius X. created and proclaimed him a member of the Sacred College of Cardinals. He was the author of a textbook in philosophy. The death of Cardinal Lorenzelli reduces the membership of the Sacred College to fiftyfive. He is the third Cardinal to pass away within a brief period, the others being Cardinals Yannutelli and Vaszary.