PEOPLE WE HEAR ABOUT

New Zealand Tablet, 27 September 1917, Page 43

PEOPLE WE HEAR ABOUT

The ; suggestion to recognise the services of Sir Charles^(Santley - to the cause of music by the bestowal , upon the veteran Catholic vocalist of the freedom of the city, is again being talked of in Liverpool. Sir Charles was born in Whitechapel, Liverpool, in 1838, and began his musical career at St. . Anne’s Benedictine Church, Edge Hill, with which he has ever since maintained his connection. His Lordship the Right Rev. Dr. Chisholm, LL.D., Bishop of Aberdeen, celebrated his 81st birthday on Tuesday, June 26. He was born in Inverness on the 26th June, 1836. Ordained priest in May, 1859 years in the ministry Dr. Chisholm has reigned over the Northern diocese since February, 1899. The clergy and laity of the diocese join with his Lordship s other friends in hearty congratulations and sincere wishes for many years of health and strength in the See of Aberdeen. Mr. Francis Gordon, a Catholic gentleman, who is Chief Engineer in the Irrigation Service under the Egyptian Government, has been decorated by the Sultan of Egypt with the Distinguished Order of the Nile for his valuable services in connection with public works in Egypt, especially in the banking of the Nile when it threatened to overflow last year. Mr. Gordon, originally a County Leitrim man, was previously honored for services at the Esnah Barrage, receiving through the Khedive the Insignia of the Imperial Ottoman Order of the Medjidieh. His wife resides at Sea view House, Saltcoats, and his two sons are students at St. Aloysius’ College, Glasgow. Mr. Xavier Merriman, who has so well succeeded in giving Republicanism in South Africa a decisive fall, is not a Catholic as the name “Xavier” might imply (states the Glasgow Herald). His father, who was Anglican Bishop of Grahamstown, was a votary of Newman’s, and his Catholic sympathies caused him to give Xavier as a name to his son. Such High Anglicans usually favor saints of the Patristic, or at any rate pre-Reformation, ages in the matter of nomenclature, Bedes, Cuthberts, and Aidans being familiar names in such circles. But Aloysius, Xavier, Loyola, Assisi they avoid. Post-Reformation saints ox then* own they have none. Parliament “runs” the Protestant Church in England, and though it presumes to attempt many purely ecclesiastical functions, we cannot remember that it ever ventured on a canonisation. * The London Tablet relates the interesting circumstances under which the Rev. W T . Feild Ridout, M.A., an Anglican clergyman, has become a convert to the Catholic faith. He studied at Oxford University and Ely Theological College, and for a time worked in a London parish. Then having served in the diocese of Zanzibar under Bishop Weston (“Frank Zanzibar” of Kikuyu fame), he was imprisoned by the Germans at the outbreak of the war for over two years in German East Africa. Released from captivity, he returned to j England to stay with his old friend, Rev. Bernard Pearce, at Tunbridge Wells, and was by him instructed and received into the fold the other day. Let us hope that “durance vile” in strange lands may be put to similar profit by many others. One of Scotland’s foremost clergymen and a notable figure in public life has been removed by the death of Right Rev. Mgr. Provost Holder, M.R., St. Joseph’s, Dundee. Mgr. Provost Holder died at Beechwood, Birnam, Perthshire, on Friday morning, June 22. He was born -in . Edinburgh in September, 1845; trained | at Blairs, Douap Issy, and St. Sulpice, at which latter ; place he had been ordained subdeacon when the Franco- ’ Prussian War broke out. Returning to Blairs, he was there ordained deacon and priest by Right Rev. Dr; Macdonald in 1871. His first curacy was at St. Mary’s, rebank, Dundee. In 1877 he was transferred to St. John’s, Perth, but in a few months he was placed in £ cß&rge of ; St. . Joseph’s, Wilkie’s lane, Dundee, and there he remained ’. for 39 years. ... p•■ L •