PEOPLE WE HEAR ABOUT

New Zealand Tablet, 12 September 1918, Page 43

PEOPLE WE HEAR ABOUT

The Right Rev. Mgr. George Sheehan, of Elktown, U.S.A., who has just died, was born in Bantry in 1855, and went to America 38 years ago. He was _ brother of the late Most Rev. Dr. Sheehan, Bishop of .Waterford and Lismore. The Rev. Father S. Marian, S.J., who has the unique distinction of being the first Tamil in Ceylon to join the celebrated Order of St. Ignatius, returned to Batticaloa on July 3. Father Marian received his early training at the Kandy Papal Seminary. On being ordained to the priesthood he was engaged in missionary work in Batticaloa, of which town he is a native. Deciding later to enter the religious life, he went to the Jesuit Novitiate at the Sacred Heart College in Shembaganur, South India, where on the completion of his noviceship he spent a period of time in further study. He has now • returned to join the staff of St. Michael's College, Batticaloa. Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, physician, author, and historian, great-nephew of Robert Emmet, the Irish patriot, and himself one of the world's best known physicians, received the congratulations of his friends early in June last on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. Dr. Emmet, who has been compelled of late to take recourse to a wheel chair, but whose mind is as clear as it was three-quarters of a century ago, spent the greater part of the morning in his study at 95 Madison Avenue, New York, working on his latest book, The Lives of Robert Emmet and Thomas Addis Emmet. The work is a revision of a former biography of the great Irish patriot and his brother. Rev. George H. Bennett, D.D., Church of SS. Mary and David, Hawick, has (states an exchange) been appointed to.the See of Aberdeen, Scotland, rendered vacant by the death of the late Right Rev. Aeneas Chisholm, D.D., LL.D. The son of the late George Bennett, C.E., the Bishop-elect was born in Antigua, British West Indies, in 1875. The family returned to Scotland and settled in Edinburgh when Mgr. Bennett was but a boy. He was educated in Edinburgh Academy and St. Benedict's Abbey School, Fort Augustus. In 1892 he proceeded to Rome, where he studied philosophy, theology, and canon law, and was ordained there in 1898 by Cardinal Cassetta in the Church of St. John Lateran. The same year he took his Doctorate of Divinity, but remained two years longer in Rome in order to pursue a special course of study in canon law. Cardinal Mercier has become so outstanding a figure in contemporary history that anything relating to his personality possesses an element of interest not only to Catholics but to the world at large. One fact which links the eminent Belgian prelate to the Catholic history of America, and which perhaps is not generally known, we find recorded in the current issue of the Indian Sentinel, In speaking of the Grand Ronde Reservation, Oregon, U.S.A., the editor mentions that the Reservation was evangelised by a saintly priest, Mgr. Adrien Croquet, an uncle of Cardinal * Mercier. So effective were the 40 years of Mgr. Croquet's apostolic labors that he left the entire population of the Reservation Catholic; and that his evangelising was thorough is vouched for by present conditions at the Reservation. "The Grand Ronde people," says the Sentinel, "are to-day the most advanced of all Indians, if the entire population is taken into consideration. It is the one Reservation where all are prosperous and law-abiding; the one Reservation that has no need for air agent." Right Rev. Thomas F. Cusack, D.D., fifth Bishop of Albany, died on July 20. Bishop Cusack was born in New York City on February 22, 1862. He was a son of James Cusack and Honora Boland. He graduated from the College of St. Francis Xavier, New York, in 1880, and studied for the priesthood in Troy

Seminary. ;He was ordained ; on May 30, 1885.:, Father Cusack served as superior of the New York Apostolate, the diocesan missionary society; « from 1907 to 1914. He was consecrated Titular Bishop of Themiscyra and Auxiliary Bishop of New York on April 25, 1914, in St. Patrick's Cathedral, and on July 5, 1915 was transferred to the See of Albany. A great and good man passed from this earth when Bishop Thomas F. Cusack, of Albany, died (says the Catholic News of New York). His soul was ever filled with priestly zeal. His was the apostolic spirit. He yearned ever to teach the truths of the Catholic religion. To witness the dawning of faith in another's heart; to guide another's spirit along the dark way towards the light; to help the uncertain, the timid, the stumbling searcher after truth to find that precious jewel; to strengthen the weak and to reclaim the erring, these were joys to his soul, food and drink to his own spirit, sources of the highest pleasure to his pastoral heart. Always the thought of the multitude outside of the Church. When he became Bishop he placed upon his crest the words, "Oris alias habeo" —"other sheep have I (not of this fold)." His years in the New York Apostolate were, perhaps, the happiest years of his life. There he gave missions, there he met inquirers, there he found searchers, there he brought in the "other sheep." According to a cablegram from Rome under date of July 20 (states the Sacred Heart Review, Boston, U.S.A.), the Holy Father has appointed new bishops, as follows:—Right Rev. Michael J. Gallagher, D.D., Bishop of Grand Rapids, Mich., to be Bishop of Detroit, succeeding Right Rev. John S. Foley, D.D., who died on January 5. Right Rev. Mgr. Christopher Burne, of St. Louis, to be Bishop of Galveston, Tex., in succession to Right Rev. Nicholas A. Gallagher, D.D., who died on January 21. Very Rev. Arthur Canon Drossaerts, of New Orleans, to be Bishop of San Antonio, Texas. Rev. J. T. MeNicholas, 0.P., to be Bishop of Duluth, Minn., in succession to Right Rev. James McGolrick, who died on January 23. Right Rev. Mgr. Jules Jeanmard, of New Orleans, to be Bishop of the new diocese of Lafayette, La. Bishop Gallagher was ordained on March 19, 1893. He was appointed Titular Bishop of Tipasa and Coadjutor Bishop of Grand Rapids on July 5, 1915, and was consecrated on September 8 following, and succeeded to the See on December 16, 1916, on the death of the first incumbent, Right Rev. Henry J. Richter, D.D. Bishop-elect Byrne is pastor of the Church of the Holy Name, St. Louis. Bishop-elect Drossaerts is pastor of St. Joseph's Church, Baton Rouge, La., and a number of missions, and a member of the Board of Consultors of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Bishopelect MeNicholas was formerly head of the Holy Name Society of the United States. Bishop-elect Jeanmard served as apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of New Orleans from the time of the death of Most Rev. James H. Blenk, S.M., D.D., which occurred on April 20, 1917, until the present Archbishop, Most Rev. John W. Shaw, D.D., took charge.