THE CATHOLIC WORLD

New Zealand Tablet, 3 April 1919, Page 35

THE CATHOLIC WORLD

GENERAL. The fund for the erection of a national shrine on the campus of the Catholic University of America has reached the sum of 100,000 dollars. ■ In sixteen Catholic churches scattered throughout various cities in the United States, doors are opened at 2 o’clock every Sunday morning and service begins half an hour later. Sister Mary of St. Michael, of the Convent of the Good Shepherd, in Newport, Ky., U.S.A., has just celebrated her hundredth birthday. She is the oldest nun in the United States. In the five years that Rev. E. J. Mannix, of Denver, Colorado, U.S.A., has been conducting his weekly class for the instruction of non-Catholics, 242 persons have been received into the Church at the Cathedral.

In Cincinnati there was recently dedicated “The Academy of Christian Democracy,” the first institution of its kind in America. It is to be devoted “exclusively to the teachings of social service under Catholic auspices.”

The Catholic Mission in Fiji has suffered a great loss in the deaths of the Rev. Fathers L. Robert and Rochereau, which occurred recently. Father Robert died at Natovi, Tailevu, while Father P. Rochereau succumbed to the epidemic at Naidiri, Kadavu, when nursing the sick people.

The new Quigley Preparatory Seminary at Chicago opened recently with a registration of nearly 400 young aspirants for the priesthood. It was an auspicious beginning of an institution that is already the largest preparatory seminary in the United States and has, it is said, no superior in numbers in the whole Catholic world.

There is an incident concerning the Bishop of Namur, Belgium (Mgr. Heylen), which is related by a returned prisoner of war. This man, after being taken prisoner, was placed in a filthy dungeon in the city of Namur, where he was kept with very little food. By some means his condition became known to the Bishop, and as often as he could conveniently manage it, Mgr Heylen fed the man with grapes and other articles of food, which he pushed through a small hole in the shutter of the prison.

AN ATTEMPTED INTERVIEW WITH CARDINAL HARTMANN. The correspondent of the Paris Journal made an attempt, that was by no means successful, to interview the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne. Waylaying his Eminence as he was leaving the Cathedral, the correspondent of the Journal began to ply him with questions. It appears, however, that Cardinal von Hartmann was evidently prepared for anything of this kind. His answer to the correspondent was short and to the point. His Eminence said: “I have made an exception in your case. Hitherto I have refused to receive any journalist. I am aware of all that has been written and said against me, but I am responsible to God alone for my actions, and to His representative on earth, the Sovereign Pontiff. I should consider it unworthy of me and my office to attempt the least justification of my conduct.” With this the Journal's correspondent had to be content, but he appears to have sought some consolation from the Cardinal’s private secretary. The secretary said that the Cardinal had taken steps against the deportation of women in the North of France; against the bombardment of Rheims ; and on behalf of the population of the invaded territories. On being plied with direct questions relating to certain incidents of the war, the Cardinal’s secretary replied: “Alas! it is war. - The military authorities would listen to nothing. They would not have tolerated any measures calculated to make the soldiers reflect. They would have pitilessly forbidden and suppressed all words of a

reprobation of . these jdeeds. whatever they might be.’*— Catholic News Service. '

. . THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND. V In a very interesting communication contributed to the Catholic Gaze.tte by Bishop John S. Vaughan, the statement is made that without any doubt the conversion of England was begun many years ago, and that it has been steadily continuing ever since ’ (says the Ave Maria While the advance has not perhaps been so swift or so marked as might be wished, it has nevertheless been unmistakable. A few of the statistics quoted by the Bishop will prove of general interest. The number of priests in England was, in 1851, just 826; in 1890 they had increased to 2478; and in’ 1918 they numbered 3952. As regards the churches and chapels, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were 156; in 1851 there were 586; in 1890 they had increased in 1335 ; and in 1918 the total was 1898. As for the steady increase in the number of the faithful throughout England, Wales, and Scotland: in 1803 it was estimated that there were in those countries seven hundred thousand Catholics; in 1851 the number was “certainly over one million”; and in 1918 the Catholic population is given as approximately two millions and a-half. As a patent deduction from the foregoing figures, Bishop Vaughan concludes that “the doleful and despondent view expresed by some clerical gentlemen, les la?-vies aux y e-use, is quite uncalled for and beside the mark.”