A “ Converted Village ” Canard

New Zealand Tablet, 27 April 1922, Page 18

A “ Converted Village ” Canard

A short time ago (says the London Tablet) Italian papers published a story about a village near Turin where all the people had given up their Faith and called in the 1 1 otestant pastor to take care of them. The paragraph was telegraphed to England and published in some papers there. Hero no one took any notice of it: it was obviously one of the numerous buildings up of some trifling incident into an anti-clerical “event.” As it has been noticed in England, and for all one knows may be used in the campaign against tho Church, the simple truth is worth publishing. The village, to begin with, is not near Turin, but in the Diocese of Novara, on the railway to Domodossola. For many years there has been an annual procession to a venerated shrine on which tho villagers set great store. This year, for purely material local reasons, the parish priest altered and abbreviated the route of the procession. The villagers considered that its importance was thus diminished, and, tenacious of their religious privileges and customs, earned it out themselves as they had been accustomed to do for years. There is a Protestant minister up there, nominally to attend to the religious needs of some Swiss Protestants employed on the railway. He saw his chance and endeavored to make religious capital out of the incident, but the only notice the people took of his harangues was to write to their Bishop. Headed by their Mayor, they are all good Catholics, and they went to church as usual, even with greater devotion than usual on the feast of the first days of November. That is all there is to the passing of an entire town to the Protestant religion.”

Me must have our discouragements, indeed, but we need not, therefore, be utterly cast down. We may despond, but avg need not feel despair.