CATHOLIC INTELLIGENCE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 37, 10 January 1874, Page 13

CATHOLIC INTELLIGENCE.

Father Homer, Director of Missious in Zanzibar, has given t,o the French Missionary Society a very flourishing statement of the progress of Catholicism in that country and on the Western Coast of Africa. He declares that the natives are exceedingly open to conversion, and that, however much tho Sultan may disapprove of the abolition of the slave trade, he is by no means inimical to Catholicism and its missions. He has granted vast tracts of land to \he Fathers for their schools and farms, on which they have already built novitiate houses, and school-rooms for both sexes.

Lancashire, as of old, has become a refuge for exiled Jesuits, Those who have been driven from Germany by the recent edicts promulgated at tho instance of Prince Bismarck, and who have dispersed themselves through France, England, Belgium and the United States, have definitely settled their English novitiate at Dillon Hall, about nine miles from Liverpool, the use of which was granted them some months ago by Mrs Stapleton Brethertou, of Ruinhill. Here about 100 priests aud students, all Germans, are located, and the course of their studies is being pursued by the Jesuit novices as if in their own country. Others of the exiled German Jesuits are settled at Stonyhurst College and St. Buenos, near JRhyl, North Wales. Daily communication is kept up with Germany. It is a remarkable fact in connection with the nijn of Pope Pius IX that he never promoted one of his own relatives. Of Ins two nephews, he told one that he should remain in the very same state where he was, and never come to Rome ; and he declared to the other, a young officer in the Pontifical army, that no promotion would be accorded to him but what was due to his rank and his merit. The two greatest religious events which have characterised his reign are first, the definition of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. The great event for English Catholics has been the holding of the fourth Provincial Couucil of Westminster, which took place with circumstances of unusual splendour at St. Edmund's College lately. The work of the Council will be divided among four congregations, of Ecclesiastical Life, Liturgy. Discipline, aud Education. The most Rev. l)r Vaughin, Catholic Bishop of Salford, EngUad, in a speech lately delivered before the Blackburn Catholic Club, expressed himself as strongly opposed to the disestablishment of the Pro* teslant Church in England, on the ground that the only party that would be benefited by it would be the unbelievers, the secularises, and infidels of the present day. A strong effort is being made to unchristianize the country by making education unchristian. He believes the great contest will be between Christianity and Paganism. Herr Frohich hits off the Jesuits in a ma3torly manner: — The Jesuits fight tne world with its own cherished weapons. The world is very clever, crafty, and enlightened ; and the Jesuits are very clever prudent and enlightened ; only the difference is this— the Jesuics use those qualifies for God which the world use chiefly for the devil.

If Prince Bismarck can have his way, the priesthooJ shall be a department of tho police, aud religion a branch of German philosophy But Pnni*e Bismarck will not hare his way. To-morrow or tho next day they will put him in a grave, and ho will be standing alone, with none to help him, before the faca of H.m who said to the Church, ani has kept His promiso : " The gates of hell shall not prevail aganist her."

France and Italy. — It appears that the Governments of France and Austria have addressed '■ observations " to the Italian Cabinet on certain provisions in the new law relating to religious corporations and ecclesiastical property : but the Italian papers are anxiously endeavor-, ing to prove that these " observations " are not " protests."

Preston, Jyi^'i'pool. — Procession of Catholic Guilds, — The annual procession of guilds \n connection with the Catholic churches of the town was tins year revived on a scale quite equal to, if not surpassing, the displays of former years, both in pjint of nusnoer and attractiveness.