POSEN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 133, 19 November 1875, Page 14

POSEN.

A letter which appears in the ' Germania ' gives a distressing picture of the religious condition of that diocese, in consequence of the persecution. All persons engaged in religious instruction in the Gymnasia (with the exception of a very few) have been dismissed for refusing to abjure their Bishop. The pupils of most of the gymnasia are without any Catholic religious instruction, in others it is given by unauthorised laymen. At the same time ample provision is made for Jewish religious instruction in the institutions frequented by young Jews. The ecclesiastical seminary at Posen, where there were 100 students, has been closed ; the " practical" seminary at Gnesen is empty. The Catholic training college for masters has been transferred from Posen to Rawitsch. According* to the Clerical Directory of 1874 there were 818 priests in the united dioceses ; there are at present only 768- Of the fifty some have died, others have been banished. Within the last two years the Cardinal Archbishop has had his revenues confiscated, and has been shut up in prison for two years. The same fate has overtaken the two Vicars-General, one of whom died from the effect of his imprisonment. The two assistant Bishops, Mgri. Janiszewski and Cybichowski, have been banished — the former for having once administered the Sacrament of Confirmation ; the latter for having" blessed the holy oils on Maunday Thursday without having received permission from the Governor of the Province. The successor of the Vicar- Greneiul in Gnesen was imprisoned for nine months, and then banished. The Prelate voox Kozmian, after having been for a long time in solitary confinement, has lately obtained a companion in imprisonment, Canon Kurowski, who is suspected of being the " secret delegate." Besides these, eightyseven other priests have been for weeks and months long in prison, and some have been released only to be banished. How injurious their imprisonment has been to many others is attested by the fact of their disabled condition from rheumatism, &c. Scarcely a number of the official journal appears in which some priest is not declared an outlaw, although he will have been already judicially* banished from the Province. Thirty -two parishes are without priests. Tweniy-one other parishes were destitute of -proper spiritual assistance (owing to the imprison m« at of their clergymen) during the great festivals of Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, and during the time for the Paschal duty. The sick are borne in waggons to outlying churches in order to receive the consolations of religion ; stealthily, and by night, priests are broiight to the bedside of the dying. The dead are committed to the grave without any religious rite (plwo Sang und Klang), a pile of stones being erected to mark the place whore they lie until a happier time when the blessing of the Church may hallow the spot. About 400 parish priests have had fines of various amounts inflicted on them. There is not a parochial residence in the two dioceses from which, every article of furniture has not been carried off under legal process; and if anywhere anything is to be found it is sure to be the pr >perty oi' some private person. The usual objects which gre3t one on arriving at a parochial lvsllence are summonses, Governmental noticed, copies of decrees, <w. Almost all the members of tle religious orders have been s>v^pt away. Tneir churches are a lmini-tored by secular priests, who depend for subsistence on the c larity of tho people. And withal, thanks be to God, there is only one Kubeczak among us ; for Kick is a stranger who nas wandered hither irojn Silesia. To conclude, it is not the clergy only who have to suffer ; the laity also have their fair share of persecution.