DIOCESE OF CHRISTCHURCH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 45, 9 November 1899, Page 6

DIOCESE OF CHRISTCHURCH.

(From our own correspondent.) November 6. Last week his Lordship and Very Rev. Dean Foley, S.M., were engaged in giving missions inLincolD, which were closed on Sunday. The Bishop is expected to be in town over Carnival week. At the close of his mission at Southbridge on Sunday, the 29th ult., his Lordship, the Bishop, announced that he had received L 1,557, 557 in the Leeßton parochial district towards the Cathedral building fund. Under the direction of Mr. Percy Kehoe, and with the assistance of the orchestra attached to Mr. Bland Holt's Company and a strong choir, Gounod's ' Messe Scilennelle ' was excellently rendered at High Mass at St. Mary's Church, Manchester street, on Sunday last. Mrs. W. Cronin presided at the organ. The Feast of All Saints was observed in the customary manner at the cathedral. Masses were celebrated at 6 a.m., 7, 30 a.m., and 10 o'olock with devotions in the evening, all the services being well attended. At St. Mary's, Manchester street, the feast day was also duly observed with a good attendance of the faithful. Excepting perhaps by the disastrous colliery explosion at Brunner some years ago, never has the public mind of this city been so agitated as it was on the occasion of the lamentable balloon accident which occurred on last Thursday afternoon, causing the untimely death of the too venturesome aeronaut. Captain Lorraine, or more correctly, Daniel Mahoney. Two previous ascents and descents having been successfully accomplished with small financial results, a committee of citizens arranged as a benefit the one under notice, which promised so well and terminated so disastrously. Full details of, the sad event are already well known undoubtedly to most of your readers. To the thousands of spectators alone was

it reserved to witness a spectacle at once fascinating and saddening. A similar experience few if any would like repeated, the great majority feeling in their hearts, after the loss of the parachute, the only possible means of escape was gone, and nothing remained but to watch with straining eyes the poor human unit mounting higher and higher and drifting to certain doom. Truly a striking example of man's utter littleness and helplessness was the thousands upon thousands gazing horrified upon the luckless adventurer rapidly diminishing into almost infinitesimal proportions without the remotest power to aid. Yet there was one to aid who, in the hour of need, perceiving inevitable destruction, piously, in the seclusion of God's own domain, stretched forth his hand giving conditional absolution and recited a prayer for the dying, knowing the vanish" ing figure to be a Catholic : a circumstance probably uniqun in the annals of history, and showing that holy Mother Church, through her chosen ministers, is ever ready to help her children in their direst extremity. This was done by the Very Rev. Father Le Menant des Chesnais, V.G. The victim of this unfortunate accident was a native of Auckland, and on the Sunday previous, accompanied by his wife, attended Mass at St. Mary's, Manchester street.