PRAISE FOR A CATHOLIC PRIEST

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 7, 14 February 1901, Page 7

PRAISE FOR A CATHOLIC PRIEST

Wb quote the following interesting remarks from Governor Roosevelt's artiole on ' Civic Helpfulness' in a recent Century, We do not doubt that it could be corroborated in other places than New York. ' Perhaps there is no harm in my referring to one man who is dead. Very early in my career as a police commissioner of the city of New York, I was brought in contact with Father Casserly of the Pauliet Fathers. After he had made np his mind that I was really trying to get things decent in the department, and to see that law and order prevailed, and that crime and vice were warred against in practical fashion, he became very intimate with me, helping me in every way, and unconsciously giving me an insight into his own work and his own character. Continually, at one point and another, I came across what Father Casserly was doing, always in the way of showing the intense human sympathy and interest he was taking in the lives about him. If one of the boys of a family was wild, it was Father Casserly who planned methods of steadying him. If, on the other hand, a steady boy met with some misfortune — lost his plaoe, or something of the kind, — it was Father Casserly who went and stated the facts to hia employer. The Paulist Fathers had always been among the most efficient foes of the abußes to the liquor trade. They never hesitated to interfere with saloons, dance-houses. and the like. One secret of their influence with our Police Board was that, as they continually went about among their people and knew them all, and aa they were entirely disinterested, they could be trusted to tell who did right and who did wrong among the instruments of the law. One of the perplexing matters in dealing with policemen is that, as they are always in hostile contact with criminals and would-be criminals, who are Bure to lie about them, it is next to impossible to tell when accusations against them are false and when they are true ; for the good man who does his duty is sure to have scoundrelly foes, and the bad man who blackmails these same Booundrels usually has nothing but the same evidence against him. But Father Casserly and the rest of his order knew the policemen personally, and we found we could trust them implicitly to tell exactly who was good and who was not. Whether the man were Catholic, Protestant, or Jew, if he was a faithful public servant they would so report him ; and if he was unfaithful he would be reported as such, wholly without regard to his creed.' In the Bame article, honorable mention is also made of a certain Brother A , who was doing very effective work for Italian children. •He had a large parochial Bchool, originally attended by the children of Irish parents. Gradually the Irish had moved up-town, and had been supplanted by the Italians. It was hia life-work to lift these little Italians over the first painful steps on the road to American citizenship.'