People

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 31, 31 July 1902, Page 10

People

A Catholic diplomat, Sir Martin G-osselin, has been appointed British' Minister at Lisbon. Sig,nor Marconi has been awarded a prize of £400 by the Accademia de Lined, tho most important scientific body in Italy, for his discovery of wireless telegrapgy. Mgr. Merry del Val, who is to represent the Pope at the Coronation) of King Edward, will reside during his stay- in London in Norfolk House, W., the residence of the Duke of Norfolk. Mrs. Humphrey Ward, the author of 'David Grieve,' 'Robert Elsmere ' and ' Sir George Tressady,' is a native of Hobart, Tasmania. She hag jusli entered her fifty-second year Her grandfather was the famous Dr Arnold, of Rugby. Tho Hon. Charles A' De Courcey of Lawrence, Mass., recently appointed by Governor Crane, of Massachussets a justice of the supremo court of the commonwealth, is said to bo the first Catholic of Irishj parentage ever appointed to a judgesnip of this state by a Republican governor. Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., who is spoken of as likely to visit Australia* shortly in connection with the movement to obtain funds for the Irish Parliamentary Party, is considered one of the finest orators in Great Britain. One of the delegates to tlieJ Manchester Convention of the United, Irish League says that Mr. O'Connor's was the finest effort of his life an,d thatj he is no unwonthy successor) of Grattan or O'Connell., King Albert of Saxony, who is lying dangerously ill at Sibyllenort,, is 74 years of age. As Crown Prince; of Saxony he was one of the principal leaders in the Franco-German war, as was also his 'brother and heir, Prince George, and both received the rank of Field-Marshal-General from tho Kaiser. The Royal houso is the only Catholic branch' of the great ruling- house of Wettin and is descended through Louis XV. from Charles 1. of England. England once more (says a London paper) has had to depend upon a soldier born in Ireland to bring tho war to an end. It was an Irishman, Lord Wolseley who was at) the head i «. t i he . i ar I my wlien thG first troops left British shores for South Africa, it was an Irishman— tho man who now presides as Commander-in-Chief in Pall Mallr-who led the army into tho Boer capital. It was an Irishman—Sir. George White— who held Lady smith against one of the- fiercest) and most persistent attacks ever made on a beseiged town, and now Lord Kitchener., who spent his boyhood on the wild sea coast of Kerry has signed tho historic document which brings back peace to the British Empire. ho ,Y ery Eev> Lawrence Shapcoto, 0.P., the new Provincial of the English Doonmican Fathers, is the son of Edward Gifford Shapcote, at one tmio an Anglican missionary to South Africa, who returned to England in 1865, and soon after became a Catholic. His wife, the talented) Catholic author, preceded him into' tho Chunch by 18 months, beimr received by Father Gallwey, S.J.; on St. Dominic's Day, 1866. The Very Rev. Francis M. Wyndham, present) Superior of the Oblates of St. Charles, Bayswiiter, London, came into} tho Church at the same time with! Mr. Shapcote. Father Shapcote was professed a Dominican in 1881. Father Vaughan, S.J., in a letter to a daily paper which reported the trial of his recent libel case, writes : In the admirable reports of my libel case v. ' Rock ' which appeared in tho Manchester papers, a mistake crept in which, per-

haps, it may be well to correct. In them I am described aa a descendant of Margaret Poole. The lady's name should have teen Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, -« the last of the Royal house of Plantagenets, and mother of Henry Pole, Lord Montague; executed on Tower Hill in 1538, .and of Reginald, Cardinal Pole. Blessed Margaret .Polo,, who after two years' imprisonment was herself executed, at the age oil 70 years, on Tower Hill, in 1541 was beatified in 1887 by Pope Leo XIH. She was a valiant woman, and, 1 fQught for her faith to the last, refusing to lay down her head, which' • had never even thought ' sedition/, on tho executioner's block. Old as Pope Leo" is, he had the rare felicity of receiving in private audience early in June one older still that remembered his Holiness when the tiara, was still nearly! three-quarters of a century off. The visitor was an old peasant woman, of Con, Anna Moroni, who wity complete her hundredth year on the 6th of October next. She remembers when Joachim Pecci was a baby, and. when she carried him about in her arms at the age of four. Those Irish pilgrims who remember the interview, between Pope Leo and the old Obba peasant woman in St. Peter's in 'October, 1900, can imagine the meeting and the greeting in the Vatican the other day. Father Bernard Vaughan (says a London paper), who has successfully brought an action against the Rock,' and obtained £300 damages! from that uncharitably Protestant! paper, is probably the most eloquent of living Englishmen. He is a younger brother of Cardinal Vaughan, whom he much, resembles in appearance. For very many years! ho acted as recton of the Church of the Holy Name at Manchester, and was a well-known and popular char-* acter in that city. His sermons; drew enormous crow.ds to the church. He is at the present time one of •fahatl congregation of priests who condtuct tho services at Farm street Church, and whenever it is his turn to preach, standing, room is hardly obtainable there. His Grace the Archbishop of Cashel, whose death was reported by cable last week, was 78 years of age on Monday, May 19. He was born at Mallow, County Cork, and educated at Charleville, and the Irish College, Paris. He was teaching, rhetoric at the Carlow College in 1848, and theology at the Irish College in Paris in the following yean. Subsequently in the days of the brass band, ho was one of the leaders in -the Tenant Right movement, which! was afterwards known as the League of North and South. People nowadays—and perhaps even Mr. T. W. Russell, who has made a special study of tho question— know very little of how much land reform owesi to tho wonk of the young Dr. Croke of those days. Subsequently Dr Croke was parish priest of Donel lajie, and then he became Bishop of Auckland, New Zealand. Ho becajne Archbishop of Cashel in 1875 : and during the fight for land reform in the eighties was one of the greatest l figures in Irish politics. During the Roubles that followed the death of Mr,. Parnell, Dr. Croke remained silent, but as soon as there was a, chance of National unity he came out in support of the National' organisation. No man in Ireland' had been so consistent in his patriotism from first to last, and none had done so much real good for hia country.