The Catholic World

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 12, 25 March 1909, Page 471

The Catholic World

ENGLAND— The Present State of Society Rev. Father Bernard Vaughan, preaching at Farnv St. Church, London, on Sunday, Jaiiuary 31, said .no * thoughtful man could look around without feeling theywere living in days of terrible social- upheaval, ' when?" everything seemed out of joint, when the powers of dark- •!, ness were raising storms of passion among men in society. Self-revorence and self-control were .being regarded as, superstitions of a bygone day. The present state of uu- ' bridled passion abroad, if it were traced to 'its source, j would be found to be due to "neglect of "Christ .atid indifference to His laws. • " Westminster Cathedral ' "'^.

Referring in the Cathedral Chronicle to the financial' position of Westminster Cathedral, Bishop Johnson says that, ' excluding the cost of the site, the total expenditure on the Cathedral building, the Cathedral Hall, and the Cloisters has been £235,420. Towards this expenditure, £48,555 was granted by the Charity Commissioners from the sale of the Moorfields property. The other receipts have been from donations, annual subscriptions, and bequests. There is still money available for some of the chapels ; and there is also some money for other fixed purposes. But on the general building account of the Cathedral there is a deficit of £8391, temporarily covered by a loan, on which interest is paid at 3i£ per cent. GERMANY— The Emperor's Birthday ; The Holy Father sent an autograph letter to the German Emperor on the occasion of the laUcr's fiftieth birthday. The lot tor is said to have been couched in the warmest terms of friendship, and to have expressed a fervent desire on the part of his Holiness to maintain cordial relations with the Emperor. HOLLAND— A Large Confraternity' The Catholic population of Holland is about 1,700,000, and of these at lca&t 108,000 are members of the Confra--" ternity of the Holy Family. As an assistant to the directors, the zealous members- support a weekly paper, which contains the news of the society and articles calculated to increase the fervor of the members. The circulation is said to be great. ITALY— A Tribute to the Clergy A tribute paid so spontaneously to the heroism of the clergy of Messina — or, rather, the third part of that body who survivod the earthquake — by Signor Giuseppe Toscano, a well-known Socialist of Messina and director of the anti-clerical paper, the Germinal (says a Rome correspondent), has Ijeen received with a good deal of pleastire by the public. ' Simply for the sake of truth,' says this Socialist leader, 'I, the undermentioned , Giuseppe Toscano, late Municipal Councillor of unfortunate Messina, attest that as soon as the catastrophe occurred I met with three Brothers of the Convent of Carmine on the debris. Their convent and my house, which were destroyed by the earthquake at tlie same moment, had stood ' side by side. The religious, whose irames are P. Ansolmo Alessi, Prior of the Convent; P. Agostino Tornatore, and P. Egidio Lo Giudicc, were almost naked, but yet they set themselves to the work of saving those buried alive. Ami although they themselves had barely escaped, and were without any tools, they kept at work by tho sole strength of their arms. I provided them with some clothes, which I took out of my house from a room not entirely destroyed, and joined them in their good work: There were saved Sigporina Salviora, Signora Mangano, Signora Magri, a child— Olivier-i — and six or seven others whose names vero unknown to us. This declaration cannot 'but' be above suspicion, bccauso I belong, as is well known, to bho Socialist" Party and directed the Germinal.' - -. The Ruins of Reggio

The Convent of the Dominicans at Reggio (writes a Rome- correspondent) was in the high town, ,in the Via Reggio Campi. At half-past 5 Father Luddi, the Superior, was startled out of his sleep. He saw the walls tottering. Instantly he threw himself under his bed. The ceiling fell. The floor fell through, and the Father was flung on, to the storey boloiv. In an intorview with a press "correspondent, he said be could 'not explain how lie was able- almost immediately to free himself from the ruins, though bleediug from several wounds. •' Then,' said the Father, ' I heard rise up in the darkness the immense clamor, made up of thousands of piercing cries. With my four fellowreligious, saved like myself, I ran to the neighboring Convent of the Visitation. The sixty -pupils and forty

nuns wore all saved ; some children had been buried under the ruins, but they were quickly got out\ uninjured.' During tliQse first ..hours'of .the .disaster, the. religious -associated with themselves some, soldiers who had escaped from the ruins of their barracks, and. restored their courage. Together they went to the hospital, .climbed tho shattered walls and saved several sick. "Their later actions form part of the general history of those first days. Monsignor Dattola and his seminarists, some priests, some religious, and a few surviving soldiers were alone in bringing a.id to the injured in Roggio. ROME— Death of a Cardinal

Tho death took place at Rome on- February 3 of-Car-dinal Crctoni. The Cardinal was in his seventy-sixth year. He was sent as Nuncio to Spain in 1895, and in the following year was created Cardinal. He was Prefect of the Congregation of Rites and Indulgences. Received in Private Audience

On January 27 the Holy Father received in private audience General Lord Ralph. Kerr, Admiral Lord Walter Kerr, and their daughters, who were presented by Mgr. Fraser, Rector, of the Scotch College. ' Hearing" tQuib Lord Walter Kerr had been First Sea Lord of ."tho Admiralty, his. Holiness took occasion to- express -onee /more, through Mgr. Fraser, his deep feeling "of gratitude lor the nobie. work- .doiie tby the sailors. "o£_ the British'^Mediterranean: Fleet, in Sicily and Calabria, and^lie 'was particu-larly-interested to -hear that; Lor- Walter's "son had been one of the officers engaged -in^'the work of rescue. Lord Ralph and Lord Walter, .bcnrg7v%)ffcyerts "of half a century" 3 standing, reported- to. his Holijieiss .the progress. , of v , the Catholic Church in Edinburgh.' Tlie'/Pope expressed- the hope that no - effort would be sparo.dv 4)y-.."'the " clergy" and laity to~ bring Scotland back to the true Church. The Swiss Guard

Pope Pius X. has issued an order that the uniform of the Swiss Guard at tlie Vatican should revert to that invented and designed by Michael Angelo. In the course of years (says the Catholic Times) the uniform has been changed by successive Popes, Gregory XV., for example, substituting a 'William Toll' cap. Pius IX. restored the helmet, but gave it a modern guise. The present Pope has restored the splendid steel cuirass and antique helmets, which will be worn on State occasions. The helmets are of fifteenth century style work, and the cuirasses are splendidly damascened. Both cuirasses and helmets are the gift of tlie German Catholic Societies to the Pope. SWITZERLAND — Progress of the Church

Catholicity has been making great headway in Switzerland in recent years. The Bureau Federal de Statistique, in his ' enquete ' concerning religious professions, {£atcs that ' in all the cantons the Catholic religion counts more adherents than in 1888, a change which is produced chiefly in the towns that have had a Protestant majority. In Geneva the_Protestants were formerly much more numerous than the Catholics. Noav there are 30,000 Protestants and 28,000 Catholics. From 1850 to 1888 the proportion of Catholics and-Prbtcstants. remained the same ; since 1888 it has changed in. the* interests of Catholicism. 5 UNITED STATES— The Church in the Philippines

The Senate Committee on the Philippines on January 19 (writes a Washington correspondent) authorised a favorable report on the bill -appropriating 80,083 dollars to bo paid to four religious Orders of; the Catholic Cliurcli in -tho Philippine Islands in full satisfaction of all claims for the use of property of the Orders by the military forces of, the TJnilcd States prior to January 24, 190G7 The See of Baltimore ; . r. L • - ' The Right Rev. 1 Dr. Corri'gaii,- "Assistant JBisjbop to Cardinal Gibbons, who was consecrated, by- his Eminence .in the Baltimore Cathedral on "January 10, has been the re- ■ cipient of many congratulations and presents" from the people of that diocese, in which he had been 'Vicar-General. The. priests tendered a cheque; for a large amount. The Catholic Population . J \ ' _ y The official Catholic 3) irectory for" the United States of America gives the Catholic population of the States as 14,285,451, exclusive of the Catholic population of the Philippines, Puorto Rico, and the Hawaiian Islands. Including tho Catholic population of the latter countries, there arc 22,474,440 Catholics under the flag of the United States Adding to those the 12,053,000 Catholic subjects of the British Empire, we find that the total of Catholics in the English-speaking world is just over 34$ millions.