People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 4 May 1911, Page 825

People We Hear About

Rev. Father W. O'Leary, S.J.,.Mungret College, Limerick, has been granted a new patent for carburetting. The Most Rev. Dr. Bourne, Archbishop of Westminster, celebrated on March 24 his 50th birthday. Seumas MacManus, who writes poetry and fiction about Donegal, and Catalina Violante Paez, who writes poetry and sociological essays about New York, were married recently at the Church of the Holy Name, New York. The ceremony was performed by Father O'Flanagan, the envov of the Gaelic League. Dr. Pedro Rojas, Venezuelan Minister to the United States, was best man. Prince Luitpold, the Regent of Bavaria, who celebrated recently his ninetieth birthday, to the rejoicing of the citizens of Munich, with whom he is deservedly popular occupies an interesting position. He has been Regent for two insane Monarchs. The first, Ludwig 11., the patron of Wagner and builder of palaces, was on June 7 1886 officially declared insane, Luitpold being at the same time proclaimed Regent. A i J The l^l y' ! ? Stest railway engineer is a distinction that rightly belongs to Sir Percy Girouard, the Governor of the Last African Protectorate, the distinguished Catholic Canadian. It was while Sir Percy was Traffic Manager at the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich that Lord Kitchener ' spotted ' him as being just the man he wanted for the construction of the Soudan Railway. And, in order to crush the Khalifa, Sir Percy laid a wonderful line across 500 miles of desert for the advance to Khartoum, in spite of constant harassing from the enemy. In South Africa his greatest feat was doubling the line between Bloemfontein and Johannesburg, in some places at the rate of forty miles a day. Archbishop Ryan would have been eighty (says an American exchange) had he lived until February 20 Bishop Hogan of Kansas City will be eighty-two, May 10 Bishop Foley of Detroit will be seventy-eight, November 5 Cardinal Gibbons will be seventy-seven, July 13. Bishop Ludden of Syracuse was seventy-five, February 4. Bishop Richter of Grand Rapids, Mich., will be seventy-three, April 9. Archbishop Ireland will be seventy-three, September 11 Bishop Gabriels of Ogdensburg will be seventythree, October 16. Archbishop Keane will be seventv-two on September 12. Bishop Burke of Albany was seventyone, January 10. Bishop Spalding will be seventy-one June 2. Bishop Grace of Sacramento will be seventy' August 2. Archbishop Riordan will be seventy, August 27! The Belfast Irish Weekly, writing on the eve of the departure of the Irish delegates for New Zealand, says Mr. Hazleton, M.P. for North Galway, has had previous experience as an Irish delegate to our kinsmen abroad, as he took part in a mission to America some years ago with Mr. T. M Kettle. Mr. W. A. Redmond, the newly-elected member for East Tyrone, will find himself amongst a host of friends and relatives in Australia, where the memories of the great Home Rule campaign conducted by his father Mr. John Redmond, and Mr. William Redmond, thirty years ago, are still fresh in many minds. Mr. J. T. Donovan will be in a position to act as guide in this mission as he was Mr. Joseph Devlin's partner in the memorable expedition to Australasia' about five years ago, which resulted in securing hundreds of thousands of new friends to the Irish cause down south, and £23,000 for the National exchequer. In 1872 Mr. William Archer Redmond was a successful candidate for the representation of Wexford in the British Parliament (says the Irish Weekly). This date preceded by many years the birth of the gentleman of the same.name who now sits for East Tyrone. The candidate for Wexford 39 years ago was the grandfather of East Tyrone's choice and father of _ the present Irish leader. A few sentences from the election address issued by the elder, and now long deceased, William Archer Redmond in 1872, are well worth recalling. He wrote: —' In reference to the question of Legislative independence, which now occupies the attention of the country, under the name of Home Rule, I will at once declare my conviction that Ireland possesses the indefeasible right to be governed by an Irish Parliament. That right has never been forfeited' or surrendered, and I hold that the restoration of Home Rule is absolutely essential to the good government of the country, to the development of its resources, to the removal of the wasting curse of absenteeism, and to the final establishment in peace and liberty of the Irish race upon Irish soil. I am convinced that ample means exist to achieve this result within the limits of the Constitution.' John E. Redmond was a schoolboy of 16 when his father secured election for Wexford County on the principles to which legislative recognition will soon be given—and very largely through the efforts of brilliant statesman who succeeded his father iu Wexford thirty years ago.