The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 24, 1911. THE LATE CARDINAL MORAN

New Zealand Tablet, 24 August 1911, Page 1637

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 24, 1911. THE LATE CARDINAL MORAN

WRITER- has well said that the names wJWuil% ■' memor i °t great men are the dowry * lr&\ of a nation. And one of the assets of , Australiaand, without doubt, its strong--9 ; , est,. most picturesque, and most striking personalitywas the great purpled Prince of the Church whose passing has thrown yT* * the whole Church into mourning. Up till very lately there was no indication of the approach of the grim Reaper. Although in his eightyfirst year, the Cardinal was physically and mentally as active and, alert as. the youngest of his priests. With him increase of power: and vigor seemed to accompany

the gathering years, and Wordsworth’s lines.- had been most truly and happily applied to him.

The monumental pomp of age ' Is with this goodly personage; A stature undepressed in size, Unbent,, which rather seems to rise, In open victory o’er the weight Of seventy years to loftier height.’

There is evidence, however, to show that notwithstanding his habitual buoyancy of spirits, the Cardinal did not lose sight of the thought and expectation of death. Not all the gold in Cathay,’ he said to an interviewer, on his return to Australia after his last journey to Rome, 1 would tempt me away again for pleasure, and I hope duty will not call me. I have come back to die in Australia. No, no, do not misunderstand me. Ido not feel like dying just yet, but I am 74 years of age, you know, and must accustom myself to the thought that I must presently go the way we all must go. Yes,’ he added, ‘ I have come to stay. I have made the journey to Rome eleven times since coming to Australia, and I hope I have made my last trip.’ The words were prophetic. It was his last trip; and he died as he would have wished—in harness and working to the last.

The people of Sydney, of course, will miss him most; and his death has left a void which, for them, can never be filled. But Cardinal Moran did not belong to Sydney alone. He was of Australasia ; and his commanding personality was known, revered, and admired, from the goldfields of Western Australia to the very back-blocks of our own New Zealand. He was, as everybody knows, an exceptionally brilliant student. ‘He was,’ said the N.Z. Tablet on the occasion of his sacerdotal jubilee,’ one of the most brilliant of the throwing concourse of students who, in those picturesque Papal days, gathered around the lecture-chairs of the great Jesuit professors in the Eternal City: the noted • mathematicians and astronomers Vico and Sestini, the learned Spanish, philosophers Torn and Manera, the famous theologians Perrone, Voigt, and Schrader, and the able Biblical scholars Reitz and Patrizi. When still a young priest in Rome, he was well known in the circles of the learned for the ripeness, the keenness, and the far-extending character of: his scholarship. While yet in the bloom of early manhood, his patient and toilsome researches among the treasures of the Vatican Library, the British State Paper Office, and the archives of the mother-houses of various Religious Orders in the Eternal City, enabled him to give to the world a series of learned volumes that are still standard works upon the early and the postReformation periods of the ecclesiastical history of his native land. Over a score of those golden volumes showed the partial results of his long and loving labors among the hidden, almost forgotten and previously unexplored, or scarcely explored treasures of Irish historical lore,’ The early love of historical research remained with Cardinal Moran to the end, but, if possible, keener and more active than ever. ‘ Some of its results are to be seen in his exhaustive and monumental History of the Catholic Church in Australasia. Research among libraries and archives and moss-grown ruins for facts illustrative of Ireland’s historic past, filled a goodly portion of his latest tour in Europe, interrupted only by the duties of his visit to the Holy See, by great religious functions, and by those grave and moving expositions of the rights of his mother-land which raised the National cause to a higher plane->and infused “a second life, a soul anew,” into the people of green Eire of the Streams.’ -

Like his distinguished archiepiscopal neighbor in Melbourne, Cardinal Moran combined, in a high degree, the two qualities of being a man of study and a man of action. The arch-diocese is literally studded, with the monuments of his active and fruitful episcopate. ‘Looking back,’ says his Jubilee biography, * on the career of the Cardinal in Australia, one finds every year marked by some majestic ceremony, some. pic*

turesque pageant; by the inauguration or completion of some important work. The episcopate of his Eminence may be described as a series of historical pictures traced upon a field which will retain its colors fresh and vivid for ever.’ During the first three years of his episcopate in Australia—years, too, of much financial . embarrassment in New South Wales — Religious Orders were introduced by him and no less a sum than £291,540 was expended on religious undertakings in the archdiocese; £106,690 of this splendid total being for convents and institutes of charity. Since the care of Australia’s great mother See fell upon his shoulders in 1884, the number of its churches increased from 120 to 190 (while many were enlarged or rebuilt), its priests from 100 to 199, its religious teaching Brothers from 78 to 220, its religious Sisters from 102 to 1374, its Catholic primary schools from 81 to 250, and the children attending them' from 10,936 to 24,477. In the same short period of nineteen years the number of Catholic charitable institutions in the archdiocese rose from five to twenty-four. The great ecclesiastical Seminary of Manly was also erected; three Plenary Councils of the Church in Australasia were held—the first in her history; St. Mary’s Cathedral was enlarged and dedicated; and the first Australian Catholic Congress was carried out on a bold and striking scale and with complete and gratifying success. The Jubilee volume of the Cardinal’s biography says that ‘ Since 1884 his Eminence has founded, blessed, and opened in the diocese of Sydney alone no less than 400 works of religion, education, and charity —an achievement which, we think •it is permitted us to remark, is absolutely without parallel in any other part of the world.’ And this manifold and marvellous activity was continued to the very last. Not long —at a time when most men of his age would be dreaming of hours of slippered ease— Eminence inaugurated and set in motion a great scheme for the liquidation of the debt on St. Mary’s Cathedral. A little later he initiated a most important movement for enabling Catholic religious to sit for University degrees without having to attend the intra-mural lectures of the local college. And in his later months he devoted himself with characteristic energy to rallying the Catholic forces and focussing public attention on the ever-important subject of education. Thus was he able, by the blessing of God, from first to last of his career, ‘to fill,' in the words of Tennyson,

With worthy thought and deed, The measure of his high desire.’

Notwithstanding the heavy calls which his literary and church work made upon him, Cardinal Moran found time to take an active, broad-minded, and patriotic interest in public affairs. According to unprejudiced, non-Catholic testimony, he rendered distinguished, and indeed invaluable service to the cause of federation. Sir John Quick, a Victorian Federalist, said publicly at Sandhurst: ‘lf it had not been for the Cardinal, we should have had no Federation to-day.’ He took an active and conspicuous part in the State Centenary commemorations of 1888, and in the celebration of the establishment of the Australian Commonwealth; he made noble and highly-appreciated efforts as peacemaker during the maritime strike of 1890; and, generally, he was, from the time of his arrival, a part of the public life of Australasia. From the moment he landed he became, in his own words, ‘ an Australian among Australians.’ ‘Outside the circle and pale of religion,’ he added, ‘ I know of no subject relating to our social and our national welfare in which it is not within my power to work with the same energy and the same devotion of heart and feeling as any other man in Australia,

We have already referred to the magnificent service which the Cardinal rendered as an exponent and outstanding representative of Irish Nationalism. To the cause of the Irish Party in these southern lands ha was a veritable tower of strength; and by his death the Party have lost their best friend. / His love for Ireland was a consuming passion. Nine years ago

almost to a day, by the unanimous vote of Catholic and Protestant Councillors, he was presented with the freedom of Cork City. In acknowledging the compliment, in a speech of burning eloquence, he unfolded his own inmost soul and told in tones that came full from the heart his personal pride in and love of the dear old land. No Irishman can read his words unmoved. ‘lt has fallen to my lot,' he said, to travel a good deal, and to visit many, lands. Now that the autumn of life is not far distant, and that my period of the sear and yellow leaf is at hand, I may be permitted to give expression to my conviction that there are few countries in the world in which man’s pilgrimage here below may be attended by such contentment and peace and happiness as in Ireland. The Englishman will rejoice in being born in Britain, incomparable as it is in commercial enterprise. The Italian may be proud •of his country’s renown, the home of the muses, of the fine arts. Others would prefer, as the land of . their birth, the rugged hills of Switzerland, the fair plains of France, the sunny gardens of chivalrous Spain, or the widespreading domain of Germany,’ unconquerable as it is in its love of fatherland. For my part, “ I return thanks to the Almighty that I was born in Ireland, poor Ireland, suffering Ireland, holy Ireland.” I venerate the footsteps of Ireland’s early saints, her ruined sanctuaries, her wayside graves. I love her harbors, her rivers, her lakes. I rejoice in her blue mountains, her mossy streams, her undulating plains. I cherish every leaf of her forests, every flower of her meadows, every shamrock of her green hills. So long as life remains it will be my prayer that faith, hope, and charity, the virtues typified by the triple leaf of that dear little sacred plant may every day abound more and more among Erin’s sons, and that every blessing that heaven can bestow may be the inalienable heritage of this dear old land.’ b

■ And now the call has come; .the loved, familiar figure will be seen amongst his people no more; the Grand Old Man has passed to his reward. The grief which found such demonstrative expression amongst the sorrowing crowd in his beloved Cathedral has its echo in the hearts of Catholics throughout the length and breadth of Australasia. He is dead; but death cannot carry away the good that he has done. For (as John Boyle O’Reilly has said) behind the passage of death lives on the faithful labor of the dead man, and the truth, the kindness, the public spirit, the noble example, the good name. These remain as a blessing and a pride, even when the dear hand of the priest closes the eyes, and his prayer ascends over the senseless clay. Behold a great priest, who in his days pleased God. May his soul rest in peace ! -