THE CATHOLIC WORLD

New Zealand Tablet, 20 February 1919, Page 34

THE CATHOLIC WORLD

GENERAL. Cardinal Gibbons has been awarded the Grand Knighthood of the Order of the Crown of Italy by King Victor Emmanuel. . A resolution has been introduced in Congress by Representative Sinnott, of Oregon, U.S.A., to appropriate 100,000 dollars to erect in Washington a statue of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the General-in-Chief of the Allies.

A count has been made of the Catholic communities in the principal cities of the United States. This has revealed that Chicago easily leads with 233 Catholic churches, New York follows with 169, Philadelphia 111, St. Louis 96, and Boston 64. The Holy Father has nominated the Very Rev. Arthur Wermersch, S.J., a Consultor of the Sacred Congregation of the Sacraments. Father Wermersch recently arrived from Belgium (where he once filled the position of private tutor to King Albert) to take the chair of Moral Theology in the Gregorian University, which the death of the celebrated Father Bucceroni, S.J., left vacant.

Through Cardinal von Hartmann the Prussian Bishops protested against the Prussian Ministerial project for the separation of Church and State. The Government has replied that the question has only been considered in a general way by the Ministry for Science, Art, and Popular Education. Should the matter assume a more definite form it would be taken in hand by the Prussian Government.

Serajevo, which gained world-wide notoriety as the scene of the events that were at least nominally the cause of the war, has lost its Archbishop, Mgr. Joseph Stadler, who died on December 8. The late Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria formed the ecclesiastical province of Serejevo and, with the consent of the Holy See, appointed as Archbishop Mgr. Stadler, who was then a professor of theology at Agram. The archdiocese of Serajevo has a Catholic population of 180,000.

By reason of the recent changes made by Pope Benedict in highest positions of trust and dignity in the Vatican palace, their arrangement returns to the order that obtained in the days of Leo XIII. The Cardinal Secretary of State is no longer Prefect of the Apostolic palaces. This dignity returns to the possession of the Major Domo. And the post of Vice Prefect of the Apostolic palaces is abolished. Then the posts of Maestro di Camera and Major Domo are filled by different prelates, as arranged by Pope Benedict two years ago. The former is filled by Mgr. De Samper; the latter by Archbishop Tacci.

An anouncement has been made in America, says a New York message, of the organisation of the National Committee in the United States for the restoration of the University of Lou vain, ruthlessly destroyed by the German invaders. The committee includes fifty of the lead public "men of the United States, heads of American universities, financiers, educators, publicists, and diplomats. It will co-operate with other national committees, which, it is declared, are being organised in all the leading nations, to make Louvain a perpetual monument of the world's condemnation of the German attempt to obliterate this ancient centre of learning.

Owing to the death of the Portuguese President, Sidonio Paes, the Church has reason to apprehend a

return of the persecution which followed the revolution of 1910. The men who came to the front at that time in Portugal Freemasons— no conception of the rights of peoples. Bitter enemies of Christianity, and even of belief in God, they sought to stifle the claims of conscience, and devised for the purpose an oppressive,, intolerable system of ecclesiastical regulations. Cardinal Tonti, who was then Nuncio at Lisbon and whose death was recently announced, found it necessary to leave for Rome. Bishops were banished. Priests were so restricted in the discharge of their duties as to be rendered almost powerless. They were forbidden to criticise the Government, but were encouraged to disobey the Bishops, and the laity were spurred on to disloyalty towards the clergy. It is from rascality of this kind that Sidonio Paes relieved Portugal. Let us hope that the little nation will be saved from having to endure such an evil again, and that the people will choose for their rulers men who are true democrats. THE MARISTS IN JAPAN. Amongst the religious congregations engaged in the evangelisation of Japan the Marist Order holds a high place. An appreciable number of their pupils have, at the termination of their school days, received Baptism, and this with the full consent of their parents. Many of these young men practise their religion with a real fervor, and they have recently formed an association as an aid to spiritual advancement and the spread of the true faith. The Marist Fathers in the ViceProvince of Japan number 81 religious, of whom 28 are Japanese. The Marist College in Tokio is frequented by adults anxious to acquire a knowledge of French and English. The Japanese Government looks with favor on the colleges of this society. The most absolute loyalty to the person of the Japanese sovereign is taught there, and the students are trained in fidelity and devotedness to the authorities. The house at Orakami, founded in 1907, is an apostolic centre for the training of catechists, and also the novitiate where the Japanese who desire to embrace the religious life are trained. CATHOLIC PRESS CONGRESS. Late American files tell of an interesting Congress of the Good Press held in Paris by the French journal La Croix and its sixty-five “offshoots, which under the same name raised the standard of the Cross in as many different parts of France despite the great difficulties of the past four years. Representatives of the 9874 committees for the support of the Catholic press were present and great emotion was caused by the presence of M. Paul Feron Vrou, editor of La Croix, who after four years of captivity, first in Lille and then in Germany, is now once more at the head of the paper. During the principal session in the Bon Theatre over which his Eminence Cardinal Amette presided the news of the deliverance of Lille was received and his Eminence congratulated M. Vrou on the fact that he would now once more be able to see his wife and return to his beloved city. The Cardinal, in thanking the Croix group for all they had done for religion, particularly for the soldier-priests, said he hoped to be able to consecrate the Basilica of the National "V owthat of the Sacred Heart, Montmartre, —in October, 1919, a ceremony which would have set the crown on the work in October, 1914, had it not been for the war.