A Great Catholic Editor FATHER HULL’S RETIREMENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 3, 21 January 1925, Page 57

A Great Catholic Editor FATHER HULL’S RETIREMENT.

Writing in the Examiner (Bombay), his Grace the Archbishop of Bombay says: It will be a surprise to many readers of The Examiner, to many it will be a painful shock, to hear that Father Hull has ceased to be its editor. For to most it has long seemed that The Examiner and Father Hull are irrevocably wedded together; that one could not live without the other; in fact that The Examiner, as •it has been known these last twenty-years, is Father Hull, and Father Hull is The Examiner How can the two live apart? It is unnecessary to dwell upon the ■ services Father Hull has rendered to the Catholic public and the Catholic cause, not in India only, but whereever English is read, by the regular fruit of his self-sacrificing labor. For these twenty years, week by week, he has carried on the work single-handed; often he has been broken in health, often he has been compelled to seek rest by change of scene, very often it has seemed to, him that his .mission has ended, yet never once has the weekly number failed to appear, with its weekly comments and its weekly information. What this has meant those only can guess who have had the same road to travel, of dead monotony on . heartless stones. It is unnecessary, too, to look back on the fruit of this toil. The long , list of books, which the author has called by the modest name'of Reprints, testifies to the breadth of his vision and the depth of his insight and the accuracy of his criticism; reprints which, , curiously enough, are" read more widely in England and America and Australia than they arc in

India. Again, his answers to correspondents, - appreciated everywhere, have been a source of information to us all; only the other day an American per asked that these “Answers” should be collected and published in book form. But apart from these permanent results of his editor-ship we. cannot forget the invariable courtesy and patience with which he has carried on his work. Naturally his letter-bag has been very heavy; he has received many letters which might well have tried a, much less highly strung nature yet no correspondent has ever been heard to complain that Father Hull dealt' - with him with anything but consideration. In his “Herr Schneebels” books he has laid down a philosophy of life; in his management of The Examiner he lias practised his own preaching; and when that has been said it is 1 enough. It is at least a consolation to know that The Examiner will not lose Father Hull altogether. Though he surrenders the management into younger hands, still he has con- - sented to continue his 'articles on the history of the Bombay Mission, the fruits, of twenty years’ research ' among original documents; he has also undertaken to answer questions •as before. If gratitude is best shown by a request for further favors, then we. cannot thank Father Hull for , all he has done better ' than by thanking him for what he has agreed to continue. May he have yet many years of fruitful work ’ for his _ readers, and may. the relief, from the, weekly and daily burthen renews that energy and elasticity of mind ■ which’ in spite of his sixty years, still gives him the vigor of youth, -w h