The Jesuits, 1534-1921

The missionaries of the old Society would recognize this light hearted modern American apostle as their brother.

Another example in a region which is the very opposite of Alaska will convince the skeptic that the modern Jesuit retains the old heroic spirit of the missions. This time we are in the deadly swamps and forests of British Honduras and the apostle there is Father William Stanton of the Missouri province. As a scholastic he was teaching the dark skinned boys of Belize and incidentally gathering numberless specimens of tropical flora and fauna for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. From there he went to the other end of the earth and was put at scientific work in the Observatory at Manila. He was the first American priest ordained in the Philippines, and his initial ministerial work was to attend to the American soldiers, who were dying by scores of cholera. After that we find him again in Honduras, no longer in college but in the bush with about 800 Maya Indians, whose language he did not know but soon learned. He was still a naturalist but first of all he was absorbed in the care of the lazy and degraded Indians. His hut was made of sticks plastered with mud and thatched with palm leaves and he was all alone.

"Roads! Roads!" he writes, "they are simply unspeakable. It's only a little over nine miles from Benque Viejo to Cayo but it took me five hours to do it on horseback. Rain and the darkness caught me. It was so dark I could not see my horse's head but my Angel Guardian brought me through all right… The only beasts that bother me are the garrapatas (ticks). I have to spend from an hour and a half to two hours picking them out of my flesh and my whole body is thickly peppered with blotchy sores where they have left their mark. But one can't expect to have everything his own way in this life even in the paradise of Benque. By the way, before I forget, would you try to send me a wash basin or bowl of glazed metal. I have nothing but the huge tin dishpan of the kitchen to wash my face in. It's a little inconvenient to scour the grease out every time I want to wash and I don't want to fall into real Spanish costumbres." His table was a packing case, his chair a box of tinned goods, his bed four ropes and a mat woven of palm leaves. He had one cup, plate and saucer.

"I have forty stations to get around to, and I haven't a decent crucifix, or ciborium, and only one chalice. I am not squealing for my house but for the Lord's. My good little mud house is a palace, even if the pigs and goats of the village do break in now and then to make a meal off one's old boots or the scabbard of one's machete. My bush church is fine; same architecture as my house, only larger. In church, the men stand around the walls, while the women and children squat on the clay floor and the babies roll all over, garbed only in angelic innocence."

Of one of his journeys he writes: "I have just returned from a river trip, after being away from home thirty-one days moving about from place to place among my scattered people on the river banks and in the bush. My health was good until last week when I got a little stroke from the heat, followed by several days' fever which put me on my back for four days, but I am now myself again. Fortunately I had only three more days' journey, and with the help of my two faithful Indians I arrived safely at Benque." These "three days," though he does not say so, were days of torture, and his Indians wondered if they could get him back alive. "I am now back as far as Cayo, arriving at 1.30 this morning. Everything is flooded with mud and water. I must get a horse and get out to Benque today, as I hear Father Henneman is down with fever. I have ten miles more to make, and over a terrible road through the bush, with the horse up to his belly in mud and water most of the time; but with the Lord's help I hope to be safe at home before night. I have been away only a week, having made some hundred and sixty miles on horseback, the whole of it through a dense jungle. I had to cut my way through with my machete, for the rank vegetation and hanging lianas completely closed the narrow trail."

He had gone out to visit a village and crossed a ford on the way. The river was high and the current strong. His horse was swept off his feet and Father Stanton slipped out of his saddle and swam beside the animal. Some quarter of a mile below there was a dangerous fall in the river, but they managed to reach the bank a hundred feet above the fall. He caught hold of a branch, but it broke and he was swept down the stream. With a prayer to his Guardian Angel he struck out for the deepest water and went over the fall. Some Indians near the bank saw the bearded white man go over the roaring cataract and they thought he was a wizard, but he went safely through, and then with long powerful strokes (he was a marvellous swimmer) he made for the bank. Then waving his hand to the startled Indians, he cut his way with his machete through the bush to look for his horse. Another time we find him returning after what he calls a "stiff trip," soaking wet all the time, for he had to swim across a swift river with boots and clothes on, he was all day in the saddle, was caught one night in the jungle in a swamp, pitch dark, knee deep in the mud – "Clouds of mosquitos and swarms of fiery ants had taken their fill of me," he writes, "while the blood sucking vampire bats lapped my poor horse. We got out all right and I had the consolation of being told by an Indian that three big tigers (jaguars) had been killed near the place last month."

On April 13, 1909, he says: "Just at present I am flat on my back with an attack of something, apparently acute articular rheumatism." He felt it, the first time while he was working in the garden. "I simply squirmed on the ground and screeched like a wild Indian." And yet he starts off to Belize on horseback to see the doctor, which meant a distant journey of four days, and he had to sleep in the bush one night. From Belize he returned by water in a "pitpan," a freight boat for shallow rivers that can easily upset in the slightest current. That meant eight weary days without room even to stretch himself out at night; with no awning in the day to shield him from the sun and frequently drenched by torrential rains. In September he is following his horse through the mud of the jungle. In October he was sent for again by the doctor at Belize, and returns a second time to his mission which meant eight days in the forest alone.

Finally, Father Stanton was ordered home to St. Louis, and it was found that his whole body was ringed around with a monstrous growth of cancer. He died in intense agony, but never spoke of his sufferings. In his delirium he was talking about Honduras. Only once he said "I am so long a-dying." He finally expired on March 10, 1910. He had just completed his fortieth year, but his missionary work was equal to anything in the old Society.

When the Jesuits resumed work in China in 1841 they found that all over the country there were great numbers of natives who had kept the Faith in spite of the bitter persecutions to which they had been subjected during the absence of the missionaries. The Province of Kiang-nan, the capital of which is Nankin, and the city where Ricci began his apostolic labors, welcomed back the great man's brethren.

Kiang-nan is a territory half the size of France. In the west and south-west it is hilly, but the rest of it is an immense plain watered by the Yang-tse-Kiang and by countless lakes, streams and canals. It is marvellously fertile and furnishes a double crop every year. The rivers swarm with fish, and the land with human beings. In it are many large cities such as Shanghai with its 650,000 inhabitants; Tchen-Kiang with 170,000, Odi-si with 200,000 and so on. Nankin is the residence of the viceroy, and was formerly the "Capital of the south," and the rival of Pekin, but later it had only 130,000 people within its walls. At present, however, it is reviving and is credited with three or four hundred thousand inhabitants. Before the Jesuits arrived, the country had been cared for by other religious orders, chiefly the Lazarists and the Fathers of the Missions Etrangères.

In the neighborhood of Shanghai, there were 48,00 °Catholic Chinese who dated back through their ancestors to the time of the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth century. Perhaps four thousand more might have been found in the rest of the province, but they were submerged in the mass of 45,000,000 idolaters. The outlook on the whole was consoling, for the vicar Apostolic, Mgr. de Besi, had founded a seminary, which before 1907 furnished more than one hundred native priests. The work of the Holy Childhood was enthusiastically carried on, with the result that in the years 1847-48, 60,963 names appear on the baptismal registers. In 1849 the Jesuits had establishments at Nankin, Ousi and along the Grand Canal. That year, however, was made gloomy by floods, famine and sickness. Nevertheless the trials had the good result of compelling the erection of orphanages where the Faith could be taught without difficulty. In 1852 the revolt against the Manchu dynasty broke out, and in 1853 Nankin and Shanghai were sacked. Everything Christian disappeared in the general carnage; but in 1855 the imperial troops with the aid of the French Admiral Laguerre entered Shanghai, but Nankin and the provinces remained in the hands of the rebels.

Certain ecclesiastical changes also occurred at that time. Pekin and Nankin disappeared as dioceses, and the province of Kiang-nan became a vicariate Apostolic, whose administration was entrusted to the Jesuits of Paris under Mgr. Borgniet. He was appointed in 1856. The vicariate of South-Eastern Tche-ly was given to the province of Champagne and Mgr. Languillat began his work there with three Fathers and 9,475 old Christians, the descendants of the neophytes of Pekin.

In 1860 the Chinese war broke out and the Taipings availed themselves of it for another rising. The English and French, who were fighting the emperor, held different opinions about what to do with the rebels, and finally contented themselves with defending Shanghai; leaving the rest of the country to be ravaged at will. Father Massa was thrown into prison and was about to be executed, but contrived to make his escape. His brother Louis, however, was put to death at Tsai-kia-ouan, along with a crowd of orphans whom he was trying to protect. In 1861 Father Vuillaume was killed at Pou-tong and others were robbed, taken prisoners and ill-treated. In 1862 an epidemic of cholera broke out in the province and lasted two years; the vicar Apostolic, Mgr. Borgniet, sixteen religious and four hundred of the faithful succumbed to the pestilence. In the following year six more Jesuits died. At this time General Gordon was beginning his great career. He was then only a major but he reorganized the imperial army, crushed the rebels and took Nankin. This gave a breathing spell to the missionaries; but in 1868, the Taipings were out again, under another name, and anarchy reigned for an entire year.

In the mean time the cities of Shanghai and Zikawei had relatively little to suffer, and the end of the war gave the missionaries the right to build churches, to exercise the ministry everywhere, and even to be compensated for the destruction of their property. But the rights were merely on paper, and fourteen or fifteen years of quarrels with every little mandarin in the country followed. Nevertheless the work went on. At Zikawei, for instance, schools were established, a printing-establishment inaugurated, and in 1872 the observatory which was soon to be famous in all the Orient was begun. Progress was also made at Shanghai. Of course the usual burnings and plunderings, with occasional massacre of groups of Christians continued, but not much attention was paid to these disturbances until 1878, when the Church at Nankin was set on fire, and Sisters of Charity, priests, and Christians in general, among whom was the French consul, were all ruthlessly murdered. The imperial government then took cognizance of the outbreak, and eleven alleged culprits were put to death. That helped to calm the mob, and evangelical work was resumed, so that Kiang-nan, which had 70,685 Christians in 1866 counted over 100,000 in 1882. In the year 1900 there were 124,000 of whom 55,171 were adults. There were also 50,000 catechumens preparing for baptism. The number of priests had grown to 159, of whom 42 were Chinese. The 940 schools had an attendance of 18,563 children.

The Boxer uprising was the most formidable trial to which the mission has so far been subjected. It was organized in the court itself by Toan, the emperor's uncle, General Tong-Fou-Siang and the secretary of state, Kangi-i, and its rumblings were heard for years before the actual outbreak. In Se-tchouan, a third of the churches were destroyed, villages set on fire, missionaries thrown into prison and many Christians massacred. A priest and his people were burned in the church at Kouang-toung; and at Hou-pe, another was put to death. These outrages were as yet local, but there was every evidence that a general conspiracy was at work for the expulsion of all foreigners from the empire. Finally the Boxers, or Grand Sabres, declared themselves, and by order of the viceroy, Yu-heen, 36 °Christian villages were destroyed. That was only a beginning. Tche-ly suffered most. It was the stronghold of the rebels. In the autumn of 1899 there were conflagrations and riots everywhere. In 1900 the northern part of the mission was in flames, and forty-five Christian centres were reduced to ashes, but there were few, if any, apostacies, although thousands were put to death in the most horrible fashion. On June 20 Fathers Isore and Andlauer were murdered at the altar. On July 20 Fathers Mangin and Denn were killed, and on April 26, 1902, after peace had been concluded, Father Lomüller with his catechist and servant suffered death.

In this storm, five missionaries had been killed; Mgr. Henry Bulté died of exhaustion; 5,00 °Christians had disappeared from the country; 616 churches had been destroyed along with 381 schools and three colleges. But that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church was shown by the fact that there are now more Christians in the district than there were before the persecution. The churches have been rebuilt; priests and catechists are more numerous; the seminary is crowded, and schools and pupils and teachers are at work, as if nothing had happened. The exact figures may be found in Brou's "Jésuites missionaires au xix siécle." Shanghai and Zikawei form the center of the Vicariate of Kiang-nan. In Shanghai are a cathedral and three parish churches which provide for a Catholic population of 9,724. There are three hospitals; an orphanage with trade schools; six schools; a home for the aged; conferences of St. Vincent de Paul. At Zikawei there is a scholasticate of the Society; a grand and little seminary; a meteorological and magnetic observatory; a museum of natural history; a college with 266 students, of whom 105 are pagans; a printing-house; a bi-weekly publication, and the beginnings of a university which it is hoped will head off the tendency of the natives to go for an education to Japan or to the Japanese schools founded in China itself.

When Gregory XVI sent the Jesuits to China, it was thought that from there it would be easy for them to go to Japan to resume the work in which they had so distinguished themselves in former times. Eighty years have passed since then, and only lately, a few Jesuits have shown themselves in that country. The Fathers of the Missions Etrangères have occupied the ground and have succeeded in establishing a complete hierarchy of five bishops and have won praise for themselves by their work in missions and parishes, in polemics and conferences. A school has been attempted and an American Jesuit has lately been placed on the staff of the University of Tokio. Only that and nothing more. What the future has in store, who can tell?

It was a happy day for the new Society when in 1841 it was ordered by Gregory XVI to undertake the missions of Hindostan; the country sanctified by the labors of Francis Xavier, de Nobili, de Britto, Criminali and a host of other saintly missionaries. No work could be more acceptable. The chief obstacle in the way of success was the protectorate which Portugal exercised over the churches of the Orient. In Catholic times its kings had the right not only to nominate all the bishops of the East, but to legislate on almost the entire ecclesiastical procedure within its dominions. Not even a sacristan could be sent to the Indies without the official approval of the Portuguese government. Such a state of things was bad enough in Catholic times, but when the politics of Portugal were in the hands of infidels and enemies of the Church, it could not possibly be tolerated, no matter how persistent was the claim that the right still adhered to the crown. Another abnormality in the pretence was that the country no longer belonged to Portugal but was to a very great extent English and hence if there were to be any dictation it should come from the government of that country.

The first act of the Pope was to create a number of vicars Apostolic who were to be independent of the Archbishop of Goa. This started a war which lasted sixty years. It was called the Goanese schism, or the fight of the double jurisdiction. The vicar Apostolic of the Calcutta district was Robert St. Leger, an Irish Jesuit, who came to India with five members of the Society after his appointment on 15 April, 1834. St. Leger's jurisdiction was disputed by a number of the adherents of Goa and he retired in December, 1838. The Jesuits with him had begun a college, which was enthusiastically supported by his successor, Bishop Jean-Louis Taberd. Unfortunately he died suddenly in 1840, and the same encouragement was not given by Dr. Patrick Carew, the third vicar, with the result that the college which had begun to prosper was closed. In 1846 the Jesuits left Calcutta, but in 1860 they were recalled by Mgr. Oliffe, the successor of Dr. Carew.

The missionaries came under the leadership of Father Depelchin, who when he had finished his work in Calcutta was later to add to his glory by founding the mission of the Zambesi in Africa. They found everything in ruins. Out of a population of 2,300,000 in the city and suburbs, there were no more than seven or eight thousand Catholics, many of whom were Tamouls from Madras. Only a few of the faithful were in easy circumstances and their influence in the city amounted to nothing. There was no help for it, therefore, but to resuscitate the College of St. Francis Xavier, which had been suppressed fourteen years before. It had no furniture and its library consisted of a few books with the covers off. The college was opened nevertheless and had, on the first day, eighty students on the benches. When Bishop Oliffe died there was a dreadful possibility of the appointment of a Goanese bishop, which, for the Jesuits, meant packing up a second time and leaving Calcutta. An appeal was therefore made to Rome and Father Auguste Van Heule was named, but he died in 1865 shortly after his arrival, and in 1867, Bishop Walter Steins was called over from Bombay to take his place. By this time the college had 350 students; a new building and another situation were imperative, but Depelchin was equal to the task, and before he left Calcutta for Africa he had 500 students on the roster.

The initial work of the missionaries was the development of the colleges but they subsequently addressed themselves to the evangelization of the whole population of the city and suburbs, and to-day they have six parishes with a population of 13,000 souls, who are provided with schools, hospitals, asylums and the like. The native population, the Bengalis as they are called, were found to be hopeless. Contact with the whites has made them skeptical in religion, and morally worse than they had been originally. The only Christian Hindoos in Calcutta are Tamouls from the South.

Not finding the Bengalis apt for evangelization, they sought out their countrymen, the Ourias in the Delta of the Ganges. Their home had the unhappy distinction of being called "the famine district," the dreadful calamity being caused either by too much water or by none. In 1866 there was a drought that withered all the crops, and then came inundations that covered 68,000 acres of land, swept away hundreds of villages, and diminished the population by half a million. Orphans, of course, abounded, and in 1868 an asylum was built for them in Balasore, which served also as an evangelical centre for missionary expeditions into the interior. But this venture was not very successful, for only about 1,600 conversions resulted after years of hard labor. The Ourias, it was found, had all the bad qualities of their friends the Bengalis. Perhaps also the movement was halted because their territory was a sort of Holy Land for Hindooism. Every year 500,000 pilgrims arrived there to pray at the shrine of Vishnu, and idolatry of all kinds, from the bloody ancestral fetichism to the refined cult of the Vedas and undiluted Brahmanism, took root and flourished there. Hence a mission was begun among the Orissas still further south.

Better than anywhere else one can see at close range among the Ourias how formidable are the moral, intellectual, social and historical obstacles that oppose the progress of Christianity in Hindostan. To add to the difficulty, Protestantism with its jumble of sects had established itself there and claimed at this time 15,000 adherents. But when cholera swept over the land in 1868, the Protestant missionaries fled and many of the native converts came over to the priests who, of course, did not imitate their non-Catholic rivals in deserting their charges. Father Goffinet especially distinguished himself in this instance, going everywhere in his narrow canoe and lavishing spiritual and corporal aid on the victims. In 1873 he was joined by Father Delplace, who went still nearer the sea. Others followed, lived in the huts of the natives, satisfied their hunger with a few handfuls of rice varied by a fish on Sundays to break the monotony of the diet, with the result that, in three years, there were thirty Catholic missions between the Hoogly and the Mutlah with 3,000 converts in what had been previously a stronghold of Hindoo Protestantism.

In the same year, Father Schoff went north of Calcutta to Bardwan – "The Garden of Western Bengal." He kept away from the rich, and devoted himself to the dregs of the populace. Over and over again the superiors doubted if it were worth while, but to-day the Haris, who were previously so degraded, live in pretty villages, and the order, piety and honesty for which they are noted make one forget the ignorance, debauchery and dishonesty of the past. A group of over 5,00 °Catholics may be found there at the present time.

In these parts, the caste system prevails in all its vigors but if you go still further west into the heart of the Province of Chota-Nagpur you come upon a half-savage people, the offscouring of humanity who have been driven into the hills and forests by the conquering Aryans of the plains. They are the Ouraons of Dravidian origin; small, black as negroes, filthy, often wrapped in cow-dung and tattooed all over the body, but nevertheless light-hearted, robust and proud of their ability to perform hard work. With them also lives a more ancient race known as the Koles: men of broad flat faces which recall the Mongolian type. They are probably the aborigines. Their religion is grossly elementary – a vague adoration of the Supreme Being, superstition and ancestor worship; but with a shade of the pride that characterizes the horrible caste system of the Hindoos. The German Lutherans had essayed to convert them. Fifty rupees were paid for each adhesion, and fifty ministers devoted themselves to this apostolate. They are credited with having disbursed 3,700,000 francs by the year 1876. Then came the Anglicans who claimed 40,000 of them. In 1869 Father Stockman arrived and opened a mission at Chaibassa. In 1873 he had only a group of thirty converts. Nine years later, he had succeeded in baptising only 273, but by 1885 there were four residences in Chota-Nagpur with one out-mission. Five priests were engaged in the task.

The progress of the work, however, was comparatively slow until the young Father Constant Lievens made himself the champion of the natives in the courts. This gave it a phenomenal impulse. For years, these poor mountaineers had been cruelly exploited by Hindoo traders from Calcutta. As soon as the natives had contrived to cultivate a bit of land they were loaded down with taxes and enforced contributions, haled before the magistrates and flung into jail to rot. Unfortunately the police regulations were all in favor of the aggressors. Hence there were incessant riots and massacres, and when the English authorities tried in good faith to remedy matters, they could find no one among these poor outcasts fit to hold any position of responsibility. The Lutherans presented themselves and promised protection for those who would join the sect, and many went over to them, but the government disapproved of these unworthy tactics, as calculated only to make things worse in the end. It was like the temptation on the mountain.

At this point Father Lievens stepped into the breach. He could speak all the languages: Bengali, Hindoo, Mundari and Ouraon; and he then plunged into a study of the laws and customs of the land; an apparently inextricable maze, but in less than a year he was master of the whole legal procedure then in force. Thus armed, he appeared in court whenever a victim was arraigned, and almost invariably won a verdict in his favor. His reputation spread, and the victims of the sharks flocked to him from all sides. He argued for all of them, without however, omitting his ministerial occupation of preaching, teaching, composing canticles, helping the needy, and seeking out souls everywhere. He cut out so much work for his associates that his superiors were in a panic. But he succeeded. The native Protestants came over in crowds, and there was a flood tide of conversions to the Faith. It cost him his life, indeed, for he died in 1892, overcome by his labors and privations, but he had started a great movement and two years after his death, the flock had grown from 16,000 to 61,312, with more than 2,566 catechumens preparing for baptism. To-day the district is absolutely unlike its former self. Sacred canticles have taken the place of the old pagan chants and immoral dances are unknown. Even the pagans who are in the majority do not dare to perform certain rites of theirs in public.

In a district of Chota-Nagpur other than that in which Lievens labored, the conversions are still more pronounced. Six missionaries are at work, and their catechumens number more than 25,000. They offered themselves in spite of the fact that the Rajah was in a rage with his subjects about it; beat many of them unmercifully, and flung them into jail. Indeed the English government had to intervene to stop him. If there were a sufficiency of priests, there would be no difficulty in converting the whole countryside. The last accounts available tell us that the inhabitants of fifteen villages have declared themselves Christians, and cut off their hair to let the world know that they have renounced idolatry. Fifty years ago there were in all Western Bengal only a few thousand Catholics. In 1904 there were 106,000; in the following year, 119,705; in 1906, 126,529. Chota-Nagpur alone has another 102,000 and the number could be doubled if twenty new missionaries were on the spot. Western Bengal has now 27 churches, 346 chapels, 124 schools and two great colleges. Working there, are 101 priests, 55 scholastics and 27 coadjutor brothers of the Society, along with 34 Christian Brothers and 158 Sisters.

When Bishop Steins left Bombay, his successor Mgr. Jean-Gabriel Meurin built the college already planned, and called it St. Francis Xavier's. The undertaking was a difficult one, for the schismatical Goanese numbered 40,000 out of the 60,00 °Catholics in the city, and their ecclesiastical leaders were not only indifferent to the project but refused to contribute anything to carry it out, just as if it had been a Moslem or a heretical establishment. The people, however, were better minded. Every one, Catholic, heathen and heretic, was eager to build the college, for Bombay was proud of being a great intellectual centre; and hence when the government promised to double what could be collected, the enthusiasm was general and money poured in. The Observatory still bears the name of the rich Parsee who built it.

The Bombay mission included Beluchistan up to the frontiers of Afghanistan; its southern limit was the Diocese of Poona. In this vast territory were native villages, military posts, Anglo-Indian settlements, Indo-Portuguese, and pure Hindoos. There were only about 33,00 °Christians to be found in this amalgam, excluding the 70,000 people of the Goanese allegiance. Four colleges were erected in the various districts of this territory, but, unlike the great establishments of Bombay and Calcutta, they were exclusively Catholic. They gave instructions respectively to 500, 690, 298, and 306 pupils. The girls of the two dioceses were also provided for and the high school population exceeded 10,000. The great advantage of this scheme was that it ate very rapidly into the schism through the children of the insurgents.

The Carmelites had been in Mangalore; but found it too hard to hold out against the Calvinists from Bâle who, in 1880 had twenty stations, sixty-five schools and an annual budget of half a million; consequently they begged the Holy See to call in the Jesuits. When the new missionaries arrived in December, 1879, the Carmelites went out to meet them in a ship hung with flags and bunting and, on landing, presented them to the enthusiastic multitude waiting on the shore. The college of St. Aloysius was immediately begun and opened its classes with 150 students. Thus it happened that the greatest part of St. Francis Xavier's territory had come back to the Society; German Jesuits being in Bombay, Belgians in Calcutta, French in Madura and Italians in Mangalore. In the latter mission out of a population of 3,685,000 there are to-day only 93,00 °Catholics, but there were 1,50 °Christian students in St. Aloysius' college in 1920. It might be noted that Mangalore has acquired a world wide reputation for its leper hospital which was founded by Father Müller, formerly of the New York province. In that district also there are more native priests than in any other part of India. They number 60 all told and take care of about 32 parishes. They are not pure-blood, however, for they bear distinctively Portuguese names, such as Coelho, Fernandes, Saldanha and Pinto. This growth of the native clergy is encouraging, but it would be a mistake to regard them as useful for spreading the Faith. They make relatively very few conversions. They leave that to outsiders. They merely hold on to what has been won for them by others.

In 1884, the college of Negapatam was transferred to Trichinopoly, the reason being that in the latter there was a Catholic population of 20,000. Of course, the Anglican educators of the city tried to prevent the move but failed. The college at one time had 1,800 pupils, and although there was a drop to 1,550 in 1905, because of new rivals in the field, the latest accounts place the attendance at 2,562. St. Xavier's high school in Tuticorin, in the Madura mission had 563 pupils in 1920, and St. Mary's erected in 1910 in the very heart of Brahmanism has 441. In Trichinopoly, the discipline and work of the students have attracted much attention, but especially the enterprise of the sodalists, who have formed twenty groups of catechists and are engaged in giving religious instruction to 700 children. Most notable, however, is the success of the college in overthrowing the caste barriers. Indeed the missionaries of the old days would look with amazement at the grouping in the class rooms of Brahmins, Vellalans, Odeayans, Kallans, Paravers and twenty other social divisions down to the very Pariahs, all studying in the same house and eating at the same table. There were walled divisions, at first; then screens; then benches, and now there is only an imaginary line between the grades which formerly could not come near each other without contamination.

Among these castes, the Brahmins display the greatest curiosity about things Christian, but like the rich young man in the Gospel when they hear the truth they turn sadly away. "Why did God permit me to meet you," said one of them, "if I am going to suffer both here and hereafter?" One of them at last yielded and took flight to the ecclesiastical seminary at Ceylon. When the news spread abroad, priests from the pagodas and professors from the national schools came to the college and stormed against the other catechumens but without avail. Another Brahmin declared himself a Christian the next year; three in 1896, three in 1897, four in 1898, six in 1899 and two in 1900. They all have a hard fight before them; for they are thrown out of their caste and are disinherited by their families. Two of these converts died, and there is a suspicion that at least one was poisoned. Already 60 Brahmins have been baptized and India is in an uproar about it. To those who know the country, these conversions are of more importance than that of a thousand ordinary people and it is almost amusing to learn that the well-known theosophist leader, Annie Besant, hastened back to India to denounce the Catholic Church for its effrontery. The incident, it is true, gave a new life to idol-worship but possibly it was the last gasp before death.

The Madura district had been taken over by the Fathers of the Foreign Missions, after the Jesuits had been suppressed in 1773. When the Pope, Pius VII, re-established the Society, insistent appeals were made by those devoted and overtaxed missionaries to have the Jesuits resume their old place in that part of the Peninsula. The petition was heeded and the Jesuits returned to Madura in 1837. They were confronted by a frightful condition of affairs. In spite of the heroic labors of their immediate predecessors, there were scandals innumerable, and a large part of the population had lapsed into the grossest superstition and idolatry. The missionaries were well received at first, but a fulmination from Goa incited the people to rebellion. Moreover their labors were so crushing that four of the Fathers died of exhaustion in the year 1843 alone. Little by little however a change of feeling began to manifest itself, and as early as 1842, there were 118,40 °Catholics in the mission, many of them converts from Protestantism and paganism. In 1847 Madura was made a vicariate Apostolic under Mgr. Alexis Canoz, a year after the Hindo-European college was established at Negapatam.

Madura has another great achievement to its credit. The English government had put an end to the suttee: the frightful and compulsory custom of widows flinging themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands who were being incinerated. The prohibition was universally applauded but the Fathers started another movement. It was against the enforced celibacy of widows, some of whom had been married in babyhood, often to some old man, and were consequently obliged to live a single life after his death. The moral results of such a custom may be imagined. It was difficult at first to convince a convert that it was a perfectly proper thing for him to marry a widow, but little by little the prejudice was removed. Of course there are orphanages, old people's homes, Magdalen asylums, maternity hospitals, industrial schools, and other charitable institutions in prosperous Madura.

The work among the lower classes in the country districts is of the most trying description. There is no place for the itinerant missionary to find shelter in the villages except in some miserable hut. Indeed, 1,853 of these hamlets out of 2,035 have no accommodations at all for the priest, who perhaps has travelled for days through forests to visit them. Moreover, though the people have their good qualities and a great leaning to religion, they are fickle, excitable, ungrateful, unmindful as children at times, and hard to manage. In certain quarters, especially in the south, conversions are multiplying daily. The movement began as early as 1876, after a frightful famine that swept the country, and in one place the Christian population grew in fifteen years from 4,800 to 68,000. In 1889 around Tuticorin whole villages came over in a body. In December, 1891, 600 people were clamoring for baptism in one place, and they represented a dozen different castes. In 1891 one missionary was compelled to erect thirty-two new chapels. "I said we have 75 new villages;" writes another, "if we had priests enough we could have 75 more."

In 1920, there were in the Diocese of Trichinopoly besides the bishop, Mgr. Augustine Faisandier, 119 Jesuit priests of whom 28 are natives. There are a number of native scholastics. Besides this group there are 27 natives studying philosophy and theology in the seminary at Kandy. Add to this 32 Brothers of the Sacred Heart, an institute of Indian lay religious, who assist the missionaries as catechists and school teachers; 75 nuns in European and 346 in Indian institutions; and 75 oblates or pious women who devote themselves to the baptizing of heathen children; and you have some of the working corps in this prosperous mission. The Catholic population was 267,772 in 1916. There are 1,100 churches and chapels, 2,620 posts, a school attendance of 27,378 children, and 7 Catholic periodicals.

The missions in Mohammedan countries were particularly difficult to handle, because Turkey is a veritable Babel of races, languages and religions. There are Turks, and Syrians, and Egyptians and Arabians, along with the Metualis of Mount Lebanon and the Bedouins of the desert. There are Druses, who have a slender link holding them to Islamism; there are idolaters of every stripe; there are Schismatical Greeks, who call themselves Orthodox and depend on Constantinople; and there are United Greeks or Melchites who submit to Rome; Monophysite Armenians, and Armenian Catholics; and Copts also of the same divided allegiance. Then come Syrian Jacobites and United Syrians, Nestorians, Chaldeans, Maronites, Latins, Russians, with English, German and American Protestants, and to end all, the ubiquitous Jews. The missionaries who labor in this chaos are also of every race and wear every kind of religious garb. What will be the result of the changes consequent upon the World War no one can foretell. There is nothing to hope for from the Jews or Mohammedans; and only a very slight possibility of uniting the schismatics to Rome, or of converting the Protestants who have nothing to build on but sentiment and ingrained and inveterate prejudice. There is plenty to do, however, in restraining Catholics from rationalism and heresy; in lifting up the clergy to their proper level, by imparting to them science and piety; forming priests and bishops for the Uniates; promoting a love for the Chair of Peter; and all the while not only not hurting Uniate susceptibilities, but showing the greatest respect for the jealous autonomy of each Oriental Church.

Before the Suppression, the missions of the Levant were largely entrusted to the Jesuits of the province of Lyons. The alliance of the Grand Turk with the kings of France assured the safety of the missionaries and hence there were stations not only at Constantinople, but in Roumelia, Anatolia, Armenia, Mingrelia, Crimea, Persia, Syria, Egypt and in the Islands of the Ægean Sea. The work of predilection in all these places was toiling in the galleys with the convicts, or in the lazar houses with the plague-stricken. Between 1587 and 1773, more than 100 Jesuit missionaries died of the pest. In 1816, that is two years after the re-establishment of the Society, the bishops of the Levant petitioned Rome to send back the Jesuits. Thanks to Paul of Russia, they had resumed their old posts in 1805 in the Ægean, where one of the former Jesuits, named Mortellaro, had remained as a secular priest, and lived long enough to have one of the Fathers from Russia receive his last sigh and hear him renew his religious vows. This was the beginning of the present Sicilian Jesuit missions in the Archipelago. The Galician province has four stations in Moravia, and the Venetian has posts in Albania and Dalmatia.

In 1831 Gregory XVI ordered the Society to undertake the missions of Syria; but at that time Mehemet Ali of Egypt was at war with the Sultan, and the Druses and Maronites were butchering each other at will. Finally, in the name of the Sultan, Emir Haidar invited the Fathers to begin a mission at Bekfaya on the west slope of Mount Lebanon and about 10 miles west of Beirut. Simultaneously Emir Beckir, who was an upholder of Egypt, established them at Muallakah, a suburb of Zahlé on the other side of the mountain. At Hauran, on the borders of the desert, they found a Christian population in the midst of Druses and Bedouins. They were despised, ill-treated and virtually enslaved. They had no churches and no priests, were in absolute ignorance of their duties as Christians, and were stupefied to find that Rome had come so far to seek them. The work of lifting them up was hard enough, but it was a trying task to be commissioned by Rome to settle the disputes that were continually arising between Christian, Orthodox, and Turk, and even between ecclesiastical authorities. Father Planchet was the chief pacificator in all these wrangles, and for his punishment was made delegate Apostolic in 1850, consecrated Bishop of Mossul in 1853, and murdered in 1859 when about to set out for Rome.

Father Planchet was a Frenchman; with Father Riccadonna, an Italian, and Brother Henze, a Hanoverian, he went to Syria in 1831, at the joint request of the Melchite bishop, Muzloum, Joseph Assemani, the procurator of the Maronite patriarch and the Maronite Archbishop of Aleppo, Germanus Harva. A hitherto unpublished document recently edited by Father Jullien in "La Nouvelle Mission en Syrie" gives a detailed account of the journey of this illustrious trio from Leghorn to Syria.

"The vessel was called 'The Will of God,' and the voyage was," says Riccadonna, "an uninterrupted series of misfortunes, – fevers, faintings, rotten water, broken rigging, shattered masts, wild seas, frightful tempests, a sea-sick crew and escapes from English, Turkish and other cruisers on the high seas. When they came ashore the cholera was raging throughout the country." The narrative is full of interest with its picturesque descriptions of the people, their habitations, their festivals, their caravans, their filth, their fanaticism and the continually recurring massacres of Christians. The travellers journeyed to Beirut and Qamar and Bagdad and Damascus, and give vivid pictures of the conditions that met them in those early days. The medical ability of the lay-brother was of great service. He was the only physician in the country, with the result that, according to Riccadonna, each stopping place was a probatica piscina, every one striving to reach him first. "In Arabia," says the Relation, "as in the plains of Ba'albek, there is nothing but ignorance and sin. There are sorcerers and sorceresses in every village; superstitions of every kind, lies, blasphemies, perjury and impurity prevail. It is a common thing for Christians to bear Mussulman names and to pray to Mahomet. They never fast, and on feast days never go to Mass. Of spiritual books or the sacraments they know nothing; clan and personal vengeance and murder are common, and sexual immorality indescribable." Such was the state of these countries in 1831.

In 1843 the mission, which until then depended on the general, was handed to the province of Lyons. In that year a seminary for native priests was begun at Ghazir, in an old abandoned castle bought from an emir of the mountains. It began with two students, but at the end of the year there were twenty-five on the benches, and in that small number, many Rites were represented. A college for boys soon grew up around it, and a religious community of native nuns for the education of children was established. The latest account credits the Sisters with nearly 4,000 pupils.

New posts were established at Zahlé and ancient Sidon and also at Deir el Qamar. The prospects seemed fair for the moment, for had not the French and Turks been companions in arms in the Crimea? But in 1860 the terrible massacres in Syria began as a protest of the ultra-Mussulmans against the liberal concession of Constantinople to the Christians. In the long list of victims the Jesuits counted for something; for on June 18, four of them were butchered at Zahlé and a fifth at Deir el Qamar. In that slaughter eight thousand Christians were killed; 560 churches destroyed; three hundred and sixty villages devastated and forty-two convents burned. Three months later the Turkish troops from the garrison at Damascus butchered eight thousand five hundred people, four prelates, fifty Syrian priests, and all the Franciscan Friars in the city. They levelled to the ground three thousand eight hundred houses and two churches, and would have done more; but the slaughter was stopped when the Algerian Abd-el-Kader arrived on the scene. They still live on a volcano. Preceding and during the war of 1914, massacre of the Christians continued as usual.

Armenia is the Ararat of Scripture. Little Armenia, in which the Jesuits are laboring, is an irregular strip of territory that starts from the Gulf of Alexandretta and continues on towards the Black Sea. Its principal towns are Adana, Cæsarea, Civas, Tokat, Amasia, and Marswan, about two or three days' journey from each other. The country is mountainous, without railroads or other means of transport. The highways are infested with brigands; and the climate is excessively hot and excessively cold. The difficulties with which the Church has to contend in this inhospitable region are first, the government which is Turkish; second, the secret societies which are continually plotting against their Turkish masters; and third, the American Protestant sects which are covering the country with churches, orphan asylums, schools and dispensaries, and flooding it with anti-Catholic literature, and money. In 1886 all the schools were closed by the Turks, but when the French protested they were reopened. In 1894 two of the priests died while caring for the cholera victims and that helped to spread the Faith, for, of course, there are never any parsons on the scene in such calamities. Under Turkish rule also, massacres are naturally chronic, but Brou informs us that on such occasions the Protestants suffer more than the Catholics; for the latter are not suspected of being in the secret revolutionary societies, while the others are known to be deeply involved.

The population of this region consists of 500,00 °Christians, of whom 14,000 are Protestants and 12,00 °Catholics. The rest are Monophysite schismatics. In the mission besides the secular priests there are 57 Jesuits and 50 teaching sisters from France. There are 22 schools with 3,309 pupils, but only 504 of these children are Uniate Catholics. They are what are called Gregorians, for the tradition is that Armenia was converted to the Faith by St. Gregory the Illuminator. There are few conversions, but the schismatics accept whatever Catholic truth is imparted to them. They believe in the Immaculate Conception; pray for the dead; love the Pope; say their beads; and invoke the Sacred Heart. For them the difference between Romans and Gregorians is merely a matter of ritual. In several places, however, whole villages have asked to be received into Roman unity. As a people they look mainly to Russia for deliverance from the Turk, but neither Turk nor Russian now counts in the world's politics and no one can foresee the future.

Father Roothaan had long been dreaming of sending missionaries to what until very recently has been called the Unknown or Dark Continent, Africa. Hence when the authorities of the Propaganda spoke to him of a proposition, made by an ecclesiastic of admitted probity, about establishing a mission there, Roothaan accepted it immediately, and in the year 1846 ordered Father Maximilian Ryllo with three companions to ascend the Nile as far as possible and report on the conditions of the country. Ryllo was born in Russia in 1802 and entered the Roman province in 1820. After many years of missionary work in Syria, Malta and Sicily he was made rector of the Urban College in Rome on July 4, 1844, and was occupying that post when he was sent by Father Roothaan to the new mission of Central Africa.

In 1845 Ryllo was at Alexandria in search of "the eminent personage" who had suggested the mission and had been consecrated bishop in partibus, for the purpose of advancing the enterprise. But the "eminent personage" was not to be found either there or in Cairo. Hence after waiting in vain for a month, Ryllo and his companions started for Khartoum which was to be the central point for future explorations. After a little rest, they made their way up the White Nile. They were then under the equator, and had scant provisions for the journey, and no means of protection from the terrible heat, and, besides, they were in constant peril of the crocodiles which infested the shores of the river. The first negro tribes they met spoke an Arabic dialect, so it was easy to understand them. The native houses were caves in the hillsides, a style of dwelling that was a necessity on account of the burning heat. Their manner of life was patriarchal; they were liberal and kind, and seemed to be available foundation stones for the future Church which the missionaries hoped to build there. Satisfied with what they had discovered, they returned to Khartoum, but when they reported in due time to Propaganda, the mission was not entrusted to them. It was handed over to the Congregation of the Missionaries of Verona.

In 1840 the Jesuits went to Algeria. The work was not overwhelming. They were given charge of an orphan asylum. But unfortunately though they had plenty of orphans they had no money to feed them. Nevertheless, trusting in God, Father Brumauld not only did not close the establishment, but purchased 370 acres of ground, in the centre of which was a pile of buildings which had formerly been the official baths of the deys of Algiers. In 1848 the asylum sheltered 250 orphans. Fr. Brumauld simply went around the cafés and restaurants and money poured into his hat, for the enterprise appealed to every one. He even gathered up at the hotels the left-over food and brought it back to the motherless and fatherless little beggars whom he had picked up at the street corners. They were filthy, ragged and vicious, but he scraped them clean and clothed them, taught them the moral law and gave them instructions in the useful trades and occupations. Marshal Bougeaud, the governor, fell in love with the priest and when told he was a Jesuit, replied "he may be the devil himself if you will, but he is doing good in Algeria and will be my friend forever." One day some Arab children were brought in and he said to Father Brumauld "Try to make Christians out of these youngsters. If you succeed they won't be shooting at us one day from the underbrush."

The Orphanage stood in the highroad that led to Blidak and permission was asked to get in touch with natives. Leave was given Father Brumauld to put up a house which served as café for the Arabs. It had a large hall for the travellers and a shed for the beasts. Next to it was a school the upper part of which gave him rooms for his little community. It was a zaoui for the Christian marabouts, a meeting place for the French and natives, and a neutral ground where fanaticism was not inflamed but made to die out. All the governors, Pelissier, the Duc d'Aumale, MacMahon, Admiral de Guéydon and General Chanzy were fond of the Father and encouraged him in his work. One day General d'Hautpoul praised him for his success, and advised him to begin another establishment. The suggestion was acted on immediately. The government was appealed to and soon a second orphanage was in operation at Bouffarik further South. Finally, as the number of Arab orphans was diminishing in consequence of better domestic conditions, Brumauld asked why he could not receive orphans from France? Of course he could, and he was made happy when 200 of them were sent as a present from Paris. There would be so many gamins less in the streets of the capital.