CHAPTER XXVI

MODERN MISSIONS

During the Suppression--Roothaan's appeal--South America--

The Philippines--United States Indians--De Smet--Canadian

Reservations--Alaska--British Honduras--China--India--

Syria--Algeria--Guinea--Egypt--Madagascar--Mashonaland

--Congo--Missions depleted by World War--Actual number of

missionaries.

Besides its educational work, the Society of Jesus has always been eager

for desperate and daring work among savages. At the time of the

Suppression, namely in 1773 three thousand of its members were so

employed; and the ruthless and cruel separation from those abandoned

human beings was one of the darkest and gloomiest features of the

tragedy. To all human appearances millions of heathens were thus

hopelessly lost. Happily the disaster was not as great as was

anticipated. In his "Christian Missions" Marshall says:--It would almost

seem as if God had resolved to justify his servants by a special and

marvellous Providence before the face of the whole world, and had left

their work to what seemed inevitable ruin and decay only to show that

neither the world nor the devil, neither persecution, nor fraud nor

neglect could extinguish the life that was in it. And so when they came

to look upon it, after sixty years of silence and desolation they found

a living multitude where they expected to count only the corpses of the

dead. Some indeed had failed, and paganism or heresy had sung its song

of triumph over the victims; others had retained only the great truths

of the Trinity and the Incarnation while ignorance and its twin sister,

superstition, had spread a veil over their eyes, but still the

prodigious fact was revealed that in India alone that there were more

than one million natives who, after half a century of abandonment, still

clung with constancy to the faith which had been preached to their

fathers, and still bowed the head with loving awe when the names of

their departed apostles were uttered amongst them. Such is the

astonishing conclusion of a trial without parallel in the history of

Christianity, and which if it had befallen the Christians of other

lands, boasting their science and civilization, might perhaps have

produced other results than among the despised Asiatics. The natural

inference would be that besides this special Providence in their regard

these neophytes had been well trained by their old masters (I, 246).

For a time, of course, there were some Jesuits who lingered on the

missions in spite of the government's orders to the contrary. Thus we

find a very distinguished man, a Tyrolese from Bolzano, who died at

Lucknow on July 5, 1785. His name was Joseph Tiffenthaller and he had

lived forty years in Hindostan. His tombstone, we are told, may be still

seen in the cemetery of Agra where they laid his precious remains. He

was a man of unusual ability and besides speaking his native tongue was

familiar with Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Hindustanee, Arabic,

Persian and Sanscrit. He was the first European who wrote a description

of Hindostan. It is a detailed account of the twenty-two Provinces of

India, with their cities, towns, fortresses, whose geographical

situations were all calculated by means of a simple quadrant. The work

contains a large number of maps, plans and sketches drawn by himself and

the list of places fills twenty-one quarto pages. He also made a large

atlas of the basin of the Ganges, and is the author of a treatise on the

regions in which the rivers of India rise; a map of the Gagra which

Bernoulli calls "a work of enormous labor" is another part of

Tiffenthaller's relics.

In the field of religion he wrote books on "Brahmanism," "Indian

Idolatry," "Indian Asceticism," "The religion of the Parsees and

Mohammedanism with their relations to each other." He also published his

astronomical observations on the sun-spots, on the zodiacal light,

besides discussions on the astrology and cosmology of the Hindus, with

descriptions of the flora and the fauna of the country. He was besides

all that an historian, and has left us an account in Latin of the origin

and religion of the Hindus, another in German of the expedition of Nadir

Shah to India; a third in Persian about the deeds of the Great Mogul,

Alam, and a fourth in French which tells of the incursions of the

Afghans and the capture of Delhi, together with a contemporary history

of India for the years 1757-64. In linguistics, he wrote a

Parsee-Sanscrit lexicon and treatises in Latin on the Parsee language,

the pronunciation of Latin, etc., He was held in the highest esteem by

the scientific societies of Europe with which he was in communication.

During the greater part of his life in India, the struggle was going on

between the French and English for the possession of the Peninsula.

Of course he was not alone in India, at that time, for Bertrand tells us

in his "Notions sur l' Inde et les missions" (p. 30) that "the Jesuits

had a residence at Delhi as late as 1790", but, unfortunately, he

could say nothing more about them. It is very likely, however, that

when Pombal's agents attempted to crowd the 127 Jesuits who were at

work in the various districts of Hindostan into a ship which had

accommodations--and such accommodations--for only forty or fifty, many

of them had perforce to be left behind, or perhaps failed to report at

the place of embarcation. By keeping out of Goa, they could easily elude

the pursuivants. The jungle, for instance, was a convenient hiding

place. However, as they received no recruits the work went to pieces

when the old heroes died, so that there were, most likely, no Jesuits

there at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was just at this

time, that England took possession of the greater part of Hindostan and,

as a consequence, the country was soon swarming with Protestant parsons

of every sect, eager to fill their depleted ranks with new converts from

the East.

Marshall had been employed to report on their success, but as every one

knows, the investigation brought him to the Church. His researches

furnish very reliable and interesting information about the conditions

prevailing in those parts among the old proselytes of the Jesuits.

Quoting from the "Madras Directory" of 1857, he shows that in the

Missions of Madura, founded by de Nobili, there were still 150,000

Catholics, and in Verapoli as many as 300,000, with an accession of 1000

converts from Mohammedanism every year. Nor were these Hindus merely

nominal Christians. Bertrand who knew India thoroughly, writing in 1838,

says of the Sanars: "One might almost say that they have not eaten of

the tree of knowledge of good and evil with Adam, and that they were

created in the days of original innocence. Among these Hindus there are

numbers who when asked whether they commit this or that sin, answer:

'Formerly I did, but that is many years ago. I told it to the Father,

and he forbade me to do it. Since then I have not committed it.' We

reckon more than 7000 Christians of this caste." Father Garnier, S. J.

wrote in the same year as follows: "The Christians of this country are,

in general, well disposed and strongly attached to the Faith. The

usages introduced among them by the Jesuits still subsist; morning

prayer in common, an hour before sunrise; evening prayer with spiritual

reading; catechism for the children every day given by a catechist; Mass

on Sunday in the chapel. But in spite of these excellent practices there

still remains much ignorance and superstition, and we shall have a good

deal to do to form them into a people of true Christians before we turn

our attention to the pagans. We shall do that when we are more

numerous."

Of course these testimonies of Jesuits may be rejected by some people,

but the Protestant missionaries in Hindostan, at that time, leave no

room for doubt about the actual conditions. Buchanan, for instance, who

was particularly conspicuous among his fellows and was greatly extolled

in England says: "There are in India members of the Church of Rome who

deserve the affection and respect of all good men. From Cape Commorin to

Cochin, there are about one hundred churches on the seashore alone.

Before each is a lofty cross which like the church itself is seen from a

great distance. At Jaffna, on Sundays, about a thousand or twelve

hundred people attend church and on feast days three thousand and

upward. At Manaar they are all Romish Christians. At Tutycorin, the

whole of the tribe, without exception, are Christians in the Romish

Communion. Before they hoist sail to go out to sea, a number of boatmen

all join in prayer to God for protection. Every man at his post, with

the rope in his hands, pronounces the prayer."

One of these parsons who bore the very inappropriate name of Joseph

Mullens and whose writing is usually a shriek against the Church says

that "in 1854, the Jesuit and Roman Catholic missions are spread very

widely through the Madras Presidency. At Pubna there is a population of

13,000 souls. It is all due to the Catholic missionaries. I allow that

they dress simply, eat plainly and have no luxuries at home; they travel

much; are greatly exposed; live poorly, and toil hard, and I have heard

of a bishop living in a cave on fifty rupees a month, and devoutly

attending the sick when friends and relatives had fled from fear. But

all that is much easier on the principles of a Jesuit who is supported

by motives of self-righteousness than it is to be a faithful minister on

the principles of the New Testament."

The bloody persecution of 1805 in China showed how fervent and strong

those Christians were in their faith. Very few apostatized, though new

and terrible punishments were inflicted on them. Dr. Wells Williams, a

Protestant agent in China, says that "many of them exhibited the

greatest constancy in their profession, suffering persecution, torture,

banishment and death, rather than deny their faith, though every

inducement of prevarication and mental reservation was held out to them

by the magistrates, in order to avoid the necessity of proceeding to

extreme measures." It came to an end only when it was discovered that

Christianity had even entered the royal family, and that the judges were

sometimes trying their own immediate relatives. In 1815, however, the

very year that the Protestant missionaries arrived in China the

persecution broke out again. Bishop Dufresse was one of the victims, and

when the day of execution arrived he with thirty-two other martyrs

ascended the scaffold. In 1818 many were sent to the wastes of Tatary,

and 1823 when pardon was offered to all who would renounce their faith,

after suffering in the desert for five years only five proved recreant.

In the midst of all this storm one of the missionaries reported that he

had baptized one hundred and six adults.

That a great many Chinese had remained faithful Catholics during the

long period which had elapsed after the Suppression was manifested by a

notable event recorded by Brou in "Les Jésuites Missionaires."

"On November 1, 1903," he writes, "a funeral ceremony took place in

Zikawei, a town situated about six miles from Shanghai. It was more like

the triumph of a great hero than an occasion of mourning. The people

were in a state of great enthusiasm about it, and assembled in immense

throngs around the tomb of the illustrious personage whose glories were

being celebrated. The object of these honors was Paul Zi or Sin, a

literary celebrity in his day, the prime minister of an emperor in the

long past, and one of the first converts of the famous Father Ricci,

whom he had aided with lavish generosity in building churches and in

establishing the Faith in the neighborhood of Shanghai.

"The celebration of 1903 was the third centenary of his baptism, and all

his relations or descendants who were very numerous, had gathered at

Zikawei for the occasion. Among them, the Fathers discovered a great

number of Christians who had remained true to the teachings of the

Church during those 300 years; and there were many others throughout the

country who resembled the Zi family in this particular. In Paul's

district, that is in the neighborhood of Shanghai, there were, 60 years

after the baptism of the great man, as many as 40,000 Christians, and in

1683 the number had risen to 800,000, but a century later the

persecutions had cut them down to 30,000 though doubtless there were

many who had succeeded in concealing themselves."

With Cochin the Jesuits never had anything to do, except that their

great hero, de Rhodes, was its first successful missionary in former

days. It was at his suggestion that the Society of the Missions

Etrangères was founded and took up the work which the Jesuits were

unable to carry on alone.

About Corea, Marshall furnishes us with two very interesting facts. The

first is that England had the honor of giving a martyr to Corea, the

English Jesuit, Thomas King, who died there in 1788, that is fifteen

years after the Suppression. Unfortunately the name "King" does not

appear in Foley's "Records."

The second is vouched for by the "Annales" (p. 190) which relate that a

French priest, known as M. de Maistre, had for ten years vainly

endeavored to enter the forbidden kingdom and had spent 60,000 francs in

roaming around its impenetrable frontier. He assumed all sorts of

disguises, faced every kind of danger in his journeys from the ports of

China to the deserts of Leao-tong, asking alternately the Chinese junks

and the French ships to put him ashore somewhere on the coast. Death was

so evidently to be the result of his enterprise that the most courageous

seaman refused to help him. It required the zeal of an apostle to

comprehend this heroism and to second its endeavors. Father Hélot, being

a priest, understood what the Cross required of him, and as a member of

a society whose tradition is that they have never been baffled by any

difficulties or perils, felt himself at the post where his Company

desired him to be. The Jesuit becomes the pilot of a battered ship,

safely conducts his intrepid passenger to an unknown land, and having

deposited him on the shore, looked after him for a while and returned to

his neophytes with the consoling satisfaction of having exposed his life

for a mission that was not his own.

From the Catalogues of the Society, we find that Louis Hélot was born on

January 29, 1816. He was a novice at St. Acheul, in 1835, and in the

same house there happened to be a certain Isidore Daubresse, not a

novice, however, but a theologian who was well-known later on in New

York. The master of novices was Ambrose Rubillon who was subsequently

assistant of the General for France. By 1850 Hélot was in China and

spent the rest of his life hunting after souls in the region of Nankin.

He died sometime after 1864. De Maistre succeeded in entering the

country and we find him waiting one Good Friday night to welcome the

first bishop who had three priests with him, one of whom was a Jesuit.

Before the re-establishment the few Jesuits in White Russia had kept up

the missionary traditions of the Society. Their missions extended all

along the Volga and they were at Odessa in 1800. In 1801, thanks to the

Emperor Paul's intercession, they had returned to their ancient posts on

the Ægean Islands, which were in the dominions of the Grand Turk; by

1806 they had reached Astrakhan; and in 1810 were in the Caucasus.

Before Father Grassi came to America, he was studying in St. Petersburg

to prepare himself for the missions of Astrakhan.

In America, in spite of the Suppression, the work of the old Jesuits did

not fail to leave its traces. Thus in Brazil where Nobrega and Anchieta

once labored, over 800,000 domesticated Indians now represent the fruit

of their toil. Deprived during sixty years of their fathers and guides

and too often scandalized by men who are Christians only in name, the

native races have not only preserved the Faith through all their sorrows

and trials, but every where rejected the bribes and promises of heresy.

In that vast region, which stretches from the mouth of the San Francisco

to the Isthmus of Panama, watered by the mightiest rivers of our globe,

and including the district of the Amazon with its 45,000 miles of

navigable water communication, "the natives who still find shelter in

its forests or guide their barks over its myriad streams," says a

Protestant writer, "push their profession of the Catholic religion even

to the point of fanaticism."

The Paraguayans of course could be counted upon not to forget their

fathers in Christ. Both Sir Woodbine Parish and d'Orbigny testify that

the effects of the preponderating influence of the monastic

establishments are still visible in the habits of the generality of the

people. One thing is certain, they say, and ought to be declared to the

praise of the Fathers, that since their expulsion the material

prosperity of Paraguay has diminished; many lands formerly cultivated

have ceased to be so; many localities formerly inhabited present at this

day only ruins. What ought to be confessed is this--that they knew how

to engrave with such power, on their hearts, reverence for authority

that even to this very hour the tribes of Paraguay beyond all those who

inhabit this portion of America are the most gentle and the most

submissive to the dictates of duty.

In "La Compañía de Jesús en las Republicas del Sur de America," Father

Hernández tells us that there were three former Jesuits in Chile at the

beginning of the nineteenth century: Father Caldera, Vildaurre and

Carvajal. The first two died respectively in 1818 and 1822, the date of

Carvajal's demise is not known, nor is there any information available

as to whether or not they ever re-entered the Society. In the old

Province of Paraguay, there was a Father Villafañe who was seventy-four

years old in 1814. Hearing of the re-establishment, he wrote to the Pope

asking to renew his vows when "in danger of death." The request, of

course, was granted but he continued to live till the year 1830. Whether

he waited till then to renew his vows has not been found out. In that

same year there died in Buenos Aires an Irish Jesuit named Patrick

Moran. His name is inscribed not only on the headstone over his remains,

in the Recolta graveyard, but on a slab inserted in the wall of the

church. He was probably a chaplain in some distinguished family or what

was more likely exercising his ministry in the Irish colony of that

place.

Coming to the northern part of the hemisphere we are told by Mr. Russell

Bartlett that the Yaqui Indians of Sonora, the fishermen and pearl

divers of California are invariably honest, faithful and industrious.

They were among the first to be converted by the Jesuits. Originally

extremely warlike, their savage nature was completely subdued on being

converted to Christianity, and they became the most docile and tractable

of people. They are now very populous in the southern part of Sonora.

Anyone who has visited the Abenakis at Old Town in Maine, or La Jeune

Lorette in Quebec, or Caughnawaga on the St. Lawrence, or the Indian

settlements at Wekwemikong and Killarney on Lake Huron will testify to

the excellent results of the teachings implanted in their hearts by the

old Jesuit missionaries who reclaimed them from savagery.

A most remarkable example of this fidelity to their former teachers was

afforded by the Indians of Caughnawaga. They were mostly Iroquois from

New York who after their conversion to the Faith were sent or went, of

their own accord, to the Christian village that was assigned to them

above Montreal. Long after the Suppression of the Society, namely in the

first third of the nineteenth century, a party of these Indians headed

by two chiefs with the significant names of Ignace and François Régis

tramped almost completely across the continent, and without the aid of

a priest, for none could be got, converted an entire tribe to

Christianity and did it in such wonderful fashion that the first white

men who visited these converts were amazed at the purity, honesty,

self-restraint and piety that reigned in the tribe. Over and over again,

Ignace travelled down to St. Louis, thus making a journey of two

thousand miles each time to beg for a Black Robe from the poor

missionary bishop who had none to give him. The devoted Ignace, at last,

lost his life in pursuance of his apostolic purpose. He fell among

hostile Indians, and though he might have escaped, for he was dressed as

a white man, he confessed himself an Iroquois and died with his people.

Father Fortis, the first General after the re-establishment of the

Society, was rather averse to any missionary enterprise for the time

being, because he judged that he had not as yet any available men for

such perilous work. Father Roothaan, his immediate successor, was of a

different opinion, and when in 1833, he appealed for missionaries the

response was immediate. Hence Bengal was begun in 1834; Madura,

Argentina and Paraguay in 1836, and the Rocky Mountains and China in

1840. In 1852 at the request of Napoleon III the penal colony of French

Guinea was accepted as were the offers of Fernando Po in Africa and the

Philippines from Queen Isabella of Spain.

The Spanish missions in Latin America were the least successful of any

in the Society. The Fathers were debarred from any communication with

the native tribes, even those formerly Christianized and civilized by

them, or if permission were granted it was soon under some frivolous

pretext or other rescinded, as we have mentioned above.

The Belgian Jesuits went to Guatemala in 1843, but only after

considerable trouble was their existence assured by a government Act, in

1851. In 1871, however, they were expelled and withdrew to Nicaragua,

from which they were driven in 1884. The Brazilian Mission was

inaugurated by the Jesuits whom Rosas had exiled from Argentina. They

were acceptable because priests were needed in the devastated Province

of Rio Grande do Sul, which had been the theatre of an unsuccessful war

of independence. Of course, the usual government methods in vogue in

that part of the world were resorted to.

The suppression of the Society wrought havoc in the Philippines, and we

are told that in 1836 as many as 6000 people were carried off into

slavery by Mohammedan pirates, a disaster that would have probably been

prevented had the missionaries been left there. They would have made

soldiers out of the natives as they did in Paraguay. It was only in 1859

that they returned to that field of work. They resumed their educational

labors in Manila and at the same time evangelized Mindanao with

wonderful success. In 1881 there were on that island 194,134 Christians

and in 1893, 302,107. Inside of thirty-six years, the Fathers had

brought 57,000 Filipinos to the Faith and established them in Reductions

as in Paraguay. Great success was also had with the Moros, who were

grouped together in three distinct villages. The Spanish War brought its

disturbances, but little by little the Jesuits recovered what they had

lost and there are at present 162 members of the province of Aragon at

work in the Islands.

In the United States, the native races have largely disappeared except

in the very far West. With the remnants, the Jesuits are, of course,

concerned, and perhaps the most reliable official estimate of the

success they have achieved was expressed by Senator Vest during the

discussion of the Indian Appropriation Bill before the United States

Senate in 1900:

"I was raised a Protestant," he said; "I expect to die one. I was never

in a Catholic church in my life, and I have not the slightest sympathy

with many of its dogmas; but above all I have no respect for the insane

fear that the Catholic Church is about to overturn this Government. I

should be ashamed to call myself an American if I indulged in any such

ignorant belief. I said that I was a Protestant. I was reared in the

Scotch Presbyterian Church; my father was an elder in it and my earliest

impressions were that the Jesuits had horns and hoofs and tails, and

that there was a faint tinge of sulphur in the circumambient air

whenever one of them crossed your path. Some years ago I was assigned by

the Senate to examine the Indian schools in Wyoming and Montana. I

visited every one of them. I wish to say now what I have said before in

the Senate and it is not the popular side of the question by any means,

that I did not see in all my journey a single school that was doing any

educational work worthy of the name educational work, unless it was

under the control of the Jesuits. I did not see a single Government

school, especially day schools where there was any work done at all. The

Jesuits have elevated the Indian wherever they have been allowed to do

so without the interference of bigotry and fanaticism and the cowardice

of politicians. They have made him a Christian, have made him a workman

able to support himself and those dependent on him. Go to the Flathead

Reservation in Montana, and look at the work of the Jesuits and what do

you find? Comfortable dwellings, herds of cattle and horses,

self-respecting Indians. I am not afraid to say this, because I speak

from personal observation, and no man ever went among these Indians with

more intense prejudice than I had when I left the city of Washington to

perform that duty. Every dollar you give to the Government day schools

might as well be thrown into the Potomac under a ton of lead."

(Congressional Records, Apl. 7, 1900, p. 7. 4120.)

The most conspicuous of the missionaries among the North American

Indians is Father Peter de Smet. He was born in Dendermonde on the

Scheldt, and was twelve years old when the booming of the cannons of

Waterloo startled the little town. He came out to Maryland in 1821 and

after remaining for a short time at Whitemarsh in the log cabin which

then sheltered the novices of the Province of Maryland, set out on foot

with a party of young Jesuits for the then Wild West. They walked from

Whitemarsh to Wheeling, a distance of 400 miles, and then went in flat

boats down the Ohio to Shawneetown and from there proceeded again on

foot to St. Louis. It was a journey of a month and a half.

His first work was among the Pottawotamis, and then he was sent to the

wonderful Flatheads, whom the Iroquois from Caughnawaga had converted.

From that time forward his life was like a changing panorama. In the

story, there are Indians of every kind who come before us. Gros Ventres

and Flatheads and Pottawotamis, and Pend d'Oreilles and Sioux; their

incantations and cannibalism and dances and massacres and disgusting

feasts are described; there are scenes in the Bad Lands and mountains

and forests; there are tempests in the mid-Pacific and more alarming

calms; there are councils with Indian chiefs, and interviews with Popes

and presidents and kings and ambassadors and archbishops and great

statesmen and Mormon leaders, always and exclusively in the interests of

the Church. The great man's life has been written in four volumes by two

admiring Protestants, and another biography has lately come from the pen

of a Belgian Jesuit. In them appears an utterance from Archbishop

Purcell about the hero, which deserves to be quoted. "Never," he says,

"since the days of Xavier, Brébeuf, Marquette and Lalemant has there

been a missionary more clearly pointed out and called than Father de

Smet." Thurlow Weed, one of the most conspicuous American statesmen of

the day, said of him: "No white man knows the Indians as Father de Smet

nor has any man their confidence to the same degree." Thomas H. Benton

wrote to him in 1852: "You can do more for the welfare of the Indians in

keeping them at peace and friendship with the United States than an army

with banners."

Again and again he was sent by the government to pacify the Indians. His

mission in 1868 was particularly notable. Sitting Bull was on the

warpath and was devastating the whole regions of the Upper Missouri and

Yellowstone. They were called for a parley, and de Smet went out alone

among the painted warriors. He held a banner of the Blessed Virgin in

his hand and pleaded so earnestly with them to forget the past, that

they went down into the very midst of the United States troops and

signed the treaty of peace that brought 50,000 Indians to continue their

allegiance to the government. De Smet in his journeys had crossed the

ocean nineteen times and had travelled 180,000 miles by sailing vessels,

river barges, canoes, dogsleds, snow shoes, wagons, or on horseback or

on foot. "We shall never forget," said General Stanley of the United

States Army--and this eulogy of the great man will suffice--"nor shall

we ever cease to admire the disinterested devotion of Reverend Father de

Smet who at the age of sixty-eight years did not hesitate, in the midst

of the summer heat, to undertake a long and perilous journey across the

burning plains, destitute of trees and even of grass, having none but

corrupted and unwholesome water, constantly exposed to scalping by

Indians, and this without seeking honor or remuneration of any sort but

solely to arrest the shedding of blood, and save, if it might be, some

lives and preserve some habitations."

In Canada, the Indian reservation of La Jeune Lorette, which was

established in the early days by Father Chaumonot, is now directed by

the secular clergy of Quebec. The Caughnawaga settlement near Montreal

was, of course, lost to the Society at the time of the Suppression, but

of late years has been restored to its founders. The Canadian Jesuits

also look after the Indians of Lakes Huron and Superior. Their latest

undertaking is in Alaska which began by a tragedy.

The saintly Bishop Charles John Seghers, who was coadjutor to the Bishop

of Oregon, had himself transferred to the See of Vancouver in order to

devote his life to the savages of Alaska. In 1886 when he asked the

Jesuits to come to his assistance, Fathers Tosi and Robaut were assigned

to the work. In July, the bishop, the two Jesuits and a hired man

started over the Chilcoot Pass for the headwaters of the Yukon. It was

decided that the two Jesuits should spend the winter at the mouth of the

Stewart River, while the Bishop with his man hastened to a distant post

to forestall the members of a sect, who contemplated establishing a post

at the same place. During the terrible 1,100 mile journey the servant

became insane and in the dead of night killed the bishop. The result was

that new arrangements had to be made and Father Tosi was made prefect

Apostolic in 1894. His health soon gave way under the terrible

privations of the mission and he died in 1898, although only fifty-one

years of age. He was succeeded by Father René of the Society who

resigned in 1904, and the present incumbent Father Crimont, S. J., took

his place.

The condition of Alaska has greatly changed since the advent of the

missionaries. The discovery of placer gold deposits with the influx of

miners robbed a portion of Alaska of its primitive isolation. The

invading whites had to be looked after, and hence there are resident

Jesuit priests at Juneau, Douglas, Fairbanks, Nome, Skagway, St. Michael

and Seward. A great number of posts are attended to from these centres.

The Ten'a Indians and Esquimaux are the only natives whom the

missionaries have been able to evangelize thus far. There is a

training-school for them at Koserefsky, where the boys are taught

gardening, carpentry and smithing of various kinds, and the girls are

instructed in cooking, sewing and other household arts. This work is

particularly trying not only because of the bodily suffering it entails,

but because of the awful monotony and isolation of those desolate arctic

regions. Some idea of it may be gathered from a few extracts taken from

a letter of one of the missionaries. It is dated May 29, 1916.

"The Skúlarak district of 15,000 square miles, depending on St. Mary's

Mission," says the writer, "is as large as a diocese. It has seventy or

eighty villages. The whole country along the coast is a vast swamp

covered with a net work of rivers, sloughs, lakes and ponds. There is

only one inhabitant to every ten or twelve square miles. There is no

question of roads except in winter and then as everything is deep in

snow, it is impossible to tell whether one is going over land or lake or

river. When we started the thermometer registered 28° below zero,

Fahrenheit. We had nine dogs; but two were knocked out shortly after

starting. Eleven hours travelling brought us to our first cabins. We

rose next morning at five, said Mass on an improvised altar and set out

southward. At noon we stopped for lunch, which consisted of frozen

bread and some tea from our thermo bottle. It was only at seven o'clock

that we reached a little 'village' of three houses at the foot of the

Kusilwak Mountains, which are two or three thousand feet high. They

served as a guide to direct our course." At another stage of the journey

he writes: "At sundown as we lost all hope of reaching any village we

made for a faraway clump of brushwood intending to pass the night there.

It is full moon and its rays light up an immaculate white landscape,

there is a bright cloudless sky, and everything is so still that you

cannot even breathe without a plainly audible sound."

What kind of people was he pursuing? Not very interesting in any way. "I

came upon a new style of native dwelling, a low-roofed miserable hovel

about twelve feet square; in the centre, a pit, about two and a half

feet deep, was the sink and dumping ground for the refuse of the house.

There we had to descend if we wanted the privilege of standing erect.

That is where I placed myself to perform a baptism of the latest arrival

of the family whom the mother held on her lap squatted on the higher

ground which served as a bed. The habits of the natives cannot be

described." "Our dogs were so exhausted," he says in the course of his

narrative, "that they lay down at once without waiting to have their

harness taken off. We fed them their ration of dry fish, they curled up

in the snow and went to sleep. As for ourselves we tried to build a fire

but could not succeed in boiling enough of melted snow for even a cup of

tea; a box of sardines, the contents of which were so frozen that I had

to chop them up with the prong of a fork constituted my royal supper. A

hole was soon dug in the snow, by using the snow shoes for a shovel and

a few sticks thrown in to prevent direct contact with the snow. I opened

my bag of blankets, put on my fur parkey and tried to keep the blankets

around me to keep from freezing. After a couple of hours I felt my limbs

getting numb, and I was compelled to crawl out and look around for a

hard mound of snow where I began to execute a dance that would baffle

the best orchestra. I jigged and clogged around for fifteen or twenty

minutes, and feeling I was alive again sought my blankets once more, but

the cold was too intense and I could only say a few prayers and make a

peaceful application of the meditation 'de propriis peccatis.'

"Another time, after fruitlessly scanning the horizon for a sign of a

village, we found ourselves compelled to pass the night in the open air.

This time I constructed a scientific Pullman berth for myself. Selecting

the leeward side of an ice block, I dug a trench in the snow, using the

fire-pan as a shovel. I hewed out the pillow at the head and made the

grave (indeed it looked like one) about two feet wide and two deep and

my exact length. Stretching my cassock over it, with the snow shoes as a

supporting rack, I crawled into it and passed a tolerably comfortable

night, though I awoke dozens of times from the violent coughing that had

stuck to me since my stay in Tumna. So it went on till April 8. We had

been three weeks on the road. Never had the trip to Tumna lasted so

long. This was due to the fact that the dogs were exhausted and we had

to walk back for about 250 miles in the snow."

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 48,000 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, 360 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; 5,000 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 5,000 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 60,000 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

33,000 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 93,000 Catholics, but there were 1,500 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 118,400 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 500,000 Christians, of whom

14,000 are Protestants and 12,000 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.

Meantime, residences and colleges were being established in the cities

of Al-Oran, Constantine and Algiers, but when at the instance of the

bishop, Father Schimbri opened a little house in the neighborhood of

Selif and was ingratiating himself with the natives, the authorities

demanded his immediate recall. Later, when the bishop solicited leave to

begin a native mission he was denounced in Paris for influencing minors,

because he had asked some Lazarists to teach a few vagabond Arab

children; but the government, whose disrespect for religion was a

by-word with the natives, had no scruple in building Moslem

schoolhouses, allowing a French general to pronounce an eulogy of

Islamism in the pulpit of a mosque. While it forbade religious

processions, it provided a ship to carry Arabian pilgrims to Mecca. It

was so scrupulously careful of the Moslem conscience that it forbade the

nuns to hang up a crucifix in the hospital when these holy women were

nursing sick Mohammedans.

In 1864 there were Jesuit chaplains in two of the forts, and from there

they ventured among the natives with whom they soon became popular. That

was too much to put up with, so they were ordered to discontinue,

because, forsooth, they were attacking the right of freedom of

conscience. The result of this governmental policy was that in the

revolt of the Kabyles in 1871 the leaders of the insurgents were the

Arab students who had been given exclusively lay and irreligious

instructions in Fort Napoleon. Father Brou says (viii, 218) that

MacMahon who was governor of the colony was opposed to Cardinal

Lavigerie's efforts to Christianize the natives, but that Napoleon III

supported the cardinal, who after his victory, installed the Jesuits in

the orphanage and also made Father Terasse novice master of the

community of White Fathers, which was then being founded; two others

were commissioned to put themselves in communication with the tribes of

the Sahara and when they reported that everything was favorable the new

Order began its triumphant career. That was in 1872. When Vice-Admiral

de Guéydon was made governor he willingly permitted the cardinal to

employ Jesuits as well as White Fathers in the work among the Kabyles,

but de Guéydon was quickly removed from office and the old methods of

persecution were resumed. When the year 1880 arrived and the government

was busy closing Jesuit houses, the single one left to them in Algeria

was seized.

Portugal graciously made a gift to Spain of the Island of Fernando Po in

the Gulf of Guinea. Brou calls it "an island of hell," with heat like a

lime-kiln, and reeking with yellow fever. It was inhabited by a race of

negroes called Boubis, who were dwarfs, with rickety limbs, malformed,

tattooed from head to foot, smeared with a compound of red clay and oil,

speaking five different dialects, each one unintelligible to speakers of

the others; they had been charged with poisoning the streams so as to

get rid of the Portuguese and were trying to kill the Spaniards by

starvation. It cannot have been brotherly love that suggested this

Portuguese present. To this lovely spot Queen Isabella of Spain invited

the Jesuits in 1859, and they accepted the offer. They lived among the

blacks, unravelled the tangle of the five dialects and won the affection

of the natives. Their success in civilizing these degraded creatures was

such that whenever a quarrel broke out in any of the villages the

governor had only to send his staff of office and peace descended on the

settlement. In other words the missionaries had made Fernando Po a

Paraguay. This condition of things lasted twelve years, but when

Isabella descended from her throne the first act of the revolutionists

was to expel the Jesuits from the mission.

Leo XIII had ordered the General, Father Beckx to begin a seminary at

Cairo. It was opened with twelve pupils. Three years afterwards occurred

the Turkish massacre of Damascus and Libanus and the bombardment of

Alexandria by the English. In consequence of all this the seminarians

fled to Beirut, and after the war a college was begun at the deserted

establishment of the Lazarists at Alexandria. Cairo was near by, but

there was such an antagonism between the two cities that two distinct

colleges with different methods and courses had to be maintained. Cairo

was Egyptian in tone; Alexandria was French. Meanwhile, a mission was

established on the Nile at Nineh which was some distance south of Cairo.

In this mission the young priests trained at Beirut were employed, and

they proved to be such excellent apostles that Leo XIII made three of

them bishops and thus laid the foundation of the United Coptic

hierarchy. In 1905 there were 20,000 United Copts in Egypt, four-fifths

of whom had been reclaimed from the schism. This is all the more

remarkable because the Protestants had spent enormous amounts of money

in schools, hospitals, and asylums.

Madagascar was originally called the Island of St. Lawrence, because it

was first sighted on the festival day of the great martyr by Diego Diaz,

who with Cabral, the Portuguese discoverer, was exploring the Indian

Ocean in the year 1500. A Portuguese priest was massacred there in 1540;

in 1585 a Dominican was poisoned by the natives, and in the seventeenth

century two Jesuits came from Goa with a native prince who had been

captured by the Portuguese. Their benevolence toward the prince secured

them permission to preach Christianity for a while, but when their

influence began to show itself, they were, in obedience to a royal

order, absolutely avoided by the natives so that one starved to death;

the other succeeded in reaching home. The Lazarists came in 1648, but

remained only fourteen months, two of their number having died meantime.

Other attempts were made, but all ended in disaster to the missionaries.

Nothing more was done until the middle of the nineteenth century. In

1832 Fathers de Solages and Dalmond were sent out, but they had been

anticipated by the Protestant missionaries who, as early as 1830, had 32

schools with 4,000 pupils. De Solages soon succumbed and Dalmond

continued to work on the small islands off the coast until 1843, when he

returned to Europe to ask Father Roothaan to send him some Jesuits. Six

members of the Society together with two Fathers of the Holy Ghost

responded to the call, but they could get no farther than the islands of

Nossi-Bé or St. Mary's and Réunion, or Bourbon as it was called.

The Queen Ranavalo, who was a ferocious and bloodthirsty pagan, had no

use for any kind of evangelists, Protestant or Catholic, but there was a

Frenchman named Laborde in the capital, who was held in high esteem by

her majesty, because he was a cannon-founder, a manufacturer of

furniture and a maker of soap. Besides these accomplishments to

recommend him, he had won the esteem of the heir-apparent. Incidentally

Laborde put the prince in relation with the missionaries off the coast.

A short time afterwards, there appeared in the royal city another

Frenchman who could make balloons, organize theatrical representations,

and compound drugs. He was accepted in the queen's service. He was a

Jesuit in disguise. His name was Finaz, and he continued to remain at

Tananarivo until 1857, when the violence of the queen, who was insanely

superstitious, brought about an uprising against her which was organized

by the Protestant missionaries. She prevailed against the rebels, and as

a consequence all Europeans were expelled from the island, and among

them Father Finaz. He could congratulate himself that he had at least

learned the language and made himself acquainted with the inhabitants.

Four years later (1861), the queen died, and King Radama II ascended the

throne; whereupon six Jesuits opened a mission in Tananarivo. They soon

had 2 schools with 400 pupils and numberless catechumens, but their

success was not solid, for the Malgassy easily goes from one side to

another as his personal advantage may dictate. Radama was killed, and

then followed a forty years' struggle between the French and the English

to get control of the island. The English prevailed for a time and, in

1869, Protestantism was declared to be the state religion. The number of

evangelists multiplied enormously, but they were merely government

agents and knew next to nothing about Christian truth or morality. The

confusion was increased, when to the English parsons were added American

Quakers and Norwegian Lutherans. The Evangelical statistics of all of

them in 1892 were most imposing. Thus the Independents claimed 51,033

and the Norwegians 47,681, with 37,500 children in their schools. The

names were on the lists, but the school-houses were often empty, and in

the interim between the different official visits of the inspectors

often no instruction was given. Against this the Catholics had only 22

chapels and 25 schools, and they were mostly in the neighborhood of

Tananarivo.

France was subsequently the dominant influence in Madagascar but, as in

the mother country religion was tabooed, there was little concern about

it in the colonies. When the Franco-Prussian war showed the weakness of

France, the respect for the alleged religion of France vanished,

especially when a crusade began against the Catholic schools.

Nevertheless the faithful continued to grow in number, and in 1882 they

were reckoned at 80,000 with 152 churches, 44 priests, 527 teachers and

2,000 pupils. War broke out in 1881, and the missionaries were expelled

but returned after hostilities ceased, and found that their neophytes,

under the guidance of a princess of the royal blood, had held firmly to

their religion, notwithstanding the closing of the schools and the

sacking of the churches. After these troubles, conversions increased,

and in 1894 there were 75 Jesuit priests in the island; and, besides the

primary schools which had increased in number, a college and nine high

schools as well as a printing house and two leper hospitals were

erected. Added to this, an observatory was built and serious work began

in geographical research, cartography, ethnography, natural history,

folklore and philology.

Just at the height of this prosperity, a persecution began. The

missionaries were expelled, their buildings looted, and the observatory

wrecked. In 1896 the bishop counted 108 of his chapels which had been

devastated, but in 1897 General Galieni arrived, and the queen vanished

from the scene. After that the faith prospered, and in the year 1900

alone there were 94,998 baptisms. In 1896 Propaganda divided Madagascar

into three vicariates: one entrusted to the Lazarists; another to the

Fathers of the Holy Ghost; and a third to the Jesuits of the provinces

of Toulouse and Champagne. In the Jesuit portion, the latest statistics

give 160,080 Christians and 170,000 catechumens, with 74 priests, 8

scholastics and 11 lay-brothers. The chief difficulty to contend with is

the gross immorality of the people who are, in consequence, almost

impervious to religious teaching, and at the same time easily captured

by the money that pours into the country from England and Norway. The

French officials, of course, cannot be expected to further the cause of

Catholicity.

In 1877, when Bishop Ricards of Grahamstown in South Africa asked the

Jesuits to accept the Zambesi Mission, Father Weld ardently took up the

work, and in April, 1879, Father Depelchin, a Belgian, started from

Kimberly, with eleven companions for Matabeleland, over which King Lo

Benguela ruled. It was a five months' journey and the missionaries did

not arrive at the royal kraal until September 2. But as the prospects of

conversion of the much-married king and his followers were not

particularly bright, only one part of the expedition remained with Lo

Benguela, while two others struck for the interior. There several of the

strongest missionaries sickened and died. The work went on, however, for

ten weary years when the king told them to stop teaching religion and

show the people how to till the soil. Otherwise they must go. They

accepted the offer, of course, for it got them a better means of

imparting religious instruction.

Then a quarrel broke out between the British, the Portuguese, the Boers

and Lo Benguela for the possession of Mashonaland. The British as usual

won the fight, but when Cecil Rhodes came to the kraal, to arrange

matters, Lo Benguela ordered all the whites out of his dominion and the

Fathers withdrew. A new difficulty then arose between the English and

Portuguese, and the mission was divided between Upper and Lower

Zambesi, the latter being assigned to the Portuguese Jesuits. There was

trouble with the natives of both sections for some time, and then the

Anglo-Boer war broke out, so that for twenty-five years very little

apostolic progress was made. In Upper Zambesi or Rhodesia, as it is

called, there are at present 40 Jesuit priests and 24 brothers, and 3

missionaries of Mariannhill, with 115 nuns, 20 churches or chapels, and

30 schools of which 26 are for natives, and about 5,000 Catholics.

Naturally speaking the result scarcely warrants the outlay but the

purpose is supernatural and intelligible only from that point of view.

In Lower Zambesi, which was given to the Portuguese Jesuits, there have

been no troubles because it is garrisoned by Portuguese soldiers; the

four stations in that district with their thirty-five Fathers were doing

splendid work when the Portuguese revolution occurred; the Jesuits were

then expelled, but twenty-six Fathers of the Divine Word took their

place.

The early days of the Zambesi mission evoked splendid manifestations of

the old heroic spirit of the Society. Thus we read of one of the

missionaries, a Father Wehl, who was separated from his companions and

wandered for twenty-six days in the bush, luckily escaping the wild

beasts and finally falling into the hands of some Kaffirs who were about

to put him to death, when he was saved by the opportune arrival of an

English gold-hunter. But starvation and disease had shattered his health

and his mind was gone. Six months afterwards he died.

Meantime his two companions Father Law and Brother Hedley found shelter

among the natives, but had to live in a clay hut which was a veritable

oven. They both fell sick of fever; little or no food was given them,

and they slowly starved to death. They lay along side of each other,

neither being able to assist his companion, and when finally the Father

breathed his last, all the poor lonely brother could do was to place a

handkerchief on the face, but when he removed the covering in the

morning, he found that the rats had been eating the flesh. The dead

missionary lay there for some time because the superstitious natives

would not touch the corpse; when finally a rope was tied around it, they

dragged it out of the hut and left it in the forest. For three weeks

after this horrible funeral the poor brother had to fight off the rats

that were attacking himself; at last the chief took pity on him and had

him carried on a litter to a band of other missionaries who were

approaching. When his friends saw him they burst into tears. He had not

changed his clothes for five months and they were in tatters. His whole

body was covered with sores and ulcers and the wounds were filled with

vermin. He was in a state of stupor when he arrived, but strange to say

he recovered. His dead companion, the priest, had been a naval officer,

and was a convert to the Faith and the grandson of one of the lord

chancellors of England.

The Congo mission was organized by the Belgium Jesuits in 1885, under

the auspices of Leopold II of Belgium, who had established the Congo

Free State. His majesty requested the Fathers to assist him, but he gave

them no financial aid whatever, though he was pointedly asked to do so.

The Congo Free State begins 400 miles from the Atlantic ocean and

extends to Central Africa. Leopold's plan was to abolish slavery within

the boundaries of this domain; then to make the adult male population

his soldiers, and meantime to place the orphans and abandoned children

in asylums which the missionaries would manage. Some of these

establishments were to be supported from the public revenues, others by

charity. The whole hope of the mission was in these orphanages, for

nothing could be expected from the adult population. The boys were to be

taught a trade and then married at the proper time. These households

were to be visited and supervised by the missionaries.

It was an excellent plan, but it was opposed by the Belgian

anti-clericals, who objected to giving so much power to priests. A

number of English Protestants also busied themselves in spreading

calumnies about these settlements and brought their accusations to

court, where sentence was frequently given without hearing the accused.

The charges were based on alleged occurrences in three out of the

forty-four mission stations. The persecution became so acute that the

Jesuits appealed to the king and received the thanks of his majesty and

the government for the work they had performed, but the calumnies were

not retracted, until May 26, 1906, when a formal document was issued by

the Free State declaring that it greatly esteemed the work performed by

the Catholic missionaries in the civilization of the State. In the

following year on May 22, it added: "Since it is impossible to do

without the missionaries in the conversion of the blacks, and as their

help is of the greatest value in imparting instruction, we recommend

that the mission be made still more efficacious by granting them a

subsidy for the upkeep of their institutions." At the beginning of 1913,

the Jesuits had seven stations and forty missionaries. In spite of all

this, however, the work of systematic calumniation still continues.

The great war of 1914 brought absolute ruin on all the missions of Asia

and Africa. Thus France called to the army every French priest or lay

brother who was not crippled by age and infirmity, and made him fight in

the ranks as a common soldier or a stretcher bearer in the hospital or

on the battlefield. This was the case not only with the Jesuits, but

with other religious orders and the secular priesthood. Nor was this

call to the colors restricted to those who were in the French colonies;

it affected all priests or brothers of French birth who were laboring in

Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Belgian Congo, Angola, Zambesi, Canada, Haiti,

the United States or South America. Sixty priests or brothers had to

leave Japan. Out of forty-three missionaries of the Society of African

Missions who were in Egypt, half had to leave. Of the twenty-two who

were on the Ivory Coast sixteen were mobilized. Indeed, four bishops

were summoned to the ranks, Mgrs. Moury of the Ivory Coast, Terrien of

Benin, Perros of Siam, and Hermel of Haiti. There were at the outbreak

of the war thirty-five Jesuits from the Levant in the army, besides

others from Madagascar, Madura and China.