FROM THE FILES 80

YEARS AGO
Political bishop
The letter of His Lordship the Bishop of Salford in which he called upon the Catholic electors of Middleton to support the Unionist candidate has, we regret to say, evoked a very great deal of feeling amongst the Catholic and Irish electors.
His Lordship, it seems, endeavoured to make out that the Liberal Party had grown cold on the question of Home Rule, and the utterance altogether was rather of a political nature than of an ecclesiastical character.
* * * ' In an Eastern paper we .rind two items from Rome in the sine column, One is headed "The Pope Seriously Ili," and the other "The Pope in Excellent Health." The reader is left to choose discreetly between the two.
I 40 YEARS
AGO Beer appeal
-The Cathedral In Our Time" is the slogan of Archbishop's House, but Sir Edwin Lutyens predicts that at the present rate of progress a hundred years will pass before Liverpool Cathedral is complete.
Alternatively, he suggests: -If every Catholic in Ibe Liverpool archdiocese gave the price of a glass of beer towards the fund each week the cathedral would be finished within la years.
Bishop kidnapped
A bishop and eight missionaries have been abducted by bandits in the Province of Hopei. The report says I hat Mgr Hubert Schreyer', of the Viricentian Missionaries, and eight of his priests three French, tut' Dutch, an Austrian, a Czech and a Portuguese — are being held by the outlaws.
At the same time, details have been received, through the Fides Agency, of the kidnapping of Fr Gerald Donovan, a young American Maryknoll missionary, who was carried off from his mission near Fushun, Manchukuo, on Oetpberon5o.
Fr D van
was at Benediction, wmhisisci oh n wchapelas b e n bg ye oannd otuhcetre d m ii ssn tohne.
ary, when he saw a man enter the sacristy. He went to the sacristy to see what the man wanted and found himself face to face not with one, hut with two men, both pointing
guns At at thhn. eisla me moment, an altarboy entered the sacristy to replenish the coals in the thurible. I he bandits took Fr Donovan arid the hoy and left the mission by the back gate, which gave them easy access to the mountain pass. -I he priest was last seen disappearing over the mountain with an escort of five bandits; he was still wearing his cassock and surplice. The surplice was later found on the mountain side, badly torn. The thurible, which the altar-boy was holding when taken by the outlaws, was also found.
The bandits sent hack the boy with a note asking for a ransom of S50,000. The Japanese military, aided by a corps of 2,000 volunteer police, have spread a net throughout the territory to stop the bandits.
the two Franciscan missionaries, Fr Epiphanius Pegoraro and Bro Pasquale, taken captive over two years ago when Reds destroyed the Catholic mission and leper asylum at Mosimien, in Schwan Province, are still alive in the hands of the Reds.