NEW TREASURE ON SOUTH BANK

Businessmen may help cathedral
A GREAT public appeal for funds to rebuild St. George's 1-Cathedral, Southwark, destroyed by bombs, was launched yesterday—to non-Catholics as well as Catholics—two days after Bishop Cowderoy had opened a new church at Sidley, the 22nd of his four and a half years' episcopate, and the second this week.
The immediate aim is that 1958 should see the main structure of the cathedral completed and ready for use. The cost will be £360,000. of which £120,000 has already been raised.
Later, 1240.000 more will he needed to add a daily chapel, extra sacristies. baptistries and a tower.
Catholics in Ireland have given f45,000. Now the committee of the building fund is concentrating its drive on the faithful of the diocese and the general public of the borough in which the new cathedral will stand.
Industrialists of Southwark, Catholic and non-Catholic, are being asked to help to restore Pugin's cathedral as a centre of spiritual and cultural life in Southwark and a treasure in Portland stone on the South Bank.
Mr. George Isaacs. a Southwark M.P., former Minister of Labour, and an intimate friend of the late Archbishop Amigo, is a member of the building fund committee.
As the businessmen of London have contributed to the restoration of two Wren churches, so they are being asked to give permanence to the work of the great architect of the 19th century.
There are nearly 350 limited companies in Southwark and the appeal to them is to raise the dignity of the neighbourhood by giving back to Southwark what was, in the words Of the Mayor, "the spiritual and social centre for many of our citizens and a place of pilgrimage and arehitectura] interest for people from miles around and even overseas."
The cathedral will provide for between 2.000 and 3,000 people, numbers of whom have to attend Mass at present outside the cathedral parish.