Staff Reporter
A RCHBISHOP MURPHY of Cardiff, calling -1-3Lon the 100,000 Catholics in his diocese to support a Elm. school building fund in 1962, said this week: " I am very confident from what I have seen of them during the comparatively short time I have been here, that my people will co-operate in this huge undertaking."
Speaking to the CATHOLIC HERALD, Archbishop Murphy said that of the Elm. to be spent on schools to be started this year, the Catholics in the Archdiocese would have to find about 30 per cent. The rest would come from State grants.
"I agree that fills represents about £3 per head of the Catholic population", Archbishop Murphy said. "But I am relying on the generosity of my people to give it."
Two years
The building programme will be spread over two years though it is foreseen that, with the rapid growth of the Archdiocese and the increasing need for new Catholic schools, a further building programme will have to be initiated next year.
To plan the mammoth building programme. Archbishop Murphy has personally visited over the past few months every local Education Authority in the Archdiocese.
The building programme agreed on is as follows : HEREFORD Primary School: MERTHYR TYDFIL Primary School;
MERTHYR TYDFIL Secondary School:
PONTYPOOL Secondary School: PORT TALBOT Secondary School: BARRY-PENARTH Secondary School; CYNTWELL (CARDIFF) Secondary School; Extensions to PORT TALBOT Primary School;
Extensions to CWMBRAN Allage School;
Extensions to ST. CADOC'S (CARDIFF) Primary School.
In a letter read in all churches of the Archdiocese, Archbishop Murphy said that a new page in the history of the Catholic Church was being wrien. "Pause before any new building site which you see. and it is a fifty-fifty chance that it is a new Catholic church or a new Catholic school."
With the new Education Act, he said, the Catholic Church has been given a chance and it is seizing it with both hands.
"I am sure when the history of the Church is written, it will be recognised that the fifties and the sixties of this century were the golden age in the development of the Catholic Church."
Trowel
Saying that already the Archdiocese had spent £592,640 on new schools and extensions. Archbishop Murphy said the exact cost of the 1962 programme was £931,662.
"That is my burden for the present year and more in the years to come," he added. "I am likely to have a trowel in my hand oftener than a crozier and all I can say is 'Thank God'."
Asking parish priests voluntarily to increase their levy if their parishioners have increased in numbers, Archbishop Murphy asked the people of the Archdiocese to contribute generously to the special Lenten collection for the building fund.
"See that even your children cooperate in this magnificent fight for our Catholic schools," he declared. "I know, only too well, the many demands on your purses. But this is a mothproof, rustless investment for the souls of our Catholic children."