Priests and laymen in Martyrs' pageant

CAMPION WILL RIDE AGAIN .
A parish turns back the calendar
BL. EDMUND CAMPION will ride on horseback through the streets of London this Sunday, when a parish, playing its part in honouring those 40 martyrs whose cause is being advanced, turns back the calendar some 400 years.
Bl. Edmund, a notice on his hat "Campion the seditious Jesuit" will be riding in a large and colourful pageant proces
sion arranged by the parish of the Most Precious Blood, The Borough, and showing incidents in the lives of the martyrs.
Scenes will show their courage and their fear, their humour, gentleness and steadfastness: the emphasis being not only on their sufferings and death.
Benedictines, Jesuits, Franciscans, Augustinians, will walk in the procession in the place of those of their Orders who died for their Faith.
Six Jesuit novices will be walking along reading John Gerard's autobiography which Gerard (not himself a martyr) wrote for the encouragement of the Jesuit novices of his day.
Fr. John Coventry, the Jesuit Provincial, will walk in the procession in memory of 131, Robert Southwell, S.J.
Children carrying palm branches and dressed in long white albs will represent the three Carthusian Prior-martyrs.
Scenes on floats will represent John Arundel recovering the head of 131. Cuthbert Mayne at Wadebridge; stone weights suspended above Bl. Margaret Clitherow; and Nicholas Owen will be seen constructing his hiding holes.
The procession which starts from St. Joseph's School at 3.30 p.m. will pass the site of the old Marshalsea prison where four of the martyrs were imprisoned. Benediction will be given in Redcross Way Gardens.
The pageant is being held, points out the parish priest of The Borough, Mgr. Anthony Reynolds, not to rouse old controversies, nor to make comparisons between the sufferings of the Catholics and those of the Protestants . . . but to bring to the notice of our fellow-countrymen, priests and laymen, whose lives and deaths can evoke only admiration.
"Their lives are not known sufficiently by our own people and still less by our separated brethren . • ." he says.
ALTHOUGH the Padley Martyrs are not among the "40" whose cause is going forward at the present time, a particularly large crowd went to Padley chapel at Grindley, Derbyshire, last week. Bishop Ellis of Nottingham told the pilgrims that their own martyrs were among those venerables whose names would conic forward at a later date. Mgr. J. Dinn, of St. Marie's, Sheffield, preached. Benediction was given at the restored chapel of Padley Manor and afterwards pilgrims venerated the altar of these martyrs, Nicholas Garlick and Robert
Ludlam, priests who were arrested there and executed at Derby.
PONTIFICAL Mass, sung by Bishop Brunner of Middlesbrough at St. Wilfrid's, York, will be part of this coming Sunday's pilgrimage in honour of Bl. Margaret Clitherow. Dom Hugh Aveling 0.S.B,, of Ampleforth, will preach.
IN preparation for Sunday (24th) the anniversary of the martyrdom of 131. John Boste, the parish of St. Lawrence, Newcastle-onTyne, has been making a novena to him and his fellow-martyrs for the cure of two sisters in the parish who are suffering from muscular distrophy and said to be incurable.
Bishop Cunningham of Hexham and Newcastle will give Benediction at the place of HI. John's martyrdom at Durham on Sunday at 3 p.m.
ST. JOHN VIANNEY'S parish in Blackburn is a new one, they have no church or school, but they have been quick off the mark to honour these 40 Martyrs. Back on Martyrs Sunday pilgrims went to the church of St. Mary at Samlesbury to venerate the relic of Bl. John Southworth, one of the "40".
A visit was made also to Samlesbury Hall where martyr-priests used to shelter and hide in a
secret place in the rafters. Bl. Edmund Campion hid in the Hall and said Mass there. When the hiding place was discovered a priest was captured there in hiding and put to death on the spotwithout "trial". His name has not been recorded.
ON August 14 Hexham and Newcastle pilgrims will gather at the ancient chapel of St. Catherine in Hylton Castle Grounds, near Sunderland. Here, Bl. John Boste. one of the "40" said Mass and administered the sacraments in secret to the Catholics of the neighbourhood. Here, too, the Jesuit Martyr Fr. Holtby was known, and possibly Bl. Ralph Corby, S.J.
The pilgrimage, arranged by the C.Y.M.S., will walk from the new chapel on the Hylton Castle Housing Estate to the old chapel and will then go on by bus to Corby Hall, the Jesuit Retreat House to honour Bt. Henry Morse, Si., who worked in Northumberland and Durham.
SUNDAY, August 28, will be another pilgrimage day when the Worcestershire Council of the C.Y.M.S. arrange the annual pilgrimage to Harvington Hall, near Kidderminster. This pilgrimage, in honour of Bl. John Wall, also commemorates the tri-centenary of Harvington chapel, High Mass will be sung in the open air at 4.30 p.m. Fr. Clifford Howell, S.J., will preach.
PILGRIMAGES in the Salford diocese in the past few weeks -arranged by the Catholic Truth Society-have included visits to OVERTON-ON-DEE (31. Richard Gwynn), TOWNLEY HALL (priests hiding places and memories of Bl. Thomas Whittaker), BARLOW HALL and places connected with Bl. Ambrose Barlow, STONE (connected with Ven. Dominic Barberi) and SAMLESBURY (B1. John Southworth).
THE Vice-postulators of the Cause state this week that supplies of the prayer leaflets which had been delayed, will be distributed in the next three weeks.
Statuettes of several of the Forty Martyrs including Margaret Clitherow, Robert Southwell. Philip Howard and Ralph Sherwin, can be bought from the Guildshop, Walsingham, or from Burns and Oates for.7s. 6d. each.
Twenty-seven more petitions have been received asking for prayers for particular people whose illness or infirmity is said to be incurable.
Four letters of thanksgiving have been received in thanksgiving for nine favours.
A REMARKABLE expression of
devotion to the Cause of the Forty Martyrs took place last Sunday in the North Wales village of Trawsfynnyd, birthplace of Bl. John Roberts.
Trawsfynnyd is difficult to get at for it is far from any big town. Bishop Petit hoped for 500 people to take part in the pilgrimage, but. in fact, nearly 2,000 thronged the village and they were nearly all from North Wales.
There were thirty-six coachloads, many cars, and some people on foot though the weather threatened and there was one fierce downpour while Mass was being sung outside the farmhouse where Bl. John was born.
13I. John was a Benedictine. so the celebrant was a Benedictine, Fr. Arthur Holman. 0.5.8.. Prior of Downside.
Present. too, were Bishop Petit of Menevia. the Abbot of Caldey, Mgr. John Mostyn (Canon of St. Peter's, Rome), Mgr. Karkowski. Mgr. Cashman (Vicar General of Menevia), and some 30 local priests.
Jesuit students from Heythrop provided servers and choir and the special preacher was Fr. Patrick Crowley, who addressed the crowd in Welsh and in English.