RECORD'AID FOR PRIESTS' TRAINING

IN an appeal for funds to help train priests for work in the Portsmouth diocese, Archbishop King, Bishop of Portsmouth, records that £1,972 was raised in a church collection made last year on the Feast of St. Edmund of Canterbury a record for any diocesan collection within memory.
"Your collection came within sight of being 50 per cent of the total receipts for this purpose received last year, which total was f3,918", the Archbishop said in a letter read in all churches in the Portsmouth diocese on Sunday.
Since the previous collection, £4,685 had been spent on clerical education in the diocese. Six students had entered seminaries in the autumn so that the diocese now had six training in Rome, three in Spain, six in Portugal, seven in England, and three in Ireland. The flow of candidates for the priesthood was "very steady" in the Portsmouth diocese, said Archbishop King.