Catholic Information From Abroad

VATICAN CITY
PRIVATE AUDIENCES. On Christmas Eve the Holy Father neceived in private audience Cardinal Hlond, Archbishop of Warsaw and Primate of Poland, Admiral Ellery Stone, U.S.N., Allied Chief Commissioner, and a group of young Catholic Actionists presented by Dr. Maria Rimoldi, president of the Central Union of Women's Catholic Action, and S. Maria Righerd. Officers of the Papal Guard. On Friday last, the Holy Father received in private audience the diplomatic representatives accredited to the Holy See in order of seniority. In the first audience, which included ten Ambassadors, were M. Jacques Maritain, French Ambassador to the Holy See, and the Portuguese and Spanish Ambassadors, On Saturday Dr. Joseph Walsh, Irish Ambassador, and Sir Francis D'Arey Osborne, Envoy Extraordinary for Great Britain, were among the eight diplomatic representatives received.
Among those persons received in private audience after Christmas were Miss Mabel Strickland, Mr. Hugo Newell, Mr. John Murphy. Mr. Gordon Hutchins, Mr. John Nolan, Miss Edna Coffey, Mrs. Stirling, and Cmdr. Burke.
THE POPE celebrated midnight Mass in the chapel of Saint Matilda, on the second floor of the Apostolic Palace, in the presence of members of the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Vatican and members of the Holy Father's own family.
FR. PERANTONI will discharge the functions of Vicar-General of the Order of the Friars Minor pending the election of a Minister-General at the next General Chapter, which is not due to be held for another four years.
M. CHARLES HELOU has been named the Lebanese Minister at the Vatican. He was formerly SecretaryGeneral of the Lebanese Catholic Action. The Lebanon is thus the first Near Eastern State ever to be represented at the Vatican.
AFRICA
THE 30th ANNIVERSARY of the death of Fr. Charles de Foucauld, in El Goka, in Algerian Africa, was marked by a Mass said by Mgr. George Mercier, Prefect Apostolic of Ghardaia, in the Sahara, in a small church near the tomb of Fr. de Foucauld. M. Edmond Michelet, former French Minister of the Army, flew to Africa for the occasion. Fr. de Fou amid, member of a well-known French aristocratic family, brilliant cavalry officer, and African explorer, entered a monastery in France at the age of 30, but desiring to return to Africa, he received permission to erect a hermitage at Tamanrasset where he spent his days in prayer, evangelising the natives. He was killed by plundering nomads who had revolted against France.
AUSTRIA The CATHOLIC CHANCELLOR, Leopold Figl, and President Karl Renner recently thanked publicly American Catholics for the generosity of their war relief donations to Austria, In recognition of this work the representative of the National Catholic Welfare War Relief Services, Mr. Thomas Fox, was presented with the first Cross of the Knights of Malta to be conferred in Austria since 1937.
BELGIUM CARDINAL VAN ROEY, Archbishop of Malinea, was recently present at a performonce of Israel in Egypt, by Handel, at the National Institute of Broadcasting. The Cardinal took a lively interest not only in the performance but also in the technical side of the transmission. The Cardinal recently formed a committee to organise Belgium relief to Austria's starving children. The committee includes Mgr. van Waegenherg, Count Carton de Wiart, and Baron Pierre Northomb. Under the scheme 500 children are due to arrive in Belgium shortly.
CHINA
ARCHBISHOP ANTON MERL the Apostolic inter-Nuncio, has presented his letters to General Chaing Kai-shek. He spoke of the good relations existing between the Holy See and the great Chinese people. He expressed the special affection of the Holy Father for the Church in China.
EGYPT BISHOP JULES GIRARD, VicarApostolic of the Delta of the Nile, on Sunday last celebrated the diamond jubilee of his ordination to the priesthood and the silver jubilee of his con secretion as Bishop in the church of San Marc de Choubra, in Cairo, in a ceremony presided over by the Apostolic Delegate, Archbishop Hughes. Mgr. Girard, a priest of the African Missions at Lyons, was born in 1863 and has been 58 years in missionary work in Egypt. He received a personally autographed letter of congratulation from the Pope on the occasion of his double jubilee.
FRANCE DR. HUGO OBERMAYER, distinguished anthropologist and professor at the University of Fribourg, in Switzerland, has just died at the age of 70. M. le Count Begouen, writing an appreciation of Dr. Obermayer in La Croix. says that through his death the Church suffered a notable 10$6.
INDIA
MGR. POTHACAMIJRY, Bishop of Bangalore, whose interview with a CATHOLIC Hertato correspondent was published in our issue of December 13, has given a talk over Vatican Radio, making substantially the same points. " The transfer of administrative power hi India to the Indian people is a favourable circumstance, and the transfer at present taking place will tako away the suspicion that Christianity b allied to the interests of various rulere and of Europeans," said Mgr. Potha
CaMiary.
The TRAVANCORE government's ban on the Catholic daily, The Malabar Mall, and The Herald. the weekly Catholic paper of Calcutta, are lifted under a new government order which repeals all " security measures." The papers had been banned 11 and 19 months ago respectively.
JAPAN
THE POPE has arranged for funds to be available for the relief of those made homeless by the recent severe earthquake in Southern Japan. The Pope has sent to the Japanese Government a telegram expressing his deep sympathy with the bereaved and the injured.
POLAND
FR. STEFANSKI, who was a teacher in a secondary school in Warsaw, has been sentenced to death by a Military Court in that city for alleged "Fascist " terrorism. This is the second death sentence in the course of a few weeks pronounced on Polish Catholic priest.. On November 22, Fe Jarkie
wicz, as already reported, was sentenced to death and other priests have received heavy penalties. Catholic weeklies are unable to discuss the cases of these priests. It is not known whether they are already executed, or are awaiting amnesty.
THIRTY-SEVEN Catholic writers published a declaration in the Warsaw Press on December 17 answering the much publicised interview of M. Bkrut concerning relations between the Church and the State. On December 20 the delegation of this group was received in Warsaw by M. Siena, socalled " President " of Poland. They condemned again the political conspiracy, but asked for more facilities to enlarge the Catholic Press and organise Catholic societies.
SPAIN
CARDINAL PLA-Y-DENIEL, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain, presided over the first meeting of the Archbishops of Spain since 1939, which was held in Madrid. Other members of the "M etr op °titan committee " which acts as the supreme council of Spanish Catholic Action attending the conference were the Archbishops of Burgos, Seville, Valencia, Valladolid, and Zaragoza, and Bishops representing the provinces of Santiago, Tarragona and Granada.
U.S.A.
The FIRST FEAST of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was kept with special solemnity throughout America on December 22 last. The Auxiliary Bishop of New York, after a solemn Pontifical Mass at the crystal shrine of the Saint in the chapel of the Mother Cabrini High School in New York, read a cablegram from the Pope to groups of pilgrims from all over the United States.
THE FOUNDER of the Catholic Deaf and Dumb Conference, a branch of the National Catholic Educational Association, in America, Fr. Ferdinand Moeller, S.J., the oldest Jesuit priest in the United States, died on December 19, one day after his 94th birthday, at the Jesuit Novitiate, Cincinnati. Fr. Moeller was the brother of Archbishop Moeller, of Cincinnati, and Mgr. Moeller, Chancellor of Cincinnati. Archbishop McNicholas, 0.P., was present at the Requiem.