About the Foreign Missions

Extract

One of the most satisfactory features in the programme of the Birmingham Catholic Congress is the announcement of the great missionary exhibition at Bingley Hall. We had a missionary exhibition on a smaller scale at Westminster last year. As a first effort of the kind it was very creditable to its promoters, though it had the defects of a first attempt. Its scope was necessarily limited. It was rather a group of small exhibitions bearing on the work of some of our mission organisations, than a well-organised demonstration of Catholic missionary enterprise as a whole. We may hope that the Bingley Hall Exhibition will show a considerable advance in this respect; and further, that it will be the first of a series of Congress Exhibitions, representing more and more efficiently at each of these Catholic gatherings the development of the foreign missions.

Speaking of the missions at the Liverpool National Catholic Congress, Cardinal Bourne said :

‘There is, in truth, solid evidence that the work of the Foreign Missions is winning for itself a much more important place in the hearts of the Catholics of England and Wales, and every effort must be made to maintain and increase this interest. It is more than likely that before long the Apostolic See will call upon the whole Catholic world for a more widespread, more completely developed, more effective, and fully international organization of the missionary activities of the Church. If, and when that moment comes, the Catholics of England and Wales must not be wanting in zeal, devotion and generosity.’

This forecast has been amply verified. The Holy See has made its appeal to the zeal and generosity of the Catholic world, and shown its appreciation of the work of the Propagation of the Faith by transferring the central direction of the Association to Rome itself.