ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND THE PHILIPPINES.
THE Catholic Mirror of Jan. 6, 1906, prints a portion of a letter from Archbishop Agius, the Delegate Apostolic in the Philippine Islands, written to "the Very Rev. F. Henry, Superior General of St. Joseph's Missionary Society of London, England," describing the conditions in those islands. He says: "There is a very large field of labor out here, hundreds of parishes are vacant, the whole population is Catholic, and entire provinces are at the mercy of schismatics and of Protestants who work with a zeal worthy of a better cause. I need not say, that the coming of your missionaries in sufficient numbers would be of great advantage to the Church here, and to our Holy Religion. It breaks my heart to see so many thousands of souls imploring for priests, and dying without the Sacraments. Your Fathers would have to come out at their own expense; at the present moment the Bishops can not afford to give any money as they have to struggle themselves to keep things going." When the friars were forced to go they despoiled the Filipinos, taking about $7,000,000, what this government paid for the ecclesiastical property, which ought to have gone to the people. Not our word for this, but that of Father Phelan of the Western Watchman, who says: "What a terrible chapter of Church history will be written when it comes to tell posterity how the poor church of the Philippines was despoiled by three religious orders. Far worse than the sack of the Church in England by the Tudors, or the plundering of the Church in Italy and France by the infidels is this spoliation of the Church in the Philippines by the Church's most favored sons." Now is the time to preach a pure Gospel to the people of the Philippines.