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Show MERCIER NEVER LOST FAITH Persecuted Belgian Cardinal Always Confident That God Would Save the Unhappy Country. Cardinal Mercior, archbishop of Ma-lines, Ma-lines, Belgium, was not actually Imprisoned Im-prisoned by the Germans, but his freedom free-dom was restrained. His offense was the issuing of a pastoral lettej- to his reople in January, 101", in which he faid: "I have goi' through most of the places in my diocese which have been wasted. . . . What I hnve seen of the ruins and the ashes passes anything that, in spite of my most acute fears, I could ever have imagined. imag-ined. . . . Churches, schools, charitable char-itable institutions, hospitals, convents, to a considerable number, are unfit for-rise for-rise or are .in ruins. Whole village-have village-have almost disappeared. . . . (soil will save Belgium, my brothers, we canuot doubt it. Let us say, rather. He is saving" her. Is there a single patriot who does not feel that glory bps come to Belgium? Which of us would have the courage to tear out the last page of our history? Which of us can look without pride on the splendor of the lory that our murdered mur-dered country has won?" |