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Show Spokane, Wash. (Special Correspondence.) When Father Aloysius M. Felchi, S. J., of Gonzoga college, Spokane, Wash., passed to his final reward at the break of dawn on December 11, there died a son of one of the noblest families in Italy, a true apostle of . the Catholic Church and a man beloved by all. He was 75 years of age, born in Rome on November 25, 1&34, and had been a priest more than forty years. He joined the Society of Jesus on . January 1, 1878. For more than a quarter of a century he was engaged in missionary work in Washington, Montana and Idaho, traveling during the pioneer days over the sparsely settled country, bringing the consolations of religion to those who had no other means of receiving them than what his visits furnished. The. amount of good done in this Way by the zealous priest can never be fuKy estimated. It was at the cost of great hardships and suffering that he accomplished accom-plished his work. He was obliged t share in the privations of those whoi: he visited. Indians as well as whites the poor and the outcast, railroad men and miners, farm hands and toilers in the woods, people of all classes and con- itions came in for a share of hi fatherly solicitude, and the little children chil-dren loved and revered fiim. Social courtesies were extended to him by the railroad officials, who had come to know the value of his work among the employes, many of whom he kept in the path of duty by his exhortation exhor-tation and example. When it is known that during all these years Father Felchi labored under un-der infirmities that rendered him practically prac-tically an invalid, his courage and patience pa-tience must have been heroic. Only a few weeks previous to the final Illness he-. completed the beautiful parish church in Newport, Wash., one of the many that he built up and sustained sus-tained in the great northwest. Nor had all his labors been confined to the Pacific Pa-cific region. Long before the civil war he labored in the Carolinas, where he built the first Catholic church for negroes ne-groes in the United States. |
