OCR Text |
Show Catholic Progress In India. (By Rev. W. S. Kress.) Hilarion Gil. in the January number of the able Spanish review, Razon y Fe, gives some interesting statistics on Catholic missions in India and Ceylon. Out of the 300,000,000 inhabitants that these countries lay claim to, 200.000,000 are Buddhists and 62,000,000 Mohammedans. Mohamme-dans. The fanatical Mohammedanh are the hardest of all unbelievers to convert. con-vert. Next to them coma the Buddhists, because of their barriers of caste. Ceylon has 4,000,000 inhabitants: in 1885 a little over 5:00.000 were Catholics; there are now more than 300,000. There were fewer than 20,000 children in Catholic Cath-olic schools in 18S5; today there are upward up-ward of 50.000. There were twenty-six priests in 1830: there are more than 200 at present. The seminary established by Leo XIII at Kandy in 1S94 compares favorably with the best of Europe. French Jesuits have been laboring in the mission of Madura since 1836. Today To-day that diocese counts 250,000 Catholics and is served by forty-five native priests, besides seventy-nine French Jesuits. More than 10,000 pagan adults and children were baptized last year, besides 141) conversions from heresies. The College of St. Joseph at Trichinopo-ly Trichinopo-ly had 1.753 students last year: fifteen Protestants. eighty-eight Mohammedans. Mohamme-dans. 662 Catholics and 900 Pagans. In the four diocese north of Madura the faithful increased by upward of 76.-000 76.-000 from 1S73 to 18S6. There are at present 313,898 Catholics, served by 273 priests, fifty-nine of the latter native-born. native-born. In the neighborhood of Goa the number of Catholics is not far under a million. There is an abundance of priests, mostly natives, and the Catholics, Catho-lics, as a rule, are well to do. The most satisfactory' mission is that of Calcutta, which was placed under the charge of Belgium Jesuits in 1862. They began with 7,000 faithful and have at the present time 101,008 Catholics, 79,-549 79,-549 Catechumens under instruction, and. they employ more than 500 catechists. The College" of St. Francis Xavier at Calcutta counts 900 students. Besides thousands of Pagans. 1,500 Protestants were converted in this diocese last year. The Jesuit college at Bombay can boast 1,700 students. In all of India there has been a steady progress during the past century. In 1800 there were less than 500,000 Catholics: by 1900 the number had grown to 2.300.000. There are now 1,600 native priests laboring faithfully and in complete harmony with their 1,000 European brethren. Half of the 3,000 Sisters are also natives. na-tives. In the western half of Indo-China the Catholic population is small, 130,000 out of 20,000,000. Fifty years ago there were hardly more than 10,000. The eastern east-ern half of Indo-China is under French influence and the Chinese race predominates. predom-inates. This part of Asia might well be named the "Church of the Martyrs." There was a fierce persecution under Emperor Minh-Menh (1820-1841). There was another in 1848; another from 1S56 to 1862. During this last persecution twenty-eight Dominicans and 100 Chinese Chi-nese priests were martyred; 100 Christian Chris-tian villages were destroyed; 10,000 Christians were imprisoned, half of whom were put to death; some beheaded, behead-ed, others hanged, others starved, others gorad by elephants, and still others buried alive. Forty thousand more perished per-ished in consequence of being driven from their homes. There were persecutions persecu-tions in 1874, in 1883 and 1S84, and again in 1885. Were the persecutors able to "tear out the noxious plant of Christianity Chris-tianity by the roots," as they declared they would? On the contrary, the church prospered all the more. Before the persecutions there were 400,000 Catholics in this district; today there are 930,000, and of 1,026 priests 603 are natives. |