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Show THE WORLD'S OLDEST BISH OP. Archbishop Murphy of Hobart, Tasmania, the oldest working prelate in Christendom, has entered on his 93rd year in good health and spirits. Sir Robert Strickland, the governor of Tasmania, and a representative deputation visited the venerable prelate to tender congratulations and good wishes. Dr. Murphy in his reply said he was born on the day on which the battle of Waterloo was fought, and around that fact a certain amount of fiction had gathered. He had read in one account of his career that he was the son of' a soldier who fought at Waterloo, and that he himself was actually born on the battlefield. Unfortunately for that picturesque pictur-esque legend, his father was not a soldier and his mother was never outside Ireland. Archbishop Murphy is a record prelate in other respects than age. He is the only prelate now alive who was appointed ap-pointed by Pope Gregory XVI. the predecessor of Pius IX.' In 1846, when he was consecrated as a bishop for India, he was the youngest prelate of that period only 31 and today, after his lapse of sixty-one years, he is the oldest, so that he is the holder of a double episcopal record. Mgr. Murphy passed twenty years in India as Bishop of Hyderabad, Hydera-bad, and had an anxious time during the mutiny. In 1865, for reasons of health, he was translated to Hobart, and the change of climate has evidently agreed with him. As Dr. Murphy was ordained priest in 1838, if he lives until next year he will have yet another jubilee to celebrate, the seventieth seven-tieth anniversary of his ordination. The archbishop is a humorist 'and the fact may account in some measure for his remarkable longevity. long-evity. He was held in high esteem by the late Pope XIII. At the age of 79 Dr. Murphy visited Rome, and at the close of a cordial audience Pope Leo remarked re-marked : "Well, my dear brother, I suppose this is our last meetinf in this world." .But five years later Dr. Murphy thought he would have one more run around the globe, and presented himself at the Vatican as pert and smiling as of yore. He reminded re-minded Pope Leo of his pesimistic prophecy, and slyly added: "So, you see, you are not infallible, after all." This is said to have been one of the few occasions on which Pope Leo laughed heartily. Canadian' Freeman. f |