Religion: Bathed Pages

Into the gold-mounted microphone of His Holiness Pope Pius XI, in Station HVJ of Vatican City, spoke last week Archbishop Carlo Salotti, secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, celebrating Mission Sunday. Through subsequent translation, the English, French, German and Spanish faithful could hear his words:

“More than once have I seen the tears of His Holiness bathe the pages scrawled by trembling hands of aged warriors in fields afar who confided to the father of Christendom their trials and anguish.

“Pius XI, who has hymned his finest cantos in exaltation of his missions, has given to the Apostolate an admirable impulse and his dictated forms which govern the new organization developing so solidly in every field. He loves missionaries intensely, aids them, defends them, sorrows with them in their misfortunes.”

In a gorge in the Chickaloon district of Alaska was found last week the body, head smashed and neck broken, of Father George Woodley, 29, Jesuit missionary, licensed air pilot. He had been hunting big game.