Welsh Journals

AMONG all the half or wholly forgotten figures of Church history in the past hun- dred years, few are more worthy of re- membrance than Father Henry Hughes, of the 1 hird Order of St. Dominic. He was born at Caernarvon in 1833, the son of an Anglican minister, and was baptised Henry Bailey, to which names he subsequently added that of Mary; the Hughes' were an old Welsh family of the county and his mother was an Irish woman. His father died while Henry was still young, and with his brothers he was brought up under the guardianship of a minister and a dea- con of the Calvinistic Methodist denomination. His guardians, nevertheless, permitted him to go to an Anglican training college, where the came under the influence of the "High Church" party, and in 1850 he became a Catholic. Having a vocation to the priesthood, he was sent to the English College at Lisbon, where, in due course, he was ordained, and entered on a brilliant career as a professor and preacher in Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Italy. His wide experience and command of languages-he spoke no less than twelve-made him prominent among the lesser figures of the Vatican Council; and his missionary zeal caused him to be sent as vicar- apostolic of the missions to the Abandu in Africa. He was about to be promoted to the episcopate, when his health failed, and he was appointed to the charge of the Portuguese community in Bos- ton, U.S.A. Here he found ample cutlet for his apostolic energy he worked among the Red In- dians and founded convents of the Third Order Regular of St. Dominic in Canada and South America. But the heart of Fr. Hughes had always been in his native Wales, and when in April, 1885, he received from Bishop Knight of Shrewsbury an invitation to work in North W,ales (which was then in that diocese), he accepted with enthusiasm. Fr. Hughes was a true Dominican, and from the outset he intended that his active labours should be grounded in the contemplative life, buttressed and braced by regular monastic observance. So he set about acquiring a site for a monastery, and by the generosity of two benefactors he was soon enabled to acquire the little island of St. Tudwal, off the coast of Lleyn in Caernarvonshire. It was a fertile spot, but uninhabited. a mile from the mainland and two miles from Abersoch, the near- est village; it has fragmentary remains of a chapel and monastery which were originally founded by St. Tudwal, a British bishop of Tré- guier, in the sixth century. Fr. Hughes was duly A CELTIC APOSTLE by Donald Attwater commissioned by Bishop Knight in the following terms "Edmund, by the grace of God and favour of the Apostolic See, Bishop of Shrewsbury, The Rev. Fr. Henry Bailey Mary Hughes, T.S.D., Missionary Apostolic, has my sanction and ap- proval for his work of restoring the monastery on St. Tudwal's Island, for the Third Order of St. Dominic, and making it a centre for missions to the Welsh of North Wales;* and I pray God to bless all who may aid him in any way towards the furtherance of his holy work. Birkenhead, 18th November, 1886. + Edmund, Bishop of Shrews- bury." Shortly before, Fr. Hughes had written to a friend — "I should be very glad if when you go to Brittany, you could bring me one or two Breton youths from Finistere who know Brezoneg thor- oughly, as I could easily teach them Welsh; let them be advanced enough to go into philosophy at least. One or another of the Breton bishops would, I dare say, let you try for volunteers among the students of his seminary. Brittany is the most thoroughly Catholic part of France. Saint Tudwal, who was for some time Bishop of S. Malo, is known in Brittany as Tugdual, Gudual or Gurwal. His relics were translated to Ghent in Flanders during the wars of the League, as far as I can recollect. Breton students would have the advantage of being- thoroughly and most devoutly Catholic; and, as for their language, I can under- stand most of it myself to read and, when I was at Rome in '69 and '78, I saw and spoke with some Bretons who were there as Zouaves, and we had not much difficulty in getting along when we got used to one another." Fr. Hughes with his companions, two secular tertiaries and a boy, intended to start living on the island at once. But winter was at hand and It is perhaps well to remind my readers that Catholicism regards the Christian revelation as a complex of absolute truth touching faith and morals, of which the custody has been entrusted to a Church. One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, whose members together with the souls in Pur- gatory and the blessed in Heaven are united with Jesus Christ in his Mystical Body. It fol- lows that those not in communion with that Church are not visibly united to that Body and •hat Head as Christ intended them to be. It is therefore the duty of the Church to send pastors to bring in these other sheep, non-Catholic Christians, that all may be in one Fold with one Shepherd. The idea of mere sectarian rivalry is quite foreign to the true spirit of Catholicism.