these religious men, who have so long been abused, spit upon, and calumniated by the anti-Christian press with a malice which no authority has ever attempted to restrain – who are devoted day by day to the hatred and violence of the mob, as though they were an association of malefactors – that these religious are esteemed and venerated in the highest degree by the clergy and by every class of the faithful, and that they are in every way most worthy of it. Their conduct is exemplary; their teaching can only be blamed by ignorance and bad faith. Many of them belong to the most distinguished families of the country. The house of superior education which they carry on with such brilliant success at Lille, was entrusted to them – I may almost say, forced on them – by fathers of families who had themselves been brought up by them, and who were determined to provide for their children an education which their own experience taught them to value. I fulfil a duty of conscience and of honor in addressing to you these simple and respectful observations."
The testimony of the Archbishop of Lyons will be of special interest. Cardinal Caverot writes: "It is the privilege of the children of St. Ignatius to be in the front of every battle. I know how hatred, and still more how ignorance and prejudice, have accumulated calumnies against the Society. But I owe it to the truth to declare here, that in the course of a ministry of well-nigh fifty – years twenty as priest, thirty as bishop – I have been able to satisfy myself, and I know that these worthy and zealous servants of God have well deserved the distinction given to the Society by the Church, when she proclaimed it, in the
