ledge of the Divine
favors, and in witness of our paternal benevolence to you, Venerable
Brethren, to the Clergy, and to all the people committed to your faith
and vigilance, we lovingly bestow in the Lord the Apostolic Benediction.

Given in Rome, at St. Peter's, on the first day of November, in the year
of Our Lord MDCCCLXXXV., of Our Pontificate the Eighth.

LEO PP. XIII.

* * * * *

VENERABLE BEDE records: "It was customary for the English of all ranks
to retire for study and devotion to Ireland, where they were hospitably
received, and supplied gratuitously with food, books and instruction."

His Eminence John Cardinal McCloskey.

ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK, CARDINAL PRIEST OF THE TITLE OF SANCTA MARIA
SUPRA MINERVAM.

The waning days of the year 1885 witnessed the peaceful decline, and the
happy Christian death, of one of the most remarkable men of the Irish
race in this country. His glorious obsequies in the magnificent
Cathedral which he completed and dedicated, produced a deep impression
on all classes, nor was there ever witnessed a greater and more
unanimous concord than pervaded the tributes of respect from the press
and pulpit of the land to this prince of the Catholic Church.

In a modest dwelling on Fort Greene, Brooklyn, fronting the road that
led to Newtown Turnpike, John McCloskey was born on the 10th of March,
1810, while deep snow covered the fields far and wide, and ice choked
the rapid current of the East River. His father, George McCloskey, had
emigrated to this country from the county Derry, some years before, with
his wife, and by industry, thrift and uprightness was increasing the
little store of means which he had brought to the New World. The boy was
not endowed with a rugged frame, and few could promise either mother or
child length of days. Yet she lived to behold him a bishop.

Brooklyn was then but a suburb of the little city of New York; it did
not number five thousand inhabitants, and the scanty flock of Catholics
had neither priest nor shrine. The child of George McCloskey, was taken
to St. Peter's Church, New York, to be baptized, by the venerable Jesuit
Father Anthony Kohlmann. As he grew up he crossed the East River on
Sundays with his parents to attend that same church, then the only one
in New York; it has just celebrated the centenary of its organization,
as a congregation, and the life of the great Cardinal, which faded away
just