Journal de Voyage France-Italie-Palestine 1876-1877 , and: Mon Premier Voyage au Canada 1881-1882 by Par le Père Frédéric de Ghyvelde, O.F.M. (review) (1947)

246.BOOK REVIEWS reference and belongs in every catechetical library. Whether it could serve as text book for others than specialists, is a matter of opinion. Kilian J. Hennrich, O.F.M. Cap. Our Lady of Sorrows Friary, New York, New York. Journal de Voyage France-ltdie-Palestine 1876-1877. Par le Père Frédéric de Ghyvelde, O.F.M. (Collection Bon Père Frédéric No. 1.) Three Rivers, P.Q., Canada: Editions Bon Père Frédéric, 1946. Pp. 112. $0.50. Mon Premier Voyage au Canada 1881-1882. Par le Père Frédéric de Ghyvelde, O.F.M. (Collection Bon Père Frédéric No. 2.) Three Rivers: Editions Bon Père Frédéric, 1946. Pp. 54. $0.35. Relatively few friends of St. Francis in the United States are as yet aware of the striking possibility that within perhaps five years Holy Church may raise to the honor of Beatification a humble French friar who served God in North America during the last twenty-eight years of his saintly life, and who was generally looked upon by those who knew him as nothing less than another St. Francis in our times. Father Frédéric Jansoone, O.F.M., of Ghyvelde (Nord) in French Flanders, died in the odor of sanctity in Three Rivers on August 4, 1916, at the age of seventy-eight. And such was his reputation for truly extraordinary holiness that only twenty-four years later, on June 26, 1940, Pope Pius XII signed the decree introducing his Cause for Beatification into the Roman or Apostolic Process, the Informative or Diocesan Process having already been successfully concluded. After a delay of six years due to the war, Bishop Maurice Roy of Three Rivers formally opened the Apostolic Process in that city on June 19, 1946. (For a complete history of the Cause, see the article by Rev. Paul Eugène Trudel, O.F.M., archivist of the Vice-Postulation, Le Procès Apostolique pour la Béatification du Père Frédéric, O.F.M., in La Vie des Communautés Religieuses, Montreal, December 1946 ; also available as a 14-page reprint from the author.) That "Good Father Frederick", as he is called in Canada, was indeed one of the most heroic and saintly figures in the history of the Franciscan First Order in modern times is clearly evident from the following summary of his major achievements : two years after being ordained in 1870 he was the founder and superior of a new community in Bordeaux ; in 1875-1876 his research work in Paris for Father Marcellino da Civezza's great Franciscan mission history was so valuable that the latter called him "mon bras droit" (Journal de Voyage, p. 24) ; in 1878 after only two years of mission work in Egypt and Palestine he was appointed Vicar Custodial, i.e. assistant superior, of the entire Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land ; in this important position for ten years he preached to the French-language communities and pilgrims — the authors of several travel-books speak of him as a saint ; he supervised the construction of the Custody's Churches of St. Catherine in Bethlehem and of the Holy Savior in Jerusalem ; he compiled two voluminous sets of minutely detailed BOOK REVIEWS247 regulations for the Shrines of the Nativity and the Holy Sepulcher determining the rights and practices of the several rites and sects, a work of lasting historical and practical value which is still accepted by all parties as the basic law governing the status quo in the Shrines ; in 1881-1882 he established in Canada the First Friday Collection for the Holy Land ; and in 1888 he was the first of the modern Franciscans to return to French Canada, where he labored as Commissary of the Holy Land until his death. During this period of twenty-eight fruitful years Good Father Frederick played the major role in founding the beautiful National Canadian Shrine of the Rosary at the Cap de la Madeleine near Three Rivers ; he wrote and published 15 books and 11 booklets on the lives of Jesus, Mary, St. Joseph, St. Anne...