CURRENT LITERATURE.
Life of Blessed Sebastian Valfre, of the 7‘1.4Tili Oratory. By Lady Amabel Kerr. (London Catholic Truth Society.)—This is the his- tory of a remarkable member of the Oratorian body, which the late Cardinal Newman has made a familiar name to Englishmen. Sebas- tian Valfre was born in 1629, and passed his long life as a priest of
the Oratory in Turin. His career is of extreme interest, and is well worth the attention not only of his co-religionists, but of readers who are not members of the Roman Catholic Church. The reso- lute devotion to duty of one who was not specially gifted intel- lectually, and whose spiritual greatness seemed due more to an "Infinite capacity for taking pains" than to those natural tastes which sometimes make sanctity, to all appearance, comparatively easy, is instructive and interesting. The cultivation of ordinary gifts with extraordinary earnestness and assiduity gave to the Ora- torian priest a large share of that special magnetic influence which generally attaches to spiritual genius. Thus, while his work was notably among the poor, and while he wrought wonderful con- versions of life among disreputable persons of the lower orders in Turin, he was also the director and constant correspondent of that turbulent and difficult Prince, Victor Amadeo IL, Duke of Savoy, and of his two daughters, the Queen of Spain and the Duchess° de Burgogne. Father Sebastian Valfre lived to be over eighty, and did his work resolutely in the face of habitual depression, which has been ascribed greatly to the prevalence in his time of the Calvinistic temper, which he combated successfully in others, but which left on him the shadow of a gloomy religion, whose doc- trines he rejected. It was said that his one really happy hoar in the day was passed in saying Mass. The book is a valuable addition to Catholic hagiology in England.
Previous page
