CAPTAIN CRAIGTo ask the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been called to a letter written by Cardinal Gotti, prefect of propaganda, purporting to regulate the affairs of Roman Catholic soldiers in the British Army; and whether, in view of the right of the War Office to send Roman Catholic chaplains wherever they may think fit to minister to Roman Catholic soldiers, as guaranteed by Rome after the Crimean War and exercised by the War Office ever since, he will say what steps he proposes to take to prevent Roman Catholic soldiers serving in India and South Africa being compelled to accept the religious ministrations of foreigners who may be unsympathetic to, and imperfectly acquainted with, the English tongue, and the subordination of the spiritual requirements of British Roman Catholic soldiers to the pecuniary interests of Foreign Roman Catholic ecclesiastics.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) After the South African War the Government of the day were approached by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Southwark, now Archbishop of Westminster, who issues to Roman Catholic Army chaplains the faculties which the law of their church requires that they should receive for their functions as priests. Through the good offices of His Grace the authorities of the Vatican agreed that commissioned chaplains should continue to serve the chief stations in South Africa, and there are now five such chaplains. The War Office has no intention of withdrawing them. At stations where the Roman Catholic troops are too few to warrant the presence of an Army chaplain use must be made, and is made everywhere, for all denominations, of the services of the local civilian clergy. Religious 394 ministrations to the troops in India are not under the control of the War Office.