Page:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Truslove & Bray).djvu/248

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HE priests who are natives of Canada, are generally very clownish in their manners, and often quite brutish in their vices. The nuns would sometimes laugh at seeing a Canadian priest from some country parish, coming in with a large piece of bread in his hand, eating it as he walked. A large proportion of the priests are foreigners; and a constant intercourse appears to be kept up with France, as we often heard of such and such a father just arrived from that country. These are decidedly the worst class. Most of the wickedness of which I have any knowledge, I consider as their work.

If I should repeat one half of the stories of wickedness I have heard from the mouths of some of the priests, I am afraid they would hardly be believed; and yet I feel bound, since I have undertaken to make disclosures, not to omit them altogether.

It is not uncommon for priests to recount anecdotes of what they have seen and done; and several stories which I have heard from some of them I will briefly repeat.

A country priest said one day that he knew a priest in a parish better off than those of the Seminary, for he had seven nuns all to himself.

A priest said to me one day that he had three daughters in Montreal, grown up. Their mother was a married woman. One of the daughters, he added, now occasionally confessed to him, ignorant, however, of any relationship.