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PREFACE
In the quiet lecture hours in the Gregorian University, in our student days, we sat near to young men who, though little they or we dreamed it, were to lay down their lives for their priesthood and wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb. While fingering the pages of our own Liber Ruber we did not think that other books of the same kind were being made and that the day would come when the simple words Martyr factus est might be written alongside the names of men with whom we conversed in the halls of the Gregorian University, and whom we saw with books under their arms treading the Roman streets or walking on the Pincio in the evening sunshine. Yet so it was. Other colleges were training their own sons for an ordeal which, in the early years of this century, seemed not to threaten . The Church has been, and always will be, the fruitful Mother of such children . Like Our Lady overshadowed by the Holy Ghost, she too will give birth without fail to sons who will press on in the footsteps of Christ the King aye, even to the shedding of blood . offer my warmest thanks to all those who have, with much devoted labour and self-sacrifice, made possible the publication of the Liber Ruber , and I congratulate the Catholic Record Society , cordially blessing its valuable work in the service of truth.
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WILLIAM GODFREY, Archbishop of Cius, Apostolic Delegate.