Over the Vineyard

Today God's work is done not only in His vineyard but in the vastnesses of the air above it. Herbert Guy Bullen, 41 a onetime schoolmaster who won the Military Cross in the World War, entered the ministry in 1925, went to Nigeria as a missionary in 1926. Two years ago, after he was consecrated assistant bishop of Egypt and the Sudan, he began to fly about his vast diocese. Half the time with Khartoum or Cairo as his air base, half the time with Juba in the Sudan as his headquarters, he was soon dubbed the "Flying Bishop." Last week when Bishop Bullen failed to arrive at Juba from Malakal, where he had left his wife, a fleet of search planes took off. In the smoking wreckage of a plane, 100 miles north of Juba, were found the dead bodies of the bishop and his pilot.

Not the first to till the vineyard from the air, nor the first to die doing so was Bishop Bullen. Others are and have been:

P: The famed "Flying Professor" of the Oxford Group, Dr. Burnett Hillman Streeter, provost of The Queen's College (Oxford), who died with his wife in an air crash in the Alps.

P: The No. 1 "Flying Priest" of the world. Rev. Paul Schulte of Germany, who still pilots the planes of MIVA (Missionary Communications Association), which he founded.

P: The Most Rev. Gabriel Breynat, 70-year-old vicar apostolic of Mackenzie. Canada, who is now known as the "Bishop of the Winds" because he covers the 600,000 square miles of his frozen territory in the plane supplied him by Father Schulte.

P: The world's No. 1 "Flying Mother"--Rev. Mother Michael Dufay, superior general of the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Ghost--who last month left Paris in a plane furnished by the French Air Ministry, bound on a 5,000-mile inspection tour of missions in Madagascar, Mozambique, the Cameroons, Ubangi.

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