EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS

Shannon News, 3 August 1926, Page 2

EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS

A OUGHTS’ THRONE. “MASS OF THE ANGELS.” IMPRESSIVE SCENES. SAN FRANCISCO, June 2S. One of the most impressive spectacles during the whole of the Eucharistic Congress at Chicago, was when an altar with twelve ecclesiastical thrones and nearly 150,000 worshippers, nearly half of them being singing children in white ,struck the gaze of the onlookers. At the outer gate of Chicago the church set up her temple. Its roof was a gray sky, hung low with scudding clouds, driven lakeward by a westerly wind and bringing once a few drops of rain. Its sheltering walls were the graystone cliffs of the Doric Stadium. Such was the cathedral out.doors. The Doric cliffs bounded it on the east and west. Its open end of the north had the 1 background of the lonic colonnade at the. Field Museum. Nearly half a mile to the south the tremendous perspective ended in hangings of white and yellow —the papal colour's —augmented by staffs carrying gigantic flags of all nations.

Pressing from all points of the compass upon this throng of 150,000 in the arena was an additional mul. tiiude estimated to number from .1 50,000 to 250,000 men, woman ana children. The latter figure was nearer the actual number. The spirit of that multitude beyond .lie Doric walls was inu tune with the spirit v\ the body of worshippers within. It became a supplementary congregation, attentive to and deeply moved by the remote echoes of prayers and song that it could hear. Learned hierographers of the church declared that nothing com. parable to the outpouring which ushered in the second day of the twenty.eighth International Eucharistic Congress of the Catholic Church had been recorded in the annals or Catholicism. The outpouring was as varied as it was vast. It comprehended all ranks and conditions or the church's children from enthroned cardinals to barefoot friars. The Archbishop of Chicago put it truiy when he said: “As the youngest daughter of the great Catholic family wCTi all the enthusiasm and energy of youth, we sent forth the call to the children of the Holy Church tinworld over. And behold they have answered our call, and from every land under the sun they have come, the greatest and the poorest, the prince;, the prelate, the priest and the liumbie pilgrim.” Beneath the gray sky and within the gray stadium all the colours were incessantly moving. Banners around <.hem and banners above them, resplendent figurete in wind.tossed vest ments of wnite and gold, of purple and cardinal-red, marched up the

sides of a hill-—“predilla,” the liturgists call it, or platform —but really ll .vas a hill built of timber and sus.. tained to represent a greensward, which surmounted by a glowing baldachinoi, or protecting temple, that sheltered the white alter. Kepliea of Rome Church. The baldachino was 66ft high. It was a gilded replica of the Eternal City’s church of St. Paul without the walls. Its roof was sentinelled by four golden angels of heroic size. I! was draped with crimson and gold, and its four lofty Corinthian columns rested on bases emblazoned with the papal arms. Each of the four sides of the temple bore on its highest cornice the words, “Ecce Agnus Dei” (Behold the Lamb of God). The twelve thrones of the visiting Cardinals rose to the right and the left of the green hillside and of the golden Corinthian fabric. On low.er levela of this improvised sanctuary sat scores of Archbishops, and hundreds of Bishops. The throne of John Bonzano, Cardinal Legate representing Pope Pius XI., was set far forward of the other six cardinal thrones on the west side of the baldachino;, and the papal arms which surmounted it were linked by heavy garlands of laurel to American flags flying from star.tipped staffs. Five other cardinal thrones confronted the Legate from the astern sidi of the green hill of steps leading up to the altar. This whole hillside was semi-circled by a eyclorama effect of scarlet draperies. In this setting the Legate celebrated the “Mass of the Angels^” Spectators Used Periscopes. 6o dense were the crowds at the “Maws of the Angels” that women used pocket mirrors for periscopes, bringing into view the procession of the clergy by holding the mirrors above the heads of the crowds. Rev. J. A. Falls, of Cincinnati, went to Chicago in an aeroplane to attend the Congress. The Australian dele, gates were lavishly entertained at luncheon by Mrs. M. H. McCarthy. The Chinese lay and clerical delegates marched in a body into the field, dressed in deep purple robes, and at their head was Lo Pah Hong, wealthy philanthropist, of Shanghai.

More than 200 children were lost in the spectacle, and they were gathered up by the police after the day’s ceremony and taken home in police wagons.

"The Mass of the Angels,” chanted by a choir of 60,000 children, had been more than a year in preparation in parochial schoolfe thrughout the archdiocese of Chicago, and for the last month the choir had been rehearsing in the two League baseball parks.