MEMORABLE SCENE

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 232, 27 June 1932, Page 9

MEMORABLE SCENE

Papal Legate and Youth

PHOENIX PARK MASS 2700 White-robed Girls Sing EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Rec. June 20, 7.30 p.m.) London, June 25. Children’s day at the Eucharistic Congress opened unpromisingly, but later there was brilliant sunshine, says the Australian Press representative at Dublin. One hundred ttioussand school children representing every part of Ireland, heard Archbishop Kelly, of Sydney, celebrate High Mass at the altar in Phoenix Park in the presence of the Papal Legate, Cardinal Lauri. Cardinal Lauri later charmingly addressed the children, then slowly moved in an open car through the lines of massed children, blessing them as he passed, to the accompaniment of ringing cheers.

There was a memorable scene from the semi-circular colonnade flanking the High Altar. Cardinal Lauri sat on a throne beside the altar attended, according to mediaeval customs, by uniformed Papal attendants. Three cardinals sat on a scarlet and gold bench on each side of the altar. The colonnade seats were filled by 130 Archbishops, while Immediately in front there was a solid phalanx of 800 surpllced priests on one side and a specially-trained choir of 2700 whiterobed girls on the other side. An impressive touch was Imparted half-way up the altar steps by a line of smart, greenlsh-khaki-uniformed Free State Army officers with drawn swOrds, while at the foot of the steps were four military trumpeters. Beyond the inner circle there was an enormous concourse. Members of the Ministry sat in a special low pew next to the priests, then came what is describable as a layer of adults, then a long row of children massed like a giant cross; the girls mostly in white and the boys in flannels and school blazers. Each child held a white and yellow Papal flag, and they looked like a row of waving daffodils. Loudspeakers carried the voices of the speakers far beyond the actual assembly. ’ A SEA OF LIGHTS Men Assemble at High Altar •» Dublin, June 24. The streets continue crowded day and night Buildings are floodlit, and searchlights are playing, throwing Latin texts on the skies. There was a great scene in Phoenix Park last night when a quarter of a million men marched thither and assembled around the High Altar. As the darkness came, at a given signal, every individual lighted a taper, and the vast park became a sea of lights as the Legate pronounced the benediction. Six cardinals and a hundred prelates participated in the service. The previous day’s splendours in the pro-Cathedral were repeated’ in the morning when Pontifical Mass was celebrated. NEW ZEALAND SESSION Landing- of Bishop Pompallier Dublin, June 24. Another paper' by Miss Eileen Duggan and Mr. Paul Kavanagh, “New Zealand’s Debt to Ireland,” was read at to-day’s New Zealand session in University College. The writers traced the early history of Catholicism from the landing of the French Bishop Pompallier in the North Island, where there were only 350 white Catholics in the Island, nearly all Irish. The first Irish priest to arrive, Father O’Reilly, reached Wellington in 1843. Archbishop Redwood, now known as the “Patriarch of the Pacific,” though an Englishman, was ordained in Ireland. New Zealanders of Irish descent were proud of the way Archbishop Redwood had surrounded himself with Irish helpers, and had himself ever remained an outspoken friend of Irish nationality.