HUGE PROCESSION

Hokitika Guardian, 10 December 1934, Page 5

HUGE PROCESSION

GREAT SPECTACLE

EUCHARIST CONGRESS CLOSES.

'(Australian Tress Association.)

(Received this day at 9.55 a.m.) MELBOURNE, Dec. 9,

Midnight Masses in all churches on Saturday night prepared Congress visitors for the Eucharistic procession this afternoon, with which the Congress virtually ended.

The day was dull hut fine. From an early hour the crowds began to swarm toward the city, special trains pud' trams being run; and all roads were packed with motor traffic. When the procession was due to. begin, it is estimated three hundred thousand were lining the two mile route.

Beginning at St. Patrick’s, the procession, comprising 600 prelates, priests and sixty thousand laymen, . followed the principal city streets, ending at Mount St. Evin’s Hospital, the city’s principal Catholic hospital, where, from •T platform on the facade high above the street, the Cardinal pronc-ounced tii.o final benediction.

Elaborate preparations were necessary in handling such a vast march.Twelve amplifiers, intalled at various points of the route, so that at no tilne was any’part-of the procession out of range, gave the directions from tho control point in the tower of St. Patrik’s.

Cross-hearers, holding aloft a replica of the Cross of Cong, led the march, followed immediately by 8000 whiteveiled Children of Mary, clad in white with blue capes Carrying symbolic banners they were the only women in the march

Marching ten abreast, followed forty thousand laymen from metropolitan and country parishes, an 1 monk- and friars, in sombre habit, singing hymns, and chanting the-Rosary.

Colofir was provided by the brilliant vestments of the Hierarchy.

Silence fell upon the. throng as the Host approached, under a canopy, preceded by 100 flower girls scattering blosspms. .

The spectators dropped on their knees as the Host, carried by the Cardinal, went by. ,

The great event, which was the largest procession ever seen in Melbourne, taking more than two hours to pass a given point, went off without any untoward incident.

Efficient organisation marked every phase of the final scene in front of -Mount Saint Evin’s, where 200,000 people heard the Benediction. It was a spectacle which will live long in memory as theclrring event of a memorable "week in Melbourn’s Catholic history. ,

DAY AT CONGRESS

THOUSANDS KNEEL IN RAIN

MELBOURNE, December 9. Saturday was women’s day at tjhe Eucharistic Congress.. Fifty thousand women knelt in the rain at Mass ft the Showgrounds on Saturday morning, the ceremony being the counter-part of the Men‘ s Eucharistic Night on Thursday. Of tlie many remarkable demonstrations of Catholic faith there have been during the past week, none displayed so much of the triumph of spirituality over discomfort as Saturday’s. The colourfulness of the scene was spoiled by rain, but the significant pageantry prevailed.

The sermo n was preached bv Archbishop Downey, of Liverpool, England.

Discussing “the new 7 morality,” which he described as “the old immorality with a thin veneer of respectability,” Archbishop Downey declared that the valiant woman nowadays was the one who stands up against these current views—the one not swayed by the lax conventions, not dazzled by the glitter of “the smart set,” and not reduced into frivolous behaviour.

He said that tjhe old portrait of the female homewrecker had lost none of the fashions to-day. It seemed that the fashions in their folly, had varied little in three thousand years. When lie added, people s pokc of broadmindedness in religion, “It should be borne in mind that error is broad and truth is narrow.