RELICS OF A SAINT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20620, 19 July 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

RELICS OF A SAINT.

PICTURESQUE MARCH

FESTIVAL OF WOMEN. The festival of the women of Hungary, in connection with the commemoration of the 900 th anniversary of the>death of Prince Emery, the son of Stephen, Hungary's first king, took place on May 25. St. Emery, who was canonised with his father in 1083, has always been revered as the patron saint of Hungarian youth. Thousands of women pilgrims in Danube steamships and by special train left Budapest iu the morning for Esztergom — where St. Emery was born —the seat of the Trince Primate of Hungary, Cardinal Seredi, and the treasure city of Roman Catholic Hungary. The arrival of the white pilgrim ships was watched by dense crowds who lined the bank on the Hungarian side of the Danube at Esztergom.

Processions of women, bearing crucifixes, and pictures of the saint, marched into Esztergom from the surrounding districts. All the women marched from the river bank to the Basilica, which dominates town and river.

The democratic character of the pilgrimage was perhaps its most striking feature. As the procession wound its way up the steep incline, one saw hatless girls, with black kerchiefs tied beneath the chin and tho blue stockings and white skirts of the peasant in Sunday dress, march abreast of fashionably dressed pilgrims from Budapest. Girls in national costumes bore an open scarlet palanquin containing a vessel holding the leg bones of St. Emery, lent 'oy the Cathedral of Atx-la-Chapelle. The great bell of the Basilca had tolled throughout the morning. When it had ceased, and tho pilgrims .had taken their appointed places, the cathedral—one of tho largest in Hungary —was filled to the uttermost limits of its marble walls. Hundreds of pilgrims who were unablo to obtain entrance ranked themselves in the adjacent gardens or knelt devoutly on the wide steps before the church. Cardinal Seredi, 111 full robes, conducted the cathedral service, and thft anthems were chanted by choirs of women. At the most solemn part of the celebration, when tho sacred elements are upheld before the altar, tho bells announce the transubstantiation and complete silence reigns, a ray ot sunlight from the stainedglass windows illuminated tho white and gold banners before the chancel. The concluding anthems, more impressive for the silence that preceded them, were sung with fervour and religious zeal. In the evening the Primato addressed a crowd of many hundreds of pilgrims on the Primas Square. Windows and balconies and all available vantage points were thronged with listeners.