SPLENDID SPECTACLE

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12483, 26 June 1926, Page 4

SPLENDID SPECTACLE

FINAL CEREMONY AT CHICAGO A MILLION WORSHIPPERS, IN A BABEL OF TONGUES SEVEN HOURS’ PROCESSION By Telegraph.— Press Assn. —Copy x*isrKl. Reuter’s Telegram. MUNDELEIN (Illinois), June 24. All roads on Thursday led to the new Roman Catholic Church at Mundelein, where nearly a million people participated in and witnessed a procession, four miles long, of the Blessed Sacrament, the final event of the Eucharistic Congress. Invested with all the colour and ceremony of the Church, the procession took seven hours to pass. The ceremony concluded with the Papal Benediction. Australian and NZ. Cable Association. The final ceremony was the greatest religious spectacle ever witnessed in this or any other country. A singing and praying multitude of a million people, gathered from all the lands of the earth, honoured the Blessed Eucharist in a babel of tongues tlie like of which has never before been heard in the New World. The gathering, which was banked on either, side of - a three-mile “Via Gloria/* circling a beautiful inland lake, shattered every existing record in sheer magnitude. The number of persons, the distances travelled, and the length of the procession surpassed any similar ovation in history. NO DISORDER The vantage points were so densely packed that it was impossible for many to sit down; so they stood beneath the scorching sun with heads reverently bowed, chanting and praying until the Papal legate and cardinals and their suites emerged and oelebrated a Pontifical mass. After this the huge procession wound around the lake. A striking feature was the orderly attitude of the gathering. There were no protests and no demonstrations. The police traffic experts estimated that 400,000 arrived by trains after surrise, and 500,000 by motors, while 100,000 camped all night and a further 200,000 were unable to enter the grounds.