CONGRESS ENDS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 490, 27 June 1932, Page 1

CONGRESS ENDS.

Pope’s Message Drowned by Roar of ’ Planes. 1,000,000 PEOPLE ATTEND. United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. (Received June 27, 12.30 p.m.) DUBLIN, June 26. The Eucharistic Congress reached its climax to-day when an assembly estimated to number 1,000,000 heard Mass in Phoenix Park. Later the Blessed Sacrament was taken in procession for five miles to an altar at O’Connell Bridge in the centre of the city, where the Papal Legate pronounced the Benediction upon a multitude stretching as far as the eye could see along the seven roads converging on the bridge. Four columns of men and women worshippers marched to the city along separate routes as a single procession would have taken eight hours. The tramping columns carried banners and sang hymns. A record crowd began to assemble around the Park altar in the early hours. Apart from the throng of visitors who had spent the week in Dublin, representing every country in Christendom, scores of special trains brought thousands from every part of Ireland, including Ulster. When the worshippers had taken up their places at noon, the whole of the fifteen acre field was a mass of humanity, which maintained a hushed silence as the Mass was opened in the circular space, where hundreds of priests, members of various orders and a choir of 500 men and boys were placed. Then began the arrival of church dignitaries, with a procession of archbishops and bishops, who took their places, and finally came the cardinals, headed by the Legate, who took his place on the throne as celebrant of the Pontifical High Mass. The Legate delivered a simple devotional homily in English and everything was heard by the huge congregation through the loud speakers, until the climax came at the end of the Mass when the Pope’s brief message was broadcast. The roar of the photographers’ aeroplanes drowned the Pope’s words. They were a simple quotation in Latin from St Patrick, “As you are Christians, be ye also Romans.”