A FITTING CELEBRATION

New Zealand Tablet, 28 March 1918, Page 38

A FITTING CELEBRATION

The Rome correspondent of the Tablet? London, gives an interesting account of the celebration in the former city commemorating the capture of Jerusalem. "After all the bells of Rome did ring out," he says. "On Sunday morning the great bell of Saint Piter's gave the note to the others." And through the morning the attendance in Saint Peter's at the Masses was very large. In the evening the Church of the Holy Cross only a small part of the vast crowds that assembled could be admitted. - "The piazza outside was filled with people, and Cardinal Pompili, his Holinesses' Vicar-General, passed twice right through a kneeling multitude with the Blessed Sacrament before returning to the porch where he gave Benediction, and into the Basilica again." The residents of that section decorated their homes, and. on all sides were evidences of the people's desire to do honor to the occasion. ; "Nor was there a whisper of anything but true devotion in the enormous crowd," continues the correspondent. "It was a religious crowd, meaning of course, all the' Catholic societies and confraternities of Rome being to the fore, but, from its numbers, a popular crowd, too. And it behaved in the most excellently Catholic manner." Cardinal Gasquet was among those present. The entire celebration made a tribute worthy of the great occasion.