HOLY YEAR

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LI, Issue 50, 17 December 1924, Page 27

HOLY YEAR

MANY PILGRIMS FROM MANY LANDS. The organising committee for the Holy Year has already received announcements of 65 pilgrimages to Rome, including that from Australia, which his Grace the Archbishop of Melbourne (Most Rev. Dr. Mannix) is to lead. The Australian Pilgrimage is timed to arrive in Rome on May 29, and will spend a week in the Eternal City. Yet in that brief time they will have an opportunity of witnessing something which even those who have spent years in Rome have never witnessedthe celebration of Mass by the Holy Father in St. Peter's. One from the Argentine is due to arrive in the Eternal City on Christmas Eve, the day before the Holy Year opens. A thousand English pilgrims are coming in the following May. The Maltest pilgrimage is arriving in August. The International Association of Catholic Youth are sending representatives in September, and other pilgrims are coming to Rome from Mexico, Quebec, and Montreal, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Michigan, nod the Philippines, at dates yet to bo fixed. The largest number of pilgrims yet announced is from Germany, fromi which country a train of 1000 pilgrims is being organised every ten days. . Six hundred Chinese are expected in January; Chilian pilgrims are arriving in February; and a body of French war widows in April. Other pilgrimages are being arranged from Palestine, Syria, and Egypt. A manifesto issued by Signor Cremonesti, the Royal Commissioner of Rome, says: —"We want, as our forefathers did, to continue the ancient splendour of Rome and to resume the mission of civilisation which Rome performed in the world . We promise to maintain and to increase the splendor of the city and its position as the metropolis of Catholicism, and this promise will _be carried out to the full next year by both the Government and the people, who, in the civil and religious traditions of Rome, recognise that the loftiest prominence of the race is the safest guarantee of Italy's fortunes." The railroad administration has appropriated £500,000 for the construction of rolling stock in view of the expected increase in traffic during the Holy Year.