"Il Papa! Il Papa!"

Sixty thousand Italians fired with religious zeal knelt in the Basilica of St. Peter's last week and 100,000 more bared and bowed their heads under a chill driving rain outside. Signor Benito Mussolini was not present, but his daughter Edda was on her knees in a part of the Basilica usually reserved for princes of the blood. For the first time since 1870 several cabinet ministers had officially entered St. Peter's. This was possible because the Papacy and the government of Italy had just patched up their 59-year-old feud by a treaty (TIME, Feb. 18); and now a papist host had met for joyful and pious celebration. "Il Papa! Il Papa!" shouted the throng, which had now increased to a full 200,000. "Il Papa Consolatore! Il Papa Consolatore!"

He came, entering St. Peter's from the Vatican for the first time since his coronation (exactly seven years ago last week). He was borne aloft on the Sedia Gestatoria, by attendants in flame-colored livery. He was fanned by other minions majestically agitating great clusters of ostrich plumes upon long poles. His garment was white of a creamy richness, but lis robe was all bloodred. On his breast blazed the Crux Pectorale, a great cross of diamonds. And above the shapely, bespectacled head of Pope Pius XI towered the holy apostolic tiara of pure, massy gold.

He came as the lord spiritual, and for the first time since 1870 as the lord temporal. "Il Papa! Il Papa Consolatore!" chanted the kneeling multitude, "The Pope! The Pope Consoler!" Amid out bursts of the purest ecstasy the supreme pontiff then performed the miracle of the high mass, transforming things inanimate into the veritable body and blood. . . .

Because the Italo-Papal treaty had not yet been ratified, His Holiness had positively announced before entering St. Peter's that he would not appear upon the balcony to bless the kneelers. However 200,000 Italians shouting "Il Papa! Il Papa!" in the rain are a powerful inducement, especially when they keep it up for four solid hours. Relenting at last, the vicar of Christ briefly appeared and adequately blessed the sopping flock, but he did not impart the especially potent blessing "Urbi et Orbi!" ("to the city and to the world!").

Commenting afterward upon the new treaty, His Holiness exclaimed in vibrant tones of pious emotion: "It gives God back to Italy, and Italy to God!" Of Benito Mussolini, who made the treaty possible, Pope Pius mystically observed: "There was revealed to us a man whom Providence caused us to meet."

A scurrilous correspondent of the wet Chicago Tribune pretended that the Summits Pontifex also said, last week, "We consider the Volstead Act immoral and contrary to the laws of Christ." Although the Savior and His disciples and the Virgin Mary did, indeed, all drink wine, it is impossible that the discreet Holy Father could have made such a remark within hearing of the world press.