St. Peter's Aflame

Until their imprisonment in 1870 the Popes of Rome celebrated, with glittering parades, the ancient Feast of Corpus Christi in adoration of the Holy Eucharist.

Last week Pope Pius XI, no longer prisoner but monarch of Vatican City, revived the celebration. In vast St. Peter's Square, late in the afternoon, 50,000 Romans and pilgrims waited. Presently from St. Peter's central doorway appeared the Pope, apparently kneeling but actually sitting at a priedieu on a platform borne by twelve husky men. Pius XI bore aloft a gem-encrusted monstrance containing the Host.* Prelates held a damask canopy over the Holy Father's head and stirred the warm air about him with ostrich-plumed flabella. Mace-bearers, torchbearers. Noble Guards and Swiss Guards walked at his side. The crowd cheered. Then 18 cardinals and 6,000 priests and ordinaries fell into line, bearing lighted candles. The Pope in the rear, they marched slowly through the evening shadows and the Bernini colonnade.

Circling back, the Pope approached an altar on St. Peter's portico, behind which was a great tapestry of the Last Supper. He turned, held aloft the monstrance, pronounced solemn benediction. At once floodlights swept his white-robed figure. With his procession he re-entered St. Peter's, dark, obscure. Then suddenly the 50,000 watchers beheld the entire dome, the roofs, the porches and balustrades of St, Peter's burst into flames of thousands of flaring torches. The crowd cheered, while the basilica blazed like a vast birthday cake. As they went back home, in trams and through dark streets, there was much talk of the sanpietrini, those nimble workers of St. Peter's who had scurried about the dome and roof on skillfully manipulated ropes, fixing and lighting the torches.

* From hostia (victim). The Host is a wheat wafer which, according to Catholic belief, has become the actual body and blood of Christ, Victim of Sacrifice.

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