Eucharist in Budapest

A squadron of airplanes, in the form of a cross, roared over Budapest and the rippling Danube. The river, banded by bridges, the buildings and monuments on both its banks blazed with batteries of searchlights, neon lights, torches, candles. No less than 1,000,000 people thronged the Danube banks when down the river, six miles to St. Margaret Island and back, steamed a procession of ten vessels from which sounded trumpet and organ music. In the steamers were cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests, monks, nuns and laymen of the Roman Catholic Church. One boat bore, in a golden monstrance in an illuminated, glass-enclosed chapel, the Sacred Host. When Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, Papal Secretary of State and Papal Legate to the 34th International Eucharistic Congress, held aloft the monstrance and pronounced the benediction, all was quiet along the Danube. A moment later boat whistles shrilled, church bells pealed, rockets burst in air and high on St. Gellert Hill a 60-foot cross sprang into light.

Eucharistic Congresses, the mightiest demonstrations of public faith the Christian world affords, demonstrate also the Catholic Church's talent for organized magnificence. Committees in charge take in their stride arrangements for such ceremonies as Budapest's Mass last week for 100,000 children, with presents of candy afterward for every one. Yet the Budapest Congress was not the largest of recent years. Nazi truculence, in the form of special visa restrictions, kept Germans at home, held the number of foreign pilgrims to about 25,000, of whom 1,000 were U. S. Catholics.

Host to the Congress was Justinian Cardinal Seredi, Archbishop of Esztergom and Primate of Hungary. His opening speech to pilgrims, in Budapest's spacious Heroes Square, where a 150-foot altar had been erected, contained no hint of the fact that he is firmly anti-Nazi. Said Cardinal Seredi: "How different would be the fate of humanity, created for happiness, wherefore it is ever seeking happiness, if the solidarity of all Catholics of the world could really be achieved." Papal Legate Pacelli, without descending from the high religious plane of the Congress, was more specific about Catholicism's enemies--"the lugubrious array of the militant godless, shaking the clenched fist of anti-Christ." Cried he: "Where now are Herod and Pilate, Nero and Diocletian, and Julian the Apostate, and all the persecutors of the First Century? St. Ambrose replies: 'The Christians who have been massacred have won the victory; the vanquished were their persecutors.' Ashes and dust are the enemies of Christianity; ashes and dust are all that they have desired, pursued--perhaps even tasted for a short moment--of power and terrestrial glory."

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