Masses at Mass

"Archbishop Curley? Morning Sun. Government forecasters report a severe storm moving up the coast from the Carolinas. What's that going to do to your 100,000?"

''You may disregard the storm warning. Tomorrow's weather has been prearranged."

Such a conversation took place one night last week between a Baltimore newshawk and Most Rev. Michael Joseph Curley, Archbishop of Baltimore. Next day Archbishop Curley was to pontificate at a solemn military field mass in Baltimore Stadium, in commemoration of triple anniversaries--the 300th of the founding of Maryland and the first Catholic mass on Maryland soil, the 100th of the birth of the late great James Cardinal Gibbons, the 20th of Archbishop Curley's consecration as bishop. With good weather, 100,000 pious folk might be present to fill the stadium as it never had been filled before, and to participate in the largest U. S. mass since the Chicago Eucharistic Congress of 1926.*

The skeptical Sun printed the Government forecast and the morning of the mass was duly grey and drizzly. In a reviewing stand near the stadium sat Governor Ritchie, Mayor Howard W. Jackson, State, city and military officials. Archbishop Curley, Archbishop McNicholas of Cincinnati, seven bishops, many a Jesuit and Most Rev. Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, who as Apostolic Delegate to the U.S. brought the blessings of the Pope.

Beneath the sullen sky, 70,000 Catholic priests, nun, 8 monks, seminarians, students, lay folk, Papal nobility and members of the Holy Name Society and Sodality of the Blesses Virgin Mary gathered along nearby streets to parade past the reviewers into the Stadium. They began marching. And suddenly the sun burst forth. It shone on the marchers, hotter and hotter. Not until they had watched the parade for three hours could Archbishop Curley and his party gather up their trains and skirts and swing in line to enter the Stadium.

On the greensward at the north end of the Stadium field stood a portable altar flanked with thrones for the celebrants of the mass and surmounted by a tabernacle of rare woods, owned by the Baltimore Sisters of Mercy and said to be the one before which the first Maryland mass was sung. In the stands behind the altar sat 10,000 Catholic schoolchildren to chant the music of the mass. And on the hot, hard benches sat the rest of the 100,000. A bugler sounded "Attention"' at the Sanctus, Consecration and Communion, and two French 75's boomed on a nearby hill when Archbishop Curley held aloft the consecrated particle.

Enthroned on the epistle side of the altar, the swart Apostolic Delegate looked cool and content. In mitre, gloves, amice, alb and stiff brocaded chasuble, 54-year-old Archbishop Curley perspired heavily but went through the ritual as valiantly as if he had not passed a winter of poor health and fasted 13 hours before the mass. Not so stalwart was many another Catholic in the Stadium. By the time the mass was under way people in the stands were dropping by dozens. By the time Rev. Dr. Peter Keenan Guilday, Catholic University historian, was in the midst of his long sermon, they were dropping by the hundreds. Ambulances were roaring up & down the cinder paths of the Stadium. Hospital tents were swamped. Fifty extra nurses were recruited from the stands to help out the 100 already on duty.

Casualties of the solemn military field mass: 1,800 complete or partial thermic prostrations, of whom nine were nuns, one a friar, one a priest.

*Then 1,000,000 Catholics were present.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.