Laetare Sunday

To good Roman Catholics, Lent means 40 days of fast, abstinence, prayer, penitential works. Three Sundays before it begins, all churches are draped with mourning purple in memory of Christ's Passion. A change occurs on Laetare ("Rejoice") or Rose Sunday, when the Church bids her faithful for a day to look beyond the sorrows of Lent to the rejoicings of the coming Easter and when rose vestments and draperies are substituted for purple. To Pope Pius XI in Vatican City, Laetare Sunday last week was especially a day for rejoicing. With use of his varicose-veined legs partially restored, the Holy Father performed the ancient Laetare ceremony of Blessing the Golden Rose.

As a mark of favor, Popes once bestowed finely-wrought golden roses upon churches, cities, monarchs. Since the 17th Century only Catholic queens, princesses and eminent noblemen have been given such honors. Pius XI has blessed a Golden Rose every year since 1922, but so scarce were Catholic Majesties that he bestowed only two: upon Spain's Queen Victoria in 1923, upon Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians in 1925.

Last October Italy's Queen Elena passed the 40th anniversary of her marriage to King Vittorio Emanuele III and in honor of that event last month the papal Osservatore Romano, referring to her for the first time as Empress of Ethiopia, announced that Elena would receive this year's Golden Rose. Last Sunday a sheaf of gold blooms in a silver vase was brought into the Pope's apartment, placed upon a candlelit table. Vested in rose garments, Pius XI prayed over the Rose, incensed it, poured balsam and musk into a tiny cup in its centre. The Golden Rose will be presented to Italy's Queen after Easter by Monsignor Borgongini Duca, Papal Nuncio to Italy.

In the U. S. for the past 54 years, Laetare Sunday has annually given some publicity to a man or woman whom the University of Notre Dame considers an outstanding lay Catholic. The Laetare Medal, a gold disc bearing a rose and a device suggesting the recipient's vocation, has gone to such Catholics as Alfred Emanuel Smith, Actress Margaret Anglin, Tenor John McCormack, Mrs. Genevieve Garvan Brady, now Mrs. Macaulay. Last week, for its 1937 award, Notre Dame chose a Catholic pedagog: Dr. Jeremiah Denis Matthias Ford, 63, chairman of the department of Romance Languages at Harvard University.

A vigorous, professorial man who was born in Cambridge and has taught at Harvard 41 years, Dr. Ford has been decorated by France, Italy, Rumania and Spain for his zeal in spreading their languages, literatures and histories. He has written or edited more than 20 textbooks and anthologies, is editor of Henry Holt & Co.'s Spanish series, has been president of the Italian Historical Society of Massachusetts, the Dante Society and (1931-33) the solemn American Academy of Aris & Sciences.

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