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 EUCHARISTIC

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EUCHARISTIC

the world. The Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is one of the principal dogmas of the Cath- olic Faith and is therefore of paramount importance as the most precious treasure that Christ has left to His Church as the centre of Catholic worship and as the source of Christian piety. The main advantages of these congresses have been in the concentration of the thoughts of the faithful upon the mystery of the altar, and in making known to them the means by which devotion towards the Holy Eucharist may be promoted and implanted in the hearts of the people. The promoters of Eucharistic congresses believe that, if during recent years devotion to the Holy Eucharist has become more widespread, if works of adoration. Confraternities of the Blessed Sacrament, and the practice of frequent Communion have spread rapidly and extensively, it must be ascribed in great part to these gatherings.

The first congress owed its inspiration to Bishop Gaston de Segur, and was held at Lille, France, 21 June, 1S81. The idea at first was merely local and met with few adherents, but it grew from year to year with an ever-increasing importance. The second gather- ing was at .\-vignon, in 1SS2, and the third at Liege, in the following year. When from the 9th to the 13th of September, 1S85, the fourth congress met at Fribourg in Switzerland, under the presidency of the famous Mgr. Mermillod, Bishop of Lausanne and Geneva, his influence anil example drew to the platform members of the Cantonal Government, officials of the munici- pality of Fribourg, officers of the army, judges of the courts, while thousands of Catholics from all over Europe joined in the formal procession. Toulouse, in the South of France, was the place of meeting of the fifth congress, from the 20th to the 2.5th of June, 1SS6, and about 1500 ecclesiastics and 30,000 laymen were present at the closing exercises.

The sixth congress met ir. Paris, 2-6 July, 1SS8, and the great memorial church of the Sacred Heart on Monmartre was the centre of the proceedings. Ant- werp, in Belgium, entertained the ne.xt congress, 15-21 August, 1890; an immense altar of repose was erected in the Place de Meir, and it was estimated that 150,- 000 persons were gathered about it when Cardinal Goossens, Archbishop of Mechlin, gave the solemn Benediction. Bishop Doutrcloux of Li^j;e was then president of the Permanent Committee for the Organi- zation of Eucharistic Congresses, the body which has charge of the details of these meetings.

Special importance was attached to the eighth con- gress, which went to Jerusalem to hold its sessions from the 14th to the 21st of May, 1893. Pope Leo Xin sent as legate Cardinal Langenieux, Arch- bishop of Reims. Here tlie reunion of the Orient was advocated, and an adoration of the Blessed Sacra- ment was preached on the very spot where tradition says the Agony in the Garden took place. Next year the congress was held at Reims, 25-29 July, and the different churches of the East were largely repre- sented. A place was given in the deliberations for the first time to the study of social questions affecting the working classes. Paray-le-Monial, the city of the Sacred Heart, 20-24 September, 1897, was the scene of the tenth congress; and the eleventh, the best or- ganized and most numerously attended of the series, met at Bru.ssels, 13-17 July, 1898. Cardinal Lange- nieux was again the pope's legate at the twelfth con- gress which had Lourdes, the city of Eucharistic mira- cles, as its meeting place, 7-11 .\ugust, 1899. This gathering was notable for the number of priests who took part in the procession. When the thirteenth congress met at .\ngers, 4-8 September, 1901, a special section was formed for young men to read and discuss papers having reference to s\ich works as young men ought to undertake for the promotion of devotion to the Holy Eucliarist and the solution of social ques- tions. Xamur, Belgium, 3-7 September, 1902, was v.— 38

chosen as the location for the fourteenth congress, and the fifteenth, 20-24 July, 1904, went to Angouleme, where the operations of French law forbade the usual procession of the Blessed Sacrament.

Pope Pius X having expressed a wish that the Eucharistic Congress should be held in Rome, the dele- gates met there, 1-6 June, 1905. He added to the solemnity of the occasion by celebrating Mass, at the opening of the sessions, bj' giving a special audience to the delegates, and by being present at the procession that closed the proceedings. It was the dawn of the movement that led to his decree, "Tridentina Synod us", 20 December, 1905, advising daily communions.

Tournai, in Belgium, saw the seventeenth congress, 15-19 August, 1906; and the next one went to Mctz, in Lorraine, 7-11 August, 1907. Cardinal Vincenzo ^^annutelli was the pope's legate, and the German Government suspended the law of 1S70, forbidding processions, in order that the usual solemn procession of the Blessed Sacrament might be held. Each year the congress had become more and more definitely international, and at the invitation of Archljishop Bourne of Westminster it was decided to hold the nineteenth congress in London, the first under the auspices of, and among, English-speaking members of the Church.

In addition to these general congresses there had also grown up, in all countries where Catholics were numerous, local gatherings of the Eucharistic leagues which were potent factors in tlie spread of the devo- tion. These were held in France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, England, Canada, Australia, and the United States. The first of these in the United States was at St. Louis, in September, 1901; the second at New York, in 1905; and the third at Pittsburg, in 1907. The presidents of the Permanent Committee of the International Eucharistic Congresses, under whose direction all this progress was made were: Bishop Gaston de Segur, of Lille; Archbishop de La Bouillerie, titular of Perga and coadjutor of Bor- deaux; Archbishop Duquesnay of Cambrai; Cardinal Mermillod, Bishop of Lausanne and Geneva; Bishop Doutreloux of Liege, and Bisliop Thomas Hcylen of Namur, Belgium. After each congress this committee prepared and published a volume giving a report of all the papers read and the discussions on them in the various sections of the meeting, the sermons preached, the addresses made at the public meetings, and the details of all that transpired.

As the most representative and important of all the congresses, the whole Catholic world was at once in- terested in the nineteenth, which was held in London, 9-13 September, 1908, and regarded as the greatest religious triumph of its generation. In an affection- ate letter voicing anew his interest in these congresses, the pope once more designated Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli as his legate to attend the sessions. More than three hundred and fifty years had elapsed since a legate from the pope had been seen in England. With him were six other cardinals, fourteen archbishops, seventy bishops and a host of priests. Xo such gath- ering of ecclesiastics had ever been seen outside of Rome in modern times, and English Catholics pre- pared to make it locally even more memorable. The seeds of " the Second Spring", one of them aptly said, awakened by the tears and blood of persecution, and strengthened by the prayers of the remnant of the faithful in the dreary years of the penal laws, bore flower and fruit.

A distinguished escort met Cardinal Vannutelli when he landed at Dover, and an enormous crowd assembled to witness the arrival of a papal legate in London for the first time in more than three centuries. On the next day, 9 September, the congress was sol- emnly opened in the cathedral at Westminster, by the legate, supported by Cardinals Gibbons of Baltimore, Logue of Ireland, Sancha y Herv^s of Toledo, Ferrari