In A Blaze Of Glory . . . The Blessed Sacrament Enthroned Above The Clouds
By JAMES MONTI The year was 1592. Pope Clement VIII was a man who felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. The Church was beset with troubles from all sides, with continuing civil war between Catholics and Protestants in France, the spread of heresy, the ever-present threat to Christian Europe from the Turks, and the bloody persecution of English and Irish Catholics living under the Protestant regime of Queen Elizabeth I.On November 25, 1592, Pope Clement issued an encyclical summoning the clergy and laity of Rome to undertake with him a spiritual crusade of prayer in the form of the Forty Hours Prayer, a forty-hour cycle of continual Eucharistic adoration which he asked each major parish of Rome…Continue Reading