By JAMES MONTI
Book Review: A Transportation Miracle: XXVIII International Eucharistic Congress, Chicago, June 20-24, 1926. Edited by Norman Carlson et al. Shore Line Interurban Historical Society, Dispatch Seven. Lake Forest. Ill.: Shore Line Interurban Historical Society, 2016. 99 pages. Available from Kalmbach Media, Waukesha, Wis. (www.KalmbachHobbyStore.com).
Each year, Easter returns to renew our hope even when things in our life and in our world appear to be so very dark. In keeping with this season of hope, we turn to a story of light and hope from nearly a century ago, a story that unfolded in one of America’s grandest cities as a rallying cry to an unprecedented gathering of one million Catholics — the Twenty-Eighth International Eucharistic Congress, convened in Chicago in June of 1926. The ultimate reason for this event stretches back much further, as expressed by the French bishop of Lille, Louis Gaston de Segur, writing in 1881 in words that could just as easily be said of our own age:
“The situation in which Christian society finds itself at the present is calculated to occasion most serious alarm…it is attacked today by diabolical measures, the object of which is to dechristianize the people. . . .
“This torrent of hatred and persecution against Catholicism assumes such overwhelming proportions that man, of himself, is powerless to prevent and overcome the peril. An extraordinary intervention of Divine Providence is necessary. Our Lord alone can save our society and we must look to Him and to no other for relief. . . . And seeing that our enemies today attack the very heart and essence of our divine religion — we must strive to defend, implanting more firmly than ever Jesus Christ in the souls from which they seek to banish Him” (quoted in XXVIII International Eucharistic Congress: June 20-24, 1926, Chicago, Ill., Chicago, Mainz Corporation, 1926, p. 21).
The Eucharistic Congress that brought prelates and pilgrims to Chicago forty-five years later is the subject of a fascinating book that although written for train buffs gives all readers a truly inspiring account of an event that was all about the glory of Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist. As the title suggests, A Transportation Miracle seeks to tell the story of how the railroads and interurban rail lines in the Chicago area accomplished the seemingly impossible task of getting hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to where they needed to be for all the Masses and other events of this five-day international congress.
Yet all the logistics ultimately lead us back to the raison d’etre of it all, the greater glory of God in the Most Blessed Sacrament. A Transportation Miracle goes to great lengths to explain this raison d’etre.
As the book discusses in considerable detail, the celebration of an international Eucharistic congress in Chicago, the first such congress on American soil, was wrought ultimately through the initiative of Chicago’s zealous and energetic archbishop, George William Cardinal Mundelein (1872-1939).
Before the congress could properly get underway on June 20, 1926, its guest of honor, the papal legate for the congress, Giovanni Cardinal Bonzano (1867-1927), was to be given a magnificent rail journey from the East Coast to Chicago following his arrival by sea in New York on June 11, 1926. A seven-car passenger train was assembled and painted in red to transport the papal legate and the other prelates accompanying him, the rail cars having been provided by Edward F. Carry, the Catholic president of America’s premier railroad passenger car assembly firm, Pullman. Carry was a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great.
The president of the New York Central Railroad personally oversaw the running of this train from New York’s Grand Central Station on June 16 to its arrival in Chicago’s Central Station on June 17. Along the route, countless spectators gathered, from little groups of the faithful holding lit candles with heads bowed in rural areas to huge crowds in the thousands in urban districts.
The arrival of Cardinal Bonzano in Chicago was greeted with the pealing of the bells of three hundred churches. The cardinal spoke of his joy in coming to America and to Chicago for “this grand World Congress of love and devotion to the holiest thing in life, the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist” (A Transportation Miracle, p. 27).
The congress officially commenced on June 20 with a Solemn Pontifical High Mass in Chicago’s Cathedral of the Holy Name, preceded by a procession of seven hundred fifty pupils of the Quigley Preparatory Seminary and nearly nine hundred of the clergy, as a quarter of a million people gathered in the streets. Fifty musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra provided instrumental accompaniment for the sacred music of the Mass.
A day later, on “Children’s Day” of the congress, a crowd of a size unprecedented in the annals of U.S. religious history, numbering 400,000, converged upon Chicago’s Soldier Field for a Solemn Pontifical High Mass celebrated at a huge temporary altar built in imitation of the high altar of Rome’s Church of Saint Paul-Outside-the Walls, its four-pillared baldachin towering 125 feet above its surroundings. Thirty trombones heralded the approach of the clergy to the altar, and 62,000 children served as a choir for the Mass. The day set a new record for Chicago’s mass transit system in getting people to and from Soldier Field.
Day Three of the congress, June 22, began with a focus of the role of women in the Church, with a second outdoor Mass at Soldier Field. Twelve thousand nuns served as a choir for this liturgy attended by over 250,000 of the faithful. In the evening, the focus shifted to the role of men in the Church, with 275,000 laymen from every conceivable profession and walk of life and every ethnicity converging upon Soldier Field at dusk, each bearing a lit candle, to attend a program organized by the Holy Name Society of Chicago that climaxed with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament:
“They came from their employment, traveling many miles for attendance, many of them supperless and in their working clothes. Laborers from construction gangs and the foundries, workers in overalls from nearby railroad yards, factory and warehouse employees, business and professional office help, all shared places with their employers, the wealthy, the successful, the socially prominent” (quoted in A Transportation Miracle, p. 40).
Day Four, June 23, was “Higher Education Day,” featuring the fourth Solemn Pontifical High Mass of the congress, again at Soldier Field, with a turnout of 200,000. The Mass brought together students from the high schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries in the Chicago area.
One of the most gratifying traits of this book is the great care that its writers and editors have taken to explain and present as accurately and reverently as they could our Catholic beliefs and practices regarding the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist. Included in the book is a full-page color photograph of the magnificent gold-gilded sunburst monstrance that is reported to have been donated by Pope Pius XI for the Eucharistic Congress. There are also color photos of the chalice and the ciborium used at the concluding Mass of the congress, plus a colorized photo of the outdoor altar built for this final Mass.
It was on the concluding day of the Eucharistic Congress that the railroads and mass transit lines were put to their ultimate test, in the end managing to run 275,000 train trips to and from Mundelein Seminary, the scene of the closing liturgical celebrations, safely moving what proved to be a turnout of close to half a million people, with most of the pilgrims coming from Chicago, Milwaukee, Kenosha, and Racine.
The ecclesiastical retinue assembled for the final Solemn Pontifical High Mass at 10:00 a.m. was of stunning proportions, arriving at the altar in a procession that comprised three apostolic delegates, twelve cardinals, sixty archbishops, two-hundred fifty bishops and abbots, plus nearly two thousand priests and four hundred seminarians.
For all the extraordinary harmony, serenity, concord, and solidarity that participants experienced within a setting in which even the civic authorities and big business rolled out the red carpet for Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, the challenges to the Church that had inspired the First Eucharistic Congress in 1881 were by no means absent in the wider world to which all the participants were going to return after the congress concluded.
High Winds And Pelting Hail
As if to emphasize this, there was a dramatic turn of events at the triumphant climax of the congress on its final afternoon. For nearly five days, the weather in the Chicago area had provided a nearly ideal soundstage and backdrop for the outdoor Masses and other events of the congress.
Yet early summer in the American Midwest is a time when the weather often changes quite suddenly. June 24 from morning through midday had been a sunny and warm day, with a high temperature near 80. It was sometime after 2:00 p.m., after the massive Eucharistic procession with which the congress was to conclude had set out on its three-mile journey, that the sky turned dark with the approach of a strong thunderstorm that unleashed a torrent of rain, lightning, high winds, and pelting hail. It was particularly the hail that sent many of the worshippers running for cover.
Yet through it all, Cardinal Bonzano, who was carrying the monstrance, was determined to proceed, come what may:
“It was a veritable deluge, drenching the gorgeous canopy, even beating upon the Ostensorium [monstrance] itself. A storm of hail followed. . . . Lightning lashed the sky. Trees bent before the devastating torrents of wind, striking terror into the hearts of the timorous. But the forward movement of the Procession was never checked. Drenched to the skin almost immediately, their glowing dalmatics wilted, their shoes soaked, the participants kept courageously on their way through the deluge.
“The white and gold canopy of the Papal Legate offered little if any protection. The supreme fury of the storm beat upon him as he passed the halfway point. Disdaining shelter, he (Cardinal Bonzano) continued serenely on his way, bearing the Ostensorium on its destined journey, faithful to all the traditions of religious procession” (account quoted in A Transportation Miracle, p. 59).
In the end, the Eucharistic Congress was recognized to be a huge spiritual success for the Church in America. Commenting upon the congress, Time magazine observed: “No treasure is too great for Roman Catholics to pour out in their honoring of Christ. Cathedrals have gone up in magnificent pomp for housing of the consecrated host, believed by Catholics to be the true body of Christ” (quoted in A Transportation Miracle, p. 9).
We as Catholics must never tire of pouring out all the treasures we can for the greater glory of God in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
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