The audacity of faith

Using the most sophisticated technology of the time, the Eucharistic Congress of 1932 captivated the country, writes Dan Buckley

“AFTER the greatest night in her religious history, Dublin was yawning today, but yawning happily. At 4am rejoicing pilgrims were still singing their hymns in the streets though Midnight Mass had been long over.”

So goes the breathless Cork Examiner report of Jun 24, 1932, on the main event of Dublin’s week-long Eucharist Congress, assigned to the city by the Vatican in honour of the 1,500th anniversary of Ireland’s patron saint.

The notion of thousands of sober revellers singing Dóchas Linn Naomh Pádraig as they danced from Phoenix Park to O’Connell St and beyond might be strange to contemplate these days. Temple Bar revellers they weren’t, yet the 1932 celebration has a contemporary resonance.

With a potent mix of pomp and piety grander than a dozen U2 concerts combined, it was an extraordinary extravaganza — not just a solemn religious event but a spectacular and dramatic production on a gargantuan scale. Employing state-of-the-art technology, organisers ensured it would be the biggest spectacle the nation had ever witnessed and the biggest gathering since the days of Daniel O’Connell.

“A thousand bells rang out at the Elevation of the Host and gigantic letters of silver-grey flashed a message of Faith in Latin across the sky,” wrote the Examiner reporter, describing a laser-like heavenly inscription piercing the clouds over Dublin.

Amid spectacular lighting displays, and with gigantic ‘letters of light’ beamed from the ground, the sight of the words ‘Adoramus, Laudamus, Glorificamus’ appearing in the sky must have seemed like a miraculous phenomenon to the 1m gathered in Phoenix Park and the 500,000 in the city centre.

“There were searchlights, flood lights and the lights of a million candles that made it difficult to discover when dawn came,” the Examiner recorded.

One of the faithful gathered there, GK Chesterton, the English writer, was overwhelmed not just by the spectacle but by the devotion that underpinned and gave credence to such a jingoistic display of Irish Catholicism. In an account of the event, entitled Christendom in Dublin, he wrote: “Nobody who was been in Dublin for a week, as I have been during the Eucharistic Congress, can doubt that Ireland is passionately religious.... Nobody who has lived in England all his life, as I have lived in England, can doubt that modern England, with its many manly and generous virtues, has become largely indifferent to religion.”

Ireland — not yet a republic — was anything but indifferent either to religion or politics. Barely 10 years after the foundation of the Irish Free State, an impoverished nation was determined to show the world that, despite 700 years of oppression and religious suppression, despite famine, war, conflict, destitution, and emigration, it could at least put on a good show.

The pomp and ceremony had all the hallmarks of a royal occasion. The Royal Hussars, mounted cavalry of a nascent Irish army, looked resplendent in their pale blue and lemon ensemble, topped off with a feathered busby that would have done the Household Cavalry of Britain’s King George V proud.

The Dublin Congress took place over five days, from June 22-26, although a special Act of the Oireachtas — The Eucharistic Congress (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1932 — decreed that the ‘Congress period’ extended from June 18 to July 1.

Dublin, a town of tattered tenements and squalor, was transformed into a city of light — spruced, decorated, beautified, and made resplendent for the joyous occasion. In honour of the achievements of the medieval Irish monastic church, replica round towers were erected in the city centre and everywhere there was evidence of the nation’s Christian heritage.

Locals also did their bit. Streets and laneways were festooned with flowers, bunting and banners. Grottos and shrines were hastily erected (some are still there) to reflect the religious devotion of the populace.

The Phoenix Park gathering was organised with great precision and attention to detail. More than 20,000 voluntary stewards as well as 4,000 Catholic boy scouts were there to marshal crowds and supervise the proceedings on the ground.

All Irish dioceses, Dublin parishes, and overseas pilgrims were allocated special positions facing the altar. Nothing was left to chance. Large catering tents and first-aid stations were erected and there was even a press office. To ensure no pilgrim went thirsty, an underground water supply to the Park was put in place for the occasion.

Everything was on a grand scale, as History Ireland recounts. “The Men’s Mass, held in the ‘Fifteen Acres’ of the Phoenix Park on 23 June in front of a giant altar flanked by colonnades, was attended by a congregation of approximately 250,000 people. The Women’s Mass on 24 June was attended by some 200,000 women. The Children’s Mass on 25 June saw approximately 100,000 children gather in the Park. The main pontifical High Mass on 26 June was attended by an estimated one million people.”

Ten years before the congress, the capital had stood still for the funeral of Michael Collins. This time it was all bells and whistles, music and lights, and — above all — song.

Count John McCormack, famous on both sides of the Atlantic, provided the latter. In the infancy of Irish broadcasting, his powerful and lyrical tenor voice rang from the Phoenix Park and was heard by millions huddled around crackling valve radios in every highway and byway, from Derry to Derrynane.

The highlight of the congress was the Pontifical High Mass in the Phoenix Park, which featured a live broadcast by Pope Pius XI from the Vatican. The broadcast was transmitted via the most extensive PA system ever used anywhere at the time, with loudspeakers located in the Park, along Dublin’s quays, and in the city centre.

In a case study on the event as part of UCC’s Multitext Project on Irish History, historians John Paul McCarthy and John O’Riordan reflect on how modern technology combined with ancient practices to give Irish Catholics a sense of being in the presence of the Pope — something that would not happen for almost another 50 years.

“Modern technology had allowed the Pope himself to communicate with the million communicants in Dublin through the PA system. Speaking from his private library in the Vatican in distant Rome, Pope Pius remarked on the extraordinary success of the congress.”

He also spoke of the exceptional piety displayed by almost every section of Irish society and on the unique intimacy between the Irish Church and the papacy.

This was music to the ears of those listening to the wireless throughout the country. In every village and town, signs of the celebration were evident. On hilltops, large crosses were

constructed where Mass was offered on the day.

In the Phoenix Park, the hierarchy were gathered in full regalia, providing a rainbow of colour — a remarkable contrast to the mostly drab and poor congregation. An Irish Press reporter could hardly contain himself: “It is 12.30. The bishops are assembling, their purple shining through the green of the trees. They march in hundreds, slowly, pensively, the bishops of the world, in white and black and red, in cream and gold and brown. They file through the 3,000 priests like a coloured thread being drawn through white silk. Then up the crimson carpet, turning right and left to the colonnades of the altar, and there they sit and seen from afar through the white pillars, each group looking like Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of The Last Supper.”

Dublin became an open-air cathedral as the al-fresco Mass was broadcast urbi et orbi — to the city and the world. John McCormack, the darling of the nation and a papal count since 1928, sang the offertory motet, ’Panis Angelicus (‘Bread of Angels’), to the mesmerised gathering.

The consecration was heralded with a precise and exotic drill presented by an Army Guard of Honour. On command, 36 gleaming sword blades were pointed towards the altar. Six trumpeters sounded a Papal salute, followed by the tolling of the Bell of St Patrick, borrowed from the National Museum.

Then, like a Cecil B DeMille movie epic, came the dramatic finale as the congress came to a triumphant close after the Consecration of the Host. McCarthy and O’Riordan describe how the Papal Legate, Cardinal Lorenzo Lauri, “threw himself before the main table of the constructed altar, vacating his throne in the most dramatic manner possible”.

The message to the rest of the world was implicit: “follow that”. Fulfilling Robert Emmet’s epitaph, the country had finally taken its place among the nations of the earth.