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Show THE WOLD'S PILGRIMAGE. The story of the Holy Year in Rome is told from its ecclesiastical side by a special correspondent in the Catholic World Magazine for March. With the article are published some photographs Just received from Rome of the golden hammer, as well as the very seen of the Holy Father using it in opening the Holy Door. . There has been no more dramatic sight during this celebrated century than that which was witnessed on Christmas eve at this remarkable cer- 1 emony. In its historical significance it reaches back through centuries; in lt3 prophetic meanings it carries one forward for-ward to the crack of doom. The clasp binding the past with the future wo Leo himself the greatest historical personage, of the age. As a boy he was present at the last Jubilee in 1825; as a venerable old man he opens this Jubilee. The current issue of this magazine speaks of the intense desire the Holy Father had of going through with this ceremony of opening the Holy Door, as follows: "It was left to Leo XIII., the Pontiff grown old with' the century, and bearing bear-ing the burden of ninety years on his venerable shoulders, to open the Holy Portals closed by his namesake in the Papacy on the Christmas eve of 1S-S. It is useless here to revert to the memories mem-ories of the jubilee of Pope Leo XII., when, in his papal bull of proclamation, our present Pontiff has drawn was a masterly hand the striking picture of the Jubilee Rome he knew as a boy. In the audience given to cardinals and 1 prelates on the feast of his patron, St. Joachim, the Holy Father lovingly recalled the early memories of his first Jubilee, the preaching in the open squares, the crowds of faithful, and the great Pontiff who called the little t.U ! UA T)Amor. nnllacra Qrniinrl I him in the Vatican to give them a special spe-cial blessing, especially praising the young Joachim Pecci, who, as the head of his class, was called upon to thank the Pope for the honor bestowed on his school. It must seem truly marvellous to the aged Pontiff to look back upon it all now; afrd one wonders if there could have come to the clever boy with the sensitive face, as he watched the closing ceremony of the jubilee in St. Peter's, even a slight premonition of how he himself, seventy-five years afterwards, af-terwards, on that very spot, would reopen re-open the Holy Door as Sovereign Pontiff Pon-tiff of the Universal Church." - |