Pope's Triumph

After receiving as a gift from one Mrs. May Lyons a Mosaic of himself, made in the Vatican Museum, Patrick Joseph Cardinal Hayes of Manhattan last week wrote letters to the pastors of his archdiocese, instructing them to dedicate October "to the supreme shepherd, Pius XI, in honor of the 50th anniversary of his holy priesthood," and to collect Peter-pence October 13.

Referring to the present Pope's masterly diplomacy, as especially shown in settling the Vatican question (TIME, June 17), the Cardinal wrote: "Our Catholic hearts were filled with joy and our souls profoundly touched with indescribable emotion when we realized that the serene, impressive, apostolic, illuminating figure of our beloved Holy Father passed beyond the portals of St. Peter's, out under the blue dome of heaven, bearing Christ himself in the Holy Eucharist. Verified, surely, was the ancient truth: 'Where Peter is, there is the Church; where the Church is, there is Christ. This is our spiritual Inheritance that cannot fade.' (1 Peter 1, 4)."

However pleasing to the Pope was news of this celebration, last week he accomplished something that must have been even more gratifying to him. Seizing the most propitious moment possible, he completely healed the breach between Czechoslovakia and the Catholic Church.

The origins of this rift were in 1925 when the Czechs, three fourths of whom are Catholics, celebrated as a national holiday the anniversary of the martyrdom of John Hus five centuries ago. Since Heretic Hus had been burned for intimating that the anti-Christ could be found at Rome, the papacy was quick to express its resentment over this holiday and withdrew the Papal Nuncio from the Prague for almost a year.

Last week at Prague the Papal Nuncio gave to President Thomas Garrigue Masaryk the Grand Cross of the Order of the Sacred Tomb. Knowing this cross had hitherto been given only to Catholic sovereigns, the Czechs realized the Pope wished the breach completely healed. Especially joyful were they because of the fact that the Pope made this reconciliation in the midst of the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of St. Wenceslas, patron of Czechoslovakia and famed in Bohemian legends. While the festival over "Good King Wenceslas" has been in progress since May, last week was a most appropriate time for the Pope's presentation, since on the following day was opened the restored Church of St. Vitus, supposedly begun by St. Wenceslas and the place to which his body was brought a few years after he was murdered at the age of 20 by his brother, Boleslav the Cruel.