In New Orleans

Trumpets tore the night air. Into New Orleans' City Park Stadium, where 65,000 Roman Catholics knelt, moved a ''Eucharistic chariot"--a large float, draped in burgundy and gold fabrics, bearing the kneeling figure of George William Cardinal Mundelein, Archbishop of Chicago, and for this occasion a papal legate in a gold mitre and cloth of gold cope. Be fore him stood a tall ostensorium worth $35,000, an altar vessel made of gold objects, diamonds and other jewels donated last winter by thousands of Louisiana Catholics.

Holding aloft the costly ostensorium, which in a glass clip contained the Sacred Host--to Catholics the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ--Cardinal Mundelein gave to the 65,000 faithful the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament as lights in the Park blinked out and thousands of candles sprang into flickering glow. For a mercy, the rain held off.

Thus last week ended the Eighth National Eucharistic Congress of U. S. Roman Catholics. At the four-day meeting in New Orleans were most of the U. S. hierarchy, thousands of priests and laity. The weather was persistently bad. Once the rain poured down during an open-air mass which could not be interrupted, and which ended with a blessing broadcast from Castel Gandolfo by Pope Pius XI.

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