A Bell for Vienna

Paris has swallowed up the Cathedral of Notre Dame and St. Paul's is only one landmark of London, but the life of Vienna still centers around the 800-year-old Cathedral of St. Stephen. The Viennese call it, familiarly, Stefanskirche--Stephen's Church. Since the war, when its roof was wrecked in the siege of Vienna, they have worked as hard to repair Stefanskirche as their 12th century forefathers did to build it. In six years workmen, including free labor volunteers, contributed 1,500,000 hours to its repair. New tiles to cover the slate roof were bought by public subscription (250,000 tiles at 5 Austrian shillings--about 20-c---a tile). The entire job cost the people of Vienna $960,000.

This week it was almost finished. For the first time since 1945 the whole of the cathedral was open to the public. Although the 445-ft. Gothic spire is not yet strong enough to hold it, a new 23-ton Pummerin--a giant bell which includes fragments of the old one--was wheeled to the gate of the cathedral, after a two-day procession through the villages between Vienna and Linz, where it was cast. On Sunday, crowds packed the cathedral and the streets around it as Theodor Cardinal Innitzer celebrated a pontifical Mass at the restored high altar. From the gate, the great bell of Stefanskirche pealed its greetings to the city, for the first time since Easter Day 1937.

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