THIRTY YEARS OF PAIN AND CONFLICT

POPE INNOCENT XI., the " Great Reformer," the Pope who marshalled the Christian forces to defeat the Turks at the gates of Vienna — the Pope whose Pontificate saw the Titus Oates Plot — was solemnly beatified and venerated in St. Peter's in two great ceremonies on Sunday.
When the Holy Father, coming from Castel Gandolfo, went to venerate the relics of his newly beatified predecessor in the evening, 30,000 Romans and pilgrims were in the basilica, and surrounding the Papal throne were 15 Cardinals and 100 Archbishops and Bishops.
Blessed Innocent, who was elected in 1676 and died in 1689. is only the third Sovereign Pontiff reigning in the past 500 years who has been declared Blessed. The others are St. Pius V and St. Pius X.
STRUGGLE
Throughout all the years of his pontificate he was engaged in a ceaseless struggle for the rights of the Church and the Holy See with King Louis XIV of France.
At a time when the Jansenists in France were seeking to impose upon everyone a system of extreme moral rigorism, Pope Innocent was seeking to make the faithful more aware of their life in the Mystical Body of Christ and urging — like Pope St. Pius X — frequent and daily Holy Communion.
The Holy Father, in a broadcast on Sunday morning during the beatification ceremony. pictured Pope Innocent as an austere solitary engaged in unrelenting activity in promoting a thorough reform in a society long plunged in grave abuses—a man who therefore was deprived of popularity, but a man who was a model of patience in pain from illness throughout .his pontificate; a man of dignified and almost melancholy bearing who, however. could at the proper time be affable.
VENERATION
And now, after all these years, as if to give their own verdict on " one of the outstanding Popes of the Roman Church " — the words of the Holy Father—the Romans and the pilgrims cheered to the echo when the beatification decree was read.
Cardinal Tisserant, Dean of the Sacred College, in the presence of other members of the Sacred College, some 50 Archbishops and Bishops, with thousands of the faithful. celebrated Pontifical High Mass at the Papal Altar before the reading of the decree.
The Holy Father was meanwhile listening in by radio at his summer
residence in the Alban Hills. His Holiness must have heard those cheers as the final words of the decree were read and, beneath the 10,000 lights of the chandeliers around the altar. the crystal casket containing the relcs of the newly beatified Pope was uncovered for veneration.
BROADCAST
The " Te Deum " filled the basilica, and then the people heard the voice of the Pope singing the " Oremus."
Over the radio immediately afterwards, the Holy Father delivered a very long address telling the history of Blessed Innocent and praising the exceptional virtues of "a Pontiff who deserves particularly well of the Church and of Europe."
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