ASS AND 'FM DEUM' GREET
THEQUEEN'S E The Queen with the iG.C, Island's Archbishop
HOMECOMING
Malta and Gib. highlight tour of lands with 3,000,000 Catholics
I N Westminster Cathedral—whose tall, slender campanile overlooks the gardens of Buckingham Palace—and in all the churches of the Westminster diocese, Masses will be celebrated on Sunday in thanksgiving for the Queen's safe return from her tour of the Commonwealth, a tour which has enabled millions of her Catholic subjects to demonstrate to her their loyalty and affection.
Cardinal Griffin—one of the three "Empire Cardinals" of 1946 who were received by King George VI and the present Queen Mother at the Palace when they returned from the Consistory at which they received the Red Hat—will assist at the Mass at 10.30 a.m. in the cathedral and give a brief address.
All the thanksgiving Masses will be followed by the "Te Deum."
Here and there on her long journeyings the Catholics who joined in the cheers that have swept up in waves to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were only a part of the crowds.
But the voices that must have been echoing still in their minds and hearts as the Royal yacht Britannia steamed up from the Mediterranean towards the English Channel and the Thames had conic from all-Catholic Malta and the almost all-Catholic fortress of the Rock of Gibraltar.
The Royal Tour has indeed demonstrated to the world as never before the deep loyalty and affection for the Crown of Her Majesty's Catholic subjects scattered across the five continents.
Wherever the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh went there were Catholics in the great throngs which cheered her, among the soldiers, sailors and airmen lining the ceremonial routes, often among the distinguished groups of leading citizens welcoming her.
Face to face
By the simple act of meeting her awn peoples where they lived, and of showing herself to them as a person of immense charm and humanity, the Queen has done more to strengthen the ties of unity and devotion than any number of Corntnonwealth conferences or formal treaties of friendship.
In some of the places Her Majesty visited. such as Bermuda. where the local Catholic population is small, the Queen's coming brought a new awareness of their kinship through the Crown and through the muchunderrated virtue of patriotism with their co-religionists m Britain and elsewhere.
In other places. such as Australia and Malta. where the Catholic communities are strong, the Queen herself must have recognised their unshakable attachment, at least as great as that of their non-Catholic neighbours.
If the Coronation reminded them in a general sort of way of the traditional religious significance of the Monarch's office, seeing Her Majesty and realising the cheerful, unaffected spirit with which she discharges her task certainly brought home to them her complete dedication.
This has been proved by the reports and editorial comments in local Catholic newspapers, big and small, coming to these offices from the West Indies, Australia, Ceylon, Malta and elsewhere during the seven months of the tour.
She knew the nuns Well over 3,000,000 Catholics live in those parts of the Commonwealth through which the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh passed, and they all prayed for Her Majesty during the visit.
Bermuda. the first port of call late last year, has only 3,500 Catholics, but in the islands of the West Indies there are nearly 500,000.
In Tonga and the Eijis, where for generations life has altered little in its externals. there are nearly 30,000 Catholics with their own Vicars Apostolic and missionary priests. In great Australian and New Zealand cities such as Sydney, Melbourne. Adelaide and Wellington, the Queen noticed that nuns wearing similar habits to the nuns she had seen in British America stood among the schoolchildren who turned out to cheer her.
Even in Ceylon, one of the principal centres of Buddhism in Asia, representatives—young and old, religious and lay—of the island's halfmillion Catholic people proved that loyalty to the Crown is a privilege they knew how to honour.
George Cross island
The Royal visit to the great missionary territory of Uganda, short though it was, at any rate gave the Catholic citizens of the Entebbe district the opportunity to welcome Her Majesty on behalf of more than 1,000.000 of their co religionists there, The last stages of the tour in Malta and Gibraltar gave the fullest outward expression of all to the loyal feelings of Catholics.
By then the Queen and the Duke were reunited with their children. And it was a real religious and Continued on page 8