50 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK

With the Million Crown Fund standing already at £24,000 – or 96,000 crowns – plans for new work in Westminster Cathedral are almost complete.
The plans will be placed before the art council, probably next month, and then work can begin.
Next month, too, the new shrine of Our Lady of Westminster will be blessed and the ancient alabaster statue will be placed under the 13th Station of the Cross in a little chapel without outside walls, but very suitable for large pilgrimages and ideal for private devotion.
This 14th-century statue, as announced last week, is an anonymous gift to the cathedral, and will revive an ancient and royal devotion.
Cardinal Griffin will bless the statue immediately before the evening Mass on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception...
When Cardinal Vaughan began this work he felt most strongly that that a cathedral in the centre of London was necessary for the life of the Church in England, and that it would have its effect gradually, but quite forcefully, on our non-Catholic neighbours.
Even private subscriptions are coming in from those who are not Catholics.
They come from those who love the building as such, from those giving in memory of a Catholic friend who is dead, or simply from those who have a high regard for the Church but who have not yet the blessing of the gift of faith.