Again, Malden

With some degree of trepidation the authorities of Holy Cross Cemetery in Malden, Mass, last week reopened the portals of their holy ground. During three weeks in November some 1,000,000 souls of every description had overrun the cemetery seeking the tomb of a priest, the Rev. Father Patrick J. Power, dead of phthisis some 60 years ago, lately reputed to possess great healing powers (TIME. Nov. 25 et seq.). Private prayer and meditation in the cemetery were impossible: the place was a bedlam of the faithful, the curious, the peanut-and-postcard-selling. At length William Henry Cardinal O'Connell, Archbishop of Boston, ordered the hordes away, the gates locked while the Church pondered the phenomena and decided whether or not God's hand was really manifest.

Last week when the public was again admitted, many persons naturally assumed that the Church had found evidence that miracles had really been wrought. But local Catholics know that parish priests were still gathering data among their parishioners, that this data will first be scanned by Cardinal O'Connell, finally sent to Rome for the scrutiny and meditation of the Congregation of Sacred Rites. Two or three years will probably elapse before decision is handed down. Then, accordingly, Malden may or may not be designated an official shrine.

Those who visited Holy Cross Cemetery last week found that the body of Priest Power had been reburied in a new grave. Around it stood a seven-foot fence. Around the old tomb and the whole Power plot were similar barricades. Posted nearby were grim-faced State police. Manifestly neither Church nor State intended to permit helter-skelter demonstrations. Announced Cardinal O'Connell: "Those who go to the cemetery for just and pious reasons must be prepared to obey strictly the regulations, else they will be excluded."

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