Crosier & Mitre

"Have you the apostolic mandate?"

"We have."

"Then let it be read!"

So intoning, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, tall Papal Secretary of State, opened last week the first consecration of a U. S. bishop ever to take place in St. Peter's in Rome. In full pontificals the Cardinal sat solemnly on a faldstool before the altar. Before him, bowing low in the cope, biretta and white stole of a priest, was Monsignor Francis Joseph Spellman, 43, onetime grocer's boy and sandlot baseball player in Whitman, Mass., named last month by the Holy See to be Auxiliary Bishop of Boston (TIME, Aug. 15). In three great tribunes sat the entire Vatican diplomatic corps and many another official including Boston's Fire Commissioner Edward F. McLaughlin.

By Monsignor Spellman's side stood his two assistant consecrators, Monsignor Francesco Borgongini Duca, Apostolic Nuncio to Italy, and Monsignor Giuseppe Pizzardo, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. A choir sang. As Monsignor Spell man approached, it hushed; the assistant consecrators bowed slightly. Petitioning that Monsignor Spellman be made a bishop, Monsignor Borgongini Duca gave to Cardinal Pacelli the apostolic mandate. Then the Cardinal began to catechize the priest who had once been an assistant to his secretariat. Catechized, Monsignor Spellman was assisted up the steps to the altar, where he kissed the episcopal ring.

Now vested in pontifical garments, the Bishop-elect joined the Cardinal in celebrating mass, each at his own altar. Then said Cardinal Pacelli: "It behooves a bishop to judge, interpret, consecrate, offer, baptize and confirm"; and while the choir chanted the Litany of the Saints, Bishop-elect Spellman lay prostrate on the floor.

"Receive the Holy Ghost." The Cardinal imposed his hands, anointed the Bishop-elect's head and hands, thrice prayed "Whatsoever thou shalt bless, may it be blessed . . ." and Monsignor Francis Joseph Spellman was a bishop. He took his crosier (pastoral staff), episcopal ring, book of Gospels, mitre and gloves, and proceeded through St. Peter's, blessing the congregation as he went. Returning to the altar. Bishop Spellman genuflected thrice, wished his consecrator well with a thrice- intoned "Ad multos annos" (for many years).

Soon after his consecration, Bishop Spellman was received privately by Pope Pius XI, whose words he had often translated into English, notably in the first international papal broadcast last year, and in the encyclical on "Catholic Action," which Monsignor Spellman carried to Paris, translating as he went. Last week the Pope affectionately recalled that on the same day, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he himself had taken possession of the Archbishopric of Milan. Then Pius XI received Bishop Spellman's relatives, gave the men gold medals, the women rosaries. Bishop Spellman got a large gold medallion for his mother. But his honors were not over. It was as if the Vatican were bending backwards for Bishop "Frank" Spellman, Fordham graduate, student in Rome, assistant chancellor in the Boston arch diocese, leading U. S. contact man with the Holy See during the past seven years.

Late in the afternoon of Bishop Spellman's consecration, he gave a reception for his friends in the Vatican's Borgia Apartments, thrown open to such a gathering for the first time in its history.

"Have you the apostolic mandate?"

"We have."

"Then let it be read!"

Not only in Rome were these words spoken last week. In Cleveland's ugly, red brick St. John's Cathedral another bishop was added to the apostolic succession. Present for the occasion was the scholarly, active Archbishop of Cincinnati, Most Rev. John Timothy McNicholas, whose fame in the Midwestern hierarchy is exceeded only by that of Chicago's George William Cardinal Mundelein and rivalled only by that of Cleveland's own Bishop Joseph Schrembs,/- who was in charge of the U. S. section of the Dublin Eucharistic Congress last June. Present also were the new Archbishop of St. Paul, the Archbishop of Dubuque, 25 bishops and 2,000 lower clergy and laymen, to welcome to the Episcopate Monsignor James A. McFadden. 51, Cleveland born and reared, chancellor since 1925 of the diocese. Monsignor McFadden was consecrated auxiliary bishop by Bishop Schrembs, with Bishops Michael James Gallagher of Detroit and Thomas Charles O'Reilly of Scranton as assistants. Afterwards there was public dining and speaking, all of it in the proud, happy vein of Cleveland's Mayor Ray T. Miller who told 10,000 in Public Hall that "the consecration made history that Clevelanders are proud of."

/-Other well-known Midwestern prelates: Fort Wayne's Bishop John Francis Noll, influential editor of Our Sunday Visitor; Indianapolis' Bishop Joseph Chartrand, probably closer in contact with his flock than any other; Oklahoma City's Bishop Francis Clement Kelley, well-known in Washington and abroad.

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