Religion: Words & Works

In Uniontown, Pa., more than 100,000 Roman Catholics at the 21st annual pilgrimage of the Pittsburgh Greek Rite Diocese to the Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Help heard Auxiliary Bishop Fulton J. Sheen of New York sing the first pontifical Mass (Byzantine rite) ever offered in English. The congregation joined in prayer for the conversion of Russia. Bishop Sheen prayed that the Communist hammer-and-sickle symbol “may be transfigured so that the sickle will look like the moon under Our Lady’s feet and the hammer like the cross from which Christ will forgive His persecutors.” ¶Peking Communist magazine, China Youth, admitted to its readers that religious believers offer a special problem to brainwashers. “People can break any idol, but this won’t wash the divinity off the brain of religious followers,” said the magazine. “This must be done through persuasion and education . . . constant atheistic propaganda.”