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¶ In Denver, five commanderies of Knights Templars were to join this week in their ninth annual Easter Sunrise Service. Led by the El Jebel Shrine Band, 1,000 Templars would march at 5 123 a. m. to Municipal Auditorium. Presbyterian Dr. David C. Bayliss was to speak. Later, Denver young people would hear the Highlander Boy Trumpet Quartet, the Little Symphony of the United Brethren Church, and an address "Dare We Be Christian?" by Sherwood Eddy, famed author-traveler-Y. M. C. A.ster.
¶ Holy Week in Rome found Church and State cooperating with smooth precision. Campaigning for fecundity, Mussolini has ordered 50%-70% fare reductions for Holy Year pilgrims and brought thousands of newlyweds to Rome partly at government expense. Pope Pius XI does his part by promising audiences to each & every couple, giving rosaries to brides, medals to grooms. On Palm Sunday the Pope was given a plaited, ornamented palm by the Bresca family of Bordighera, in accordance with old custom.* He planned to send it to Martin Henry Carmody of Grand Rapids, Mich., Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus. This week Pius XI will pontificate at high Easter mass, bless the populace afterwards.
¶ In Jerusalem on Easter Day, Jews will be nearing the end of Passover; thousands of Christians will visit the great Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Holy Saturday to see the Latin Patriarch bless a Holy Fire in the courtyard. Moslems will join in dancing, flag-waving processions to Nebi Musa, the reputed tomb of the Prophet Moses—a custom established some 50 years ago by Sultan Abdul Hamid the Damned, as a political maneuver to keep Christian ceremonies from monopolizing the Easter scene in Jerusalem.
¶ In parched, sparsely-settled districts of New Mexico and southern Colorado live Los Hermanos Penitentes—the Penitent Brothers, supposed to have degenerated from a pioneer Franciscan order into blood-fanaticism. The Penitents spend Holy Week fasting, chanting Spanish dirges, marching repeatedly over cactus and flogging each other with jagged whips of yucca (Spanish bayonet).* At length, blood streaming from their naked backs, they proceed to their Calvary. One of their number carries a cross. He is gashed in the side, then crucified—but with ropes, not nails as once was done.
* In 1586, the famed obelisk in St. Peter's Square was being put up. The ropes began to slip. Though silence had been enjoined, Sailor Bresca shouted: "Throw some water on the ropes." This was done; the ropes contracted and held; the Brescas were rewarded.
* In an Indian pueblo near Albuquerque last week a squaw named Mrs. Andrea T. Frasue was lashed five times, by order of the Pueblo Council, for professing belief in the Bible and attending Christian prayer meeting. Other Indian women were threatened with similar punishment, until the U. S. Government intervened.