1951 Solemn Pontifical Field Mass • With 100-Voice “Palestrina Cathedral Choir”

By way of a wonderful Polish blog, we discover this interesting photo:

Here’s the background:

N OCTOBER 14, 1951, about 6,500 people gathered at the foot of Starved Rock, to commemorate Jesuit missionary Fr. Marquette, near Utica where he offered the first Mass in Illinois in 1675. Also present was the 23-member Menominee Indian brass band of northern Wisconsin. Solemn Pontifical Field Mass was celebrated by all the Bishops of Illinois and numerous monsignori, and sung by the 100-voice Palestrina Cathedral Choir, supported by 500-voice choir from the diocesan Catholic high schools.

Among the attending dignitaries was also Cardinal Stritch of Chicago, US Senator Everett Dirksen, Congressman Noah Mason, Francois Briere, French Consul-General of Chicago, and Adlai Stevenson, Governor of Illinois. Following the field Mass, Payetanimah, a brave of the Menominee tribe in Wisconsin, made Archbishop Joseph H. Schlarman of Peoria an honorary Indian chief. He presented him with an Indian headdress and Indian title Weeskiew Pimmaniwew, which means “good manager and bountiful dispenser of goods.”

From what I can tell by a cursory reading of his biography, Bishop Schlarman seems to have been a solid and holy bishop. Schlarman also seems to have been close to one of my heroes—Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen—who was born in Peoria, Illinois:

I like where Schlarman says:

Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen has no superior, and perhaps no equal, in character, piety, and virtue at the Catholic University.