The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-11-21
AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY
St. Edwards Day Brings Roman Cath
 olics to Shrine of the Confessor
By R. GORDON wAEssON

London, November f.-(Reciprocai News e.)-Roman Catholics were worshipping at Westminster abbey to- day. From morning to night thin stream of devout pilgrims, most of them faithful adherents of the Pope, passed in and out of the great shrine of Eng fish Professionalism.
 For it was St. Edward the Confessors S Day, and his remains lie entombed be- hind the high altar of the abbey. Since the year 1066, believers have worshipped at his resting place, and for almost eight centuries this day has been the particu- lar occasion on which they have shown their devotion, Long years before the shrine at Lourdee existed the halt and the maimed and the sick prayer here for health and strength and the troubled spirit for peace and calm, There have been brief interruptions during the period of acute religious slrte, ou, cessa- ton of hostilities has ever brought the renewal of the old, old pilgrimage. And once every year Catholic and Protestant worship here together before the tomb of the medieval saint.
 As the remains of Edward the Con- lessor are more particularly an object of worship for Catholics than for Prot estants. the abbey authorities make spe- cial provision to receive the strangers. They are allowed to approach close to the shrine and press their rosaries to it's walls, and care is taken that sightseeing parties will not disturb their devottons. Communion is administered round the tomb by a Church of England clergy man at o'clock in the morning, but for the rest of the day the Roman Catholics have perfect freedom. The service at the high altar at 10 O clock and evening pray CT at 3 o'clock do not interfere with the worship at the shrine.
 Without the abbey, the news vendors were selling the details of the coal miners conference and of the latest out rage in Ireland. Buses and trans and taxicabs were honking and changing round the street corners. dirigiple scared overhead.
 Within the time blackened walls of the venerable edifice scene from the mid de ages was unfolding itself. This con . gregation of figures kneeling two and three deep in the dim light, this silence broken only by clinking rosary beads and shuffling feet-they have been the same since before the crusades. With the abbey setting slightly different, Thomas Beckett worshipped the same relics on almost precisely the same spcs. little anticipating at the same time his own martyrdom and his own shrine; Richard Cour de Lion, the Black Prince, Warwick the kingmaker-aH these old heroes of history and tradition probably knelt here as these people did today. Who can say? Perhaps the two little princes were brought here by their nurses in the years before Richard the Hunchback deprived them of their lives in the tower.
 During the 10 centuries that have elapsed since his death, the worship ot St. Edward has unders one many and strange vicissitudes. The saint ruled England as king from 1of2 to 1o66 the year in which William the Conqueror mastered England, Though net canon- 5zed by the church until a century after his death, he was popularly worshlpped 2s a saint during his own life, such were his meekness and piety of demeanor lie disliked affairs of state. and the malli- cious have not hesitated to say that more attention to them and less to prayer might have saved his people from the Conuuerors heel. His remains nave been enshrined within few feet or tnel present location since the day Of hiS death. though the present tomb dates in part from the sixteenth century.
 For hundreds of years, the maimed and sick have sought relief from their iiis' at his resting place They would spenn the night ensconced in the niches nor lowed out of stone for the purpose. around the base of the shrine. And large share of the responsibility for it's present mutilated condition lies at the door of these pious pilgrims, who were won't to chip off pieces of carved stone and bits of the glass inscriptions for per- sonal relics.
 In the heat of the Reformation, the xhrine was twice footed Of it's ornaments of gold and precious stones.> The oocy itself was once profaned and removed to soma obscure spot in the vicinity for