Abstract
THE broadcasting of the services at the International Eucharistic Congress of World Catholicism at Buenos Aires in October 1934 to the largest and most widely diffused religious congregation in history was made possible by the radio telephone. On the closing day, October 14, the Pope, Pius XI, speaking into a microphone on his desk at the Vatican, gave the concluding message not only to a million worshippers kneeling in the streets of the Argentine capital, but also, by means of retransmissions from Buenos Aires to broadcasting stations on three continents, to a very considerable proportion of the clergy and laity throughout the world. In Electrical Communication of July, two papers describe the broadcasting arrangements and the radio telephone system which rendered possible this world-wide service. No longer are the delegates to these international congresses crowded together in a cathedral with straining ears. Walls or park boundaries or national frontiers or even oceans now offer no restrictions. Without wireless, the management of the large crowds drawn from a metropolitan area having nearly three million inhabitants would have presented almost insuperable difficulties. Chile, Peru and Colombia were linked up by transcontinental land lines and Uruguay by a subfluvial cable. The able and willing co-operation of the Government telephone departments of many of the leading countries in the world ensured the success of the international broadcasts.
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Religious Broadcasting at the Eucharistic Congress. Nature 136, 471 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136471c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136471c0