What was in the news on July 5, 1963?

The papal coronation is seen by millions, and the president meets the new pope

By Brandon A. Evans

This week, we continue to examine what was going on in the Church and the world 50 years ago as seen through the pages of The Criterion.

Here are some of the items found in the July 5, 1963, issue of The Criterion:

• Pope Paul’s coronation is beamed to millions over radio, television
  • “VATICAN CITYFor the first time in history, the full coronation rites of a pope were carried out in the open air as the gold and silver papal tiara was placed on the head of His Holiness Paul VI under the darkening sky over St. Peter’s Square on the feast of the Commemoration of St. Paul. The new pope addressed the world in nine different languages, pledging his pontificate to the causes of world peace and Christian unity. The [June 30] spectacle was unlike any witnessed by man beforeseen by millions around the world by means of television and by more than 300,000 in the giant square before the impressive façade of the greatest church in Christendom.”
• President in audience with pope
  • “VATICAN CITYPresident [John F.] Kennedy was received by His Holiness Pope Paul in a meeting which marked the third time a U.S. president has been received in a papal audience. The first was in 1919 when Pope Benedict XV saw President Woodrow Wilson. The second time was in 1959 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower visited Pope John XXIII.”
• In coronation talk: Pope pledges to push efforts toward unity
• Annual observance: Carmel novenas to open Monday
• Sixty women to make closing retreat at old Fatima Retreat House
• Revolution in German architecture
• Married diaconate seen as boon to Church
• Birth control plan limitation approved
• Idlewild to have 3 airport chapels
• Nearly 700 Latin seminarians in the U.S.
• $100,000 donation made to Woods drive
• Oppose school prayer plan
• More pastoral emphasis on theology advocated
• Uphold nuns’ right to lease hospital
• Protestant clergy to attend retreat
• Says good Church music never heard in churches
• Asks special U.S. study of family farm problems
• JFK credited with ‘assist’
• Awarded scholarship: New Albany man to go to Rome
• Pontiff combines traits of his two predecessors
• Diocese to stop school expansion
• At Gettysburg Mass: Imitate Lincoln, all Americans told

(Read all of these stories from our July 5, 1963, issue by logging on to our special archives.) †