1926 | Religion
Religion
The grotto of Lourdes that has been drawing hopeful patients since 1858 attracts new attention after French housewife Augustine Augault is relieved overnight of a fibroid tumor of the uterus that has swelled her weight from 77 pounds to 102. The tumor has been diagnosed as such by physicians, but after Mme. Augault is carried on a stretcher at the procession of the Blessed Sacrament at Lourdes it is found to have disappeared by 30 physicians, Catholic and non-Catholic—a "miracle" that will help lead to the canonization of Sister Bernadette in 1933 (see 1866).
California newspapers report May 18 that evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson has disappeared while swimming and is presumed to have drowned (see 1923). She returned April 24 from a long vacation with her daughter Roberta through Europe and the Holy Land, some 15,000 of her followers kneel in prayer for her soul at her Bible School auditorium, hundreds more pray on the sidewalks and lawns around her Temple, pleading with her to return from the dead, but she has actually been having a tryst at Carmel with former Los Angeles Times radio station manager Kenneth Gladstone Ormiston, a married man and agnostic who in 1923 built radio station Kalling Four-Square Gospel (KFSG) atop her temple. McPherson returns to Los Angeles June 27, receives a wild reception from city officials and thousands of cheering well-wishers, and announces the next day that she was kidnapped (Ormiston discreetly moves to Chicago). A grand jury meets July 8 to decide whether anyone should be indicted for kidnapping, but McPherson appears outside the courthouse wearing a simple white crepe dress with a long blue cape, she produces seven other women of similar build, hair style, and facial features wearing outfits identical to hers, and the grand jury decides July 20 that anyone claiming to have seen her at Carmel might have been mistaken. It finds insufficient evidence to warrant an indictment.
The International Eucharistic Congress convenes at Chicago under the auspices of New York-born Chicago archbishop George Cardinal Mundelein, 54, who has made English the language of instruction in all parochial schools. The event attracts Roman Catholics from all over the world.
Father Coughlin makes his first radio broadcast October 17 over Detroit's station WJR to begin a career of nearly 20 years. Detroit priest Charles Edward Coughlin, 34, will broadcast sermons marked by racial bigotry and right-wing sentiments (see commerce, 1934).
Catholic bishops in Italy ban scantily-clad women from church and criticize women's participation in sport as "incompatible" with a woman's dignity.
Saudi Arabia's Wahhabist Saud government introduces religious police (muttawa) to arrest women who fail to cover themselves completely in black abaya robes; the muttawa enforce prayer five times per day.