CATHEDRAL OF ALMARIA VELLA — On the steps of the Cathedral, and before a congregation in which the printers' guild stood in uncommon prominence beside the magistracy, His Eminence the Cardenal Marín yesterday marked the Feast of Saint Lúcia of the Presses with a homily of characteristic gravity and, for those who listened carefully, of unmistakable civic application.

The Cardenal praised the vocation of the honest compositor and the scrupulous editor, observing that the printed word, "though it be set in lead, is carried upon the conscience of those who set it." He prayed for correspondents in captivity — a petition that those present took to be an allusion to the detentions reported by the Foreign Ministry earlier in the day — and he commended to the faithful the virtue of temperance in speech, which he distinguished sharply from silence.

In a passage that will be parsed by the clerks of both the Palace and the Chamber, His Eminence reminded the congregation that "the Church, which has outlasted many parliaments, holds no preference among them," but that the Church holds an unwavering preference for truth, for the poor, and for the vulnerable household in a cold season. The allusion to the coming increase in fuel statements was not lost upon the faithful, many of whom are numbered among those households.

The homily closed with the traditional blessing of ink and of presses, a rite restored by this Cardenal in the second year of his primacy. The Herald's own foreman, in attendance as is custom, received the blessing on behalf of this paper.