in 1910. Canadian Prime Minister
Wilfrid Laurier is standing on the right. The first International Eucharistic Congress owed its inspiration to Bishop
Gaston de Ségur, and was held at
Lille,
France, on June 21, 1881. The initial inspiration behind the idea came from the laywoman
Marie-Marthe-Baptistine Tamisier (1834–1910) who spent a decade lobbying clergy. The sixth congress met in Paris in 1888, and the great memorial
Church of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre was the center of the proceedings.
Antwerp hosted the next congress in 1890, at which an immense
altar of repose was erected in the Place de Meir, and an estimated 150,000 persons gathered around it when
Cardinal Goossens, Archbishop of
Mechelen, gave the solemn
benediction. Bishop Doutreloux of Liège was then president of the Permanent Committee for the Organization of Eucharistic Congresses, the body which has charge of the details of these meetings. Of special importance also was the eighth congress, held in
Jerusalem in 1893, as it was the first congress held outside Europe. In 1907, the congress was held in
Metz,
Lorraine, and the German government suspended the law of 1870 (which forbade
processions) in order that the usual solemn procession of the Blessed Sacrament might be held. Each year the congress had become more and more international in nature, and at the invitation of Archbishop Bourne of Westminster the nineteenth congress was held in
London, the first among
English-speaking members of the Church. The presidents of the Permanent Committee of the International Eucharistic Congresses, under whose direction all this progress was made, were: • Bishop
Gaston de Ségur of Lille; Archbishop de La Bouillerie, titular of
Perga and coadjutor of Bordeaux; •
Archbishop Duquesnay of Cambrai; •
Cardinal Mermillod, Bishop of
Lausanne and Geneva, Switzerland; •
Bishop Doutreloux of
Liège, Belgium; • Bishop
Thomas Louis Heylen of
Namur, Belgium. After each congress this committee prepared and published a volume giving a report of all the papers read and the discussions on them in the various sections of the meeting, the sermons preached, the addresses made at the public meetings, and the details of all that transpired. ==List of International Congresses==