Religion: Verdier's Visit

A jolly, rugged prelate, red-cloaked and red-hatted, was whizzed upward in Manhattan's Empire State Building one day last week.

"Nous allons à la lune, hein? Formidable!"

"He says, 'Are we going to the moon?' " explained an interpreter.

"You can light your cigar on a star up here," cried Alfred Emanuel Smith, proud because he was showing off his building to Jean Cardinal Verdier, Archbishop of Paris. Then, during luncheon with John Jacob Raskob, Editor Michael Williams of The Commonweal, Jeweler Pierre C. Cartier, President John S. Burke of B. Altman & Co., Banker Robert Louis Hoguet and others, Cardinal Verdier admired the view.

Superior General of the Order of St. Sulpice, Father Jean Vedier visited the U. S. in 1923. Born of a modest family, he was a scholarly, obscure teacher until Pope Pius XI jumped him over innumerable bishops and made him Archbishop and Cardinal (TIME, Dec. 2, 1929). First Sulpician ever to get a red hat, Cardinal Verdier was invested by Pius XI in person. He is currently in the U. S. on a tour of Sulpician houses. Though fluent in French, German and Italian, he speaks little English, has for interpreter and traveling companion Very Rev. John F. Fenlon, superior of U. S. Sulpicians, president of St. Mary's Seminary & University in Baltimore. Last week Cardinal Verdier arrived from Montreal by way of Worcester, Mass., stopped a few days in a French church in Manhattan, then entrained for Baltimore. Thence he was to go to Washington, stay at the French Embassy, meet President Hoover.