Denver Newsroom, 20 November, 2021 / 2:00 pm (ACI Africa).
The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, celebrated this year on Nov. 21, also is referred to as the Feast of Christ the King, Christ the King Sunday, or Reign of Christ Sunday.
While the concept of Jesus Christ being King is as old as the Gospels, the feast is fairly recent in the Roman Catholic calendar.
The feast was introduced in the Western liturgical calendar in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, via the encyclical "Quas Primas." Pope Pius XI was about to close the Jubilee year of 1925 in the context of the growing secularist nationalism that followed the fall of European kingdoms after World War I, and decided to establish the solemnity to point to a king "of whose kingdom there shall be no end.”
Surprisingly, the first parish in the world to be consecrated in honor of Our Lord Christ the King was established by Pope Pius XI not in Europe, but in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1926.
“The 225 worshippers who attended Our Lord Christ the King’s first Mass on December 5, 1926, embodied the essence of what it means to be ‘church.’ With neither bricks nor mortar to call their own, this gathering of believers placed their faith in Providence and celebrated early liturgies in humble surroundings,” reads an account posted on the parish's website. “There was no electricity for the first Eucharist, so the room was illuminated by headlights beamed from parked cars. Pastor Father Edward J. Quinn, a former World War I chaplain, used his Army Mass kit.”
