Visiting A Royal Couple

and other things.

King Leopold III of Belgium with his wife Queen Astrid. The photo above was taken in somewhere in spring of 1935 and published in an April issue of the Catholic Illustration, a magazine I wrote about last year. He is 33 in the picture and she is 29 and they have just being the king and queen for a year, since Leopold's father King Albert's death.

They had three children together, one daughter and two sons
(Here is Astrid with their youngest)

and lived in  the palace Stuyvenberg in Laeken. Raised in Sweden in all simplicity, Queen Astrid cooked for her children herself and took them out for a walk, saying that she was just an ordinary mother.

Here you see her arranging flowers.

The queen was raised Lutheran and had to convert to Catholicism in order to marry Leopold. Their marriage took place in 1926. According to the article, this was one of the pictures she kept in her bedroom, presumably it was of her father? Or may be her father-in-law?

They were a beautiful couple but she had only a short time to live after that article was written. In August of the same year, they went on vacation to Switzerland where the queen died in a car crash when her husband lost control over the steering wheel.

Here is King Leopold working:

He mourned her for several years but remarried again in 1941 and had three more children.

Since it was an Easter edition of the magazine, there was an article about a special form of Easter Liturgy taking place in Sint Andries Abbey.

Taking the Holy Communion:

It included, among other things, blessing of an Easter lamb on the church altar:

The end of the Mass, the deacon is singing Alelluia

 The monks awaiting the blessing of their abbot:

That was about all for today, till next time:)