52. But a wonderful and happy spectacle was to be seen in the Ruthenian districts in 1905, when liberty to profess any religion was to some extent granted. Innumerable Catholics came forth from their retreats into open day. They had no priests of their own Eastern rite, so they went in a body, singing their thanks and praise to God, with the standard of the cross carried on high and their sacred pictures publicly exposed for veneration, to the churches of the Latin rite, entry to which had previously been prohibited to them under severe penalties. There they begged the lawful ministers of the Church to open their doors to them, receive their profession of faith and enroll them again among the Catholics. In this way in a short time 200,000 faithful were duly received back into the Church.