Solemn High Mass

He’s also stopped, after 40 years, going in person to the solemn high Mass at the Church of the Ascension, known for its music.

This legend is commemorated every year on the 5th of August, the festa of La Madonna della Neve, when, during a solemn high mass in the Borghese chapel, showers of white rose-leaves are thrown down constantly through two holes in the ceiling, "like a leafy mist between the priests and worshippers."

The solemn High Mass proceeded, now the deep magnificently male voice of the organs, now the delicate stringed instruments, with human voices, for the Spaniard fearlessly follows his impulses of worship and presses every talent into the service of the altar.

So on a burning Sunday in August solemn high mass was sung at the altar of St. Clare in San Damiano and, although the friars were defrauded of their procession, such was the concourse of people who came to gain the plenary indulgence granted by His Holiness that the good friars rejoiced, and were comforted for all the persecution they had suffered on account of this marvellous Crucifix.

On returning home she consulted with her confessor, who advised her, now that the devil had the heretic's body, it would be well to have a solemn high mass for the occasion, to be said at the church of St. Germain, at which Charles and his mother attended, and a Te Deum was sung in honor of the glorious victory gained by the church, by the destruction of so many heretics.