The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1896-06-08
Impressive Ceremonies Beneath
the Dome of the Historic
Church.
PRIESTS CONDUCT a MASS.
A Throng of the Devout and the
Curious Visits the Little
Cemetery.

SANTA BARBARA, CAL, June THE
festival of Corpus Christi was celebrated
with great solemnity at the Old Mission
Church to-day, after the ancient custom.
Father Superior Servatius. Father Reyna-
RUS and Father Matthias conducted the
mass, assisted by two subdeacons. A
large congregation gathered in the historic
church. and while thx Spanish-An.erican
element was in the ascendant many Amer
leans of culture joined the band of wor-
shippers.
All day long on Saturday the brown
gowned Franciscan monks had toiled in
the warm sunshine cutting down slim
young sycamore saplings and dragging
them along the dusty road to form an arch
over the entrance to tbs stately pile and
convert the interior to bower of green.
The burning incense filled the nave with a
faint blue haze during the ceremonies,
through which the old paintings on the
walls and the golden candlesticks and
gilded statuary about the altar were dlmly
seen.
At IL o'clock the procession formed,
headed by a young monk carrying
golden cross and preceded by little girls
clad in white and strewing flowers. Little
boys followed two by two in orderly pro-
cession. Then came the priests who had
conducted the mass, clad in richly en-
broidered robes of white satin and up
holding the sacred host, an embroidered
canopy OF dark green silk sustained by
four poles being held above them by their
attendants.
Following the priests came the process
sion of the devout, the curious and the
reverent. In it walked an old, SORROW
stricken woman whose son had lately
committed horrible crime and who lives
in daily dread of seeing him dragged to
the scaffold. pair of gay young society
girls of Santa Barbara wore sailor hats
with gu. S. Philadelphia" on their kat
bands. In the throng were many Catholic
husbands with Protestant wives and
! Protestant husbands with Catholic wives,
both for the time humbly reverential to
the ceremonial whose deep significance
| impressed even the gay and shallow. Old,
! old women were there, called from their
| fresides by the holy celebration and re-
calling memories of their childhood as
they told their rosaries in whispers. One
ardent young photographer was there,
but he did not have the courage to
pull out the little camera he had intended
to use.
Slowly the long procession swept around
the graveled walks of the old cemetery,
past tombs messy with age, past the great
vault surmounted by cross, where the
murdered superior Father Fernando was
so lately laid, past the tail cruclfix where
life-size image of the Nazarene, beau
tIful carving, meekly bows its thorn
crowned head; past the low grave where
Ramona's mother is supposed to lie; past
the roses and blooming ANIMALS, so care
fully tended by the devoted hands of old
Father Reynarius, and back beneath the
gray portal OF the church where burst of
music, chanted sentences and prayer
hailed It's return and proclaimed the close
| of the ceremonies.
At the parochial church of Our Lady Of
| Sorrow an even more imposing mass and
ceremonial celebrated the day. Many
! townspeople were in attendance, but the
poetry and time-honored "reminiscences of
the day clustered around the ancient mis-
! sim