Our readers in the Manhattan area may be interested to know that:
For All Souls Day, November 2nd, there will be a Solemn Pontifical Requiem Mass at 6:30 PM at the Church of the Holy Innocents in Manhattan (37th St. and Broadway). His excellency, James C. Timlin, Bishop Emeritus of Scranton will celebrate the Mass from the Faldstool. The Rite of Absolution with catafalque will follow the Mass. The schola will sing the Ordinary of the Mass from Victoria's Requiem Mass setting and chant the Propers of the Mass (including the sequence, Dies Irae).
You may enroll the names of the faithful departed to be included in the intention of this Mass at the Parish Office of the Church of the Holy Innocents.
Please note that those who devoutly visit a church or an oratory on All Souls Day and recite there the Lord's Prayer and the Creed may gain a plenary indulgence but only for a soul in purgatory.
[As one of my correspondents just pointed out, "a plenary indulgence can be acquired once only in the course of a day," though one can also obtain the plenary indulgence for the moment of death, "even if another plenary indulgence had already been acquired on the same day. To acquire a plenary indulgence it is necessary to perform the work to which the indulgence is attached and to fulfill the following three conditions: sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion, and prayer for the Sovereign Pontiff. It is further required that all attachment to sin, even venial sin, be absent. If the latter disposition is in any way less than perfect or if the prescribed three conditions are not fulfilled, the indulgence will be partial only." --MGA]
The polyphonic
Victoria Requiem is a true monument in the history of Church music, and was written in 1603 by the composer for the funeral of the dowager Empress Maria of Spain, sister of Philip II. Tomás Luis de Victoria was the Empress's personal chaplain from 1586, when she entered the convent of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid, to her death. Particularly of interest, in addition to the fact that it will be a pontifical mass, will be the very beautiful rite of absolution, unfortunately seldom seen in this day and age, which I assume will be accompanied by Victoria's amazing setting of
Libera me, Domine.
