Today being the third Sunday of October, in the Ambrosian Rite it is the feast of the dedication of the cathedral of Milan. On this same day and feast in 1963, His Excellency Giovanni Colombo, who had been appointed to the see of St Ambrose earlier that year (on August 10), formally took possession of and solemnly entered his cathedral. (He was raised to the cardinalate in 1965, and retired at the very end of 1979, passing away in May of 1992.) The first picture here shows how the sanctuary of the cathedral was set up for the ceremony; this is followed by pictures of his procession from the archiepiscopal seminary, the solemn entrance, a color photo of the Mass, and finally, the archbishop imparting his blessing to the enormous crowd gathered in the piazza in front of the Duomo. Many thanks to Nicola de’ Grandi for sharing these with us.
In the photograph below, we can see a metal grill in the floor of the Duomo in front of the sanctuary. This is part of the “scurolo”, the chapel which contains the relics of St Charles, which had an open ceiling looking up into the Duomo. Unfortunately, Cardinal Colombo himself decided to effect the post-Conciliar rearrangement of the sanctuary by closing this aperture with a large piece of concrete, and planting the versus populum altar on top of it. The recent renovation of the scurolo was necessitated in part by the atmospheric problems created by the lack of air circulation between the crypt and the nave. As seen in the photo above, the Mass in 1963 was celebrated on a forward facing altar temporarily erected on a raised platform over the scurolo.
The archbishop leaves from the seminary building.
At the doors of the cathedral, holy water is sprinkled as in the Roman Rite.
The archbishop’s galero.
