The French city of Toulouse is the cradle of the Dominican Order. It was in Toulouse and its surrounding towns that St. Dominic and the first friars began to live their new evangelical life as mendicant preachers. Their importance for the city of Toulouse can be measured by looking at the magnificent medieval Dominican church — sadly, confiscated by the French state and now run as a state-owned museum — known as the Jacobin. One of the greatest treasures of that great church was (and still is) the relics of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Every year on January 28, the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Dominicans of the Toulouse Province of France are permitted by the French Government to celebrate a solemn Mass at the (modern) altar over the relics of the Angelic Doctor in the Jacobin church. After the Mass, the friars carry the great reliquary in a procession through the ancient cloister, once inhabited by so many generations of friars preachers.

You can watch a video (5 minutes, in French) about this solemn and joyful occasion here. (The procession begins at about 3:27 into the video.)

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