Pius XII proclaims the dogma of the Assumption of Mary at St Peter's on 1 November 1950

A not-so-old photograph from Saint Peter's Basilica, 1 November 1950, when Pope Pius XII proclaimed the Dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the taking up of the Mother of God into heaven, body and soul, at the end of her earthly life. The fact is that the biblical texts leave this moment unilluminated, and for more than a millennium the Church had no single view, relying on late apocryphal texts whose ideas ranged from the natural immortality of the Mother of God to her spiritual rebirth. Only in 1950, among Catholics at least, was a dogma adopted that clarified the Church's position on the question.

The Dormition of the Mother of God is celebrated on 15 August. For the Orthodox, by the Julian calendar, which corresponds to 28 August in the Gregorian.

But this is not about the theological meaning of the dogma and the feast itself, or the history of the idea's development. What I want to draw attention to are the burning candelabra with candles: this is the middle of the twentieth century. A sight now unthinkable: the whole of Saint Peter's in candlelight. And, incidentally, Mass is being celebrated at all the altars simultaneously.