October 4th, the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, 1865, in the presence of the provincial of the Minor Observants as officiating priest, Sister Mary Maddalena made her canonically solemn profession as a choir nun. As her biographer, Fr. Albert Kleber says: The sincere taking of solemn vows is for anyone a momentous and sacred -though joyous - act. It is a complete renunciation of the world and a being laid away in the tomb with Christ, from which the soul, now dead to the world, emerges, as though from baptismal waters, into a new life with Christ in God (Col. 3,3). It was intensely so for Maddalena Bentivoglio. Her motive in taking this step and her immediate reaction to it appear in what she later said to one of her spiritual daughters, that on the day of her profession it seemed to her as though a whole mountain was removed from her life and that now she was free to remain with our Lord.