He said his first mass privately in the chapel of the castle of Loyola, on the first of August 1551, the Festival of St. Peter’s Chains; and gave Holy Communion to his second son, Don Juan de Borja, who, having found it hard to leave his father, was losing his young heart to Doña Lorenza Oñaz de Loyola, heiress of the Señor Don Beltrano de Loyola. Padre Francisco’s second mass was a public function. All the people round about persisted in nicknaming him “Lo Santo Duque,” _The Holy Duke_. The Lord Julius P.P. III granted a plenary indulgence to all who should assist at this mass, on the usual conditions of confession and communion. To satisfy the multitude the mass was to be said in the city of Vergara: but no church would hold the crowd, and the altar was erected in a field by the hermitage of Santa Ana. It began at nine o’clock in the morning of the fifteenth of November 1551, and continued till three in the afternoon, so overwhelming was the number of communicants. (The ordinary mass lasts half an hour.) The sermon was preached by Padre Francisco in the courtly Castilian dialect: but it is recorded that people of all provinces understood him, even those whose native tongue was Basque. A certain Don Juan de Moschera publicly cursed him; to whom Padre Francisco instantly went, begging pardon for being worth a cursing. He set up as a hermit in a wooden cell near the Jesuit House at Oñate; and gained fame as a preacher, especially (strange to say) among the learned clergy. Men who take pleasure in approving of others, newcomers, of the same trade, are very rare: but for the clergy to approve of a preacher is rarer. He wrote a manual of Advice to Preachers, which had an unusual vogue. He was very fond of the breviary hymn _Vexilla Regis prodeunt_, (The Royal Banners forward go;) and repeated with delight of soul the stanza, “_Arbor decora et fulgida, Ornata regis purpura: Electo digno stipite, Tam Sancta Membra tangere._ “O Tree of glory, Tree most fair, ordained those Holy Limbs to bear; How bright in purple robe It stood, the purple of a Saviour’s Blood.” (“Hymns Ancient and Modern.”)