The keys which lock the basilica shut the friars off from the outer world leaving their only means of communication as aperture in the main portal, through which they receive provisions from Saint Saviour's.
Every afternoon the fathers conduct a pilgrimage to the sanctuaries of the basilica, and at midnight, while chanting their Office, they go in procession to the tomb of the Saviour, where they intone the Benedictus.
He conferred numerous benefactions on Saint Saviour's, and induced the Ottoman Empire to remove the stable which obstructed the light and air of the little monastery of the Holy Sepulchre.
On 25 September 1875, these bells pealed forth for the first time in 700 years summoning the faithful to worship in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
In the early 20th century, besides the church of Saint Saviour (the Latin parish church of Jerusalem) the convent included an orphanage, a Catholic parish school for boys, a printing office, carpenter's and ironmonger's shops, a mill run by steam, and the largest library in Jerusalem.