IS IT POSSIBLE THAT ICE-CREAM CAN BE CONSIDERED A LIQUID WHICH DOES NOT BREAK THE FAST

Frustrated with the long wait for the Brief to be approved – which was the last thing holding him back in Rome he wrote in his personal diary:

 The usual outings, as useless as yesterday, with the exception that I got back my manuscript with the decrees, signatures and seals, but everything concerning the Brief has been held up by the inertia of Bishop Capaccini, whom nothing can move. This way of doing things will be the dark part of my painting of Rome.

 Then a wry comment about priests breaking the Lenten fast, which at that time consisted of solid food only at meals, with only liquid permitted in between:

 I soon left to return to my monastery, saddened to see with my own eyes a great number of people, even priests, applying ice-cream to their consciences, in spite of the Lenten fast; it is possible that ice-cream can be considered a liquid which does not break the fast, for it melts in one’s mouth; in my opinion, it cruelly offends the spirit of mortification, from which a person should not dispense oneself so easily during this holy time.

Eugene’s Diary, 13 March 1826, EO XVII