During this holiday season, there’s one local man with a particular devotion to singing sacred music.

He's Father Arnold D’Achille, a Fort Myers resident and Benedictine monk turned Catholic priest. At 92 years old, he’ll say his voice isn’t what it once was, but he is no less devout. It’s been his life. He grew up in Italy and chose his career at a tender age.

"I went to the seminary at 10 years old, believe it or not. In Italy, this was soon after the war, and many, many monasteries would accept even homeless orphans. I was not an orphan, because I came from 10 children … I was born in a farm, and my father would say, 'Do you want to work in the farm, or do you want to go to school?' And I said, 'Dad, I don't like the farm. I want to go to school.' And so I ended up in the seminary."

Before presiding for several decades over a congregation in Dearborn, Michigan, D'Achille spent many years in a Benedictine monastery.

"When you are in the Benedictine monastery, you say Gregorian chant four times a day. And you did that, and therefore I memorized it."

So in his retirement, D'Achille transcribed from memory the chants he did as a monk. He has quite a few that he’s hoping will interest musicians someday.

He recently watched a program on PBS featuring Gregorian chant, and noticed how moved the audience was.

"People were crying, and yet, the words were sung in Latin and people were crying," he said.

D'Achille believes the structure of Gregorian chant makes that kind of impact.

"See the whole difference between Gregorian chant and so-called secular music is that Gregorian chant is really called linear music, whereas secular music is full of one voice added to another but in a very very low, noisy kind of thing."