Father Salvatore Franco   Requiescat in pace  1926-2002

Home to his Mother

In the great counterrevolution of preserving and upholding the Truths and Traditions of Holy Mother Church another faithful member of the Church Militant has completed his mission as a faithful priest of God. To Father Salvatore Franco: 'Well done good and faithful servant. Rally the Church Triumphant to Heaven's cause.'

"Father Franco received the Sacrament of Extreme Unction in the Traditional Rite the day before he died. We were privileged to see him in the Intensive Care Unit of the North Shore University Hospital in Plainview, New York, just nine hours before he died. Keeping vigil at his bedside was his devoted sister, Helen, who has given her entire life to care for her brother and to support him in his service to souls. Father Franco was in his final agony. Although he rallied somewhat shortly before he died, it was clear that he was going to home to his Mother, our Blessed Mother, before the end of the feast of Saint Lucy. How wonderful it is the patroness saint of both Sharon and Lucy is the day that Father Franco entered eternity."

   "He didn't make it, Doc." Those words, spoken by Marco Posillico in a message left on my cellular phone answering system at 11:45 p.m. on the Feast of Saint Lucy, December 13, were heartfelt and laden with emotion. Marco was referring to the fact that our dear friend, Father Salvatore Franco, had died. As my very perceptive wife Sharon, who sees things so clearly through the eyes of the Faith, noted, however, "Father did make it. He had the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. He did make it." Indeed, while we never presume the state of any person's soul at the moment of his death, Father Salvatore Franco was ready to go home to his mother, his Blessed Mother, that is.

   Father Salvatore Franco was born in 1926 in Brooklyn, New York. After completing his studies at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Huntington, New York, he was ordained to the priesthood by the long-time ordinary of the Diocese of Brooklyn, Archbishop Thomas Molloy, in 1953. A short while after Archbishop Molloy's death, Pope Pius XII split the Diocese of Brooklyn in 1957, creating the new Diocese of Rockville Centre out of the counties of Nassau and Sufolk on Long Island. As Father was assigned to a parish in the Brooklyn part of the original diocese, he remained a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn, although many of his classmates and priest-friends found themselves in the new diocese. Father Franco thus knew almost all of the personalities, for example, who would be involved in fomenting the theological and liturgical revolutions in the Dioceses of Brooklyn and Rockville Centre, including the late Bishop John Raymond McGann, who was Bishop of Rockville Centre from 1976 until 2000, and the late Bishop of Brooklyn, the Most Reverend Francis Mugavero. Father Franco lived through the process by which many of his own brother priests permitted themselves to be indoctrinated into the Modernist religion that passes for Catholicism in most places today.

   Father Franco was very close to Our Lady, consecrating himself to her at he beginning of his priesthood. Her mercy to him was such that Father was spared from having to serve in a diocesan parish when the Novus Ordo was instituted by Pope Paul VI. Father Franco had suffered a massive heart attack at the age of thirty-seven in 1963 and never returned to parish work again. He was on a health leave from that time until he formally changed his status to that of a "retired" priest a few years ago. Although Father Franco was on a health leave, he was not really retired. He continued to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass in his home. Father's heart problems, which he would give to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart for nearly forty years, were really a Godsend to keep him from having to be "re-educated" in the way of the new Mass. He saw so very clearly from the very beginning that the new Mass, though valid, would devastate the life of the Church. Yes, Father Franco did celebrate the new Mass now and then in the 1970s and 1980s when asked by a priest-friend to do so (and when no other priest would celebrate a 5:30 a.m. Mass at the end of a monthly all-night pro-life vigil at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Massapequa Park, New York). However, he was spared the horror of having to deal with the problems of the new religion in his priesthood as a result of his health problems.

   Father Franco, who is survived by his devoted sister, Helen, was not the only one in his family to see clearly from the very beginning that the new Mass was going to devastate the Faith. Father's father saw it as well, commenting about the state of things as the Second Vatican Council was meeting. Father Franco told us recently, "My father said, 'They've destroyed the Church.' We told him, 'No, Dad, everything will be okay.' However, we knew that it wasn't going to be okay." Father Franco also told off Pope Paul VI's brother in Italian during one visit to Rome in 1971. Mr. Montini, the Pope's brother, asked Father Franco how he liked the new Mass. "It's a sacrilege," Father Franco said, going on to tell the papal brother a few other things. Mr. Montini was quite taken aback by Father Franco's directness. Father told us, "And I told him to tell his brother exactly what I had told him." Father Franco also told Pope John Paul II that he had not consecrated Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. His Holiness stared with steely eyes at Father Franco.

   Father Franco and his sister Helen moved to New Hyde Park, New York, where he celebrated the Traditional Latin Mass in a chapel he had built after the move. It was from that location that Father served as a spiritual director and confessor to hundreds upon hundreds of Catholics in the Brooklyn and Rockville Centre dioceses. He baptized children in the Traditional Rite. He celebrated Traditional Requiem Masses in funeral homes. He gave days of recollection to various groups, took Holy Communion to the sick and the dying on a regular basis, preached at the monthly Eucharistic holy hour that Marco and his twin brother Michael Posillico had started on Long Island in 1996, led pilgrim groups to Fatima and Lourdes and other Marian shrines, conducted Rosary pilgrimages to local Marian sites, and was available at any hour of the day or night to offer solid spiritual advice to those who asked it of him. He would also celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass at St. Ann's Church in Manhattan, which is offered every Saturday afternoon at 2:00, when he was asked to do so.

   The authorities in the Dioceses of Brooklyn and Rockville Centre tolerated Father Franco's apostolic activities. Bishop McGann, who had been ordained to the priesthood in 1950, three years before him, told Father Franco at one point, "Sal, you have to update your theology." That said almost all a person needed to know about Bishop McGann, who died in January of this year, two years after he retired from his relentless role as a theological and liturgical revolutionary (whose activities I chronicled from time to time in The Wanderer and with whom I crossed swords personally on a number of occasions). Father Franco was the "anti-Bishop McGann," that is, a man who was erudite, well-read in the Faith, a solid theologian and philosopher, and a man who understood the truth about the actual development of the Mass of the Roman Rite through the centuries.

   Father Franco's clarity of vision about the Mass led him into contact with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, with whom he maintained contact until his death. Father Franco met with the Archbishop during his visits to the United States, seeing him as a genuine hero who was trying to keep the Traditional Mass alive at a time the revolutionaries, including Pope Paul VI, wanted to flush it down the Orwellian memory hole. Father Franco was very close to the priests of the Priestly Fraternity of the Society of Pope Saint Pius X, offering them his support and consolation as they sought to serve souls by giving them access to the "forbidden" Mass. As is the case with many diocesan priests in this nation, Father Franco told his directees that they could attend Mass in an SSPX chapel and fulfill their Sunday obligation. He told us recently that at least one priest he knew in the Diocese of Rockville Centre had given that same advice to people before he became immersed in the machinery of the diocesan bureaucracy.

   Thus, Father Franco was willing to make great sacrifices to be faithful to the Mass. Although he remained on friendly terms with many of his classmates and brother priests, there was a gap between them as a result of the Mass. Most of his brother priests did not understand his commitment to Tradition, seeing it as a quaint personal devotion that was a sign of eccentricity, not total fidelity to the way in which the Blessed Trinity is best worshiped and souls best sanctified. Father offered up this humiliation to Our Lady, serenely going about his business of trying to help souls in the more or less underground work he was doing, work that was above the radar screen but of such seeming insignificance to diocesan authorities that he was left alone to do it. As ruthless as Bishop McGann was at times, he was not Danton or Robespierre, seeking to kill off everyone who believed in the past, although he did try to send his share of priests to the guillotine. Father Franco, living alone with his sister, was simply tolerated. And he was given delegation from diocesan officials now and then to confirm converts to the Faith. What the revolutionaries did not understand, however, was that Father was far more dangerous to them than they realized. This "quaint old priest" was a terrific theologian and spiritual director, who used the power of the graces given him by Our Lady to help scores of young home-schooling parents to become devoted to the truths of the Faith, including the Traditional Latin Mass. The fact that tens of young families with loads of children attended the first night of his wake on December 15, 2002, speaks volumes as to his influence. A priest without a parish had a devoted following that transcended parish and diocesan boundaries.

   Father Franco was indefatigable almost to the end. His heart continued to worsen over the course of time. So much so that his doctors told him that his heart was functioning at only twenty percent of its normal capacity. He had heart bypass surgery and had no less than four pacemakers installed. The last pacemaker was installed in October of this year, some eleven months after his third had been installed. Undeterred, Father Franco led a pilgrim group from Manhattan to Fatima days after getting out of Saint Francis Hospital in Roslyn, New York, following the installation of that fourth pacemaker. Although suffering from a very bad cold upon his return, he insisted that he deliver a replica of Our Lady's Fatima crown to the Posillico brothers. It took him more than two hours to drive the twenty-five miles from Kennedy Airport to Old Westbury. As Sharon noted, he was so full of enthusiasm for performing this act of charity that could have waited until the next morning. No one, including his doctors and himself, knew that he had a form of leukemia that would take his life in less than three months. Though constantly tired, Father Franco simply thought his heart's poor functioning was what as fatiguing him, which goes to show you that medicine is a very inexact science.

   I first met Father Franco in the early 1980s. I did not know him well at the time, though I was impressed with his sermons when I heard him preach on various occasions. It would not be until the early 1990s that I got to know Father Franco better. He came to a number of my talks on Long Island, asking very challenging and thought-provoking questions, demonstrating a keen and very precise grasp of the Faith. Father was very precise in his theological language. Sharon met him for the first time when he came to several of my "Living in the Shadow of the Cross" lectures at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Massapequa Park, New York, during the Fall of 2001. However, it would not be until we returned to Long Island in early April of this year following Lucy Mary Norma's birth in Sioux City, Iowa, that we got to spend a lot of time with Father Franco, who went out of his way to provide us with a spiritual oasis in the midst of a real theological and liturgical desert known as the Diocese of Rockville Centre.

   As I noted in my tribute to Father Frederick Schell a few months ago, Sharon and I were very blessed to have gotten to the Traditional Latin Mass in a number of venues while we were in California at the beginning of this year. We got to the Mass of our fathers in Father Raymond Dunn's house in Palo Alto, California, in independent chapels in San Jose and Petaluma, California, and in Father Patrick Perez's trailer in Santa Ana, California, before having Mass with Father Schell in the San Fernando Valley in March. After a priest from Long Island celebrated Mass for us in a chapel of Saint Michael's Abbey in Silverado, California, just two weeks before Lucy's birth, we continued our string of Latin Masses in Denver while en route to Iowa, where we were able to get to daily Mass in Omaha, across the Missouri River from Council Bluffs, at a parish served by Father Eric Flood of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter. It was in that parish that Lucy was baptized in the Traditional Rite at the Hour of Divine Mercy on Easter Sunday.

   Having had such a wonderful run of Traditional Masses, I prayed to Our Lady to help us continue attending the Mass of our fathers back home on Long Island. Thus, I called Father Franco to see if he would be willing to have us attend his private Mass in his home in Westbury, where he and his sister had moved a few years ago. Graciously, Father agreed. He celebrated Mass for us practically every weekday for nearly five months before he was hospitalized with his recurring heart problems in September of this year. He was so very good to Sharon and Lucy and me. His sister Helen made us feel very much at home, welcoming us so very warmly. Father Franco provided us with five months of consolation and relief from the barren ecclesiastical landscape in which we find ourselves. We grew very close to Father Franco, taking him out to dinner once in a while at the Milleridge Inn, a place he found to be "civilized" as well as delectable, expressing special joy over the popovers served there. Father was a man in love with Our Lady. However, he also enjoyed the good things of this passing life, understanding that Our Lord wants us to use the things of this life moderately and commensurately for our enjoyment as a small foretaste of the eternal joys of Paradise. Father was keenly interested in the events of Church and State, had a great sense of humor, and was always so very kind of solicitous of the needs, both spiritual and temporal, of others.

   Father Franco was physically very weak, both from his heart problems and, as it turned out, from the leukemia that was silently killing him. Nevertheless, this frail man, who had to keep both of his elbows on the table to support himself when sitting down sometimes, had a bounce in his step when he offered the Traditional Latin Mass in his kitchen for us. His concentration on the exquisite celebration of the unbloody re-presentation of the Sacrifice of Calvary never waned as his hands shook and his body sometimes trembled. He would be exhausted after saying Mass. During its celebration, however, Father was transformed, given an energy that was not his own. Indeed, he was celebrating Mass in his hospital bed in September and October when he was hospitalized with his heart problems.

   I thanked Father profusely for giving us the privilege of celebrating the Traditional Mass for us. Always, and I mean absolutely always, Father would say, "Please, please don't mention it. This is my duty. I am a priest." He was so good to us, accommodating the needs of my schedule, which varied from day to day when I resumed adjunct teaching at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University in September. He was so humble, so generous, so fatherly. If we were running a few minutes late, he would accommodate us, greeting us at the door by saying, "Ah, my flock has arrived." He referred to Lucy, who was sometimes not the quietist parishioner Father Franco had ever known, as his "choir." He was so understanding that a newborn was going to be a little loud now and then.

   Father Franco celebrated Mass for us at the residence of a homeschooling family on Long Island on May 31, 2002, the Traditional feast of the Queenship of Mary. He heard confessions beforehand on a very hot day. He enjoyed the camaraderie of the people gathered there on that feast day, which was the occasion on which the family generously hosted a party to honor Lucy Mary Norma's birth and baptism, which had taken place two months before.

Father Franco wrote the following note to Lucy, dated May 31, 2002:

"Dear Lucy, God has called you to a life of holiness. He has given you excellent guides in the persons of your mother and father. They are His gift to you as you are His gift to them. I am pleased to remember you, Lucy Mary Norma, in a Novena of Masses for your spiritual and temporal welfare. God bless you today and always. Sincerely and prayerfully, Father Salvatore V. Franco"

   Lucy Mary Norma watched Father Franco very intently as he celebrated Mass. She is a very observant little baby. During a Mass Father celebrated for us in November, I was holding Lucy on my knee as I knelt to receive Holy Communion from Father Franco. Lucy looked at me as I opened my mouth. She saw Father Franco move from me to go to Sharon. Figuring that she was going to receive from Father What he was giving to us, she dropped her pacifier, tilted her head back and opened up her mouth as though to receive Holy Communion! When I told Father Franco that after Mass, he said to Lucy, "Oh, did you think it was candy, like they teach in the new Mass?"

   The aforementioned Posillico brothers treated Father Franco as a surrogate father, having lost their own father some years before. They took him out to dinner a lot, sometimes as much as twice a week. They invited him to speak at their holy hours, made sure he was invited to attend various Communion breakfasts and other functions that took place around Long Island and Manhattan. They would go over to his home to keep him company at moments when his health was precarious. The death of Father Franco hits them, obviously, particularly hard. However, Father Franco will be missed by hundreds of people in the greater New York City-Long Island area, many of whom came to visit him during his hospital visits. Father Franco did more good for souls as an "underground" priest than most other modern priests, many of whom wile their hours away watching television in rectories during their official pastoral assignments.

   Father Franco, though devoted to the Traditional Mass, was not unaware of the pastoral difficulties faced by his priest-friends. One of those priests, who shall remain nameless, was somewhat threatened by Father Franco's outspoken defense of Tradition. That sentiment, however, did not deter Father Franco from rightly terming this other priest as "the best priest in the Diocese of Rockville Centre," a man who spends himself tirelessly for souls as a pastor of a diocesan parish (and who was persecuted viciously by Bishop McGann). A man of infinite charity, he never condemned anyone. Indeed, he would turn the conversation away from any hint of condemnation of those who were doing their best in difficult circumstances and/or who were hostile to the Traditional Latin Mass, stressing the positive things these men were doing for souls. He prayed to Our Lady for them.

   Father Franco was told a few weeks ago that he had acute leukemia. This was a shock to him. However, it was a great mercy given him by Our Lady to prepare for a good death. He could have collapsed suddenly from a heart attack or a stroke. Oh, he fought to the end, hoping that some natural remedy might be found to cure the cancer, also invoking the intercession of Blessed Father Nelson Baker for a miracle. He knew, though, that his death was near. He knew that Our Lady was calling him home despite his own desire to remain here in the Church Militant to be part of the underground church. His sole goal was to help souls to pursue the highest degree of holiness possible by having them totally consecrated to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

   Father Franco received the Sacrament of Extreme Unction in the Traditional Rite the day before he died from Father Paul Baumberger of the Society of Saint Pius V. We were privileged to see him in the Intensive Care Unit of the North Shore University Hospital in Plainview, New York, just nine hours before he died. Keeping vigil at his bedside was his devoted sister, Helen, who has given her entire life to care for her brother and to support him in his service to souls. Father Franco was in his final agony. Although he rallied somewhat shortly before he died, it was clear that he was going to home to his Mother, our Blessed Mother, before the end of the feast of Saint Lucy. How wonderful it is the patroness saint of both Sharon and Lucy is the day that Father Franco entered eternity.

   Father Franco was very devoted to Our Lady's First Saturday requests. As Sharon noted when reflecting on Father Franco's death, "If Father had to go to Purgatory, it was only for fifteen minutes." Dying just fifteen minutes before Saturday, December 14, 2002, one can be confident that Our Lady came and got her devoted son, Father Salvatore Franco, who has now gone home to his Blessed Mother.

   Nevertheless, we continue to pray for Father Franco's soul, understanding that Our Lady will direct the fruits of our prayers and Masses to some other deserving soul if he has no need of them. And we offer our prayers for the consolation of his sister Helen, who devoted her entire life to the care of her brother so that he could go about his priestly duties, and for the Posillico brothers, who were so very close to Father and wanted him to keep going to be part of the underground church in the years ahead. However, as much work as he did here on earth, Father Franco will be doing far more in eternity to aid the promotion of the Traditional Latin Mass and the triumph of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. We will miss him terribly, though.

   As Sharon has noted, there is going to be quite a void here on Long Island without him. Even those priests who are privately devoted to Tradition on Long Island lack Father Franco's courage and his absolute, unqualified zeal for souls. Father Franco cared nothing for human respect or for career success. He cared about fidelity to Tradition. Period.

   "Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul-and all the souls of the faithful departed-rest in peace. Amen."


Thomas A. Droleskey, Ph.D.

By Fr Laisney

Father Augustine Cummins, the pioneer priest who started practically every Mass centre in New Zealand back in the 70s, passed away on 8th March 2006 around 2:00 a.m. Scotland time, having almost reached his 61st anniversary of priesthood, and in the 98th year of his life. Father Cummins started visiting New Zealand in 1977, first infrequently, and then he gradually increased his visits to the point of coming every other month in the early 80s. He would fly to Auckland, give catechism, confessions, Mass in the evening, then often a morning Mass, and he would take the bus for Hamilton, and do the same there, then a bus for his next stop… and for fifteen days he would go from the top to the bottom of New Zealand, visiting small groups and giving hope to many, helping many to persevere, in a very humble and very charitable manner. Then he would fly back to Australia from Christchurch. I know how heavy his circuit was: I did it in 1983 as a young priest and was tired!

Though he was always frail, his great faith and zeal to help many to remain faithful to the Mass and Tradition of the Church was such that he seemed to be supported in an extraordinary manner. He brought the grace of God everywhere he went. He was a true son of St. Alphonsus, bringing devotion to Our Lady with him. New Zealand was only a small portion of his zealous territory: from Fiji to Perth (and even Singapore), from Townsville to Hobart, there are only very few chapels that he did not start. All the workers of the first hours remember him with great gratitude, and all those who came after ought to acknowledge their common debt to this kind, humble but extremely zealous priest. We must all include him in our prayers for the repose of his soul, and walk in the path of his Faith and attachment to Tradition. He spent the last years of his life with Fr. Sim, CSsR, from New Zealand, in his monastery on Stronsay island in the Orkney islands, north of Scotland.

Reflections from his former Altar Boy...

24 July 2007, aged 91 Born September 9, 1915, ordained priest 1939, Fr. Fox became professor of  Sacred Liturgy and History at Mosgiel Seminary in Dunedin New Zealand, and there  taught numerous future bishops of that country. When I met him in 1983, it was briefly at a Latin Mass he held at my  grandfather's house in Thornleigh Sydney Australia. The next year I went once  again, and then in late '84 he loaned me some books of Michael Davies about the  liturgical revolution in the Catholic Church, and the great role of Archbishop  Lefebvre in the Catholic Restoration of  Tradition. I had decided to enter the modern seminary at Manly, Sydney, when Fr. Fox  encouraged me to assist at his daily Mass, inviting me to learn to serve. With  all I was learning, the Novis Ordo seminary became less appealing, and with Fr.  Fox’s help I found my way to the SSPX seminary in the USA in  '85. To prepare me for that, Fr. Fox taught me to join him in saying the  Divine Office in Latin with him for an hour after his early morning Masses, and  I had the privilege that year to drive him to his various outback Mass centres  around NSW and learn much more.

His encyclopedic mind was bursting with Catholic  history and scripture and law and liturgy and lives of the saints, all conveyed  with true love for God and His holy Church. He had taught the late Fr. Stephen Abdoo the same way, preparing him for  the seminary at Econe a few years earlier. Fr Abdoo was the first SSPX priest  who died, killed by a car after one year as a priest, aged 24 in  1987. He once had as a parishioner the famous Mel Gibson, of immortal memory  for his dedication to the Latin Mass and the Passion of the Christ movie, the  greatest movie ever made. Fr. Fox had to work at one time with Mel's father  Hutton, who was secretary of the Latin Mass Society before the SSPX arrived in  Australia. For a quarter Century, the indefatigable Fr. Fox held Sunday Masses  in a town hall on the north side of Sydney, until he moved for a while to our  seminary in Goulburn NSW.

The one burning desire of his life since the Council ended in 1965, was  to be loyal to both the Church authorities AND the Tradition in all its  fullness. Hence he never celebrated the new English Mass, but was not averse to  helping priests distribute Holy Communion at that Mass, until he read a study  questioning the validity of the English Mass. He was concerned about  the mistranslation that falsifies the key words in the holiest part of the Mass,  as if the Blood of Our Lord is shed at MASS for ALL, instead of what Christ  said, FOR MANY. He was surely overjoyed that Pope Benedict has ordered this  glaring and dangerous error to be corrected in all English  Masses. Father suffered much from some misguided fellow priests who thought it  their sacred duty to prevent him from keeping available for the faithful the  Mass of his ordination in 1939. They had heard Pope Paul in 1976 say the new  Mass is compulsory, but they never read the fine print, that he did not legally  oblige and never could forbid the ancient and venerable Mass canonised by St.  Pius  V at the council of Trent. In vain did he try to convince his beloved brethren that there was no  real prohibition on the Mass, and in his latter years he was not allowed even a  server at his very private Masses. In other ways he was very grateful for the  kindness of his order of Vincentians, who did look after him in so many  ways. I could fill a book with fond recollections of our many adventures  together, and marvellous workings of God's grace through this man of God, but  this will have to wait. He, and very few others (Fr Augustine Cummins,  Monsignors Leo Hatswell and Ken Hodgson, Fr. Dudley Dyson-Smith), prepared the  way for the SSPX to arrive in Australia and flourish as it has since 1982.

How greatly would he have rejoiced to read the Motu Proprio of July 7,  just 17 days before his death where the Holy Father vindicated dear Fr. Fox, and  declared solemnly to the whole world... "Fr Fox is right! This Mass has never  been and can never be banned!" So in this same month of that historic decree,  and in the octave of his glorious patron St. Vincent de Paul, the very reverend  and saintly son of the Church-of-all-times, Patrick Fox, is taken by God to his  eternal reward, to the embrace of the Sovereign All-Perfect Lover of  souls. He will be remembered for his faith, fervor, kindness and joyful, even  playful good humour, joined to a strictness and self-discipline that was so  opposed to the modern world. He was a model of priestly purity and charity, a  harvester of traditional vocations, and an inspiration to all who knew him. MAY  HIS SOUL AND THE SOULS OF ALL THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED, THROUGH THE MERCY OF GOD,  REST IN PEACE.....AMEN! Yours  sincerely in Christ,
 
Fr  Kevin Robinson


From the Editor of "The Catholic"
Dear Friends,

Father Patrick Fox was ordained to the priesthood on the Feast  of St Andrew, 30 November 1939. He died this morning (July 25) in Sydney. He  served God in the holy priesthood for nearly 68 years.

Fr Fox never ever celebrated the Mass in the new rite, and  since 1969, was continually persecuted by his order, the Vincentians. Time after  time they tried to force him into the new ways, and time after time he  outsmarted them. I remember Bishop Williamson saying in Perth on the occasion of  Fr Cummins' 50th jubilee, that Fr Fox was a fox in more ways than just his name,  and indeed he was. He was sent to a psychiatrist on at least two occasions, and  was given a certificate of mental health both times. Most of us do not have a  certificate of our sanity! His Order tried to have him certified insane, and  they failed.

His persecution only let up for a short time a few years ago  when he lived at Holy Cross Seminary. This did not last long because he wanted  to die as he had lived, in a Vincentian house. His persecution in his last years  was that he was forbidden to have anyone present when he celebrated Mass. In  last years he would celebrate Mass privately in his room at 11.30pm  and then  immediately celebrate another after midnight, thus covering two  days.

How wonderful that Fr Fox lived to see his stand vindicated,  Pope Benedict stated clearly that the Old Mass, that to which Fr Fox was always  faithful, for nearly 68 years, was never forbidden.

Finally, Fr Fox has always been a good friend to us, from his  visits to Melbourne in the late 70s, from the time we established  Catholic in 1982, and then since we finished in 2000, he still  kept in touch. His conversations were usually late at night, and it was always a  joy to speak to this wonderful man, this priest of God.

We pray that Fr Fox will now join those other Australian  champions of the Mass of All Time; Fr Cummins, Fr Buckley, Fr Dyson-Smith, Msgr  Hatswell, Fr de Silva, others that we don't know, and not to forget Fr Abdoo,  SSPX, who died in a car accident 20 years ago on July 26, 1987.

May he, and they,  rest in peace

Don
SBBC

THE MASS THAT REFUSED TO DIE



At about 8 a.m. on Monday 13th September, 1976, Fr. Fox himself heard this brief item on the ABC Radio News session: "Because of the Tridentine Latin Mass which he celebrated at East Lindfield yesterday, Fr. Patrick Fox now faces disciplinary action, but his Provincial Fr. K. Turnbull added that this disciplinary action would not go as far as excommunication" (!!). And indeed, just before beginning his Tridentine Latin Mass at East Lindfield Hall at 9 a.m. before a congregation of at least a hundred people on the previous morning Sunday 12th September, 1976, Fr. Fox had used the only escape route from his dreadful dilemma that he could then see - namely, by announcing for all to hear that this Mass (though celebrated as usual) would be a PRIVATE Mass (as opposed to the forbidden PUBLIC Mass), an announcement of course which Fr. Turnbull did not relish at all when he later heard of it, and which formed the basis of the next day’s Radio News item already quoted. But whatever disciplinary threats might now hang over him from that direction, Fr. Fox’s conscience was however clear: on Sunday 12th September, 1976 he had not celebrated the forbidden public Tridentine Latin Mass, but a self-announced private Mass, which yet however had saved his flock from being liturgically stranded and abandoned - an answer to prayer indeed!

After the aforesaid threat of disciplinary action by Fr. Turnbull against Fr. Fox as proclaimed on Monday 13th September, 1976, some Mass-Media reporters or agents rang Fr. Fox to ask what had been done to him, or what would be done to him in the way of disciplinary action; and they left phone numbers so as to learn the verdict (TV channel 9, Alan Gill - religious writer for the "Sydney Morning Herald", and "The Australian"). However, as day succeeded day in that traumatic week, on each one of which Fr. Fox was expecting to be summoned to the Provincial Office to learn the details of his disciplinary sentence, nothing of the kind happened, although Fr. Turnbull was in and out of Ashfield where Fr. Fox then lived; and on the Wednesday evening (15th September) Fr. Fox had even "sneaked in" another old Latin Mass for some of his flock in the other Sydney suburb of Killara (at the Masson family home).

But it was on Saturday 18th September, that this "disciplinary" week ended with Fr. Turnbull’s final "canonical" action therein: at 5.15 p.m. he sailed away out through Sydney Heads for a four weeks Pacific Ocean cruise as chaplain on board the cruise-ship "Fairsky" - Fr. Turnbull’s annual holiday in fact. This holiday could not have come at a better time for Fr. Fox who, still undisciplined, on the next morning 19th September, 1976 celebrated the Tridentine Latin Mass as usual for his Sunday congregation in the East Lindfield Hall - "Fairsky" so far, both on land and sea! And, interestingly, when some weeks later after his Pacific Ocean cruise Fr. Turnbull returned to Sydney, the old Latin Masses on Sundays in the East Lindfield Hall continued on unabated year after year, without any red signal from Fr. Turnbull for Fr. Fox to stop them - they might even in his mind have been private Masses, and still not public ones! Furthermore, the previous threat of disciplinary action against Fr. Fox was for practical purposes no longer mentioned - no doubt to the disappointment of the newspaper and TV reporters. But since that exciting month of September, 1976 those old Latin Masses have gone on in that East Lindfield Hall for well over twenty years, even to this day, the 9th February, 1997, when this Mass looks set to continue there well into the next century - how good God has been to us already in allowing this Mass to exist for so many years, and may His blessings be with it for the future at this oldest existing traditional Latin Mass centre in Australia!

And what powerful motivation we have for persevering with this old Latin Mass, when we learn from a French Courtoise Radio session of Jean Guitton, the great friend of Pope Paul VI, that this Pope, when promulgating the new Mass in 1969, had this intention regarding the Mass, namely, to reform the Catholic liturgy so that it would almost coincide with the Protestant liturgy, to get it as close as possible to the Protestant Lord’s supper, to tone down what was too Catholic in the Catholic Mass, and to get the Catholic Mass closer to the heretical Calvinist service (!!). 19/12/1993

We learn also that in 1986 eight out of nine Cardinals appointed by Pope John Paul II to study this matter declared that the old Latin Mass had never been suppressed, and all nine Cardinals declared that no Bishop may forbid a Catholic priest in good standing to celebrate this old Latin Mass.

Finally, "our traditionalist priests" (see above) are greatly encouraged to keep saying this Mass by these lovely words of the same Susan Claire Potts (see above): "What glory in heaven will be theirs! Imagine the look on Our Lord’s Holy Face, when He greets them in eternity! Imagine the love in Mary’s heart, when She beholds her sons. For they are the faithful ones. They are the ones obedient to the mandate of Christ. In the face of the most terrible opposition ever known to priests in the whole history of the Church, these "Latin Mass priests" have not faltered - or, if they have faltered, they have come good again - amid odd clouds in the Church’s Fairsky!


And the Lord said: "Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren." (St. Luke 22:31-32)



Father Patrick Fox, C.M. was called to his reward on July 24, 2007.  At the age of 91, after 67½ years of priesthood, he was an exemplary model of simplicity and obedience to the seminarians and priests alike, as well as a great inspiration for traditional Catholics throughout Australia, for he had never celebrated the New Mass, and had always publicly stood firm for Tradition, Archbishop Lefebvre and the Society of Saint Pius X.

Fr. Crowdy died, aged 92, on The Feast of the Assumption 2006, his last Mass for SSPX was at Taunton on All Saints, immediately thereafter going to stay with the Bevan family for his final days. Up until then, he had been staying at SSPX Bristol, with Fr. Leo Boyle and others - it was then, indeed, a very happy house.

At one point he was constrained not to Celebrate Mass at outlying centres, however, when the clergy returned, they discovered that Fr. Crowdy had taken Communion to a person an even further distance. I had a meeting with Fr. Crowdy at Bristol, when he was over 90,and upon arriving discovered he had gone to Celebrate Mass in Dorset and was expected imminently. In due course he arrived clothed in motor cycling gear and a WW II gas cape, when told he was on his newly acquired motorbike, I thought it was a joke, it was not!

Truly, "A priest forever ...... " RIP!

Source http://z10.invisionfree.com/Ignis_Ardens/index.php?showtopic=8846&st=0

Fr Crowdy died on Friday 8th December at 3pm. Fr Boyle was with him. He wished to be buried at St Saviour's in Bristol. Requiescat in pace.

Please pray for Fr Crowdy, who said the Traditional Mass in Oxford for many years.

His Requiem (a Traditional Solemn High Mass) was said on Thursday 14th December at 11am in Bristol, at St Saviour's. (Saint Saviour's House, St Agnes Avenue, Knowle, Bristol BS4 2DU)

by Thomas A. Droleskey, Ph.D.

October 1, 2002

Father Frederick Schell, S.J., (1916-2002) an uncompromising rock for the Truths and Traditions of Holy Mother Church, passed away September 28 - Our Lady's Saturday at the age of 86. He will be greatly missed by the remnant of Traditional Catholics whose souls he touched in manifesting so many good fruits during his many years in the harvest of God's lambs.

  Father Schell was born in 1916 in El Paso. He joined the Society of Jesus and was ordained to the priesthood after World War II. As he could not take the situation within the Society, he sought out incardination in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in the 1970s, where he made a number of friends among the priests there.

   The breaking point for Father Schell came, however, when he was told in November of 1977 that he would have to give out Holy Communion in the hand. Pope Paul VI had granted the American bishops the permission they sought to regularize the abuse they had "tolerated" (actually, initiated) in many places ever since the new Mass started in 1969. "They told me I would have to give out Communion in the hand on November 20, 1977," Father Schell told us, "I told people at the time, 'This is a sacrilege. They can't make me do it." He saw so clearly what so many priests acquiesced to in a perversion of a true Catholic understanding of the word "obedience." Father Schell was not out to please man but God, "So, I preached against it on November 13, 1977," he told us, "and by the next week I was gone. The last twenty-five years have been the happiest of my life."

   Father Schell opened up shop about fifty miles north of Los Angeles, attracting a steady stream of parishioners who had grown sick and tired of the liturgical irreverence, the improvisation, the showmanship, and the doctrinal impurity found in their local parishes. Although he was then in his fifties, he drove from Granada Hills to Garden Grove to Bakersfield to Ventura to offer the Mass of our fathers week in and week out. He placed everything in the hands of the Blessed Mother. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles knew all about him, but never lifted a finger to sanction him.

   Father Schell told us the story on March 11, 2002, of the time that one of Cardinal Mahony's auxiliary bishops came to the chapel where he offered Sunday Mass. Although he was dressed in civilian clothes, a woman recognized him and told Father Schell. "I told her to tell him, 'Tell him to stay out of the way and that he'll hear a good Mass if he wants to stay.'" The woman did as she was instructed. Word got out that the auxiliary bishop was there, and each of the children knelt down before him to kiss his ring, embarrassing the fellow no end.

   Father Schell minced no words about the state of the church. About the bishops, "They're bums, each and every one of them. Bums. . . . They're fence straddling mugwumps. One week they're mugs, the next week they're wumps." He agreed with my assessment about in "A Mere Matter of Preference?" that the Novus Ordo was ultimately harmful to the Faith. "That's right," he said very matter-of-factly. "I agree with that."

   I kept thinking while at breakfast with him that he would have enjoyed meeting the late Father John J. Sullivan, whose life and priesthood I described in "Jackie Boy" just about two years ago now. When I told him about a priest at Holy Apostles Seminary who had said that Our Lord was conceived in a perverse, violent manner, Father Schell jumped right in, "I would have punched him right in the nose." I told Father Schell that's exactly what Father Sullivan did. Father Schell was very pleased. It should be noted, however, that Father Schell told us after he had treated us to breakfast, "I'm all talk now. I don't too much fighting these days."

   Sharon and I were amazed at the physical condition in was in after all of the years of driving hundreds and hundreds of miles every week. We were also amazed at his "breakfast of champions," as Sharon called it, which consisted of endless cups of coffee (with loads of cream and sugar in each cup) and a cinnamon role with gobs and gobs of butter on it. At 86, the food police had not caught up with Father Schell.

   Both Sharon and I came away from that meeting with the belief that we had met a saint. Naturally, Father Schell did not believe he had done anything extraordinary. He simply offered people the Mass, giving them an oasis in a desert of the Faith. And he had the humility to recognize when he was slowing down, being willing to turn over the network of parishes and the academy he had built up over a quarter of a century to Father Perez, who he had just met a few years before. Father Schell did not build up a cult of personality around him. He simply was a priest who wanted to offer Catholics the Traditional Latin Mass and pure instruction in the Faith.

   The Padre Pio Academy in Garden Grove is well attended by well behaved children. I told Sharon after attending our first Mass there with Father Perez in February of this year, "You tell me who the crazy ones are around here? The people who sit back passively and accept liturgical abuse and outright heresy, who expose their children unthinkingly to the rot of sex-instruction, or these good people who simply want to save their own souls and to help their children get to the highest place in Heaven possible next to that of the Blessed Mother? Who are the crazy ones?" A photograph of Father Schell hangs in the academy. When I saw it for the first time, I told Sharon and Father Perez, "He looks for all the world like Milton Berle." Father Schell told us when he met him that he had been told that many times.

   I realized after meeting Father Schell how wrong I had been over the years, that the circumstances of the postconciliar church had produced men of remarkable courage, men of such profound humility that they did not care what anyone thought of them or what sacrifices they had to make to be faithful to the Church's living liturgical tradition. And I prayed all the more fervently that the Holy Father would erect an Apostolic Administration so as to give these courageous men the canonical recognition that is their due as they seek to honor the Blessed Trinity fittingly and serve the cause of the formation and salvation of immortal souls.

   We kept in contact with Father Schell after we left California. He was so pleased to get the news of Lucy Mary Norma's birth. It was, therefore, with great delight that we looked forward to seeing him again in California when we flew out there in May in association with a talk I was to give at a Una Voce-Los Angeles/Latin Mass Magazine conference on May 25.

   We met Father Schell at his home in Granada Hills. He took us to a wonderful restaurant perched above the intersections of Interstates 405 and 5 and California Route 118, a place that had a breathtaking view of the entire San Fernando Valley. It was clear, though, that he had slowed down in the two and one-half months since we had first met with him. He was preparing to go home.

   Father Schell, who was so happy to met our daughter, told us that he was retiring from all of his active work, giving it all away to Father Perez. "I'm praying to Our Lady for a quick exit," he told us, "probably sometime within the next six months. She usually gives me whatever I ask of her." Selfishly, we hoped that he would be around for a lot longer than six months. We so enjoyed visiting with him, partaking of his wisdom and being inspired by his great love of Our Lord and Our Lady.

   I was told several days later that Father Schell's used his last sermon to urge his parishioners to read the issue of Christ or Chaos he had had reproduced. "I've given you many things over the years," he told them. "This is the last gift I am giving you." To say that I was touched and honored beyond words is an understatement. That a man of his courage and wisdom and foresight would find my work in any way edifying for his people is a gift I will always cherish.

   We spoke on the phone several times in the last few months. He told me that he was doing all right, but that he was glad he had made the decision to retire. Again, Sharon and I were hoping to see him on our next journey California, though we do not know when that is going to take place. Our Lady had other plans.

   Sharon found out from a dear friend of hers in San Juan Capistrano, California, that Father Frederick Schell, S.J., died peacefully in his sleep on Saturday morning, September 28, 2002. He died on Our Lady's day, Saturday. Father Patrick Perez told me over the phone that evening that he had conditionally anointed Father Schell several hours after his death, telling me that there was a smile on his face. As well there should have been. Though we never presume the state of any soul at the moment of death-and are duty bound in both justice and charity to pray for the souls of the faithful departed for as long as we are live, Father Schell is one of those men, as a great Catholic philanthropist and defender of the Traditional Mass noted that same evening, "you pray to as well as pray for." Whether he is in Purgatory or Heaven, the prayers of Father Frederick Schell will be most powerful to aid the restoration of the Traditional Latin Mass.

   Humanly speaking, it is sad to realize that we will never see him in this life again. If it were at all financially possible, Sharon and I would fly out to California for his Requiem Mass. Our faith teaches us, however, that we are never separated from the souls of the faithful departed. The doctrine of the Communion of Saints teaches us that each part of the Church-Militant, Suffering, Triumphant-are connected to each other. Indeed, we are overawed at the childlike simplicity Father Schell had in Our Lady's intercessory power to grant him a quick exit from this vale of tears although nothing was really wrong with him physically at all other than the toll that eighty-six years of living the Priesthood and Victimhood of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ takes on a courageous son of the Church.

   Father Schell cared nothing for honors, nothing for prestige, nothing for the perquisites that so many priests (even those who are orthodox and who recognize in the Traditional Latin Mass the best way to worship the Blessed Trinity and to sanctify souls) are willing to sell their souls in order to obtain. He cared only about fidelity to Christ the King and Mary our Queen by giving the souls who sought him out access to the closest thing to Heaven imaginable: the Traditional Latin Mass.

   Yes, the Providence of God is amazing. I needed to have the scales taken from my eyes to appreciate men like Father Frederick Schell. And I will never cease to pray to Our Lady so that those who remain after him - and those who will come along after them - will one day be recognized by Holy Mother Church herself as nothing other than priests who care about true reverence in Mass and integrity in handing on the Deposit of Faith in all of its purity. It is men such as Father Frederick Schell who kept the Traditional Latin Mass alive in the midst of a veritable revolution to flush the past down the Orwellian memory hole.

   While praying for Father Schell's soul (he probably gave "Jackie Boy" Sullivan a punch in the nose in eternity for not "getting it" about the Traditional Mass), we also give Our Lord and Our Lady thanks for his courage and zeal, his humility and self-effacement.

   Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon him. May his souls - and the souls of the faithful departed - rest in peace. Amen.

 THE MASS THAT REFUSED TO DIE

1969: AUSTRALIAN AFTERMATH

9th February 1997 (from the Achives)


The beautiful old Latin Mass is timeless, changeless, universally the same, and has about it that untranslatable beauty, the gestures, the eloquent silences, the sublimity, the transcendence, the touch of heaven, the majesty, the mystery so tremendous and yet so fascinating!

It arouses in the heart, whether we ourselves know Latin or not, a sense of something ever ancient, ever new, something rich, strange, different, awesome, majestic yet lovable, demanding attention and belief, not to be trifled with, sacred and secret, immune to the vagaries of fashionable taste and to the corruption of the passing ages - Christian Order 12/1987, p.p. 586-7; The Remnant 17/10/1980 p.1.

I think of this old Tridentine Latin Mass as the spiritual health food, the real spiritual food, of our day, as of any age. In this Mass none of the most nourishing ingredients have been refined out of it by so-called liturgical reform: consequently we see the Tridentine priest, taken from among the people, yet set apart at the Holy Sacrifice by his vestments, by his aloneness at the altar, offering to God the Body and Blood of His Son in atonement for our sins, the people reverently kneeling to adore the awesome majesty of God and the unfathomable mysteries of His love in coming to us in Holy Communion - which we would not be so brazen as to receive standing or in our unconsecrated hands. This is true nourishment sacramental and spiritual. It has sustained saints and strengthened sinners for many, many centuries and, like the wheat that grows century after century from God’s earth, is always the same, always life-giving.

By contrast, the 1969 New Ordo Mass is the spiritual junk food of our generation. Those who partake of it lose their spiritual health and often their entire faith. Their understanding of Catholicism becomes twisted and weakened, because too often at their Masses there is flagrant irreverence, much non-Catholic teaching in their sermons, far too much unruly guitar-strumming, a sign of peace that erupts into an orgy of hugging, kissing and squealing, with dancing girls, and Holy Communion given by lay ministers, while the clergy sit and watch and perhaps chit-chat-"The Angelus", July 1982, p.18.

Again by way of contrast with these New Ordo priests, during the long critical years between the New Ordo Mass year of 1969 and the Roman Indult year of 1984 (which allowed the old Latin Mass back, though never legally abolished), the following priests, by celebrating the old Latin Mass over long periods for the persecuted lay people who wanted it, saved this Mass from total extinction not only in the Archdiocese of Sydney but in several country areas of New South Wales, and all this in the face of bitter opposition and intense personal suffering: Msgr. Leo Hatswell, Fr. Carl Pulvermacher O.F.M. Cap., Fr Joseph da Silva S.M., Fr. Dudley Dyson-Smith, Fr. Terence Hogan, Fr. Gerard Hogan S.S.P.X., Fr. Francois Laisney S.S.P.X. and Fr. Patrick Fox C.M. Elsewhere in Australia, Fr. Cyril Crocker S.M., Fr. Augustine Cummins C.S.S.R. and Fr. Brian Buckley of Townsville Diocese did the same. But the difficulties by no means disappeared in 1984, and even before then some of these priests were taking this Mass interstate. "I think that in Australia you can never pay enough honour to the very small group of priests who kept the old Latin Mass going here, no matter what it cost, after the 2nd Vatican Council (1965...........), when otherwise this Mass would have vanished totally from Australia. But there was never a time when the Latin Mass was not kept going in Australia " - this kind tribute to the aforesaid group of "Latin Mass priests" came from Mr. Michael Davies (famous English convert, author and lecturer) during his lecture at ‘Sancta Sophia’ University College, Sydney on Sunday evening 14th April, 1996; and about a year earlier in the U.S.A., (‘Remnant’ 30th April, 1995,p.4), Susan Claire Potts had written this inspiring appreciation of these "Latin Mass priests", as regards both their earthly trials and achievements on the one hand, and their great eternal rewards in heaven on the other:

"In more places than you would think of across the land and throughout the world, the old Latin Mass is said by good, faithful priests with quiet dignity, and with the Faith passed down. These priests, undaunted, face ridicule and derision. They are ostracised and maligned. They are marginalized and despised. They suffer like Our Lord. But because of them, our cherished Catholic traditions will not die, and so we lay people can still live the Faith. So a remnant lives on in the Divine Embrace, because of the sacrifice and love and devotion of these priests, whom the people call "our traditionalist priests".

As for some examples of the earthly trials of these traditionalist priests, Monsignor Leo Hatswell in 1976 was forced out of his parish at Lockhart in the country Diocese of Wagga, N.S.W., because he was saying the old Latin Mass in his parish church, for which ‘crime’ some of his parishioners dobbed him in to the Most Rev. Francis Carroll, then Bishop of Wagga; and as this Bishop later told Fr. Fox: "In these circumstances, I regarded it as my duty to dismiss Msgr. Hatswell from his parish in my diocese"; Msgr. Hatswell then went to live with his relatives, the Dowling family, on their property five miles out of Penrith, about 30 miles from Sydney, now in the Diocese of Parramatta. Part of the Dowling family home was converted into a lovely chapel; and Msgr. Hatswell’s old Latin Mass therein was like a rustic magnet for nearly nine years, drawing people from miles around and even from Sydney, not only for his 9 a.m. Sunday Mass, but for confessions, Benedictions, Holy Hours and even for Holy Week ceremonies - and all this at the age of 78 or so! Truly, Lockhart’s loss was Penrith’s gain, and Wagga’s loss was Sydney’s gain. What a great example this is of a venerable priest who suffered so much for his Mass, and yet remained so genial and cheerful in spite of it all! He died on 4th December, 1991, over 60 years a priest, and ordained in 1930.

Then on 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th August, 1991, Fr. Patrick Fox C.M., committed the ‘dreadful crime’ of celebrating four old Latin Masses in a private house at Mackay in Queensland, with about two dozen people at each Mass. But until then no such Masses had been celebrated in Mackay for years and years; and these four Masses stirred up such vigorous and adverse comment among the local priests that Fr. Fox on his next visit to Queensland in late October, 1991, was confronted with this startling message at Townsville: "If Fr. Fox appears again in Mackay, "HE WILL BE SHOT!" It was later explained that although the priests at Mackay had not expressed their strong feelings in these precise words, yet in the opinion of a well known Mackay lady Miss Jessie Roger, that was what the verdict of these priests amounted to. But shooting or not, similar Masses were to continue there at regular intervals; and indeed even before this shooting threat had been targetted at Fr. Fox, it had been arranged in Sydney that the priests of the Society of St. Pius X would continue these Latin Masses in Mackay, while from Melbourne came a warning to the people of Mackay to beware of Fr. Fox: "He is, as he claims, in union with the Pope, but only just"(!!) - ‘Fidelity’, Ormond, Victoria., September, 1991.

The next year 1992 Fr. Fox made his first Tridentine ‘assault’ on the diocese of Cairns (much further north in Queensland than Mackay), with another bleak welcome. He arrived in Cairns direct by air from Mt. Isa on Saturday 16th May, and was told that no church in the entire diocese of Cairns was available for his traditional Latin Masses; but that private homes could be used for such Masses, if the visiting priest possessed a Celebret (written permission to say the Mass from a Superior, which Fr. Fox did have from the Vatican Cardinal Augustine Mayer O.S.B., in Rome), with attendance of lay people allowed by Msgr. M. Walsh who was in charge of the Diocese until a new Bishop be appointed. So next morning, Sunday 17th May, 1992, Fr. Fox celebrated one of these Masses (followed by Benediction, with the sung Litany of Our Lady) in the home of Mr and Mrs L. Giacomo, located in the outlying Parish of Gordonvale, with about 30 people attending. The local Parish Priest sent a message to Fr. Fox not to ring him up, lest he (Fr. Patrick Jones) speak severely to Fr. Fox; and furthermore, any of the parishioners present at the Latin Mass were to be penalized in some way.

But during those years when the very survival of the old Latin Mass in Australia was so critically at stake, Fr. Fox had no need to leave Sydney or to travel interstate to experience entrenched opposition to his old Latin Masses. For on Monday 6th September, 1976 Fr. K. Turnbull C.M., Vincentian Provincial in Australia handed to Fr. Fox this written directive:

"I, as Visitor (=Provincial) of the Australian Province of the Vincentian Fathers,

exercising the authority committed to me in the Congregation of the Mission

a) Forbid you to say publicly, the Latin Tridentine Mass.

b) I forbid you to publicly and personally as a priest and member of the Congregation of the Mission to promote the celebration of the Latin Tridentine Mass and attendance at such."

Fr. K. Turnbull C.M."

This directive at once faced Fr. Fox with a dilemma of conscience regarding the accustomed (since Sunday 28th September, 1975) Latin Tridentine Mass at East Lindfield Hall to be celebrated at 9 a.m. on the following Sunday, 12th September 1976, and on Sundays thereafter. Was Fr. Fox to cancel this Mass totally for the future, and thus leave his flock suddenly and permanently stranded without their Latin Mass? Or was he to continue this Mass as usual, and thus be branded as disobedient and contumacious by his Provincial Fr. Turnbull in the light of the aforesaid directive? Or again, could Fr. Fox find some escape route out of this dilemma?

Whatever might be the answers to these questions, as that week progressed and Sunday 12th September, 1976 drew inexorably closer, Fr. Fox felt the ever increasing pressure of that dilemma within himself, and had recourse to much prayer so as to solve this difficulty - a difficulty never envisaged at any stage of his long seminary training. For now in the 1970’s Fr. Fox’s Vincentian Superiors were actively suppressing the very Mass which his Vincentian Superiors of his seminary days in the 1930’s had taught him to celebrate!........


Part II