District Newsletter – July 2009

My dear Brethren,

As most of you already know, we will have the privilege and pleasure of a visit to Australia of our Superior-General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, next month.  Unfortunately, time will not allow him to visit all of our centres but he will manage to visit the three largest in addition to the Seminary.  The programme of his visit has been arranged as follows:

Please come in large numbers to these various functions and welcome our Superior General to our country.  I imagine that in his public conferences he will have many interesting things to relate about all of the important events which have taken place between the Society and Rome over the last few months.

Here in Australia various things have happened since my last letter in March which will be of interest to you.

Firstly, in regard to the priests, I am sorry to announce that Father Jules Bélisle will shortly be leaving us for a new post in Singapore.  Father has spent his years in Australia in a fruitful apostolate as the Headmaster of St. Philomena School at Parkridge in Queensland and latterly as Prior at Our Lady’s Church Hampton.  However, if we are sorry to see him go, we are at the same time delighted to welcome back Father Todd Angele who will replace him at Hampton.  Father is, of course, no stranger to Victoria, having the illustrious distinction of being the founder of St. Thomas Aquinas College, Tynong and so returns “home” to Melbourne after an absence of eight years in Calgary, Canada.

At the last General Chapter of the Society it was decided that in due course the Superior of each country should appoint an Assistant and Bursar.  This has now been done here and Father Shane Johnson has been appointed District Assistant of Australia.  This means, in effect, that he is second in command in regard to the general administrative matters of the Society in this country and deputy in my absence.  Father Sayed Elias is District Bursar and my assistant with regard to matters of finance.

We offer special congratulations to Father Michael Delsorte, the Principal of St. Thomas Aquinas College on the Silver Jubilee of his priesthood which he celebrated at our seminary at Econe at the place and on the day of his ordination by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1984.  A special celebration is also arranged to take place at

Tynong on Saturday 25th July.  We surely offer Father our prayers that God may continue to bless and fructify his apostolate.

These recent days have also been marked by another regrettable departure, that of Sister Mary John, the Principal, during the last five years, of St. Dominic Savio School here at Rockdale.  This has been a time of great importance for the school and Sister has executed her responsibilities with great competence and devotion.  We are certainly sorry to see her go but her great qualities will now serve in her new position as Mistress of Novices at the Convent of our Society’s Sisters at Ruffec in France.  Happily, however, she is replaced as School Principal by Sister Mary Gemma who has worked at St. Dominic Savio’s for many years and is familiar to, and appreciated by, all associated with the Sydney school and parish.

The last few months have also been of great consequence for all of our schools as each of them are beneficiaries of the grants associated with the Government’s “Education Revolution”!  As these grants are being distributed according to the size of a school’s enrolment and are essentially an investment in new buildings, St. Thomas Aquinas College at Tynong is our most striking beneficiary and soon we will see the construction of a new library and administration block.  St. Philomena’s School at Parkridge will likewise construct a new library which is conceived as the first step towards an eventual replacement of all of the school’s buildings which are now quite old.  Various improvements of a more modest kind have been effected at the school at Rockdale.

Last, but by no means least, we are all aware that last Easter Bishop Fellay launched a third Rosary Crusade within the Society in view of the startling success of the two previous ones for the intentions of the lifting of the restrictions on the celebration of the Traditional Mass throughout the world and the putative excommunications of our four bishops.  Contrary to all human expectations, these objectives have been accomplished but this next crusade envisages a far wider object i.e. the general good of the Church and the world.  Bishop Fellay requests that we offer to the Blessed Virgin Mary “between now and March 25th 2010 a bouquet of 12 million (five-decade) rosaries as a crown of as many stars around her person; accompanied by an equivalently important number of daily sacrifices” for the  “triumph of her Immaculate Heart by the means which she herself requested: the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart by the Supreme Pastor and all the bishops of the Catholic world and the propagation of the devotion to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart”.

May we all enter with great devotion into the spirit of this Crusade!  Humanly speaking, of course, this is likely to be without the immediate visible result of the two previous Rosary Crusades.  Nevertheless, with God all things are possible and are accomplished by Him in His own due time.  By a great mystery Russia has been the fount of most of the fundamental errors of modern times.  Throughout the whole world we now suffer the manifold consequences of a public apostasy which is the result of a long history of the rejection of Christ and His Church by key Christian Nations (e.g. England and Germany in the 16th, France in the 18th and Russia in the 20th centuries).  The consecration of Russia to Our Lady, I think therefore, must be seen in a wider perspective than simply that of the reparation of guilt of a particular nation (for Russia herself has already been crucified by Communism) but rather as the expression of a formal renunciation of Satan and all of his works and pomps through her who “destroys all heresies in the entire world” (Roman Liturgy). For the Communist mentality, being a fundamental rejection of God and the order of His creation, is a hydra which presents itself in many ways, not merely in its Stalinist form.  Its ideas have profoundly affected the modern world including the Church and its hierarchy.  This is surely why the consecration of Russia – so easy in itself to perform – presents such a problem and has not yet been done.

Likewise, devotion to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart goes well beyond a particular form of homage or piety.  The essence of this devotion surely consists in imitation of and union with the virtues manifested by Mary’s Heart (i.e. complete surrender to the will of God, co-operation with His grace, humility, purity and loving acceptance of the Cross as the means of our own and the world’s salvation) so that we may, like her and with her, keep “all of these words in (our) heart” (Lk 2.51).  It is surely in this spirit that our Superior-General bids us, not merely to recite the rosary, but to accompany it with an equivalent number of daily sacrifices, “which we will take good care to look for first in the faithful accomplishment of our duty of state”.  These sacrifices are not to be dramatic or ostentatious but quiet and constant, intimately related to the self-effaced life of the Blessed Virgin herself.

With every good wish and blessing,

Yours sincerely in Christ,

Father Edward Black

Superior.