SSPX Australia District Newsletter – December 2009

My Dear Brethren

Very soon Bishop Tissier de Malerais will be visiting Australia in order to confer the Sacred Priesthood on Mr Todd Stephens, an Australian and Mr Remi Picot, a Frenchman and I ask you to pray for these young men that God may abundantly bless their future apostolate.

I am delighted to announce that Todd Stephens, who parents are very prominent members of our congregation at Tynong and caretakers of St. Thomas Aquinas College, will be remaining here in Australia and will take up his first priestly duties here at Rockdale.  Father Jordie Stephens will then move to Tynong.  He will replace Father Richard Vachon who has spent five years at St. Thomas Aquinas College and will now move to Brisbane where he will be resident at Park Ridge with Fathers MacDonald and Arthur with responsibility for our congregations in North Queensland.

By the time you receive this letter Father Niklaus Pfluger, the First Assistant of the Society, will be in Australia and assist at the Speech Night for the end of the school year at Tynong and then preach the Retreat to the Ordinands.  Afterwards he will accompany me to Fiji where we will spend Christmas together at the Society’s house in Suva.  Unfortunately, our congregation in Fiji remains without a resident priest and is served by our priests from Hampton every two months.  When there is no Mass on Sundays they nevertheless gather at the Chapel and recite the Mass prayers.  Let us hope and pray that after waiting many years there may soon be an improvement in their situation.
No sooner will Father Pfluger have left Australia than we expect the arrival of Father Alain Nely, the Second Assistant of the Society who will preach a retreat to the priests of the Society in this country from 11th to 16th January at the Seminary at Goulburn.  I am hoping that he will also visit a few of our churches during his stay but this is yet to be confirmed.

Work has now begun on the construction of the new buildings for our school in Park Ridge in Queensland.  All three priests serving our churches in Queensland will be resident there at the beginning of the year.  In order to accommodate them all Mr. and Mrs. John Brooker, who have been so closely involved in running St. Philomena’s since its beginning, are unfortunately obliged to vacate the school house where they have been resident since the school began.  We are really most grateful to them for all their devoted service in manifold areas during all these years in both educational and administrative fields.  Mr. Brooker has now retired but Mrs. Brooker will continue in her post as school secretary next year.

It was a great pleasure for me to be able to give a week of conferences to the ladies of Tynong on the subject of Motherhood on the lines of a similar series which I preached last year on Fatherhood.  It was very encouraging to have some seventy ladies present each evening to consider their sublime vocation.  The talks have been recorded and will be available soon on MP3 format.

As the first decade of the new century already draws to its close I take the opportunity of wishing you every grace and blessing for Christmas and the year to come.

Yours sincerely in Christ,

Father Edward Black
District Superior