When Father John Brancich arrived in Nashua, New Hampshire in the summer of 2016, the Bishop himself was there to greet him.

His Excellency Bishop Peter Anthony Libasci and the parish of St. Stanislaus share an extraordinary bond. Bishop Libasci himself is responsible for bringing the Latin Mass to the Diocese of Manchester, to which he was named in 2011 by Pope Benedict XVI. There was a clear desire, illustrated by the myriad letters that would arrive at his office, among the members of his flock for a Latin Mass in the area. To learn more about the founding days of the parish, we talked to Fr. James Smith, who joined the parish as assistant pastor this past summer after his ordination in May.

The bishop’s office researched suitable communities that could provide the Traditional Latin Mass and the bishop reached out to the Fraternity, inviting our North American District Superior, Fr. Saguto, to meet with him in New Hampshire. The meeting was a fruitful one, the two superiors sharing common ground in their New York Italian heritage, but, more importantly, in their mutual goal of saving souls and caring for their flocks.

The Bishop gave the Fraternity the 100-year-old Polish church of St. Stanislaus, which was merged with St. Aloysius Gonzaga parish in 2002 and had been closed as a Mass location since that time, but had remained in use as a place of Eucharistic adoration. The Bishop reopened it as a parish in 2016, Father Brancich celebrating the first Sunday Mass on August 7 of that year. The size of the extant Latin Mass community was made apparent on that Sunday, when 40 young men turned up to offer their services at the altar, and 450 attendees came to the Mass. Since the parish began counting the number of attendees in March of 2017, attendance has increased almost 50%, from 240 to 380 on one Sunday in November.

Fr. Smith told us more about the strong friendship the parish has with Bishop Libasci. The Bishop sat in choir during Holy Week at St. Stanislaus and had lunch with the parish on Palm Sunday. He comes to Mass unannounced, says Fr. Smith, and will drop by the rectory at times just to say hello. “He is very good to us,” he says.

Parishioners come from various regions in New Hampshire and from as far away as the dioceses of Worcester, Massachusetts and Portland, Maine, one family even coming from the Diocese of Springfield, MA, on occasion.

The urban parish is situated in downtown Nashua, a city of 90,000 people that is the two-time winner of the Money magazine’s annual “Best Place to Live in America” survey (1987 and 1997). As far as New England goes, New Hampshire is one of the more conservative corners, and its lack of income tax and sales tax make it an attractive prospect for many. It also partakes of the cultural benefits of being near Boston, such as access to theaters, museums and other activities. The Massachusetts capital is a little over an hour’s drive from Nashua.

And those are not the only benefits of its geography. The parish is perfectly positioned to become an integral part of the growing traditional Catholic hub in the Northeast. The traditional community that met the Fraternity on its arrival is complemented by that found at the nearby Northeast Catholic College, which has the Traditional Latin Mass weekly and whose talented choir lends its voices to almost every Sunday High Mass at St. Stanislaus. Also close by is the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, which celebrates the Traditional Latin Mass on Fridays and runs a van to the Latin Mass on Sundays. As well as the choir from Northeast Catholic, the parish is also blessed to welcome the choir from Thomas More on occasion. The video below is from Sunday, May 7, 2017, the 3rd Sunday after Easter.

The Thomas More choir also sang a High Requiem Mass on November 4, just after All Souls Day. Thomas Aquinas College, which celebrates the Latin Mass daily, is looking to open an east coast campus next year, at a location in Massachusetts about an hour and a half away from Nashua.

The growing parish of St. Stanislaus is the first apostolate for the Fraternity in the New England area, and its presence is therefore a source of great excitement and joy in the FSSP community. A U.S. region that has historically been and continues to be such a population center, a gateway of international travel and immigration and a hub of cultural activity is a vineyard of immense potential, and the FSSP goes into the fields rejoicing.

Our thanks to Mr. David Laskey for the photographs used in the text of this article.

Happy feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe! Today is the patronal feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary, and hence today is a particularly joyful day for our seminarians.

You can still enroll your loved ones in our Christmas Card Novena, a novena of Masses celebrated at the seminary from December 17-25. You will receive a set of beautiful Christmas cards to send to those you enroll. Since there is not time now for you to receive your cards and then send back the paper enrollee form, you can instead just include the names of the enrollees in the online enrollment form here.

You can also read more about the novena and Fr. Saguto’s letter for the 2017 novena here. You can see the beautiful designs for the 2017 cards below!

That’s right. Because Christmas is on a Monday, the Vigil of the Nativity of Our Lord, a Vigil of the 1st Class, takes precedence over the 4th Sunday of Advent on the 24th. So instead of opening your missals to the 4th Sunday of Advent on Christmas Eve, turn over a page or two to the Mass of the Vigil. The last time it happened was 2006, and while it ought to happen every six years, the leap year in 2012 caused an 11 year gap in this cycle. It will next occur in 2023, so enjoy this rare occurrence!

Editor’s Note: The next time after that will be 2028 … the leap year is causing a 5 year gap.

A most happy feast day of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady! Today is a Holy Day of Obligation, so be sure to attend Mass. On this day we recall the singular privilege granted to Our Lady of being preserved from sin from the first moment of her conception. Ever sinless and immaculate, Our Lady’s soul overflowed with all the graces of God and was always in complete union with His Will at every moment, as exemplified by her glorious fiat at the Annunciation. It was through His Most Holy and Immaculate Mother that Christ chose to come into the world to save us, and so let us rejoice and celebrate this feast day in honor of this most excellent Mother!

Gaudens gaudébo in Dómino, et exsultábit ánima mea in Deo meo: quia índuit me vestiméntis salútis: et induménto justítiae circúmdedit me, quasi sponsam ornátam monílibus suis.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, and my soul shall be joyful in my God: for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, and with the robe of justice He hath covered me, as a bride adorned with her jewels.

Isaiah 61:10, from the Introit for today

Twenty-one men of Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Nebraska, received minor orders on November 25, 2017. Eleven were ordained Exorcist and Acolyte, and ten Porter and Lector. The ordinandi come from many different parts of the world, including various U.S. states, Mexico, England, Scotland and even India!

The orders were conferred by His Excellency the Most Reverend Fabian Bruskewitz, Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Lincoln, who celebrated a Solemn Pontifical Mass. Please pray for our seminarians as they take this important step towards the priesthood.

NET, Nebraska’s home for PBS and NPR, recently produced a segment about Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary! The segment was shown nationally recently on PBS Newshour, and you can watch it here! It will also be shown on the upcoming season of “Nebraska Stories” on NET.

The beautiful 360° video below of the seminarians singing the Divine Office in the Chapel of Sts. Peter and Paul was shot by NET during their filming of the segment.

Please consider donating here to support our seminarians as they study for the priesthood. 

The sense of hearing is an important one not only for communicating with others and understanding the world at large, but, even more importantly, for participating fully in the life of the Church. If we are not carrying a missal, we understand the readings by means of hearing them when they are read in the vernacular before the homily. The homily itself is something that we absorb by means of hearing. In order to benefit from the counsel that the priest gives in Confession, we must be able to hear him.

But when if you could not hear? For those who are deaf or hard of hearing, full participation in the spiritual goods that the Church offers is a daily challenge. The deaf cannot understand the readings or listen to the sermon, and tasks such as approaching the Sacrament of Confession or attending spiritual direction can be much more difficult than they are for those who can hear.

Yet St. Stanislaus, the FSSP’s apostolate in Nashua, New Hampshire, is looking to change all that. One recent Sunday, a deaf attendee was able to hear the readings and homily by means of an interpreter who translated them into American Sign Language.

And the interpreter is not the only one in town who speaks ASL.

Fr. John Brancich, the pastor of St. Stanislaus, is himself fluent in sign language. And while there is not yet a regular interpretation program in place, he wants those who cannot hear with their ears to be able to attend the Traditional Latin Mass and to more easily receive Sacraments such as Confession, which can be difficult when the penitent cannot converse fluently with the priest. Therefore, if a deaf person wishes to attend Mass at St. Stanislaus, an interpreter will be provided, and in addition to more easily partaking in the Sacrament of Confession, the deaf can also receive such things as spiritual direction and marriage prep in their own language.

It all goes back to when Fr. Brancich was stationed at Immaculate Conception Parish in Omaha, Nebraska. One day there he conversed with a deaf man by means of writing. It was slow communication, the man had many questions, and the inefficiency of writing as a mode of communication was evident. Fr. Brancich remembered a family with a deaf son, and he inquired of them the best way to communicate with the deaf. They said that most deaf people like to communicate in sign language. Fr. Brancich met others in the deaf community and they encouraged him to learn ASL. He subsequently took classes from 2010-2012 at a local community college.

Immaculate Conception arranged for interpreters to translate the Gospel, Epistle and homily during Mass. More and more deaf people came to the parish, and a sizeable community came together during Fr. Brancich’s time there. Father Brancich even celebrated a marriage for two deaf people in which he preached in sign language. A parish for the deaf had existed in the area, but the last priest who signed had died twelve years earlier, and therefore the services offered by Immaculate Conception helped to fill that need.

In Nashua, future plans for expanding the availability of resources for the deaf community at St. Stanislaus include the possibility of ASL classes at the parish (ASL classes were made available at the Omaha parish and were very popular). Fr. Brancich would also like to install technology for those who are hard of hearing and use hearing aids. The church has an excellent sound system, and it is possible to install a feature that delivers sound directly to the hearing aids.

Our physical hearing, whether it be hearing with our ears or, as in the case of those who communicate through sign language, with our eyes, is only a first step towards that which is greater, the interior hearing of the Word of God Who became flesh and dwelt among us. And parishes such as St. Stanislaus are ensuring that all their sheep have access to that first step, so that all might hear in their hearts the Shepherd Whose voice we all know.

A happy and blessed Thanksgiving Day to you and your families! The word “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving”, and our lives as Catholics, centered upon the Eucharist, are filled with thanksgiving to God for His Love, His mercy, and the greatest gift ever given, that of His only Son.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. – Colossians 3:16-17

Monsignor John Fritz, pastor of St. Stanislaus Parish, the Fraternity’s apostolate in South Bend, Indiana, completed his incardination with the FSSP at the chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary on October 18, 2017. Originally a priest of the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois, Monsignor has been a member of the Fraternity on a per annum basis since 2012 and pastor of the South Bend apostolate since it became a parish in 2015. We had the privilege of talking to Monsignor recently, and he told us more about how he was first drawn to the traditional Latin Mass of the Church, and the path that led him to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter.

Monsignor first thought about becoming a priest when he was just 13 years old, and acted on that original inclination when he was finishing college, being ordained for the Diocese of Rockford in 2000. Although not familiar with the traditional Latin Mass growing up, it was during his time in seminary in the 1990s, while he was in liturgical studies, that he began to learn about the old Mass and to be disposed towards the traditional liturgy of the Church.

It was not long after his ordination, Monsignor explained, that he decided that he wanted to celebrate the traditional Mass. In addition, he also wished to have a traditional priesthood and to have confreres who held the old Mass in common and viewed their priesthood in the same way. He first requested of the Diocese entrance into the FSSP in 2004 and was granted permission in 2012, the incardination subject to yearly renewal until the ceremony this October.

It has been a long desire of his to be in the Fraternity, Monsignor added.  Indeed, Monsignor’s formal incardination with the Fraternity on October 18, 2017 was an event no less than 13 years in the making. The presence of Monsignor Fritz has been an immense blessing to us over the past several years, and we rejoice in his future as a member of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter.

Congratulations, Monsignor!

Editor’s Note: “Monsignor” is a title for those who have received certain honors from the Pope. One of these honors is “Chaplain of His Holiness”, which is the honor that Monsignor Fritz holds. In addition, incardination, from the Latin incardinare, meaning “to hang on a hinge,” is the canonical process by which a priest is bound to the jurisdiction of a bishop, abbot, Order, Congregation or Society. In Monsignor Fritz’s case, he excardinated from the Diocese of Rockford and incardinated with the Fraternity.

On October 21, 2017, at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, celebrated a Solemn Pontifical Mass at St. Mary Mother of God Parish in Washington, D.C. The Mass was the annual Mass in honor of Blessed Karl of Austria, the last emperor of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which disintegrated following the First World War. Blessed Karl became emperor in the midst of the War in 1916, declaring peace as his central goal, and was the only world leader to unconditionally accept Pope Benedict XV’s peace plan for ending the conflict. Not only was Blessed Karl the paragon of a just and selfless statesman, but he and his wife, Empress Zita, and their eight children are also a profound example of a Christian marriage and a holy family life. He said to his future wife on the day before their betrothal: “Now, we must help each other to go to Heaven.” On their wedding rings he had the phrase inscribed: “Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix”, that is, “We fly to thy protection, O Holy Mother of God.”

In his sermon, Bishop Schneider described Blessed Karl as “an apostolic king, an emperor of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.” He explained how Karl was particularly devoted to the Sacred Heart throughout his life, and faithfully observed such devotions as that of the First Friday in honor of the Sacred Heart. On October 2, 1918, he consecrated his family and his entire empire to the Sacred Heart, renewing it on each First Friday. He was similarly devoted to Our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament, so much so that a bishop of the time called him “the Eucharistic emperor.” Blessed Karl of Austria was sent into exile in 1919, and died there of an illness in 1922 at the age of 34, with the Holy Name of Jesus as his final word in this world.

“Blessed Charles dedicated all his life not only for the temporal welfare of his people,” Bishop Schneider said, “but ultimately for the aim of the exaltation of Jesus Christ as the only King of each human heart, and as the only true King of each human and political society.”

The great-grandson of Blessed Karl and Princess Zita, Prince Dmitri Galitzine and his wife, Princess Alexandra, were present in D.C. on Saturday to honor their beatified relative. The music was a beautiful combination of the mixed-voice choir Musikanten and the St. Mary’s men’s and women’s scholas, and the Mass was followed by the veneration of a first-class relic of Blessed Karl.

Afterwards, the reception hall was overflowing with guests who chatted and enjoyed the hors d’oeuvres, sweets and drinks that had been carefully laid out for the anticipated crowd. Presentations about Blessed Karl were a part of the festivities, including a speech by the Prince himself. His Highness spoke of the exemplary marriage of his great-grandparents, how it prepared himself and his wife for the married life, and how it is an example to all Christian couples and families. “Today the Christian marriage is under a lot of pressure from a number of factors. Hence the message that Blessed Karl conveys has never been more important than it is now,” the Prince said. “Although it is hard for us to imitate him as a Christian statesman, that ruled by putting the concern of his people above his own, it is truly in our grasp to emulate the properties Blessed Karl and Empress Zita have shown in their marriage. I truly believe, that if we try, we can create a better and a more Christian society as fundamentally, the family is the backbone of society.”

If you are near the U.S. capital next year on October 21, be sure to attend this yearly Mass and celebration in honor of Blessed Karl of Austria. Of course, at any time of year you can visit St. Mary’s and venerate the first-class relic of Blessed Karl that resides on the left wall along with a large portrait of the saint. Blessed Karl of Austria, pray for us!

Our thanks to Mr. Joe Vitacco for his photos of the Mass.