With the disastrous flooding that has recently afflicted Houston, Texas, many of you are probably concerned about the status of Regina Caeli Parish, the FSSP apostolate in Houston. We would like to inform you that the parish property is untouched and suffered no flooding.

However, there are parishioners who have been seriously affected and they need our help. If you are looking for ways to assist Houston, you can send contributions by check for the relief of Regina Caeli parishioners to the parish address below. Please designate FLOOD RELIEF in the memo line.

Regina Caeli Parish
8121 Breen Rd.
Houston, TX 77064

You can also contribute via Paypal by visiting the parish website here. Look for the gold Donate button. If you note FLOOD RELIEF on your contribution on Paypal (Add special instructions to the seller), the parish will use the money to provide relief for parishioners.

You can stay updated on the status of the Houston apostolate and ways you can help via their website here.

May God Reward You!

From July 31 – August 10, 2017, Nne Enyemaka, the FSSP’s parish in Nigeria, hosted Camp St. Patrick, their first summer boys’ camp. It was a resounding success, with 32 boys from the parish and surrounding areas dividing into four teams and participating in activities that included sports, games, flag-making, skits, camp fire singing and especially catechism, all the while competing for the Saint Patrick Cup. They also enjoyed three outings to a nearby zoo, the Biafra War Museum and Holy Trinity Cathedral in Onitsha, where the body of Nigeria’s only Blessed (Blessed Tansi, the camp’s co-patron) is housed. The camp will hopefully be an annual event, and the apostolate is already looking forward to hosting Camp St. Patrick again in 2018.

Seminarian Joe Loftus teaching Gregorian chant

A camp participant enjoying a lesson with Deacon (now Father) Charles Ike

Praying together at the statue of St. Thérèse of Lisieux

A lively game of frisbee!

Painting their team flag with careful hands

Nice to meet you!

1 Corinthians 9:24

Camp participants with their team flags

At the Biafra War Museum

You may have read the post here about the mission work being done at the Fraternity’s apostolate in Guadalajara. Recently we were blessed to receive a firsthand account of the experiences of a volunteer who served at the apostolate for ten months, and he told us about the extraordinary graces which God is causing to blossom in Mexico.

by Benjamin Misner-Elias

My name is Benjamin Misner-Elias and for ten months I had the opportunity to work with the FSSP in Guadalajara, Mexico. During those ten months, I lived in the apostolate house of the FSSP which, in a couple years, will also be considered an official house of discernment. While there, I participated in two St. Francis Xavier mission trips and a mission from Nuestra Señora del Pilar, the FSSP parish in Mexico. The first of the two St. Francis Xavier trips was to Zacatecas, Mexico, in the spring of 2017. The second one was to Tonalá, a town on the outskirts of Guadalajara. The mission group which the FSSP runs out of Nuestra Señora del Pilar is called Mission San Pedro.

St. Francis Xavier has two missions trips per year – one in the spring and one in late July. Each city receiving the missions is usually different, but the goal of the missions always stays the same: convert, convert, convert. The main premise of the St. Francis Xavier missions is to evangelize and spread our Catholic Faith. There are three ways this is accomplished: door-to-door, the Mass, and catechesis.

The door-to-door method of evangelization is successful. Participants split into a certain number of groups, for instance, five groups of five people. Then, each drives to a designated block or neighborhood that will be covered for that day. This allows the participants to reach as many people as possible in an organized structure. The people that you will encounter will be anybody from Protestants to pagans to Catholics that have fallen away from the Church. By going door to door, we are able to invite people to church, answer doubts that they have about the Faith, and explain the Latin Mass.

The Mass itself is one of the best forms of evangelization because the people are able to see the Sacrifice of Our Lord and participate in the highest form of prayer.

Finally, each group is usually responsible for having a class of catechesis, either for adults or children. The mission that most recently concluded in Tonalá was so successful because of how the catechesis was organized. Different groups chose a certain theme that they felt was necessary to teach to their class. For example, one day my group and I were discussing topics for catechesis. We decided that we should give a talk about the Rosary because we had noticed that, throughout the week, many of the young boys and girls didn’t know how to pray the Rosary, even those who were Catholic. After this, we gave the talk and prayed many Rosaries with them. They learned how to pray one of the world’s most powerful prayers by the end of the week.

San Pedro is one of our most recent mission groups and it mostly focuses on street evangelization. This mission primarily involves the parishioners of Nuestra Señora del Pilar. It is similar to the St. Francis Xavier mission groups but this group focuses on evangelizing in the streets and visiting hospitals.

Finally, the summer Spanish program, the San Junipero Serra Spanish Institute, based out of the apostolate house Casa Cristo Rey, allows seminarians and priests to experience two months of Spanish language immersion. Participants in the Institute were also able to participate in the street evangelizing that the San Pedro mission performs.

My volunteer experience allowed me to see another country and learn another language. More importantly, it allowed me to increase my faith, spread Catholicism, and assist thousands of people to witness to the Latin Mass. During my time there I was able to run four social media sites, including two sites used to reach a United States audience: the Mission Tradition and San Junipero Serra Spanish Institute Facebook pages. While living in Mexico, I took advantage of the opportunity to travel, which permitted me to see more of the natural and cultural beauty of Mexico. This experience was amazing! I encourage every person to take at least a year to live in another culture and spread their Faith.

On August 15, 2017, the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, a new priest joined the ranks of the FSSP. Fr. Charles Ike’s ordination at the FSSP’s apstolate in Umuaka, Nigeria, brings the total number of new priests from the North American District this year to 10, with seven ordained in Lincoln, Nebraska in May and two in Warrington, England, in June. Fr. Ike was ordained by Bishop Gregory Ochiaga, Bishop Emeritus of the diocese of Orlu. This was the first traditional priestly ordination in Nigeria in over 50 years.

From July 12 through July 15, 2017, the 5th annual Sacred Liturgy Conference took place in Medford, Oregon. The focus of the yearly conference is the immense liturgical heritage of the Church and her attendant sacred music traditions, and this year’s theme was “The Voice of the Bridegroom.” Featured at the conference were lectures by His Eminence Cardinal Raymond Burke, Archbishop Alexander Sample, Bishop Robert Vasa and several other speakers, including Fr. Gerard Saguto, Superior of the North American District of the FSSP, who presented a lecture entitled The Offertory: Prelude to Sacrifice. The FSSP priests in attendance assisted Cardinal Burke at a Pontifical Solemn Mass at the Throne on July 14, the feast of St. Bonaventure.

The conference will take place again next year and is open to the public. To learn more and to sign up when registration begins on January 1st, 2018, visit the conference’s website here. You can also visit their Facebook page here, where you’ll find information on next year’s event and a sneak peek at the lineup!

Our thanks to Marc Salvatore for the photographs of this year’s conference. You can view the full album here.

On Thursday, September 14, 2017 at 7pm, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a Solemn Pontifical Mass will be celebrated by His Excellency the Most Reverend Joseph Perry, Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago, at the Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, PA. The Mass will mark the 10th anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, the Apostolic Letter of Pope Benedict XVI in 2007, which clarified that the Traditional Latin Mass was never abrogated and eliminated the need for priests to obtain permission to say the Latin Mass.

If you are an FSSP parishioner who plans to attend the Mass, please let us know! Send us a message using the form below. Then send us another message afterwards telling us your firsthand accounts and thoughts on the event.

…because there were way too many great pictures not to do another post!

Did you catch Vatican Radio’s interview with Fr. Akers about the recently released Requiem album? Requiem features our priests, directed by Fr. Akers, chanting the ancient Gregorian repertoire for the Mass and Burial of the Dead and it made waves this summer by hitting the very top of the Billboard classical music charts.

Hear the full interview at Vatican Radio here!

To order Requiem, please visit Amazon, iTunes or Barnes & Noble.

For discounted bulk orders, please email studio@DeMontfortMusic.com.

On July 19, 2017, missionary boots hit the ground in Mexico. The boots belonged to those participating in the FSSP’s St. Francis Xavier mission trip, which runs through August 1 in Tonalá, near the FSSP’s apostolate in Guadalajara. To learn more about the trip and for firsthand reports on the work the missionaries are doing, we turned to Fr. Daniel Heenan, director of the Mexican apostolate.

The mission in Tonalá, Fr. Heenan explains, serves as the conclusion to the St. Junipero Serra Spanish program for seminarians. In addition to the seminarians, those participating in the mission work include parishioners from the Fraternity’s parish in Guadalajara, several Americans and people from other parts of Mexico. The group has been invited to serve at a parish in a poor neighborhood, an area afflicted not only by poverty but also the presence of gangs.

They divide up into 10 groups, about 45 people in total, and divide the town into sections, with each group assigned to a particular section. They then go door to door visiting the residents, inviting them to catechetical activities in the afternoon for children and adults and Mass in the evening. In their conversations sometimes the missionaries have the opportunity to encourage people back to Confession after a long time away from this Sacrament. And the fruit of their efforts is apparent: about 200 people were present at Mass on Wednesday night. Most are not familiar with the traditional Mass, and though there are some who remember the FSSP group from other visits, they do not receive the traditional Mass regularly and as Fr. Heenan says, “we’ve seen a great response.”

“Additionally, for the seminarians, it’s a great conclusion to their eight weeks of Spanish classes,” Fr. Heenan continues. “So, guys who arrived not knowing anything of Spanish, or very little, are now giving classes to groups of children and talking to people in their houses. They’ve all made tremendous progress. To me it’s a really great testimony of the effectiveness of the program and we hope to keep growing it.”

As you are reading this post, young people from across the North American District are giving their time and talents serving the poor of Piura, Peru, with priests of the FSSP. The trip is one of the Fraternity’s St. Francis Xavier mission trips, which occur every year and give youth, families and individuals of all ages the opportunity to assist their brethren who live in poverty, to enrich their own spiritual lives through daily Mass and prayer, and to fully live out Christ’s command to love and serve.

The Peru trip is focused specifically on young people ages 16-21, for whom this trip is an opportunity, at such a formative stage in their young lives, to encounter Christ in His poor. Our volunteers arrived on July 21 and will return on August 2, and we have been privileged to receive updates and pictures documenting their experiences so far.

Learn more about the St. Francis Xavier mission trips, donate to support the trips and apply to volunteer at the St. Francis Xavier website here.

Learn more about the Fraternity’s missionary efforts at the Mission Tradition website here.