“Italy, blessed by God, who providentially desired that the See of the Papacy would be located in Rome, now follows the ruin of other Catholic nations which have become apostates and rebels against Christ. The Italian Church has also sunk into ruin, and the Italian Bishops’ Conference is totally subservient to the new Bergoglian course. The Bishops of the Italian Dioceses are either silent or else convinced supporters of Bergoglio. Most parish pastors, priests, and religious follow the synodal wind like weather vanes, and the few dissenters do not dare to react publicly.
For this reason, I believe the time has come to give a new impetus to Exsurge Domine, the Association I founded a few months ago. I wished to reserve this particular occasion which sees us gathered today in the house of the President of Exsurge Domine to announce that the Monastic Village at the Hermitage of Palanzana in Viterbo, initially intended to help the Benedictine Sisters of Pienza, will become, God willing, a house of formation for clergy which will take the name Collegium Traditionis, since the Sisters have recently decided to dissociate themselves from the project that Exsurge Domine had offered them.
The Collegium Traditionis will be the first and only traditional Italian reality destined for a seminary, equipping itself with teachers and spiritual guides of sure orthodoxy and solid spirituality, under my supervision.
This passage follows in some way the initiative of the venerable Archbishop Lefebvre, but it differs from it in its Italian and Roman flavor, and also in consideration of the different ecclesial context today compared to the situation of the 1970s. We will therefore have vocations and ordinations for Italy, to restore the Catholic priesthood in the homeland of St. Ambrose and St. Charles Borromeo, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Pius V and St. Pius X, and all the Saints whose our beloved Italy is honored.
I am well aware of the challenge that this project represents, but I am equally confident that, where the intention is right, the Lord will not fail to bless our commitment to the service of the Church and to protect Exsurge Domine from the attacks to which it will certainly be subjected. However, my commitment and that of my confreres will need the help and collaboration of those whom, as Saint John Chrysostom writes, the Lord has endowed with material means to make them cooperators and instruments of Providence. Good things belong to the Lord, says the great Doctor of the Church, and the rich are those who have the privilege of administering the riches that God has granted them to use for good. For this reason, dear Brothers and Friends, I urge you to become ministers of Providence yourselves in this ambitious project, in the awareness that this work of charity of yours – obviously accompanied by a supernatural gaze – will serve Italy first and foremost, indeed the Italian people, given the total absence of a traditional seminary in this region. Your children and your children’s children deserve not only to grow up and be educated in a Christian family, but also to have Ministers of God who do not betray their vocation, and who continue, even in times of apostasy, to do what Christ commanded the Apostles and their Successors, remaining faithful to what the Holy Church has always taught.”