Apostolic Visit of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter
The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) has issued a press release, available on its website, dated September 26, 2024, announcing an “apostolic visitation” to be carried out by the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.
The communiqué states that the FSSP “has recently been informed” by the aforementioned Dicastery “of the opening of an apostolic visitation of the Fraternity.” The communiqué adds that, “As the Prefect of this Dicastery himself made clear to the Superior General and his assistants during a meeting in Rome, this visit does not originate in any problems of the Fraternity.”
The press release continues that it “is intended to enable the Dicastery to know who we are, how we are doing and how we live, so as to provide us with any help we may need.”
To explain this contact, the communiqué adds that the “last ordinary apostolic visit of the Fraternity was undertaken in 2014 by the Ecclesia Dei Commission. As the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life has been in charge of the FSSP and other former Eccelsia Dei institutes for the past three years, it [is] now the competency of this Dicastery to look after the FSSP.” The names of the visitors appointed by the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life have not yet been revealed.
A generally well-informed blog takes a somewhat different view. It states that “the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life acts by order of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.” It goes on to explain that we should not expect a text limiting the traditional Mass, but “a targeted intervention of individual realities.”
It gives as an example “the visit the superiors of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest made to the Pope in the Apostolic Palace, which was based” on a modification of the Statutes.
(Sources : FSSP/Silere non possum – FSSPX.Actualités)
Illustration : vitaconsecrata.va