Sunday, 30 November 2014

Msgr. Gilles Wach, Prior General


The following communiqué was issued from the General House of the Institute of Christ the King:
On the feast of St. Charles Borromeo, November 4, 2014, and in accordance with Article 20 of the Constitutions of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, the General Chapter gathered in the presence of Monsignor Patrick Descourtieux of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei at the Motherhouse in Gricigliano in order to elect the Superior General.
The vote elected Monsignor Gilles Wach as Superior General for the next six years.
Let us render thanksgiving to Divine Providence while invoking the intercession of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception so that the Institute may be ever faithful in the service of God’s Holy Church.
Rev. Canon Gilles GuitardSecretary
It is available here from the General House's website and here from the website of the United States Province.

Félicitations Monseigneur!

Monday, 24 November 2014

Latin Mass in the Pro Cathedral, Dublin

With the permission of His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin and the Very Reverend Canon O'Reilly, Adm., St. Laurence's Catholic Heritage Association organised a pilgrimage to the Pro Cathedral, Dublin, today, to honour the feast of St. Laurence O'Toole, Patron of the Archdiocese, and to venerate his relics enshrined there.

The sacristy staff honoured us by laying out for use at the Mass the vestments made for the High Mass in the Phoenix Park at the 1932 Eucharistic Congress in Dublin and the chalice given as a gift by the People of Ireland to St. John XXIII, gifted by him back to the Pro-Cathedral, and used by St. John Paul II at the Mass that he celebrated in the Phoenix Park when he visited Ireland in 1979.

From Dublin: The City Within the Grand and Royal Canals and the Circular Road by Christine Casey, p. 126 ff:

ST. MARY'S PRO-CATHEDRAL
Marlborough Street

Of 1814-25.  A large and remarkably ambitious metropolitan chapel whose style and scale provided an exemplar for Catholic church building in the city for over half a century.  In all but name, this is the Roman Catholic cathedral of Dublin.  It is the parish church of the archbishop and since its dedication in 1825 it has played a central role in national religious ceremony.  The remains of Daniel O'Connell, Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera lay here in state; John Henry Newman was inaugurated here as the Rector of the Catholic University; and in 1903 John McCormack began his career here with the renowned Palestrina Choir, founded in the previous year.  At 4,734 square ft (1,320 square metres), it was the largest church built in Dublin since the Middle Ages.  The model was French, in particular the basilican church of St Philippe du Roule in Paris (1764-84), a Neoclassical design with a nave, apse and ambulatory... The Pro-Cathedral design is more fastidiously primitif in its employment of Greek Doric throughout, modulated to Tuscan in the tripartite windows of the s elevation.  'Sublimely Greek by any standards' concluded J.M. Crook, 'pedantic' and 'dogmatic' counters Michael McCarthy, both seeing through the many accretions to the original heroic concept.  While substantial C19 and C20 alterations have considerably reduced the potency of the original design, the Pro-Cathedral still ranks among the most powerful Greek Revival church interiors in these islands...