Christchurch: The lights of St Mary’s Pro Cathedral lit up a dark Christchurch evening and the hearts of those who attended the ordination of a seminarian who grew up in the western Indian city of Mumbai.
The choir of the Latin Mass chaplaincy sang Missa O Quam Gloriosum as Brother Jean Marie, from the Congregation of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer — the Transalpine Redemptorists – entered the altar on June 15.
Emeritus Bishop Basil Meeking of Christchurch led the ordination Mass, reports nzcatholic.org.nz.
In contrast to the formal ceremony, the altar boys processing with candles, the Latin Rite, and the golden vestments, were children with teddy bears and pillows, some resting on the floor.
Fr Jean Marie grew up in Bombay where his life was filled with sporting activities, including hockey, soccer and a special love of athletics. He attended Mass and daily Rosary with his family but, unlike some of his friends who knew what they wanted to do, he had no career ideas or plans.
At 22-years-of-age, he received an invitation to a Latin Mass, where for him the word of God came alive.
God revealed plans that would take Jean Marie from India to Papa Stronsay, a remote island off the coast of Scotland to join the brothers there.
For more than 1,000 years this island has been set apart from other Orkney Islands as a holy island, now owned by the brothers.
Life on this windswept, treeless island is not for the fainthearted. Measuring 250 acres at low tide, the farm generates its own power.
Skills such as boat building, carpentry, fishing — a record of 700 mackerel in a day — farming cattle and butchering are needed.
The brothers publish the Catholic magazine on the island — largely written and organized by Fr Jean Marie.
Four years after their petition in 2008 to the Holy See for reconciliation with the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI granted them a new religious community congregation fully recognized by the Church.
The “Sons” have left their contemplative life and set out on travels from this island to teach eternal truths, wherever they are invited — which, in 2014, was to Christchurch.
Christchurch is a garden city on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island, set on the Canterbury Plains. The Avon River runs through the city center. On its banks are cycling paths, the green expanse of Hagley Park and the Christchurch Botanic Gardens. Two major earthquakes in 2010 and 2011 destroyed many city-center buildings, and restoration work continues.
The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer or Filii Sanctissimi Redemptoris (FSSR), known as the Transalpine Redemptorists or The Sons, are a Catholic religious institute canonically erected in the diocese of Aberdeen and based on Papa Stronsay in the Orkney Islands as well as in Christchurch.
Their rule is based on that of St. Alphonsus Liguori, although they have no formal connection to the Redemptorist religious institute.
The congregation was founded as The Transalpine Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (CSSR) in 1988 by Redemptorist Father Michael Mary Sim as a traditionalist Catholic religious community affiliated with the controversial Society of St. Pius X led by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
They were called the Transalpine Redemptorists. On 3 December 1987 Archbishop Lefebvre officially blessed the undertaking of the foundation.
Originally based at the Monastery of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary in the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, they moved to the Mother of Perpetual Succour Monastery in Joinville, Haute-Marne, France in 1994.
Five years later they bought the island of Papa Stronsay and set up the Golgotha Monastery, and started publishing The Catholic, a monthly. According to Wikipedia.com the congregation promotes its own version of a Redemptorist Purgatorian Confraternity.
In July 2007 the institute established a second monastery in Christchurch.
In June 2008, the community petitioned the Vatican for reconciliation and Pope Benedict XVI accepted it saying they enjoyed “canonical good standing” within the Catholic Church.
Most members accepted the move, while a few continue to be affiliated with the SSPX. However, they were not “canonically erected” and thus their faculties for celebrating Mass were for some years restricted to the islands of Papa Stronsay and Stronsay.
They changed their official name to The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer and made minor changes to their religious habit in order to more clearly differentiate it from that of the Redemptorist Congregation.
On August 15, 2012, Bishop Dom Hugh Gilbert of Aberdeen granted the 17-member community canonical recognition as a Clerical Institute of Diocesan Right.
In 2001 Papa Stronsay had a population of 10 although by 2011 there were no “usual residents” living there as recorded by the census.
Nonetheless, Papa Stronsay continues to be the home and mother-house of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, as their active online presence demonstrates.