Italy Receives Second Personal Parish for Immemorial Mass of All Ages

Italy’s second personal parish established for the Immemorial Rite

(Rome) In Italy, the second personal parish is being built in the Immemorial Mass of All Ages. Since 2008 there is the personal parish SS. Trinità dei Pellegrini in Rome, which is cared for by the Fraternity of Saint Peter. It was the only such parish so far. Now the second personal parish has been established on 16 July.

Basilica of Santa Croce, Cagliari

Two days ago, the Archbishop of Cagliari and Primate of Sardinia and Corsica, Msgr. Arrigo Miglio, announced that he had established a personal parish in the Sardinian capital in the sense of the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum.

The archbishop responded to the request of a Coetus Fidelium, who had turned to him with the request.

The personal parish was established at the Basilica of Santa Croce. It is located in the middle of the old town in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral. The basilica stands where a small Jewish quarter was located in the Middle Ages and was built in place of a synagogue. After Jews converted to Christianity had made anti-Christian contents of the Talmud known, the Jews from the kingdom of King Ferdinand II of Aragon had been expelled in 1492. Sardinia was then part of the Kingdom of Aragon. The church built at that time was entrusted to the Archdiocese of Santo Monte di Pietà, which handled the spiritual care of prisoners and had previously operated in the Franciscan sense, in money lending against Jewish usurers at a fixed and above all, low interest rate.

In 1564 the church went to the young Jesuit order. After its abolition, it was nationalized and in 1809 transferred to the Order of St. Maurice and Lazarus, a knightly order of the House of Savoy, which since 1720, were the Kings of Sardinia.

Since 2008, the church has been celebrating in the Immemorial Mass. So far on Sundays and public holidays, in the future also on weekdays. At first, canons were responsible for the celebration, in the past three years Mons. Gianfranco Zuncheddu. For the first pastor of the parish, the archbishop appointed the diocesan priest Don Gianluca Pretta. The priest has been close to tradition for years. In his previous parish, he conducted Gregorian courses and celebrated the Immemorial Mass.  In 2015, when a priestly candidate of the Archdiocese was consecrated in the traditional rite, Don Pretta was to assist, but had to give up at the last moment - for unpleasant reasons.

Basilica of Santa Croce

His powerful proclamation of the truths of faith didn’t bring him only friends. He made headlines in 2014 when he banned, then as a pastor of Gesico in his church, short mini-skirts and posted a notice of a certain decency in clothing. There was no lack of ridicule in the media, but this was only the beginning of a much harder attack. The priest was accused in 2015 - wrongly, as it turned out - of pedophilia. Although the judiciary made it clear at the end of 2016 that the anonymous allegations could not be substantiated, the priest had to endure his own personal calvary.

Archbishop Miglio then stated in a press release that "the good name" of Don Pretta was restored by the judiciary. The wave of sexual abuse by clerics apparently attracted freeloaders who used false accusations as a means of personal vengeance or out of hatred for the priesthood, knowing well enough that the mere accusation can already destroy one's life.

Don Pretta stayed in his parish and now receives a new special, task. He has become the first diocesan priest to preside over a personal parish in the traditional form of the Roman rite.

Text: Giuseppe Nardi

Picture: MiL

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

AMDG