(LifeSiteNews) — Vatican journalist Diane Montagna is reporting that Ireland’s Archbishop Emeritus of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, and France’s Archbishop Emeritus of Tours, Bernard-Nicolas Aubertin, have been tapped to carry out the Vatican’s recently announced apostolic visitation of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP).
JUST IN: Sources close to #Vatican say the Archbishop Emeritus of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, & Archbishop Emeritus of Tours, France, Bernard-Nicolas Aubertin, have been named Visitators for the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP) apostolic visitation announced in late September. https://t.co/fWQyIXvXKT pic.twitter.com/VnlpFWJRus
— Diane Montagna (@dianemontagna) October 18, 2024
Founded in 1988 for priests who want to offer the Latin Mass with the Vatican’s approval, the FSSP announced the visit at the end of September in a press release.
“This visit does not originate in any problems of the Fraternity but 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,” the group said at the time.
The announcement has been viewed as a worrisome sign of a possible crackdown on the FSSP by Pope Francis, as previous apostolic visits of traditional-minded communities and clergy, including Bishop Joseph Strickland, the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, and the Fairfield Carmelites, have ended in suppression.
Formerly under the purview of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, which was abolished by Francis in 2019, the FSSP has been overseen for the past three years by the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, whose prefect is Brazilian Cardinal João Braz de Aviz. The group has nearly 370 priests and last underwent an apostolic visit in 2014.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has issued a number of problematic public statements that indicate he has a less than orthodox understanding of Catholic teaching.
In 2005, Martin told The Tablet during a bishops’ conference that “you don’t write off a candidate for the priesthood simply because he is a gay man.”
In 2016, in remarks leading up to the 2018 World Meeting of Families, Martin said Catholics must not “allow ourselves to become entangled in trying to produce definitions of the family” because different cultural values mean family “cannot be defined simply.”
During Holy Week and on Easter in April 2017, Martin criticized the Church for its “harsh exclusion” and “judgmental” treatment of “gay and lesbian people” at “various times in history, and not only in a distant past.”
In 2018, he said he was “happy” that former Irish President Mary McAleese quoted a remark he had made previously during a speech she delivered at a feminist conference where she alleged that Irish citizens have a negative view of the Church because it is an “empire of misogyny” where “women are invisible and voiceless in Church leadership, legal and doctrinal discernment and decision-making.”
In 2019, Martin criticized pro-lifers who were protesting outside an abortion clinic. Abortion became legal in the country thanks to a massive campaign funded by George Soros in 2018. Many Irish Catholics blame Martin and his fellow bishops for not being more outspoken against that proposal, as well as the recent vote on homosexual “marriage.” Martin also previously banned from his archdiocese a book on LGBT ideology written by Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
In recent years, Irish citizens have suffered many criminal attacks committed by foreigners imported to their country as “refugees.” On New Year’s Day of 2019, the day on which abortion became legal in Ireland, Martin delivered a homily on Brexit and the so-called threat of nationalism instead of on the need to protect Irish citizens as well as the unborn.
Leaders of the FSSP had a private audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican on February 29. They said in a press release that Francis “confirmed the liturgical specificity of the Fraternity of St. Peter” to them but that they also shared “with him the difficulties encountered in its application.” At present, the group has a presence in nearly 150 dioceses, celebrates Mass in almost 250 locations, and has 48 personal parishes across the world, along with two seminaries, one in Nebraska and the other in Germany.