Commentary by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

You don’t hear me chime in or comment on stories like the one above, too often.. But that is not because this kind of news is not important to me. I am a old warrior for the restoration of Traditional Religious Communities, and have the scars of being calumniated on both sides of the Atlantic by fellow Catholics, progressive and traditional alike. But I learned or shall I say, realized, more than a decade ago, that such a restoration is impossible with the generation of bishops that we have and with the generation of self-deluded Catholics who will not financially support such communities.

So if you wonder why a traditional Franciscan is helping the needy in Ukraine and not in a monastery or hermitage in Italy founding a community, you now know why. I commiserate with the Benedictines above. Religious life is holy, just and penitential, and never more so, when you are persecuted by your own Bishop.

Thankfully, there are many vocations still to the traditional Benedictine life. We Franciscans have none, since our Founder has been maligned by the left, such that we only get marxists, socialists or libertines who want to join us: none of whom has a vocation from God. And in an age where submission to evil, and not the virility of bucking all for Christ’s sake, is the religion of state, it’s extremely difficult for anyone to understand our Seraphic Patriarch, Saint Francis of Assisi. And increasingly, in recent years, only the depressed or psychologically unhealthy even pick up a phone to tell me they think they have a vocation. Besides, young men no longer consider themselves sinners in need of penance, life long penance. So I know well the futility of making a foundation now.

So, I will close with this prayer: Persevere, o Sons of Saint Benedict! Better days are yet to come.

And let us all pray that we get a religious on the throne of Saint Peter, because the diocesan clergy during the last 200 years have totally ruined the papacy and the Church.