Four Years Ago in Rome...

Four years ago today, seven people woke in the dark hours before dawn and set in motion a plan so weak and fragile it was doomed to fail.  Indeed, it almost did in the very first hour, when we brought the first load of boxes from an apartment just a few blocks from St. Peter’s Square, and began piling them up in the Via della Conciliazione.  In my haste, I left my keys in the apartment, and the outer door had locked!  Thus, at 5AM I was forced to ring the bells of all those living in that building until one answered and I begged to be let in.   May God bless that poor tired soul who consented!

Yes, with just seven people, and a fool’s trust in God, we set up two stations and wore ourselves ragged running back and forth over the cobblestones, laden with boxes of books featuring Cardinal John Henry Newman on the cover.  But the book was not a homage to this saint whose Canonization Mass was to take place that day; rather, it was a book designed to help its readers fall in love with the Mass of Ages…

There were police and military and security guards of all sorts trawling the streets of Rome that day, but not a single one ever asked us who we were, what we were doing, or demanded any sort of permit whatsoever.  In fact, when it came time for the Canonization Mass to begin, we approached the policemen in the tent just a stone’s throw away from us, and explained that we had tickets to attend the Mass…could we please leave our boxes of books there in the shadow of the Vatican walls and return after the Mass?  They shrugged that typical Italian shrug and told us to go ahead.

The number of people who angrily returned the book to us after finding it was not what they expected was far outnumbered by those who returned to thank us for what we were doing, especially Italians who begged us to publish this book in their language next time.

Four years have passed since that day, and again a Synod circus is taking place in Rome.  Perhaps someday God will make it possible for us to reprise that incredible task.  But in the meantime, the exposure we gained through that quixotic quest and this video about it (which disappeared off YouTube when LifeSite News had their account banned during COVID) has borne great fruit.  Our original three languages distributed during that Pan-Amazon Synod (English, Spanish and Portuguese) now have brothers in Polish, French and Italian, and a German version is finally in the works. 

Best of all, if you can believe it, in the 9 years since it was first published, the worldwide sales of this book have topped 50,000 copies!  That doesn’t include the 4000 or so that we gave away on the streets of Rome during the 2019 Synod.  And that number continues to grow as good men like Bishop Strickland use it to discover the riches of the Traditional Latin Mass.

I wish to thank all of you for the prayers you have offered for our little apostolate over all these years.   You wouldn’t believe how much they have done, and continue to do, for me and my family.  I owe you all a debt of gratitude.