38 Receive Cassock on February 2nd
Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais tonsuring a seminarian in the SSPX seminary in Virginia.
On the Feast of the purification each year, men who are discerning their vocation receive the cassock: this year 38 men in 3 seminaries.
On February 2, 2017, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais gave the cassock to 17 seminarians: 14 Americans, one Dominican, one Mexican and one Canadian.
See the photo gallery from this ceremony
Those seminarians enrolled in the Year of Spirituality (first year) received the cassock, and those seminarians in the Year of First Philosophy (second year of studies) received the clerical tonsure. In the Society of St. Pius X, the present custom is to receive the cassock one year before becoming a cleric.
The same day, at the Séminaire Saint-Vianney Flavigny in France, Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X, gave the cassock To 14 seminarians: 12 French, 1 Swiss, 1 British. In his sermon he recalled what the ecclesiastical habit represented: renunciation of the world and its individualism, destructive of authority, and obedience.
Finally, in Germany, at the Seminary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta gave the clerical habit to 7 seminarians, giving a grand total worldwide in the SSPX on this date to 38 men.
(Sources: FSSPX / Flavigny / Dillwyn / Zaitzkofen - DICI of 03/02/17)
