Dear friends,

We’re excited to announce our fundraiser for Lent. Our goal is to raise just $16,000 by Easter. 

This will cover the projects detailed in the Projects section:

-A monthly supplement for the seminary for food, cleaning supplies and other basics
-A monthly supplement for the convent in Bom Jesus for food and pharmacy
-A proper wardrobe for each dormitory room in the seminary
-A round of new books for the library
-New musical instruments for the sisters

Please join us in reaching (or even surpassing!) our goal! Contributions of any size are welcome. Please donate today!

May God repay you for your prayers and contributions. Please share this fundraiser with your friends and colleagues!

Ona Kiser
President
Friends of Campos

They had also desperately needed new hospital beds for the Saint Joseph Care Center for the Elderly, and these were also purchased by a private donor in late 2020. They haven’t been delivered yet, but we’ll post some pictures when they are. We are grateful to see the sisters receiving extra help, especially in such a difficult year. ​

Back at the seminary, I was delighted to see that the Formation Center for Priests has been finished, despite the quarantines. ​

Another joy was to see the progress made on the library. The new shelves are slowly filling with books, the reading room is already in use (and air-conditioned!), and a small team has been trained to repair and catalogue the books under the supervision of one of the priests. There are some treasures to be found, including correspondence, magazines and other publications covering the time of upheaval and transition after the Second Vatican Council. It will make a good resource for researchers in the future. This was not a Friends of Campos project in 2020, but will be in 2021 (see project page for details!).

The sisters and the seminarians are praying for our benefactors during Lent as well there are Masses celebrated for this intention at the seminary. We thank you again for your support in 2020, our first year of service. We hope to grow in 2021!

Check out our 2021 projects here!

Also new this year: the sisters and the seminary are taking prayer requests. You can submit your intentions here.

By Ona Kiser

First, we want to thank you all for your generous support of this new project, Friends of Campos. Our plans for helping out with some infrastructure projects got set aside as the pandemic wrecked the flow of support from the parishes that normally sustains the seminary. Thanks to your charity we were able to make several donations to help keep the seminarians in food and soap.

The seminarians are on summer break now, visiting their families. The new school year starts up at the end of January (the school year runs January to December here). God willing, I’ll be heading out for a visit shortly after the feast of Candelária (February 2). That’s also the feast day of the patron saint of Brazil, Our Lady of Aparecida. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen everyone in person!

We were happy to celebrate the ordination of Father Kelvin in December (see previous post): a joyful conclusion to a rather difficult year. There were also a few minor news stories from around the region:

The end of the school year is a time for public presentation and defense of monographs by the  students finishing philosophy (the end of the third year). The successful presentation and defense of the monograph is required to continue on to theology. In the photo, Eduardo Salomão takes the stand. His monograph was about Natural Law in the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas. He called the subject "awesome but difficult" but said he found the preparation rewarding, especially as the subject is very current.

A calf auction was held recently in Bom Jesus. The sale raised funds to help pay for the new solar panel installation on the Saint Joseph’s Home for the Elderly, affiliated with the Apostolic Administration. I have sometimes purchased raffle tickets for calf raffles, just on a whim, but have yet to win a calf. I live in the city, so a calf is not much use to me, but if I ever do win one it will make a good story. Brazilian cattle are super adorable, with big eyes and floppy ears.

I’ll just add a special mention of two of the oldest residents of Saint Joseph’s: Eliza, who is 108 and Maria de Lourdes, who is 110! Here they are in their Christmas wish list photos which the sisters posted so area residents could bring gifts.

Happy New Year! God repay you all for your continued prayers and support.

December has brought us a new priest, Father Kelvin, who was ordained on December 12th, feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Due to the renewed outbreaks of Covid-19 here in Brazil the ordination was held semi-privately, mostly attended by Kelvin’s family. Dom Fernando, bishop of the Apostolic Administration, was one of several clergy in the Administration who were recently afflicted with Covid and he was still in quarantine on the scheduled date (though he had a relatively mild case and has now recovered).

Dom Antônio, an auxiliary bishop from the archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro was kind enough to substitute. He proved a good student, too, learning the old rite in two days of training. He was reportedly overjoyed to do the ordination.

Following are some photos for your enjoyment. Please do continue to pray for us here in Brazil!

Brazil maintains some fragments of formal manners such as I’ve never encountered in the United States. One is asking a blessing from superiors. It may be done by children asking the blessing of their parents in the morning or by children lining up to ask their school teacher’s blessing in the morning. I’ve been asked for my blessing by my godchildren, and even by children on the street in traditional communities. I’ve asked elderly ladies for their blessing and received, in all solemnity, “May God bless you” in return. It’s one of many gracious gestures that seem like drops of beauty in a world that tends to informality, hurried interactions, and disrespect.

Another, often done in conjunction with asking a blessing, is kissing of the back of the other person’s right hand. While this is a ritual gesture in the traditional Mass, it is also normal when meeting clergy on the street or at the parish, at least in the more traditional communities.  In fact, it spills over again into the greeting of superiors in general, with the formal asking of a blessing from ones mother, an elderly lady, grandpa, a teacher, a religious superior or other paternal figure often accompanied by a kiss to the back of the right hand.

Another delight is the use of formal address not only with superiors, but also among equals. I’ve discovered this custom in convents, seminaries and monasteries (sometimes even in those that do not celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass). It, too, is something that seems to bring a dignity and graciousness to what would otherwise be banal activities, from passing the salt, sir, to reaching for a pen, ma’am. In Portuguese this formality is conveyed by a use of the third person instead of second person: “Would the lady like more water? Might the gentleman pass me the salt?”

All of this may seem fussy.  I initially found it so strange that I scolded some young people at church for speaking formally to me. To my astonishment they begged me to allow them to keep the custom, as it was for them a small gesture of dignity and beauty in a world full of ugliness and disrespect.  With time I’ve come to see it as part and parcel of the cultivation of a life filled with thoughtfulness and consideration, an awareness of social structure, and an honoring of the dignity of guests and superiors. In fact, I find it just as apt when addressing people least likely to be treated with any dignity at all: figuring they could use a drop of courtesy more than most of us.

I do wonder what will happen to the hand kissing, a gesture that has been quite suddenly suppressed by the fears around covid, here at the end of the year 2020. It’s strange to see Brazilians in general greet each other at a distance, making awkward nods or bows which fail to convey the enthusiasm of the more usual greetings of hugs and kisses. That said, the verbal politenesses are not susceptible to germs, so have some chance of carrying on, God willing. And in daily life the attempts at new kinds of greeting seem to be losing traction, with girlfriends and moms slowly reverting to their usual kisses, and men to their handshakes and back-slaps.

​Ona Kiser
President

We didn’t anticipate this year’s economic upheaval when we launched Friends of Campos. But not a few months later here we are, with parishes and Church institutes barely keeping their heads above water. Economic hardships have affected nearly every sector, many small businesses have closed, and many people have been out of work, at least temporarily. The funding and direct donations of food the seminary in Campos received from the parishes dropped by two-thirds, leaving them low on food and basic cleaning supplies. 

We asked your help and your response was immediate and very generous. We are all very grateful for your heartfelt outpouring of support.

The rector of the seminary, Father Marco Antonio, recorded a short thank you. Gabriel and Eduardo, both in their third year of philosophy, spoke in English on behalf of their colleagues and put together the video as a personal thank you to all of you. 

​May God reward you all for your charity.

When a joyful Brazilian man from Campos entered our monastery in Norcia years ago, we had no idea it would be the beginning of a lasting, rich friendship with his home city. Often he shared stories of a land that modernity had left in peace, a land with material challenges but spiritual abundance. Processions and pilgrimages went on for days and men and women attended daily Traditional Mass as normal routine. It is hard to imagine a place where the Faith lives on in a real way as if never interrupted.

On my first visit to Campos flying up the Brazilian coast in a small plane from Rio on Azul airlines, I could see from the air that the land itself was mostly “modern”. Tall office buildings, bad traffic, and poor sanitation dotted the landscape. Most of the people on my flight were oil rig workers. Helicopters met them at the Campos airport -- the size of a small American gas station -- to take them out to the rigs. The area had all the trappings of a modern industrialized society including those no one wants to mention: boredom, restlessness, ennui.

Yet unlike much of the modernized world, this otherwise ordinary region drinks from a river of life which flows through it, clear and pristine. In the western and northern hemisphere we are used to traditional parishes sparsely scattered throughout the country with at most one per city. In Campos however, a whole diocese exists of more than 30,000 faithful who live a life where the traditional liturgy is seamlessly interwoven into the daily fabric of their lives. One town alone can have three churches, a nursing home and shrines for pilgrimages in the countryside.

Residents take modern medicines, talk on modern cell phones and drive modern cars (although some could use newer ones!), but they can still appreciate the words, Introibo ad Altare Dei as an invitation into the supernatural dwelling place of God. Little did I expect on my first visit to hear the consoling and resounding response of 1500 faithful  exclaiming, Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam. Thus my first visit to Campos several years ago brought me much joy. In unassuming ways the whole diocese, called canonically an apostolic administration, reminds the visitor of what we have lost but also of what is still possible. It brings hope…

Prior Benedict Nivakoff, OSB
Secretary

During the end of July Brazil also lost a beloved bishop, Dom Henrique Soares da Costa, of a diocese in the state of Pernambuco, who was a respected friend and support to traditional Catholics. He had preached the annual clergy retreat of the Apostolic Administration just two years ago. ​

The library in the new wing is really developing nicely: there is a reading room with individual desks and air conditioning (a rare thing!) and the books which had been stashed in every spare nook and cranny of the seminary and are being neatly cataloged and shelved. Finishing work continues in the remainder of the new wing, as does clean up of the gardens, which got a bit mangled during all the construction.

The Feast of the Transfiguration was the annual parish feast day in Bom Jesus (the city’s name means Good Jesus). The novena leading up to the feast featured Adoration, a homily and Confession. Despite the accommodation of state and city regulations regarding crowding and social distancing, people are happily attending Mass, Confession, and devotions in the parishes. This is true here in Rio, too, where the Tridentine Latin Mass is as full as conditions allow (it was moved to a larger church for the time being to accommodate the need for space between people in the pews). The lines for Confession are long, and the hardships and upheaval of recent times seems to have only inspired greater enthusiasm in many Catholics.

Being a gringo I tend to take things at face value and follow rules. But things work differently in Brazil. Since priests were celebrating Masses in the churches anyway, with the presence of some cantors, the organist, the tech guy to run the video feed, and several altar servers, it didn’t seem unreasonable to let in the pious who might knock at the side door. As long as they didn’t cause a fuss and stayed behind the camera, there was nothing said and life went on as usual. I’m speaking here of my personal experience in the city of Rio de Janeiro and the accounts of several friends, but I suspect the same has been going on in most places, as it would be a very typical Brazilian workaround.