People From Emilia Romagna

"Perhaps we forget too often that the Church is fundamentally divine, despite the fact that she is incarnated in men and in the history of men. One day, a pope, against all expectations and against all human calculations, will take things in hand and all that needs to be corrected, will be corrected, because the Church is divine and Our Blessed Lord will never abandon her."

"Competition among Ferrari drivers was always encouraged. The Ingegnere- he hated being called Commendatore- especially relished chargers in the red cars. Recrimination was always on the cards for a man who settled for a safe second, never for one who had destroyed a car trying to be first."

"Now, finally, the news is confirmed, the rumors fact. Enzo Ferrari died the evening of August 14, and while that may be trite, it is also true that an era ushers away with him. He was the first, and also the last, of the great autocrats of auto racing. Red cars will continue to be built in the little town near Modena, but other hands, perhaps susceptible to influences beyond a pure love of racing cars, will be in control. For that Ferrari undoubtedly had. Thirty and 40 years ago he began producing road cars, disliking intensely that the majority were ordered by rich dilettantes, people attracted by the kudos of the name, probable incapable of driving a Ferrari properly. There was no Fiat money there in those days, and the road cars were seen as an evil necessary to pay for the racing program. It was an attitude that persisted to the end of the old man's life."

"[Did you imagine you would become Superior General of the FSSPX?] A few months before the 2018 General Chapter, I had obviously heard some rumours. Before that, I must say, I had never thought about it. I particularly remember the joy of working for three years in Asia, in Singapore. Travelling a lot in Asia, I remember wanting to stay in those countries for the rest of my life. I remember very well once visiting a cemetery with all the graves of missionaries. It was a Christian cemetery in a Muslim country. When I saw those missionaries' graves, I remember very well the desire to spend my life in those countries until the end. To one day be buried there too, far from my homeland. Then the Lord changed the cards on the table."

"My heart has always beat a little faster for Ferraris, and there is no distinction in that. Captivation by them is almost irresistible. All that charisma, magic, call it what you will, has plundered the emotions of racing fans as no other cars ever have, or ever will. Paint a race car red, and already you are halfway there. But the rest is less easy to pin down, a hodgepodge of remembered sights and sounds; black on yellow Prancing Horse sheilds on the cockpits of Ascari, Hawthorn, Lauda, Berger; exposed gear lever gates, "PROVA MO" stencil marks. And the mystique, of course, began with the enigma from whom the cars took their name. A man of contradictions, on occasion chillingly ruthless, yet capable of surprising sentimentality."

"His death has deprived us of a great champion - one that I loved very much. My past is scarred with grief; parents, brother, son. My life is full of sad memories. I look back and see the faces of my loved ones, and among them I see him."

"Il secondo è il primo dei perdenti. (The runner-up is the first of losers.)"

"So what do we want? What does the Society of Saint Pius X want? We want the cross. We want the cross of Our Lord. We want to celebrate this cross, and we want to enter into the mystery of this cross. We want to make this cross our own. There are not two possible crosses, and there are not two possible redemptions or two possible Masses. [...] In this sense, the Mass is truly our flag, our banner. And in a battle, the banner is the last thing to be abandoned. There is one last thing that the Society must obtain. And it is crucial. We do not want this Mass solely for ourselves, but we want it for the universal Church. We do not want a side altar. We do not want the right to enter with our banner into an amphitheatre where everything is permitted. No! We want this Mass for ourselves and for everyone. We do not want a privilege. It is a right for us and for all souls, without distinction. It is through this that the Society of Saint Pius X continues and will continue to be a work of the Church. Because it has in view the good of the Church; it does not seek any particular privilege. God will choose the moment, the manner, the gradualness, the circumstances. But as far as it depends on us, we want this Mass now, without conditions and for everyone."

"(On the publication Mater Populi Fidelis) To deny the title of Co-Redemptrix is tantamount to dethroning the Most Blessed Virgin. Such a thing wounds the Catholic soul in what is dearest to it."

"The life of the Church and of redeemed souls is one, of the very unity of the cross, of redemption. There is only one Christ, one cross through which we can worship God and be sanctified. And it is therefore this same unity that we find in the Mass, in this application of redemption to the life of the Church, to the life of souls. Since there is only one redemption, and since it is perfect, there is only one way to perpetuate this redemption, to actualise it in time in order to apply it to souls: there is only one Catholic Mass. There are not two."

"Among musicians, I had a true friend, Maestro Cantelli. He was a young man of particularly noble sentiments."

"First of all, it seems clear to me that with the beatifications and canonisations of all recent popes since Pope John XXIII, there has been an attempt to ‘canonise’ the Council, the new conception of the Church and Christian life that the Council established and that all recent popes have promoted. This is an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of the Church. Thus, the post-Tridentine Church never thought of canonising without distinction all the popes from Pope Paul III to Pope Sixtus V. It canonised St. Pope Pius V not only because of his links with the Council of Trent or with its implementation, but because of his personal holiness, proposed as a model for the whole Church and placed at the service of the Church as Pope. The phenomenon we are currently witnessing is more reminiscent of the renaming of main squares and avenues following a revolution or a change of regime."

"Do not capitulate before this world, but recapitulate everything in Christ [instaurare omnia in Christo]."

"We are living in an age when faith is diminishing. If you abandon God, the Devil will take his place."

"Remember, when we jeer at the Devil and tell ourselves that he does not exist, that is when he is happiest."

"Demons are wary of talking and must be forced to speak. When demons are voluntarily chatty it's a trick to distract the exorcist. We must never ask useless questions out of curiosity. We but must interrogate with care. We always begin by asking for the demon's name."

"Once I asked Satan: ‘But why are you more afraid when I invoke the Madonna than when I invoke Jesus Christ?’ He replied: ‘Because it humbles me more to be defeated by a human creature than to be defeated by Him.’"

"During the exorcism the evil may emerge in slow stages or with sudden explosions. He does not want show himself. He will be angry and he is strong. During one exorcism I saw a child of 11 held down by four strong men. The child threw the men aside with ease. I was there when a boy of 10 lifted a huge, heavy table. Afterwards I felt the muscles in the boy's arms. He could not have done it on his own. He had the strength of the Devil inside him."

"I speak with the Devil every day. I talk to him in Latin. He answers in Italian. I have been wrestling with him, day in day out, for 14 years."

"I have no doubt about the fact that the demon tempts the authorities of the Church especially, just as he tempts every authority, those of politics and industry."

"No two cases are the same. Some patients have to be tied down on a bed. They spit. They vomit. At first the demon will try to demoralise the exorcist, then he will try to terrify him, saying, 'Tonight I'm going to put a serpent between your sheets. Tomorrow I'm going to eat your heart'."

"When I hear people say, “You Catholics honour Mary too much,” I reply, 'We are never able to honour her enough."

"Prayer at distance rarely has a liberating effect. In itself, it is possible to attempt prayers at distance, but whether they take root is another matter. One of the requirements for doing exorcisms is in fact that the person is present, and that he or she is consenting. Doing exorcisms on someone who is neither present nor consenting nor Catholic presents difficulties. I have no doubt, however, that Hitler was a Satanist. From this point of view, I am not surprised that Pius XII might have attempted an exorcism at distance. [The Führer's possession emerges from his] humanly inexplicable perfidy: one cannot explain such wickedness without a higher force and outside human nature."

"We call upon you to witness, however, in the name of the Lord, beloved sons, Catholics who in the kingdom of the Gauls are united, being mindful of your religion and the faith of your fathers, we counsel you from the innermost feelings of our heart lest you secede from it, inasmuch as it is the one and the true religion, which bestows eternal life and protects citizens, even societies, and makes them prosperous. Take special care lest you proffer ears to the insidious voices of this secular sect, whose voices furnish death, and avoid in this way all usurpers whether they are called archbishops, bishops or parish priests, so that there is nothing in common between you and them, especially in divine matters...in one word, cling to us: for no-one can be in the Church of Christ unless he is unified with the visible head of the Church itself and is strengthened in the cathedral of Peter."

"It is nature herself, therefore, which (decrees) that the usage which each must make of his reason should consist essentially in recognizing his sovereign author. ... In order to make this phantom of unlimited freedom vanish from the eyes of healthy reason, is it not enough to say that this system was that of the Vaudois and the Beguars?"

"We consider that our especial commendation and the testimony of our heart may be justly claimed by those who, in this time of apostasy and impiety, have exerted the force of their genius that they might write in defence of the cause of right. ... Amongst them you have stood out as one of the foremost, in that you have composed a famous work to overthrow and utterly destroy the fictions of the new philosophers of France, and have exhorted your fellow country-men...to show indulgences to Catholics born in the realm of Great Britain. ... therefore it is our wish that you should accept with joyful and cheerful heart our congratulations and praises, which have this especial object—that you should more and more exert yourself to protect the cause of civilization."

"[We condemn those principles whose] necessary effect [is] to destroy the Catholic religion, and with it, the obedience due to kings. It is with this end in view that they establish, as a right of man in society, this absolute liberty, which not only assures the right of not being disturbed in regard to his religious opinions, but which also grants that license of thought, of writing and even shamelessly publishing on the subject of religion whatever the most unruly imagination might suggest. This monstrous right nevertheless appears to the Assembly to result from the equality and liberty which are natural to all men. But what could there be more outrageous than to establish among men this equality and this unbridled liberty which will snuff out reason, the most precious gift that nature has given to man, and the only one which distinguishes him from the animals?"

"(Ma) bene a forza il caro e dolce riso Scoprir il Paradiso E far lieta fortuna d’atra e dura."

"Religion is for Machiavelli utterly necessary to found, preserve, and reform good political orders. He stated this view in the most unequivocal manner. At the same time he knew very well that the only available religion was the Christian. Had he believed and argued that Christian religion was in its essence and hopelessly inimical to good political orders and above all to republican liberty he would have been compelled to also believe and argue that good political orders and republican liberty were impossible for the moderns in general and for the Italians in particular, a conclusion that he never entertained. Instead, he believed in, and suggested, the possibility of a civic interpretation of Christianity similar to the one that he knew existed in his Florence."

": Far worse it is To lose than never to have tasted bliss."

"Che mai Non v'avere ò provate, ò possedute."

"Altera figlia Di quel monarca a cui Nè anco, quando annotta, il Sol tramonta."

"But now, coming to your shameless assertion that ministers of the altar should be allowed to marry, I consider it superfluous to unsheathe the sword of my own words against you, since we see the armed forces of the whole Church and the massed array of all the holy Fathers ready to resist you. And where so great a host of heavenly troops opposes you, one can only wonder that your novel and rash attempt at doctrine does not submit when confronted by such authority."

"But you, my lord and venerable pope, you who take the place of Christ, and the successor to the supreme shepherd in apostolic dignity, do not through sloth allow this pestilence to grow, do not by conniving and dissimulation loosen the reins on this raging impurity. This disease is spreading like a cancer, and its poisonous breed will reach out endlessly unless its evil growth is cut off by the scythe of the gospel."

"But if I have erred in anything, I gladly come before the teaching authority of Peter."

"Sanctum Satanum meum."

"Let that ancient dragon, Cadalus, take note. Let this disturber of the Church, this destroyer of apostolic discipline, this enemy of man’s salvation understand. Let him beware, I say, this root of all sin, this herald of the devil, this apostle of Antichrist. And what else shall I call him? He is the arrow drawn from the quiver of Satan, the rod of the Assyrian, the son Belial, "the son of perdition, who rises in his pride against every god, so called, ever object of men’s worship" (2 Thess. 2:3-4), the whirlpool of lust, the shipwreck of chastity, the disgrace of Christianity, the ignominy of bishops, the progeny of vipers, the stench or the world, the filth of the ages, the shame of the universe. Still more epithets for Cadalus can be added, a list of darksome names: slippery snake, a twisting serpent, the dung of humanity, the latrine of crime, the dregs of vice, the abomination of heaven the expulsion from paradise, the fodder of hell, the stubble of eternal fire."

"Any cleric or monk who seduces young men or boys, or who is apprehended in kissing or in any shameful situation, shall be publicly flogged and shall lose his clerical tonsure. Thus shorn, he shall be disgraced by spitting in his face, bound in iron chains, wasted by six months of close confinement, and for three days each week put on barley bread given him toward evening. Following this period, he shall spend a further six months living in a small segregated courtyard in custody of a spiritual elder, kept busy with manual labor and prayer, subjected to vigils and prayers, forced to walk at all times in the company of two spiritual brothers, never again allowed to associate with young men."

"E fu in quel tempo che io montai quassù, e dissi che io non era mandato a predicarti da uomo del mondo, né da signore alcuno, ma da colui che è signore dei signori e dalla santa Trinità."

"Io vi conforto di convertirvi a Dio, vivere come è obbligato ogni buon cristiano, dolervi del passato e ridurvi alla pietà. Altrimenti, io vi annunzio che è sopra di voi imminente un gran flagello, e sarete flagellato nella roba, nella persona e nella casa vostra. Vi annunzio ancora, che della vostra vita ce n' è per poco; che, se non farete quel che vi dico, anderete nell'inferno; e questa lettera vi sarà presentata innanzi al tribunale di Dio, nè vi potrete scusare."

"Do you wish to be free? Then above all things, love God, love your neighbor, love one another, love the common weal; then you will have true liberty."

"Elegance of language must give way before simplicity in preaching sound doctrine."

"I am the hailstorm that shall break the heads of those who do not take shelter."

"Ecce gladius Domini super terram, cito et velociter."

"Colui che scomunica me scomunica Dio."

"The Pope may err, and that in two ways, either because he is erroneously informed, or from malice. As to the latter cause we leave that to the judgment of God, and believe rather that he has been misinformed. In our own case I can prove that he has been falsely persuaded. Therefore any one who obstinately upholds the excommunication and affirms that I ought not to preach these doctrines is fighting against the kingdom of Christ, and supporting the kingdom of Satan, and is himself a heretic, and deserves to be excluded from the Christian community."

"The reason why I entered into a religious order is this: first, the great misery of the world, the wickedness of men, the rapes, the adulteries, the thefts, the pride, the idolatry, the vile curses, for the world has come to such a state that one can no longer find anyone who does good; so much so that many times every day I would sing this verse with tears in my eyes: Alas, flee from cruel lands, flee from the shores of the greedy. I did this because I could not stand the great wickedness of the blind people of Italy, especially when I saw that virtue had been completely cast down and vice raised up."

"God is the best helper, but He loves to be helped. Be earnest in prayer, but do not neglect human means. You must help yourself in all manner of ways, and then the Lord will be with you."

"The Italian Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola was a reactionary zealot and bigoted theocrat who vehemently opposed the humanism of the Florentine Renaissance. His ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ burned books and art he deemed ‘immoral’. Savonarola’s ‘Christian and religious republic’ was an intolerant, sanctimonius and murderous reign of terror. His very name is a synonym for mad monks, and the crimes of theocracy and misguided virtue."

"The terrorism exercised by Savonarola and his adherents grew daily more and more intolerable. The prophet declared that no one could be a good Christian who did not believe in him."