Apostolic Mandate read during the ceremony of Episcopal Consecration of Bishop Thomas Aquinas on March 19th, 2016, in Nova Friburgo, Brazil.

Translated by Brother Raymund of Pennafort, T.O.P.

At the beginning of the rite of the consecration the following dialogue takes place between the consecrating bishops and the Archpriest who presents the bishops-elect for consecration:

—Do you have the Apostolic Mandate?

—We have it!

—Let it be read.

We have a Mandate from the Roman Church, which in Her fidelity to Sacred Tradition received from the Apostles, commands us to hand down faithfully that Sacred Tradition—namely the Deposit of the Faith—to all men by reason of their duty to save their souls.

Now, on the one hand, since the Second Vatican Council until this day, the authorities of the Roman Church are animated by a spirit of Modernism which profoundly undermines Sacred Tradition to the point of twisting the very notion of Tradition: “they cannot bear sound doctrine, they turned their ears from the Truth and followed fables,” as St. Paul says in his second Epistle to Timothy (IV, 3, 5). What use would it be to ask such authorities for a Mandate to consecrate a bishop who is going to be completely opposed to their most grave error?

On the other hand, to obtain such a bishop, the few Catholics who understand his importance might have hoped, even after Vatican II, that he could have come from the Society of St Pius X founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, like the four consecrated by him with a previous emergency Mandate in 1988. Unfortunately, observing that the authorities of the Society are taking that same Liberal road, constantly turning towards the Roman authorities, that hope appears to be vain.

From where then could these faithful Catholics obtain the bishops essential to the survival of their true Faith? In a world day by day more opposed to Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church, the danger seems so great that, as long as Peter does not convert (Lk. XXII, 32), it is the very Holy Church which asks us to come to the aid of the abandoned sheep, assuring them a sufficient number of true shepherds (Jer. III, 15) in so far as such necessity presents itself.

No presumption or assignment of episcopal power of jurisdiction accompanies this transmission of the episcopal power of Orders. And, so, when God intervenes to save His Church, to which there remains no human hope of salvation, the effects of this transmission and emergency Mandate will be handed over immediately into the hands of a Pope once more unequivocally Catholic.