FIUV International Federation Una Voce: Appeal for Masses for Persecuted Christians

Friday 13 February 2015

Appeal for Masses for Persecuted Christians

A Mass being said in secret during the persecution of Cathollics in England, by one of the
'Padley Martyrs'. Stained glass at Padley chapel, Derbyshire, England.

The Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce is appealing for Masses to be celebrated for persecuted Christians around the world.

Catholics attached to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite and other ancient forms of the Mass will want to avail themselves, where possible, of the Votive Masses and Commemorations specifically for the Defence of the Church against Persecutors, and similar intentions, found in the ancient Missals.

We will be posting information about Traditional Masses being celebrated for this intention on this blog. Information about them can be put into the comments box of this blog.

We are simultaneously publishing a Position Paper on Prayers for Persecuted Christians and the Leonine Prayers today: see Rorate Caeli and the LMS Chairman blogs.

Prophetic words of the Founder...

“A renaissance will come: asceticism and adoration as the mainspring of direct total dedication to Christ will return. Confraternities of priests, vowed to celibacy and to an intense life of prayer and meditation will be formed. Religious will regroup themselves into houses of 'strict observance'. A new form of 'Liturgical Movement' will come into being, led by young priests and attracting mainly young people, in protest against the flat, prosaic, philistine or delirious liturgies which will soon overgrow and finally smother even the recently revised rites..."

--- Dr Erich Vermehren de Saventhem, founding President of the International Una Voce Federation, New York 1970

Our abiding mission...

“It is vitally important that these new priests and religious, these new young people with ardent hearts, should find -- if only in a corner of the rambling mansion of the Church -- the treasure of a truly sacred liturgy still glowing softly in the night. And it is our task – since we have been given the grace to appreciate the value of this heritage -- to preserve it from spoliation, from becoming buried out of sight, despised and therefore lost forever. It is our duty to keep it alive: by our own loving attachment, by our support for the priests who make it shine in our churches, by our apostolate at all levels of persuasion...”

--- Dr Erich Vermehren de Saventhem, founding President of the International Una Voce Federation, New York 1970

Dr Borghild Krane, co-founder of the International Una Voce Federation

In 1964, Dr Borghild Krane, an eminent psychologist in Norway, sent out an appeal to concerned Catholics to group together in defence of the Church's liturgical heritage. As a result of that appeal a number of national associations came into being in 1964-65. The first interim President of the nascent and inchoate Federation was His Serene Highness Duke Filippo Caffarelli. Delegates from six European associations met in Rome early in 1965 and the International Federation was formally erected in Zurich on 8 January 1967. Delegates from 20 associations approved the draft statutes and elected the first Council and a new President, Dr Erich Vermehren de Saventhem.