Eric Michel Lay Member
The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter will send you the certificate of membership in return. The commitments take effect with the reception of the certificate.
- Members must be Catholics who are at least 14 years of age.
- Membership is purely spiritual and does not confer any rights or duties other than the spiritual support in prayer and charity in accord with the commitments described above.
- By themselves, the commitments do not bind under penalty of sin.
- Membership and the commitments which follow it are tacitly renewed each year on the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter (February 22), unless expressly determined otherwise.
The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (Latin: Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri; FSSP) is a traditionalist Catholic society of apostolic life for priests and seminarians. It is in communion with the Holy See. It was founded in 1988 by 12 former members of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) who left following the Écône consecrations, which resulted in the SSPX bishops being excommunicated by the Holy See.
Headquartered in Switzerland, the society maintains two international seminaries: the International Seminary of St. Peter in Wigratzbad-Opfenbach, Bavaria, Germany, and Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Nebraska, United States. The Holy See officially recognizes the society and has 368 priests who celebrate the Tridentine Mass in locations in 147 worldwide dioceses.
The fraternity’s pontifical right status means that the Pope has established it and is answerable only to him in terms of its operation (through the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life; before 17 January 2019, through the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei), rather than to local bishops. A local bishop still governs the fraternity’s work within his respective diocese. In this sense, its organization and administrative reporting status are similar to those of religious orders of pontifical right.
On 28 September 2024, the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life informed the FSSP that it had opened an apostolic visitation. According to the Fraternity, this is intended to “enable the Dicastery to know who we are, how we are doing and how we live, to provide us with any help we may need.”
As of November 2023, the fraternity included 569 members: 368 priests, 22 deacons, and 179 non-deacon seminarians in 146 dioceses spread among Australia, Austria, Benin, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, the United States, and Vietnam. The fraternity’s membership represents 35 nationalities, and the average age of its members is 39. As of 2023, the lay Confraternity of Saint Peter had 9,546 members enrolled, who spiritually support the fraternity’s charism.
