ABOUT US

We are in communion with Our Holy Father Pope Francis

and 

Our Bishop, The Most Excellent Bishop Robert Vasa

of the Diocese of Santa Rosa

​

We are a community of Catholics in Santa Rosa, throughout Sonoma County and beyond, committed to worshipping in the Roman Rite as our ancestors did, some of whom did so in peace, some through hiding, suffering, and dying. The traditional Roman Rite Mass has been celebrated continually in this region—sometimes in the open, sometimes in the shadows—since the California Missions era. We recognize Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma as our historic birthplace as Sonoma County Catholics.

For twelve glorious years, our ancient Eucharistic liturgy left its prior out-of-the-way places and was offered at the altar of the Cathedral of St. Eugene under the patronage of a good Rector and a good Bishop. A glorious carved, gilt, and mosaic high altar and baldacchino from Philadelphia were brought to St. Eugene’s to be a fitting place at which the sacrifice of this ancient Roman Rite Mass might be offered. The hand of God was manifestly on this community.

The regular worshippers grew over these twelve years from thirty-five (35) to two hundred (200) on many occasions. Marriages came into existence, children were born and baptized, religious postulants progressed to solemn vows, seminarians were nourished onward toward priestly ordination, and young laymen entered seminary formation, all in the context of this ancient Mass.

      Under the circumstances of the legislation Traditiones Custodes, we have been forced to return to out-of-the-way places. Our resolve to preserve the perennial Catholic faith and its liturgical expression in the Vetus Ordo Roman Rite Mass is only strengthened in undergoing this trial. We recognize that as our Catholic Forebears, in the face of the Protestant Revolution, were actively part of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, we too, in the face of the Modernist onslaught, are counter-reformers in our own humble way.

That is why we persist.

That is why we insist. We beg the hand of God to continue to be on us.