What is the state of the Church in Europe? How are young Catholics working to revitalize the Church and the culture? Alexander Tschugguel, founder of the St. Boniface Institute, will address those issues on today’s Crisis Point.
Links:
• Alexander Tschugguel’s Twitter Account
• St. Boniface Institute Twitter Account
• St. Boniface Institute Website
• “Ever Ancient, Ever New”
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Transcript:
Eric Sammons:
Why are young people drawn to Catholic tradition? What is the state of Catholicism in Europe? We’ll talk to somebody today with insights into these questions today on Crisis Point.
Hello, I’m Eric Sammons, your host and the editor in chief of Crisis Magazine. Before we get started, be sure to like and subscribe to the channel, let other people know about it. We really appreciate when you do that. Also, you can follow us on all the different social media channels @Crisis Mag. And also be sure if you can to donate to Crisis Magazine. We’d really appreciate it.
Okay, let’s go ahead and get started. Today we have a great guest. It’s Alexander Tschugguel. He’s an Austrian Catholic and the founder of the St. Boniface Institute, which supports the fight for the traditional Catholic faith and to defend that faith whenever and wherever necessary. Thanks so much for coming on the program, Alexander.
Alexander Tschugguel:
Thank you very much for the invitation, Eric. I’m very pleased to be here.
Eric Sammons:
So what I want to do first is I want to get a little bit of your background. The reason I had you on, first is because you’re one of the people in this new book called Ever Ancient, Ever New: Why Younger Generations Are Embracing Traditional Catholicism. It’s from Tan Publishers. I’ll put a link to it in the show notes for people to know about it.
It’s great. It’s basically each chapter is a different person giving their own story and you get chapter one, Alexander, and then some others like Timothy Gordon and Stephanie Gordon and Kenneth Alexander, and some others are all featured in here. So why don’t you tell us first, a little bit about, I believe if I’m correct, you’re actually a convert to Catholicism.
Alexander Tschugguel:
Yes.
Eric Sammons:
And also then the traditional Catholicism. Why don’t you give a little bit of your story, how that all happened?
Alexander Tschugguel:
Yes. So basically when I was young, I had this question phase everyone goes through, where I didn’t know really why we are on earth, why the earth is the way it is and so on. And then I was for one week thinking that maybe the chaos theory is right. Everything’s going to emerge from chaos. But after one week I found out that this somehow is stupid as if everything emerged from chaos then why don’t we see chaos right now? When did the chaos stop and the order start and so on.
So this is when I actually came to the conclusion that things are not as they seem to be, especially looking at what I learned at school. My school was considered a quite good school, but in general, obviously very atheistic and so I didn’t really get any answers there, but I had quite some faithful friends. And so I started talking with them and a few of them were faithful Catholics.
And then we had this strange situation where I was sitting in my classroom and I was a Protestant, a Lutheran and my professor a Lutheran theology would say, “Instead of the Catholics we as Protestants think,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So whatever he said, he always said, “The Catholic said this, but we say this.” And I found this is very strange. And as I really did not like his approach in general, I thought that it would maybe a good idea to look a little bit more into the Catholic faith.
I talked with my friends about this, who are Catholic, who were Catholic, this time both of them are still Catholics and very faithful. And then called the parish, which was right next to our school and which was exactly the parish my Protestant teacher made always fun of because they were so Catholic. And so I went there to talk with the Priest there, the auditoriums of St. Philip and the auditorium priest there did a great job. And I asked all my questions. They answered all my questions. And at the end father Paul, he was in charge back then for this and he was fantastic. At the end, it was clear that I will become a Catholic.
He then gave me tons of books. I read through the books. I talked to my family. My family was very critical, but very accepting. They were very kind. My father, and my mother said, “Well, if you think this is right, we’ll support you, but we do not want you to get in or out of it. If you do it then you really have to do it.” I said, “Well, okay, perfect. I’ll do that.” And after my conversion-
Eric Sammons:
How old were you at that point?
Alexander Tschugguel:
15.
Eric Sammons:
- Okay, great.
Alexander Tschugguel:
And after my conversion, I started to step by step discover the Catholic life. I started serving as an alter boy. One has to say that within my home parish St. Rupert’s in Vienna, their auditorium, there was no people’s alter, there were no female alter service. We had communion in the mouth always. It’s also, it was already considered quite conservative and traditional.
And then my conversion priest after when my first Jubilee year of conversion came, he said, “Do you want to do a traditional high Mass?” And I said, “Well, yes.” Unfortunately he did not really explain to me how everything works. So it was a little bit boring for me, but for me, it was from the beginning something normal so I never considered it to be abnormal. I always thought, okay, well, that’s also part of the church somehow.
And then a few years later, not so many years later, actually through the help of one very dear friend of mine, we were still very close to each other, I discovered traditional Mass at FSP, the local FSP parish in Vienna. And it was wonderful. It was like the answers to all my questions was finally 100% there. It seems my conversion I already saw the answers, but then I saw them live, which is a little bit different. So I was so happy about this. And this is how I became traditional.
It took me then about one and a half years to find out that traditional Mass is really what I want always. So before that, I went to both but then I found out that this is somehow this is not it anymore. I don’t want to talk badly about me old parish. They a wonderful parish. But I have to say that the fullness of the faith is so clearly visible in the traditional Holy Mass in the traditional way. The sacrament that the sacrifice is done on the alter, compared to the Novus Ordo, which is just not as clear. And I thought that if we honor God, why don’t we honor him in the best way possible. And in my eyes, this is as Roman Catholic, clearly the traditional Mass.
Eric Sammons:
Now, one of the things that I was in a Novus Ordo parish for many years. I worked for a diocese and one of the biggest challenges in the Catholic Church, at least here in America. And I think it’s also true in Europe is that we don’t attract young men. In fact, I wrote an article for Crisis before I was the editor of Crisis years ago and it was one of the most popular articles ever at Crisis, which I was very shocked by it.
And I basically, it was called No Church for Young Men. And it was about the fact that young men seemed to be very much not attracted to your typical Catholic parish. Yet on the other hand, my own, the traditional Mass that I attend after Mass it’s hilarious because we have all these young men hanging out afterwards because they all went through this Mass and they go there and things like that. And obviously you were a young man when you discovered it, why do you think that the traditional Mass seems to be so attractive to young men in particular, as opposed to what is normally celebrated at most Catholic parishes?
Alexander Tschugguel:
The Catholic faith is the most male faith in the world that obviously also the most female faith in the world. So for both sides, it’s the best faith in the world, obviously. Yes. So the Catholic teaching is so clear and so wonderfully beautiful that as soon as you see it somewhere, and as soon as you understand it, somehow you already feel very attracted. So as a man, obviously we see the modern world. We see the whole homosexual movement. We see the gender ideology, we see this whole female, this feminization, if you can say, of male. And at the same time, by the way, the destruction of femininity with women. So we see this destruction. It’s not very attractive. At the end of the day, we want to be challenged actually, we want to actually be asked to fight for the good things. We want to do good things.
So when I first came to traditional Mass, what struck me most was that there was no talking around the important things. Everything was clear. All in the liturgy especially the liturgy, it’s no, blah blah. It starts with a prayer at the alter stairs and you fully understand everything is directed how it’s called. Everything is direct to how the sacrifice, how it’s called.
In Novus Ordo Mass you always have this more or less struggle to find priests who are able not to put their own personality too much into the Mass. So in Novus Ordo Mass, we consider Novus Ordo Mass reverent when we see that the priest actually holds back as much as possible. And then we have to say, the problem comes up, that every Pius priest has obviously his own ideas of how his life of faith looks like.
And then obviously it’s like with little children, okay, this sounds arrogant, I don’t want it to sound arrogant, but get me right now. If you have little children who do not know something very well, and you give them, let’s say little stickers, so little stickers, and then they stand, stand next to let’s say a baroque cupboard. And they think, “Ah, the baroque cupboard is nice and the stickers are nice. So I put the stickers on the cupboard.” And we all would say, “No, don’t do this, it’s a baroque cupboard, the stickers would ruin it.”
So we see the same with faithful priests in the Novus Ordo Mass, they will then start adding what they consider beautiful to the Mass, because they see that there’s something missing. And if you now go to traditional Mass and look at this, this is not at all the thing. It’s 100% clear. The prayers are clear. The direction is clear. The serving is clear. The symbolic is clear. The way the priest stands is clear. Everything makes total sense. There’s nothing there is a human problem. It’s, God’s liturgy. It’s really to honor him. He is in the center.
And this is so attractive. And all my friends, all my male friends, especially as soon as they understand that one part of the life is actually to fight for what is good, traditional Mass is the place to go.
Eric Sammons:
Now in America, the traditional at Mass has grown just exponentially. Now it’s still a small part. It’s a small percentage of the total number of parishes. But over the past few years, especially after COVID, all the lockdowns it’s grown exponentially. We’ve seen this all over America. In fact, America’s known as one of the bastions of the traditional Latin Mass.
What is the state of traditional Latin Mass in Europe as far as obviously you’re an Austria. My understanding is that it’s pretty popular in France, but not necessarily in other places, but is it growing across Europe? Is it still a very small segment? What is the status of it over there in Europe?
Alexander Tschugguel:
Well, the easy answer is when I converted and I traveled through Europe finding traditional Latin Masses, as I said back then, I was not yet like this, but some of my friends were already, it was really difficult. Now it’s not difficult anymore. So yes, it’s definitely growing. The only difference is that in Europe, everything grows more silent than in the United States because in Europe, the things that, first of all, we have way more the mainstream media also in the Catholic sense is way more institutionalized in a way that it’s way more difficult to go around them.
Whereas in the United States, you have this idea that if something is good and there’s no institution yet, you just found an institution, that’s it. And then you go for it and then people relate to it and it works. And it’s wonderful. That’s the reason why we all like the United States so much, but here in Europe, after socialism, you just don’t forget here in Austria and Germany, we had Hitler, we had national socialism.
So national socialism went through all the schools, all the people in school learned that socialism is good and that the state should be in charge of everything. Then we had soft communism after this and socialism after this as well, telling us all the time that everything has to be according to how the government wants it.
So right now the main problem here is that people are not courageous enough, or maybe they are courageous enough, but they don’t think it’s wise yet to talk about it in the same way as we would talk about in the United States.
And second of all, we have a different structure of diocese here than we have in the United States. As we have all our historical diocese, which are quite old. So we have to sing that we have very little small diocese, sometimes old ones, new ones, one where you have a small country, but you always had a cardinal other ones where you have a big country, but not a cardinal and things like this. And that makes it all a little bit more difficult to navigate through this authorities. But at the end of the day, the traditional Latin Mass communities are growing and growing and growing, up until Traditionis Custodes in a very beautiful way since Traditionis Custodes in a more hidden way. But they are still growing.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. What you’re saying is in America, we can’t shut up (laughs).
Alexander Tschugguel:
No, no, it’s wonderful, it’s good.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. It is true, the, culture’s very different.
Alexander Tschugguel:
It’s a lot of advantages.
Eric Sammons:
Now. So in Austria itself, then where you are, you’re in Vienna, is that correct?
Alexander Tschugguel:
Yes, I’m in Vienna.
Eric Sammons:
Okay. So for example, is there just the fraternity parishes that celebrates the traditional Mass or are there other parishes in Vienna?
Alexander Tschugguel:
So before Traditionis Custodes, we had, I think, let me get 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, more than 11 Masses in Vienna, traditional every Sunday. Now we have two.
Eric Sammons:
That’s very unfortunate. Who’s the Bishop of Vienna?
Alexander Tschugguel:
The diocese of Vienna is bigger than the city of Vienna you have to know. And unfortunately the Custodes closed everything except two FSP parishes, one inside Vienna, one outside, and one more or less it’s not a diocese, it’s by the auditorium actually, these are the only Masses which now exist.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. Actually, I go to auditorium parish myself, and they’re just wonderful. So what happened to all the people who were attending the other nine traditional Masses, are they mostly congregating to those two parishes? Or are they just kind of left? Are they too far away? I mean, how does that work there?
Alexander Tschugguel:
Well, Vienna is obviously an old city, so everything’s quite close to each other. So nobody’s too far away. They go to the other Masses obviously, but some of them now go to SSPX. Some of them do not go to those Masses anymore at all. And what the main problem is, it really destroyed the communities there, because some of those communities were actually pretty old already.
Not necessarily huge, because for example, we had this one parish priest in Vienna. He’s a wonderful man, a little bit unusual, the way he does things. And his traditional Mass was already since 2013. And it was now closed with about 80 to 100 people going to it every Sunday. And that’s really outside of the city. That’s not in the city center. So those people now have it very difficult now to attend the other traditional Masses.
So yes, there are those problems, but as you know, whenever modernist people tell us that they do something for pastoral reasons, it’s mostly for not very pastoral reasons. And so the same we saw here. So Traditionis Custodes was used as an instrument to destroy good working Catholic communities with lots of young people, with a good rate of conversions, with a very, very good rate of baptism, of confirmation, of priestly vocations, of marriages and so on.
And so at the end of the day, all those marriages do still exist. The vocations all do still exist. The baptized are all still baptized and so on. So if they think that through this nonsense instrument, they will keep us from living a traditional Catholic life then obviously they are wrong. What we have to say is that unfortunately, it made it a little bit more difficult to organize traditional Masses. So when I, for example, went to any church and said, “Well can we do traditional Mass there?” This was never a problem in Vienna. Now it is a problem. Now we have to go to other dioceses of Austria and organize them there because some other dioceses are not as strict as dioceses of Vienna.
Eric Sammons:
So we were fortunate in America, so to speak when it came to Traditionis Custodes in that most diocese here, most bishops basically did nothing. They maybe put out a statement, but they did very little. There have been a few diocese, definitely like Chicago, and then most recently St. Augustine and some others that have cracked down more. But generally, like for example, in most parish diocese, the Bishop was just like, “Ah, we’ll just leave you guys alone.”
What was the case outside of Vienna because Vienna sounds like it was pretty badly reaction, but how did most bishops around Europe react? Did they mostly act as Vienna did and crack down more so than they did in America?
Alexander Tschugguel:
This, I cannot give you a generalized answer. I can only talk for the German speaking area. And the German speaking area obviously the Germans went pretty harsh on traditionalists, but they already did before. So interestingly, the traditional communities in Germany all still exist because they were already used to this kind of handling the diocese had with them. But in other, obviously in France, there were a few very famous diocese which shut down traditional Mass. In Italy as well. In general, I can still travel for Europe and I can still go to traditional Mass everywhere. But yes, it was very hard in some areas.
It cannot be generalized because it’s really a bishop thing right now. And all the leftist bishops did this and all the mainstream bishops normally did not do anything. And the good bishops normally supported the traditional Mass now more than they did before.
Eric Sammons:
Right. Now, what would you speculate is the future of Traditionis Custodes and traditional Latin Mass? Because it seemed like for a while, Pope Francis kind of paused and after Archbishop Roche had the dubia responses back in December, there was a big pushback against that. And it seemed like nothing happened. They kind of paused. They let the FSSP go. Now there seems to be some more talks and more ramping up. What do you think the next couple years holds for the traditional Latin Mass communities?
Alexander Tschugguel:
Well, they will grow obviously, but besides that, or if you talk more or less about the, I don’t like the term, but about the church political point of view, then one could say that there seems to be the plan to destroy every traditional community except one or two, let’s say for example, FSP, or maybe instead of Christ the King, I don’t know. And then obviously go after them in the second step. This is a plan which is talked about quite often by at least more the liberal bishops.
In general, I have to say that as the traditional communities have so much youth coming, so many vocations, it’s kind of impossible to destroy them in general. And I think that in the next years, the political crisis of the world, so we already mentioned the war in Ukraine right now, but after two years of corona terror, we all know that things can happen. They are so huge that I think having underground Catholic communities might be a thing in general needed in general. And those communities will be mostly traditional at the beginning. I’m very sure. And then I think the rest will follow. And also follow into tradition in my eyes.
So in general, I think that the more we as Catholics have to suffer and the more the church has to suffer and the more the people and the citizens of our countries have to suffer, the more the traditional answer will be what they all will look for, as it is so clear, so helpful and the only thing which actually carries you and strengthens you in those times of need.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. I think you’re right. I think as the culture becomes more and more anti-Catholic, there’s a need among Catholics to distinguish themselves more clearly with the culture. And that is definitely something the traditional Latin Mass does. It’s so different. It’s so counter-cultural just by its essence that it is something that will stand, like you said, the persecution, the suffering.
Alexander Tschugguel:
Yeah. If I might I’m terribly sorry about this, but if I might correct you on one thing. It is not counter-cultural. It is cultural and what they do is counter-cultural. And that’s the reason why you see it. We really have to understand that the traditional Latin Mass is nothing new. Also, if it develops, if, for example, if Leo the XIII edits the Leonine Prayers after the Mass, and those who come and maybe have one prayer added at this Mass or one prayer added at this Mass, at the end, the traditional Latin Mass is the oldest sacrifice on earth because it’s the sacrifice, which is God’s sacrifice itself. And which was already on a liturgical sense prepared by sacrificing the temple of the Jews.
So you see that this is one big thing. They will never destroy it. It’s impossible. So what will happen is they will persecute us. And as you know, when Christians get persecuted, they normally grow in strength. And you see this right now here. So I’m very happy to say that actually, I’m not happy to say that the crisis happens because it’s not good for many people and many people totally lose their sanity, but every crisis shows clearly what is true and what is a lie. And the truth is definitely, definitely God.
And so if God tells us, you only come to the father through Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ tells you have to get baptized. And Jesus Christ tells the apostles you have to hear the confession. And this is how you do the Mass and so on, that this is so extraordinary, bigger than everything that the others do, that the only thing they can do is they can come after us physically, physically.
So I think that the traditional Catholic faith is the best antidote to the physical and also more or less psychological war they lead against the humanity. And therefore it will survive because it’s the anti dose. People will be way more healthy with it than without it. The calculation at the end of day, I don’t like to calculate those things, but at the end it could be a calculation.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. It’s a good point. It’s a good point you make though that our culture, the popular culture today is really an anti-culture. It’s not a real culture. It’s a culture of lies.
Alexander Tschugguel:
Yes. That’s it.
Eric Sammons:
Now let’s just shift a little bit, just I want to keep talking about Europe in general and the state of the church. And here in America, when we look over at Europe, I mean, I don’t know by, I don’t know about other people, but most people, I know we have a very low opinion, frankly, of the Catholic Church in general in Europe. Because we hear about the German bishops for example, we hear about all these other, frankly, some of the French bishops and the English bishops, I mean they just aren’t, I mean, our bishops are not an impressive lot either at times, but they just seem to be just going even further, especially in Germany.
Let’s focus on Germany for a second. How can you explain the fact that the German bishops are literally an outwardly pushing heresy and trying to get the church to change its teaching on perennial teachings that she can’t change?
Alexander Tschugguel:
Yeah. Well there are tons of reasons for this, but I want to, first of all, I want to stand up for the good Catholics in Germany. There are tons of them and they do not do what the bishops do. So if you ever think that Germany is totally lost, it comes to the faith that’s definitely not the case. We have lots of vocation. The biggest traditional priestly seminary of Europe is in Germany. It’s the seminary. And so it’s good. But let’s talk about the problem. So the bishops in Germany, I don’t know if you’re aware of that are officially paid by the government, which explains more or less already half of it.
I’m a Catholic, so I do not think that there is a separation between faith and politics, but yes, obviously there must be a separation between the church’s hierarchy and the government’s hierarchy. And this separation has to be as big as possible and no, it has to be bigger according to how big the difference between the stand of the government towards the Catholic teaching is. And therefore this government right now, the German government, is so far away from the Catholic teaching that the bishops should be as well, but they are paid by the government through taxes, which were introduced by Adolf Hitler in order to create such a system of dependence on the state.
Eric Sammons:
So just to make sure it’s clear. So I think I understand this a little bit, but I want to make sure it’s clear. So if I’m a Catholic and I’m living in Germany and I’m baptized Catholic and everything, then when I pay my taxes, I mark that I’m a Catholic, correct, and so then that money is then funneled through the government and some of that is then used to then pay the bishops and that’s how the bishops get their funding?
Alexander Tschugguel:
Yes.
Eric Sammons:
So now do I also tie, like on Sundays and give money that goes directly to the bishops and the church does it just go basically mostly funneled through the government?
Alexander Tschugguel:
No, you can… In Austria and Germany it was introduced both by Adolf Hitler, but Austria has a nicer system than the Germans. In Germany if you pay taxes and you are officially you are a Catholic, then automatically you have to pay a church tax. The church taxes then goes officially through the governmental structure, but goes directly to the church. And the church pays the bishops and certain other things with it. Obviously [inaudible] and all the good things, obviously not only bad things, but the system is not good.
And whatever you contribute privately if you go give Sunday something when they go around and collect, you can also give money there. And then this normally goes to the parish also to the diocese, depending on what you want. So yes, this is the system. And this gives the bishops a strange standing, obviously as the bishops in Germany are more or less a political arm of the German government. And this is also the reason why you see them doing so many bad things. And the more traditional and the more Catholic in areas, the highest chance you will find a good fish up there.
So for example, if you go to Cologne, you have Cardinal Woelki, who is known to be, let’s say, not as leftist as the other ones. He’s unfortunately still part of the Synodal way, but he’s opposing it. I don’t understand why he’s part of it. He can just exit the Synodal way. And I would like to clearly ask him also to exit because many Catholics want him to exit.
Or you look at Bavaria where you have the terrible Cardinal Marx in Munich. But then you have two other dioceses, the Diocese of Augsburg and the Diocese of Passau, both very traditional Catholic diocese where the bishops are actually really good and fight against Synodal Path. And nobody really talks about them of in the international sphere. So yes, there is still a counter fight against this, but it’s very difficult to do this if you’re so intertwined with the current system.
And then secondly, the problem is that the theological and especially philosophical formation in the seminaries in Germany, it was obviously… Like in South America, in South America, when a liberation theology came, all the new priests were all communist more or less. And the same happened in Germany. Germany has a very Protestant theology at the universities at some of the seminaries and in all of the universities except maybe one or two, and therefore it is nearly impossible to get a good formation there.
So if you talk to good cardinal, you know that, for example, Cardinal Muller actually did quite some good work recently. If you read his old books, his old books are completely leftist theology, but he’s a wonderful man. He’s faithful. So as he’s faithful, and as he knows that Christ is really the Lord and that the Holy Communion is really that Christ is really present there and so on, as he knows all those things, they pull him away from the Synodal Path, from the harasses. And so now Cardinal Muller is fighting against the Synodal Path.
Or Cardinal Brandmuller, who is very old already, but he’s a professor. I don’t know if you know him in historian, a wonderful church historian, especially, and tons of other things. And he’s also a very strong opponent of the Synodal Path, but he’s a German cardinal. So you see that there are good people fighting against it. It’s just, if they do not have their own ways of formation, like Cardinal Brandmuller, who is so older already that he already still got the old formation. Or Cardinal Muller who is in touch with so many other people that he’s found that he read so many books and he’s just saw it in his pastoral work. Then it’s actually really difficult to see, to get a clear point of view of the Catholic faith.
All those bishops act as if they would be state clerks, look at their personal private life, they do not have anything to do with the people, with the faithful, they have only to do with a sort of governmental like structure in the dioceses, which are 100% leftists and which get their orders more or less directly from the different leftist think tanks that exist in Germany. That’s the problem. But yes, you will see that this will all end because the German, those Catholics do not have any youth. Nothing. They already struggle to find new people. And now obviously they say, “No, it’s now needed we need to open it for the women. Women for priests,” on which is not possible. It’s just not possible.
So even if they say, “I will now consecrate a woman,” she will not be a priest afterwards, which is terrible still. And a huge confusion and will cause many problems, but it will not change what God created. So therefore this will end.
Eric Sammons:
Now, so basically are the vocations, I’m assuming they’re not getting any vocations, are all the vocations basically going to the traditional orders at this point, or at least most of them in Germany and Austria?
Alexander Tschugguel:
So there are two big groups where they get vocations still. That’s the traditionalists obviously they are full. They have tons of vocations. And then the Neocon ones also the more charismatic ones, because even though they do not have a very strong teaching, they are normally very clear in the main question. So if you would ask a charismatic Catholic, “What do you think about abortion?” He would tell you it’s bad. If you would ask him, “What do you think about confessions?” It’s very important. Holy Masses, to them also very important. Praying the rosary is very important and all those things. So they are still Catholic in a way. The problem is just that they are confused and mixed up with a kind of Protestant theology, which ends up having huge problems in those communities. And they are a little bit organized, like Protestant types so they have a community popping up. There’s this one charismatic leader figure. And then he stops being a leader and then a community falls apart. So it’s not very stable.
So at the end of the day, lots of those charismatics turn traditional as well. So right now we have, for example, in our SFP community where I normally go to Mass here in Vienna, the church is really full and lots of the people who are there, young people, tons of young people there. Everyone, if you talk to them, some of them come from the charismatic part of the church. Some of them come from the Neocon part of the church. Some of them come from destroyed parishes. Some of them are converts. So you have them coming from everywhere.
And the tradition is just holding them together. As the Catholic traditional Mass is not a hobby, it’s not our style. It’s the Catholic Church being represented and presented in a way that is so beautiful that people are very much drawn to it as soon as they overcome their judgment. Some of them have brought wrong judgment about this because they heard. “Yeah, well, the traditionalists are all the crazy guys.” But we are not crazy. Go there. You can find tons of families with little children there. They are not crazy. They are very normal.
Eric Sammons:
So how would you, if you had to predict in the next 20 years, how the church in Germany, particularly how it’s going to develop and evolve based upon what’s happening now, what would you say is going to probably be the likely scenario over the next 20, 30 years in Germany?
Alexander Tschugguel:
Well, clearly the numbers of Catholics will shrink quite a lot. They will shrink. They will never totally go away. That’s impossible because right now we have all those young communities growing and they are very strong in faith. They will shrink. You will see having tons of women in charge of important positions for quite a time, because as long as they have money, they will be able to pay lots of people. And the Catholic Church in Germany is very rich.
So the diocese of Munich and Cologne and so on, they really have, I think even billions of euros, if I’m not wrong and they are really, really wealthy. And so at the end of the day, they will continue their work for quite lots of time. If not, God decides that he will now end this in other ways. I don’t know. So, but this is realistic. At the same time, you will see tradition communities growing. Some bishops will definitely fight more against them. Some bishops [inaudible] So you will have secret communities in one diocese and the public and very good working communities in the other dioceses. At the end of the day, this will just outlive modernism.
And if the political crisis continues in the way it does, then you don’t have to wait 20 or 30 years, but then you can wait 10 years, maybe, or five years, even because with the stronger the political crisis, the more people are drawn to the faith actually. Right now, if our bishops in Austria would do their job better than they unfortunately do, they could go around and be missionaries right now and send their priests out to do mission among the Austrian people. The Austria people are so highly confused and so highly irritated by what’s going on in the political sphere, the Catholic Church with it’s the oldest answer in the world, with all questions is actually very attractive.
Eric Sammons:
Now, here in America, with COVID and the COVID regime that all the lockdowns and everything like that, we saw it was a real revelation of a lot of things. Like people revealed who they were and what they stood for. And the churches, we saw that too, where people there’s been a big shift here of people going, like I said, the traditional parishes have actually grown tremendously after the COVID lockdowns. Not simply because of the external, they weren’t as strict on the rules about COVID rules, but more because I think, because it revealed that they put souls first. Souls were a more important bias. They were the ones willing to go into hospitals. They were willing to risk themselves for souls. Now did something similar happen in Europe? Like I know a lot of countries there had Massive COVID lockdowns as well. Was that a similar thing that happened there?
Alexander Tschugguel:
100%. 100% everywhere, everywhere. It was such a growth in trust. People suddenly still saw the traditional priest, because there’s this saying that the traditional priests only go there because it’s more fancy to be a traditional priest and you have nicer cloths, but it’s really not the case, especially not in Austria, by the way, where all the novels are the priests, often were very nice cloths. So that’s not a thing here. Yeah, yeah, no, 100%. I’m very happy to say that those in my community, the priests did really good work.
I also, my family, I had two of my grandfather, both my grandfathers died in the last year. And even though one of them was not Catholic, the other one was also not, he left the church and he entered the church again through the help of a very good traditional priest. And the other grandfather, we don’t know because he was already, so that he couldn’t talk about it anymore, but he’d say yes and no. And asked by traditional priest, by the way, if he wants to be with God with Jesus, if he dies now, he at least says, he said, “Yes.” It was the most beautiful moment I’ve ever seen in the life of my grandfather.
So I don’t know if this would work at the end, because your God will give him possibilities. And if he takes them or not, it was his situation back then. But those priests came and they helped. And I was not at all the only one, all my friends had similar situations, friends and others. And this was really good for those communities. Obviously it was also bad for other communities because there tons of people died without receiving sacraments.
Eric Sammons:
Now if I remember correctly, Austria had some pretty strict COVID rules. My daughters actually visited Austria in November. And I’ll just say they had to get in and out and it was a little bit dicey there. But so what were Catholics doing to resist the COVID regime that was happening in Austria and still is probably?
Alexander Tschugguel:
Yeah. It still is. The most beautiful reaction you can think of. We had an emergence of rosary rallies in Austria, which now happen every Wednesday. Today as after our interview, I will go into our office and I will prepare myself for today’s rosary rally. Because we started this two years ago on about 13th of May, 2020. And since then every second week, and now every week we pray the rosary together. It’s in more than 450 places in all of Austria, tons of priests involved, tons of faithful involved every Wednesday, every Wednesday, since now, two years. And it’s growing.
Eric Sammons:
That is amazing. And we did an article in Crisis about that actually, now that I think about it a couple months ago. So basically this just started up right after COVID started. So May of 2020.
Alexander Tschugguel:
In Vienna.
Eric Sammons:
And every Wednesday now. And how many different places in Austria does this happen?
Alexander Tschugguel:
In more than 450 places. I think it’s already more than 500 places where it happened, but regularly, it still happens in more than 400 places.
Eric Sammons:
And what exactly do you do?
Alexander Tschugguel:
You meet at 6:00 or 7:00 PM, depending on which time as you agreed on. And you meet, then we talk about if there are certain things we should pray for, especially in regard to our country and of huge things like pro-life of course and whatever, then you just pray rosary together.
Eric Sammons:
That’s amazing. It’s really inspiring. It’s it shows how God brings good out of evil.
Alexander Tschugguel:
Yeah. Yeah. If you go to the Twitter channel of St. Boniface Institute, and obviously I’m always telling people to follow this channel, it’s not the most interesting channel, the first view as we do not bring breaking news normally, but you will see that we post videos of those possessions regularly. And if you look through those videos, you will see, you obviously do not see very little children because at this time they are normally at home with their family, but you will see students, you will see people coming from work, you will see elderly people. You will see sometimes lots of priests, sometimes no priests, depending on the day, and whatever happened.
And normally in the wintertime, and we had really lots of people coming there. And at the end, we had more than 600 people at one of the possessions, just every week processions, just imagine this. And now obviously in the summertime people do not come as often anymore as they now have different… Now we are allowed to go to restaurants again, which was not possible for us up until a few weeks ago.
Eric Sammons:
Wow.
Alexander Tschugguel:
If you were not vaccinated, you were not allowed to go in any restaurant in Austria for quite a long time. And so all those people now do this more. And so now we do not have the same numbers anymore, but that doesn’t matter too much for me. It’s just about praying is good. We all know that if we don’t live a personal life of prayer, that we will not make it into heaven, because this is what is needed. And you have to say the same thing about our society in general or the people in general, also the society has to pray together. That’s very important.
Holy Mass, as you know, on Sunday, the church gave us the obligation to go there, but we can and also should, if possible go more often than on Sunday. Then you will see that the church wants the people to go there to gather in prayer doing holy Mass, for example. So the church asks us to do things also together. Also in public, the church asks us to do processions. The church wants us to erect crosses, statues of our lady, statues of the different saints and so on to remind the people. And the public prayer is nothing else than this.
People often criticized this at the beginning and said, “Well, you only want to show off your faith.” It’s an interesting way of putting it because more than half of the processions we did were done during lockdowns. So going on the street was always connected with having a bunch of police cars following you, and then screaming at you or trying to fine you for this. I don’t see how this will be good for my reputation. So at the end of the day, we did it for the prayer. It’s praying together is so powerful.
And we now did a meeting of all those people who always came to our rosary processions. When the restaurants opened again, we went to a restaurant where they were always very good, and they were also during the lockdowns they were very kind and did not do the same thing as others. And we expected 40 people at this meeting. And then 90 people showed up. And we talked to each of them on my team with the different families and so on, and what they told us are terrible stories. And they all told us how the prayer changed it into a beautiful story very often. And so I’m 100% convinced that this is the right answer to this crisis.
Eric Sammons:
Was it illegal to do these at first because of the lockdowns?
Alexander Tschugguel:
That’s a question. So according to Austrian law, no, because in Austria, the Catholic faith is exempt from nearly everything because it was a former state religion. So there is a difference. We have lots of contracts with the government, the church. There was this fight going on because the dioceses followed the Austrian law. And so the question was, can the diocese forbid me to privately organize a rosary rally or not? At the end of the day, they did not forbid it for us at all, not at all.
And we were once challenged. We were once fined and we challenged this and we won. So still, so even though our constitution was broken quite often in the last two years, they did not break this part of it yet.
Eric Sammons:
Who started these rosary rallies?
Alexander Tschugguel:
Our team St. Boniface Institute.
Eric Sammons:
St. Boniface Institute. Okay, great. Let’s segue into that then. So you founded St. Boniface Institute what was that? Three years ago? Two years ago, something like that?
Alexander Tschugguel:
Yeah. Also, the reorganization to it was founded three and a half years ago. It is St. Boniface itself was founded November, December, 2019.
Eric Sammons:
Okay. So what exactly is the purpose then? I mean, I gave the one line before, but what is exactly the purpose of the St. Boniface Institute?
Alexander Tschugguel:
Well, that’s now the most interesting question, obviously, because people always expect me to give a one line answer like we organize conferences or something like this, but I have to say that our approach is a little bit different. Our approach is that the Catholic faith is so important that everything should be all the powers of God.
So whatever you do, God should be the first reason for you to do it. So if you drink a glass of water, like I do all the time, I should not drink it in order to say because I want the glass of water, but in order to keep my body healthy, why? Because I want to fulfill the tasks God gives me in order to honor God. If I build the street, I build it so that priest can bring the sacraments to the sick and that I can go to Holy Mass and so on.
Secondly, to visit my family, to fulfill my futures in my work and so on, which is also part of my Godly vocation. So at the end of the day, everything covets God, then everything becomes quite clear and why you do things and how you do things as well. And so the St. Boniface Institute wants to help people to get a deep understanding of this by connecting good priests, good bishops with faithful, by promoting certain books, promoting certain prayers, certain devotions, and so on obviously as every Catholic organization, I think does.
And also, and that’s the more extraordinary part maybe by doing a little bit of kind of think tank like work. So what we do is we watch political developments very closely and try to find out what to do with them out of a Catholic point of view.
For example, easiest example, vaccination and abortion, very easy. Tons of Catholic questions coming up with the false vaccination, even for example, the Catholic Church in its note about the vaccine even said that there cannot be such a thing as a false vaccination, but obviously there are other problematic points with this note, but still, this was very clear.
You have those different topics to go through. And the problem is that I saw if people are in touch with all those different issues every day, even though it’s not their job, so for example, they have an everyday job as a, let’s say bus driver, work in a factory, work as a lawyer, working as a doctor, whatever, then those people are way more easily confused by it and follow certain theories way quicker than they should.
And I see this very clearly with the corona thing. People started to panic immediately, and panic is not our answer. Our answer is we trust God and God will leaders. And God led us actually through this crisis in a very beautiful way. And therefore, we tried to find out what can we do right now?
So we found out promoting prayer is very important. We found out connecting people to priests, as you said before, which still handed out the sacraments, even during the lockdown, this was very important. Bringing people together with good doctors, physicians, which do not force you to get vaccinated, which actually take care of you was very important. Bringing them connection with good Catholic lawyers and so on.
So this kind of work we do. So more or less, we screen the political landscape in order to find out whatever we are able to find out. Obviously we have limited resources. And we are trying to find out as much as possible about how this affects the Catholics. And also the others obviously we always think for the whole society, but the people we’re in contact with are Catholics mostly. And then we try to do different kind of work. So one of them is we work on press releases and articles and so on, and send them then to different media outlets in Europe, mostly, but also a little bit in the United States where we tell them, “Well, by the way this happened, this is a statement by us. If you want to use it, you can use this here, our sources, you can research this yourself, but do something with it.”
And normally this is very accepted so we can influence without doing it in a wrong way, and influence the public discussion by stating certain Catholic truths. So we normally look into the catechism and or to a certain paper letters and then [inaudible] and so on and try to find out answers. And this normally works out very well. And if we do not find answers, we ask a priest and good bishops and good cardinals, cardinals are bishops I know, but we ask them to help us with this.
So at the end of the day, this is what our work looks like. And so it’s difficult to put my finger in and say, that’s St. Boniface’s Institute’s work because at the end of the day, it does not really matter if we do it or someone else does it. The question is if we can contribute something, which is good and helps people to find God and defends the faith in public, especially all the Catholic traditions. And obviously we are a traditional institute, then we try to do it. If we find out someone else does it better, then we support someone else. That’s very easy.
So for example, we could never fulfill any task a priest should fulfill. So we try to stay in contact with as many priests as possible. And if a faithful asks is for a priest, we can say, “Yeah, go there.” So that we do not create this strange parallel structures where you suddenly think you are actually the better priest. You are actually the better physician. You are actually the best lawyer. No, we are not, but we can recognize this. So this is always our approach.
Eric Sammons:
Now, of course, you’re doing the rosary rallies are happening. Are there any other events, conferences, things that are coming up in the next coming months that you guys are planning?
Alexander Tschugguel:
So we did our conference in February, which was quite difficult because according to Austria law, it was not, I don’t want to say anything wrong on camera right now, but it was not clear if the way we did it was the way the Austrian law wanted us to do it. Let’s put it that way. But we had a conference and a ball after the conference, a very beautiful ball, where we gave people the possibility to meet other young Catholics.
At the conference, we talked about the different issues, and we tried to bring together good people and also to create some policy papers and strategy papers in order to hand them over the people who are interested in the Catholic position on a certain fight. And now upcoming, we do not have any big events because in the summertime, it’s impossible to plan anything in Austria. People are all gone.
So what we do is right now, we are working on a campaign against the so-called month of Pride. So we have in June, it’s so-called Pride month, so LGBT flags everywhere, it’s terrible. And so we do a campaign against this, which is very difficult following Austrian law because the discrimination laws are so heavy already that you can go actually into prison, quite already for criticizing this ideology in the wrong way. So we criticize it in the best possible way and the same time highlighting the Catholic teaching on family and so on.
This sounds a little bit boring, but this is connected with very active work. So we do meetings. We do speeches by very good priests. Ones which are not priests. We do lots of interviews, lots of media work and so on. So at the end of the day, you will not necessarily find St. Boniface Institute as a name often in media, but you will find tons of articles, which are influenced by our work.
And this is how we want to work, because I think that the European Union and the United Nations, but especially European Union here in Europe, are really going after us, we will not have free speech in anything anymore in the future. We are now about to implement the first social credit systems here in Europe. Bologna started, Vienna will follow in autumn, and we already have this. We now have a censorship law, which tells us not to spread certain media anymore or we get fined up to 50,000 euros and the medias on the list are defined not by our government, but by the European Union.
We have a new law coming out, which tells us that encryption in private messaging will be illegal towards the government. So the government will then be able to look inside everything you write on your phone, everything to everybody. It doesn’t matter if it’s a priest, doctor, a lawyer, your own wife and so on, so this will be really ugly. And at the end of the day the only thing we can do to combat this is to strengthen the Catholic society.
We do not invent the Catholic society. God creates the Catholic society by calling people, by giving them their vocation and through baptism and through receiving of the sacraments, through staying within Catholic society, more demand is automatically created, we have to recognize it. So we do not want to create parallel structures. We recognize working in good structures, that’s a different approach. So we do not say the government is corrupt. So we now create our own parallel government that’s wrong because that’s not a Catholic approach. And this would be fleeing from actually our task of being here in this world. God wants us to be here.
We as pro-lifers, say, every child is wanted by God. God’s will is perfect. So he wants us to be right now where we are with all our skills, but we recognize that if something leads people towards evil this cannot be good. So therefore we try to find out if there are [inaudible] emerging naturally, which leads people towards good. And those structures, we promote. The good doctors, the good priests, the good lawyers, the good teachers, the good family structures, the good businesses, and so on. We just promote them all the time, every day, every day in the whole life.
And I hope, and I believe, and this is my vision, at the end of the day, this will be working society also strong enough to keep government running and keep society also on a legal, in a state to make a state work. That’s, I think what will happen, but I think we cannot invent this. We have to find it.
Eric Sammons:
It’s amazing that the restrictions you guys have and are, and it sounds like it’s increasing. We complain over here in America, but the truth is here at Crisis. I don’t worry about at least not yet the cops coming after me. I mean, what we would have is, Facebook would cancel us or Twitter, something like that. But it sounds like if you guys do things the wrong way, like Pride month, we have that here too. We can say whatever we want about it and we might get canceled on social media, but we’re not going to get arrested, but it sounds like you guys could get fined and arrested if you say the wrong thing.
Alexander Tschugguel:
Yeah. This starts, it gets heavier and heavier every year. And we have a law called [foreign language] I cannot translate it, but it’s more or less a hate speech law, which says that if you promote hate towards groups of certain sexual interests and on, so LGBT whatever, then you can get fined or face prison up to two years. That’s the law. So at the end of the day, the government does not use it as harshly as they could, but they increase it every year. So every year that fines and the people get punished more. So it’s a silent way of increasing it. You know? And every time the people accept it more or less because the government will tell them no, no, no, we don’t go after free speech only after this particular terrorist.
And then, this terrorist is gone and then the level is one step higher. Then the next guy is a terrorist and so on. So this is very easy. It’s a very communist way of handing things. If you read any book about communism, I always highly appreciate if people have read the book [foreign language] who describes very well, how everything happened and worked out, you will find so many parallels.
Hey, I live next to the communist governments, the Hungarian border it’s less than 100 kilometers from here. I can drive within half an hour more or less. If you talk to old Hungarians, old Polish, old Czech people, and so on, ask them, “What do you think of what’s happening right now?” Everyone and I’m quoting them. “I know this. This was my childhood.”
Eric Sammons:
Wow. I was going to wrap it up, but now you mentioned Hungary. I’ve just got to bring that up now, since you’re so close to it. Now, it sounds like there’s some good things going on in Hungary with the leadership and things. And I don’t know, honestly, I don’t always believe everything I read either good or the bad. So what’s your take on Orban and Hungary seems to be going a different path than most of Europe, is that true or not?
Alexander Tschugguel:
Yeah, that’s definitely true. It’s a huge talk right now. So I would give a small answer here if you allow me. Hungary understood that the Hungarian people are more important than certain ideologies. That’s what they understood. But obviously they are not as independent as one would think unfortunately. So at the end of the day, the Hungarians do a huge work very, very good and very happy to have them. And I think we as Austrians should work very closely with them. But government right now would not do this because we have a leftist government, but it would be a very good idea.
And some of our political people also do try to do this, but at the end of the day, if the Hungarians don’t have a missionary movement, they will also lose. And this is not happening there yet. Even though I have to tell you that the Catholic communities in Hungary are growing and also becoming more traditional every month. So who knows? I definitely believe Hungary is a fantastic country right now to be in except the vaccine question. Because in the vaccine question, they were unfortunately as terroristic as everyone else. Except this question, the Hungarians are actually doing really good work, especially if it comes to the family politics, family politics are really amazing there.
Eric Sammons:
That’s good to hear. Yeah, that’s good. It sounds like there are it, from what it sounds like to me in Europe, it’s like, there are definitely all the bad things we hear about over here, but there’s a lot of good things going underground that aren’t as well known, but they’re growing and they’re happening.
Alexander Tschugguel:
Yes, they do. And believe me, you will see in a few years, if you would travel Europe and maybe Europe is already really the dictatorship we expect it to become, then you will have an underground social life. And we as Europeans we know how to do this because we had so many, unfortunately, so many decades where we could try out and practice for this. We have our own culture for this. We have our own songs for this. We have our own pictures and art for this. We all have this.
So we just have to revive this, get it out of the basement, freshen it up a little bit and at the end we would like it, but that’s not our goal. Our goal is not underground. Our goal is to do whatever God wants us to do. If God wants us to do this to move our life more to an underground social life, this could definitely be what we are going to do, but God will show us. God shows us very directly everything we did the last two years if we kneel down in prayer and ask God, “Please help us with this decision.” The decisions worked out well every, every single time.
Eric Sammons:
Right. Yeah. I think in America, if God calls us to underground, we have no idea how to do it. We just never have had to over here. So we might get some lessons from you guys.
Alexander Tschugguel:
And we, yeah. What we need from you actually, that’s the reason why I said at the beginning, I really like the Mag. It’s also it was not a critique that the European student talked too much about this. It’s a matter of fact that we cannot talk too much about this as well. And you can. So yes, there are some fights which are really annoying. So for example, when this whole fight among traditionalists came up about certain theological questions, which can definitely be sorted out inside and not outside this was very annoying. And every European, traditionalist was very annoyed by this because we all said, “Why do you have to do this right now? It’s just destroying your reputation, it’s destroying everything you do.”
At the end of the day, whenever I come to the United States, it was not possible for the last two years, but now there is a possibility for me. Whenever I come to the United States, I’m amazed by the wonderful communities there, but a fantastic breeze, but a wonderful faith, great, great media by lots of universities who were able to create. And so I’m 100% sure the United States, the people of the United States, the Catholics of the United States will play an important role in the fight against evil. They already play an important role in the fight against evil that I’m 100% sure of that.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, God willing and hopefully we’ll all continue. So one last thing I wanted to ask you, how do just practically the St. Boniface Institute, how does it fund itself and how do people support the institute?
Alexander Tschugguel:
So there are two ways of how people can support us. We have, obviously you can just donate. We have the Patron and a PayPal and a direct bank account details online. I know that it’s for many Americans, it’s not too attractive to fund a European organization because why should they it’s here? So what I try to focus on is trying to get donors from Europe to fund the organization. It works out quite well.
We still, obviously, as every European organization, we work with very low salaries, very, very… Lots of people who work for us for free. Without this, this would not work. So we have lots of people who work for us because it’s a good cause and are very happy about this. But in general, it is possible to support us.
Our work is not always visible, but whenever you come to Austria, whenever you want to come here, you will see that the work can be visible for you if you want to. It’s just that we cannot make certain things visible anymore as it is just not legal anymore. Just imagine all the meetings we had during the lockdowns. I talk about this very often because I would never tell the police where and who and so on, but all of them were illegal. All of them. We did them every week, a few times.
Eric Sammons:
I mean, God bless you that’s great. I mean, that’s what we have to do is just when it’s the right thing to do, when God wants us to do it, we just do it.
Alexander Tschugguel:
That’s it.
Eric Sammons:
No matter what the secular governments might say. So I will put a link to the St. Boniface Institute website, and also the Twitter account because you said you have the nice videos there. I just want to mention to people, the book The Ever Ancient, Ever New, I’ll put a link to that as well from Tan publishers. The nice chapter by you in that about why younger generations are embracing traditional Catholicism. Anything else that you want people to go to or find out about?
Alexander Tschugguel:
Well, the easiest thing to, well, if you want to follow our work, please subscribe to our newsletter. We do talks every now and then where I talk about the political situation from a Catholic point of view. I assume they are once or twice every second month. So this is not very often. We do not annoy you with newsletters every week. We send out newsletters very rarely. Not because we don’t do so much, but just because I think that others do this better and what our work can be, should be straight to is what we are good in.
And obviously follow us on Twitter. Follow us on… We have a Telegram channel now St. Boniface has a telegram channel. We have a Twitter profile and we have an Instagram profile for people who want to be an on Instagram.
And I have a Twitter account as well. Alexander Tschugguel, it’s just @ATschugguel, very easy to find. Where I comment sometimes. Right now I just reread it a little bit because I had too many things to do, but whenever things happen here, I always comment on them and you’re normally without showing off, but you’re normally very well informed if you follow me on Twitter because I know normally what’s happening here, especially.
And the central European point of view is a very interesting point of view as we are in between north, south, east, and west. And we are a Catholic country so we have this Catholic approach. So who knows, maybe this is very interesting for lots of you. And if you want to support us and want to donate us on our homepage you will find all the details.
The main support, and I’m not kidding about this is definitely the prayer support. As I know that there are certain situations in our fight, which are really, really unpleasant, really unpleasant. It’s about if you find out that people’s life got completely destroyed through whatever the political system did and we cannot help them, often the situation comes up. And so for this, especially your prayers are very needed and I’m always very thankful if people do this.
Eric Sammons:
That’s great. Yeah. So, so I guess I’ll put links to all that stuff in the show notes so people can find it. I really appreciate you being on here and telling us about it. It was very informative. It actually, I’m much more encouraged now than I probably was before we started talking about what’s going on in Europe with the Catholics there. So I’m glad that we did this. Hopefully other people who are listening are also more encouraged than they might have been before.
Alexander Tschugguel:
Yeah. Yeah. You could definitely be encouraged. Believe me, I’m traveling around right now quite often because I can, the restrictions are gone. All the good communities are really growing and do very well right now. So it’s difficult for them, but we exist and it’s well connected and it works.
Eric Sammons:
Great, great.
Alexander Tschugguel:
Good fruits coming out with this.
Eric Sammons:
Great. Well, God bless you. God bless the work that you’re doing there at St. Boniface.
Alexander Tschugguel:
Thank you very much. God bless you as well. I’m very happy that I could be on the show. And when I come to the United States, I will send you an email and maybe we can…
Eric Sammons:
Oh, that would be great. I would love that. I would love that. Okay, everybody until next time, God love you.
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