Priestly Fraternity of St Peter

The Priestly Fraternity of St Peter is a Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical right, that is, a community of priests who do not take religious vows, but who work together for a common mission in the Catholic Church.  The mission of the Fraternity is two-fold:

1. the formation and sanctification of priests in the cadre of the traditional liturgy, commonly called the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, and
2. the care of souls and pastoral activities in the service of the Church.

The Fraternity was founded on 18 July 1988 at the Abbey of Hauterive (Switzerland) by a dozen priests and a score of seminarians. Shortly after the Fraternity’s foundation and following upon a request by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Bishop Josef Stimpfle of Augsburg, Germany granted the Fraternity a home in Wigratzbad, a Marian shrine in Bavaria.  It is here that the European seminary of the Fraternity is currently found, and which is the mother-house of the community. The General House, on the other hand, is situated in Fribourg, Switzerland.  There are currently almost 287 priests and 150 seminarians in the Fraternity.

The Fraternity came to Australia in March 2000 and has so far been invited by the bishops to work in their Dioceses of Sydney, Parramatta, Canberra and Adelaide.  In 2017, the Fraternity also started an apostolate in Auckland, New Zealand.