Fr. Joseph Marie Falciano, FSSP, celebrated a traditional Solemn Mass last evening at St. Mary’s Church in Norwalk. Having been ordained to the priesthood on May 28, Fr. Falciano was celebrating his first Mass in his former parish. After Mass he offered his first priestly blessing to each of the faithful. This Mass and the music was sponsored by our Society.

St. Mary Church, Norwalk, is giving to the Church two new priests this year.

Fr. Joseph Marie Falciano, FSSP, was ordained to the priesthood at St. Cecilia Cathedral in Omaha on May 28.   He will be celebrating at Solemn Mass at St. Mary’s on Tuesday, June 9 at 7 pm. He will be giving first priestly blessings after Mass. A reception will follow.

Deacon Juan Colon will be ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Bridgeport on Saturday June 13 at 11 am in St. Augustine Cathedral.   He will be celebrating his First Mass at St. Mary’s  on Sunday June 14 at 12 noon (Spanish Mass). 

Please keep both of these young men in your prayers.

Fr. Falciano will be celebrating traditional Masses at the following churches in the area:

Tuesday June 9, St. Mary Church, Norwalk, 7 pm Solemn Mass, reception to follow

Wednesday, June 10, St. Josaphat Oratory, Bayside, Queens, 7 pm, Solemn Mass, reception to follow

Friday, June 12, St. Vincent Ferrer, New York, NY, 9:30 am, Solemn Mass for Feast of the Sacred Heart, Missa Pange Lingua by Josquin des Prez.

Saturday, June 13. St. Margaret of Cortona, Bronx, NY, 10 am, Solemn Mass

Sunday, June 14, Annunciation Church, Crestwood, NY, 2 pm, Solemn Mass, reception to follow

Father Jon Tveit will celebrate the following Traditional Masses to mark his 10th anniversary of ordination:

Sunday, May 24: Annunciation Church in Crestwood, NY, Solemn Mass, 2 pm, convivium to follow

Saturday, May 30, Church of the Blessed Sacrament, New Rochelle, NY, 12 noon, Ember Saturday Solemn Mass

This Thursday, May 14, is Ascension Thursday, a Holy Day of Obligation. The following churches will offer the Traditional Mass.

If you know of a Mass that is not on our schedule, please contact us so that we can add it.

Connecticut

St. Mary Church, Norwalk, low Mass 8 am; Solemn Mass 7 pm

Georgetown Oratory of the Most Sacred Heart, Redding, Missa Cantata, 6 pm

Sts. Cyril and Methodius Oratory, Bridgeport, low Mass 7:45 am; high Mass, 6 pm

St. Patrick Oratory, Waterbury, low Mass 8 am; high Mass 6 pm preceded by Benediction

St. Martha Church, Enfield, 7 pm

New York

Church of the Holy Innocents, New York, NY Low Mass 8 am; High Mass 6 pm

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, New York, NY, 7 pm

St. Josaphat Oratory, Bayside, Queens, 7 am Low Mass (Confession after Mass); 6 pm Eucharistic Holy Hour (Confession will be heard during adoration); 7 pm High Mass

St. Rocco Church, Glen Cove, Long Island, 7 pm

St. Matthew Church, Dix Hills, Long Island, 10:30 am

St. Paul the Apostle, Yonkers, 12 noon

Annunciation Church, Crestwood, Missa Cantata 7 pm

Immaculate Conception, Sleepy Hollow, low Mass, 5 pm

Sacred Heart, Esopus, 11:30 am

St. Mary and St. Andrew, Ellenville, 7 pm

St Joseph’s, Troy, 5:30 pm. Carmelite Rite.

New Jersey

Our Lady of Sorrows, Jersey City, High Mass, 7 pm

Holy Trinity Church, Hackensack, Missa Cantata, 7 pm

Our Lady of Fatima Chapel, Pequannock, 7 am, 9 am, 12 noon, 7 pm

St. Anthony of Padua Oratory, West Orange, Low Mass 9 am; HIgh Mass 7 pm

Shrine Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, Raritan, 7 pm

St. John the Baptist, Allentown, High Mass 7 pm

CREW is a Catholic Leadership Program that serves teens in the greater Danbury area and brings community, tradition, and the Traditional Mass to teens who would otherwise never have access to or experience it.

“The program will display the dizzying range of music that coexisted in one place a one time.”

Cifras nuevas presents music from the 16th and 17th centuries for the duo of harp and guitar or vihuela. Widely attested to in European iconography and Latin American folkloric traditions, this combination of instruments performed music ranging from ornamented canto llano to dances of African origin. The first half of our program will feature sacred works and instrumental fantasies from the 16th century, including Luis Venegas de Henestrosa’s setting of the “Ave maris stella.” The second half will explore the preludes and dances of the 17th century, spotlighting the dual influences of Italian harmonic innovations and the rhythms of Spain’s colonial possessions.

(Above) Raphael: The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia. From Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale (at the Exhibition Raphael: Sublime Poetry)

Raphael: Sublime Poetry

Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New  York

March 29–June 28, 2026

The Metropolitan Museum has just opened a new exhibition on Raphael. Now Raphael Sanzio has been, even in his own lifetime and up to the present day, one of the most famous artists who ever lived. This exhibition collects many paintings and drawings of the artist. It’s a unique opportunity to study the artist’s  development as well as the development of his individual works of art based on this unique juxtaposition of works from all over the world.

Now Raphael’s time (he died in 1520 at just 37 years of age) was of course a unique culmination of Renaissance and Western art. It was the age of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Giorgione, Bellini, and Titian, among many others. Raphael at an early age showed a complete mastery of the technical handicraft of art. But early on he also showed a unique organizational talent and an ability to receive and understand contributions of others which he incorporated creatively into his style. 

Raphael’s career reached its apogee in the Rome of Popes Julius II and Leo X, where he found appropriate challenges for his artistic genius. As time went on the commissions grew ever larger and he was able to meet the situation by assembling and managing a well-trained workshop. A true universal genius of the Renaissance, Raphael later had a role in the planning of the new basilica of Saint Peter. Moreover,  he was able to work with  artists in other media, creating influential works that for centuries diffused his style all over Europe (the prints of Raimondi; the great tapestries for which Raphael prepared the cartoons).  All this can be seen in this exhibition. 

But Raphael was not merely an exemplar of a static, “canonized” art. In his interactions with the art of Leonardo or Michelangelo he was already laying the foundations for further developments. Especially his later frescoes introduce movement, drama and conflict. It was these principles that would dominate the next period of art –  mannerism – after Raphael’s death.

In this exhibition we see abundant evidence of the various aspects of his genius. Take the many  images of the Madonna, each one carefully differentiated from the others. The portraits are of unique quality. Then, there are the great religious paintings. The religious works  demonstrate the significance of Raphael’s and Renaissance Italy’s Catholicism for the art of the High Renaissance – this is no “art for art’s sake.” The Madonnas, as the exhibition points out, derive ultimately from a Byzantine icon of the 12th and 13th centuries. It was an image that was particularly relevant when the mortality of both mothers and children in childbirth was exceedingly high. The tapestries, depicting events from the Gospels or the acts of the apostles, are of epic grandeur. 

But of particular relevance to the spiritual vision of Raphael  is the painting of Saint Cecilia in ecstasy.  The saint turns her eyes to heaven, viewing a chorus of angels singing, while she holds, facing downward,  a small organ. At her feet, strewn  on the ground, are various worldly musical instruments, “broken and unstrung”. She is surrounded by four other saints involved in a mysterious dialogue with each other or with the viewer. The style is not didactic but displays great insight into the personages depicted.

The Metropolitan Museum was able to restrain its woke commentary more than it usually has done recently. Yes,  in this exhibition there are passages in the Museum’s texts about the dire position of women in Renaissance –  ignoring the role that extremely well-educated women played in the unfolding of the Renaissance as the exhibition itself points out. I also did not appreciate the use of the Alba Madonna as a logo on posters, scarves, refrigerator magnets and mugs. 

(Above) The “Alba Madonna.” Currently in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. – previously in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg.(From the exhibition Raphael: Sublime Poetry)

Now such an exhibition, involving consideration and comparison of many drawings and paintings,  summons the visitor to contemplation. That is difficult to achieve in the crowded exhibition halls of the Metropolitan Museum. With a few exceptions the crowd was definitely older or to put it more frankly,  old. Some visitors  were in wheelchairs or using walkers. Is this because the art of Raphael –  that once  had been almost a cliché –  now is known only to those who attended  high school or college art courses in the distant past? I don’t know! 

And what is a Catholic to think about the light this exhibition may shed upon the current situation in the Catholic Church?  Because Raphael, in contrast to the artists of modernity was not an individual creator but was embedded in a society that shared his ideals and offered him the patronage to realize  them. These was especially true of Raphael’s two principal patrons, Julius II and Leo X. If we move forward to our own day there’s quite a different situation. Even though it may be an invidious comparison to set the current regime of  the Vatican against that which produced perhaps the highest development of Western art, we have to admit that the current artistic patronage of the Roman Catholic Church is a sick joke. We have the cartoon-like images of Marco Rupnik. We have the obsequious courting of contemporary artists by clerics like Cardinal Ravasi and Bishop Fisichella. By introducing the “Luce” mascot of the 2025 jubilee year, the Catholic Church abased itself before what their semi-senile leadership  thinks is popular “youth” culture. Then we have,  with the direct involvement of the late Pope Francis, agitprop-like art: statues of migrants,  art created in women’s prison etc.

Raphael, with his precocious ability, seemingly unlimited facility,   organizational skill,  authentically classical harmony -as well as his  evident religious faith – may  seem alien to our day’s notion of the artist. The Metropolitan Museum itself offers  a strangely contrasting exhibition, now in its final days, of Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946). We see, in her works, the final stages of the Western figurative tradition: isolated individuals, dreamy symbolist landscapes, self-portraits revealing a person seemingly in dissolution or even on the brink of madness. 

We ourselves cannot recreate the art or the specific circumstances of the High Renaissance. Much of 19th century Catholic ecclesiastical art was a commendable but not totally successful attempt to do so (e.g., the “Nazarenes”). But what we can do is study the masterpieces of an artist like Raphael, and attempt to  understand the great skill,  discipline and intellectual effort that were necessary to create them. And perhaps from this study, God willing,  a new Christian art may arise in some way and at some time not yet known to us.  For it is by engaging with the masters of the past that a rebirth  ( that is, a “renaissance “) of culture will come.