A New Sedevacantist Bishop: Fr. Germán Fliess to be consecrated a Bishop in November

Announcement made by Bp. Sanborn

A New Sedevacantist Bishop:

Fr. Germán Fliess to be consecrated Bishop in November

The August 2022 newsletter of Most Holy Trinity Seminary in Florida and Pennsylvania contains an announcement for an episcopal consecration. The Most Rev. Donald Sanborn will consecrate Fr. German Fliess a bishop on Nov. 30, 2022.

The following is the announcement published by Bp. Sanborn:

This month we are pleased to announce the upcoming episcopal consecration of Father Germán Fliess, scheduled for November 30th of this year, in Brooksville, Florida.

We have decided upon this consecration in order to make sure that the Roman Catholic Institute, its seminarians and its faithful, never be deprived of the services of a bishop, particularly in what pertains to the continuation of valid sacerdotal and episcopal orders.

Not only is validity of orders a concern, however. We desire also to ordain and consecrate clergy who are well formed, both spiritually and academically, and who enjoy good reputations.

The Catholic priesthood and episcopacy could be compared to 24 carat gold, inasmuch as they are gifts which proceed directly from the Holy Ghost. They are always of supreme supernatural dignity, whether they should be possessed by great saints or by the most depraved sinners. Just like gold, they do not change, do not tarnish or rust, do not lose their intrinsic excellence, no matter who possesses them.

Since these gifts are so exalted by nature, it behooves the possessor of them to be of the highest morals and piety, and sufficiently trained in philosophy and theology, according to Canon Law. It is for this reason that we operate the seminary according to high standards, the best that we can do, always improving wherever we can.

A good and well-trained priest can attract non-Catholics and Novus Ordites to the Catholic Faith simply by his piety, dignity, knowledge, good morals, and refinement.

Conversely, although a strong Catholic can look beyond even the serious faults and sins of a priest, concentrating on his sacred priesthood, nonetheless the weak can be easily turned away by such aberrations.

For these reasons, we strive to produce from our seminary priests and bishops with all of the good qualities which I mentioned.

Father Fliess is just such a priest. Anyone who knows him could attest to that. He is pious, zealous in apostolic labors, humble, obedient, discreet, very intelligent, absolutely firm in his faith and uncompromising detestation of modernism. He is well versed in Sacred Theology, and teaches Sacred Scripture, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in our seminary.

He is so humble, in fact, that when we approached him about the idea of being consecrated, his first reaction was that he would absolutely abhor any position of direction or management. We assured him that we would preserve him from such roles, and reserve him for the distribution of the sacraments.

Please keep Father Fliess in your prayers, as the episcopacy is a heavy burden. The very life of the Church — the priesthood, the Mass, the Holy Eucharist, and the episcopacy itself — is placed in the hands of a consecrated bishop, and his accounting to God increases a hundredfold. The Church rises and declines as its priests rise and decline, and it is the bishops who choose and ordain priests.

(Source: Most Holy Trinity Seminary Newsletter, August 2022, pp. 1-2)

Bishop-elect Fliess hails from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was ordained a priest by Bp. Sanborn on December 15, 2010, in Brooksville, Florida.

The following video shows Fr. Fliess preach a sermon on the dogma of the Most Holy Trinity, the central mystery of our holy religion:

As Church law prescribes two co-consecrators for an episcopal consecration, Bp. Sanborn will be joined by at least two other bishops for the ceremony, one of whom will no doubt be Bp. Joseph Selway, who was consecrated by Bp. Sanborn in 2018 and is also affiliated with the Roman Catholic Institute.

Bp. Sanborn was consecrated a bishop in 2002 by Bp. Robert F. McKenna (1927-2015), who in turn had been consecrated in 1986 by Bp. Michel-Louis Guérard des Lauriers, O.P. As a priest, Fr. Guerard des Lauriers was theological advisor to Pope Pius XII, taught at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, and co-authored the 1969 Ottaviani Intervention. He was made a bishop in 1981 by the Vietnamese Bp. Peter Martin Ngo-dinh-Thuc, who had been appointed by Pope Pius XI in 1938.

Image source: YouTube (screenshot)
License: fair use