Photo of the Week

Likely effect of today's priestly formation

The man with reflective glasses in the foreground of the two gifs on this page is Fr. Alberto Ravagnani, an Italian priest from the Diocese of Milan.

He is a good example of how a seminarian and then a priest are being formed following the "openness to the world" policy encouraged by both the documents of the Council dealing with these two important matters, respectively Optatam Totius and Presbiterorum Ordinis.

We divided the priestly life of Fr. Ravagnani into phases to illustrate in practice how the normal young man who enter the seminary – one of the few who is not homosexual or pedophile – likely "progress" in his vocation.

In the first phase he still maintained some piety and took the priestly life seriously; in the second phase, following the Vatican II line, he plunged fully into the life of the world; in the third phase, he left the priesthood because he could not resist the attractions of the world.

These bad consequences of the adaptation to the world that are so obvious for any Catholic who still has a drop of good sense, were not effectively addressed by Pope Leo XIV in his Apostolic Letter Fidelity, which supposedly aimed to carefully analyze the formation of seminarians and priests.

Blindness? Complacency?

Translation from Italian, last two photos:
‘I was a priest, now I am free’
‘I have removed the habit of priest Fr. Alberto’

Photos & gifs from the Internet

Posted February 15, 2026

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