"Great concern about the separatist mentality"

This is the complete text of the letter written by Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, as head of the Pontifical Commission 'Ecclesia Dei', to the Archbishop of Bombay, India, Ivan Cardinal Dias, regarding the return of three of four diocesan seminarians who had gone to a Seminary of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (FSSPX/SSPX) in Australia (the Holy Cross Seminary) and then returned to Bombay.

PONTIFICIA COMMISSIO
ECCLESIA DEI

No. 260/91
Rome, 24 February 2006

Your Eminence,

I wish to acknowledge with gratitude your kind letter to me of 5 February 2006 regarding the return to your flock of three seminarians who had left your Archdiocesan Major Seminary in 2002 to enter to the seminary of the Society of St Pius X in Goulburn, Australia. I am particularly appreciative of the memoranda by these seminarians which you have enclosed and I rejoice with you that they have responded to the grace to return to the fullness of the Catholic faith and life in India. I am very pleased to know that they have found in Your Eminence a paternal welcome back to the bosom of the Catholic Church and I pray that their experience will make them value ever more the importance of being in full communion with the Successor of Peter.

The testimony of these seminarians gives reason for great concern about the separatist mentality which surrounded them in the seminary in Goulburn and which they finally had the grace to reject. I sincerely hope that it will be possible to save their vocations. Their testimony could be a powerful apologetic argument in favour of Catholic unity.

I believe that in dealing with these seminarians, Your Eminence has found a sound way to proceed in any similar cases in the future.

Grateful to your kindness in sharing this information with me and assuring you of my sentiments of fraternal esteem, I remain

Sincerely yours in Christ,

+ Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos

The implications of the contents of the letter are unknown, as the FSSPX is indirectly accused of harboring a "separatist mentality" in its seminaries -- or at least in its Australian seminary. Three of the four seminarians had written some strong testimonies in 2004 regarding what they had considered doubtful and unorthodox practices in the Diocesan Seminary of Bombay [it is not clear if the three who wrote the testimonies are exactly the same three who returned, but at least two of them are, naturally].