A brief history of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer

The Transalpine Redemptorists was founded with the blessing of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the encouragement of Cardinal Gagnon, on 8 December 1987 when Cardinal Gagnon was visiting the Society of St Pius X as the Papal Visitator. The following year, on 2 August, 1988, a young Redemptorist priest with a seminarian of the Society of St Pius X, and several first aspirants formed a fledgling monastic community consecrated to the celebration of the old Mass, and to living according to the spirit and tradition of St Alphonsus, the founder of the Redemptorists.

Warden Manor on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, England, was their first monastery and the cradle of the Order until 2001. Five of these early years were also spent in Joinville, France. In 1999, Divine Providence directed them to the ancient monastic island of Papa Stronsay in Orkney, Scotland; now the Order’s Mother House.

Formal recognition of the community took place when, on 15th August 2012, the Bishop of Aberdeen, the Rt Reverend Dom Hugh Gilbert, OSB, canonically erected the community as a Clerical Religious Institute of Diocesan Right. Three years later by the Decree of Approval of the 18 May 2016 the Constitutions of The Congregation of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer were given their final approbation.

The second house of the Congregation is in the diocese of Christchurch, New Zealand. The Transalpine Redemptorists first arrived there in 2007. After the interior reconciliation of 2008, they received fatherly support from the then Local Ordinary, Bishop Barry Jones, who in 2012 announced that he would entrust them with the pastoral care of the Latin Mass Chaplaincy, and who, on 15th April 2014, sealed his approval of their Congregation by formally inviting them to establish a canonical house within the territory of his diocese.

The Congregation’s third canonical foundation is in the diocese of Great Falls-Billings, in Montana, USA. Bishop Michael Warfel welcomed the Congregation into his diocese on the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary, 7 October 2020. The pioneer community, at present living near the city of Jordan, Montana, is in the process of erecting a monastery and retreat house in the county of Rosebud, Montana.