The Church has usually placed key positions in dioceses in the hands of local clergy as soon as the latter are readily available.

Today, in the SSPX, there is not a single priory or district that does not have a local man available to take charge. Yet, the French influence is there to be seen across the world.

In the English speaking world, even in former colonies and the Philippines, the locals have absorbed some of the cultural attitudes of the former colonial powers, and so it is difficult to adjust to some of the French priests whose mannerisms are sometimes taken to be off-hand and un-necessarily sarcastic, and whose English is not always easy to understand.

A late priest friend of mine, many years ago, quit his religious order, along with a group of colleagues, on the grounds of severe “ cultural differences “ with the then superior. Alarmed at this incident Rome asked the Mother House of the order to send a Visitor. The findings went totally against the Superior and his advisors,  who were also his fellow countrymen. They were all removed and were replaced by locals. The order thrives unto this day.

A local SSPX priest suggested to his District Superior that he cut down on his many trips here and there in order that another church be built with the money thus saved. The retort was to “ go and beg in America if you want to build a church! “.
A lady translating the Sunday sermon into the local language stopped doing so simply because of the attitude of the then Prior. “ He considers us to be uncivilized ”. His successor, another Frenchman, was said by his (French) confreres to be rather shy and reticent to be put in charge. I personally saw the man in action and for the first time I realized that being shy and being obnoxious were one and the same thing.

Rather than keep elaborating, let me conclude by saying that this great French connection in the appointment of personnel to head districts and priories should be cut back. A recently deceased Benedictine Abbot in the USA is said to have joked, to other Trad priests, about the “French Fried” formation absorbed even by the US SSPX Traditional Benedictines.