Bishop Williamson, my personal experience in Italy

“The most ferocious war against God in history is underway, but we must resist, always pray the Rosary, and so we will have nothing to fear. Treat your wife well, Cristiano, always love her because you are the arms and the mind of your family, but she… she is the heart, the woman is the beating heart of the family!“

It was a gloomy afternoon last October, and these are the last words that His Excellency Bishop Richard Williamson addressed to me personally for the last time. I remember as if I had that situation right there in front of me, on the hills of Reggio: after leaving work, I went to say my last goodbye because the next day he would be leaving for Rome, and a few days later he would be returning to England. As I approached the room where he was staying, at the home of priest friends, I glimpsed him through the glass of his room, in the dim light, intent on looking outside, with a deep gaze that characterized him, that short panorama that all in all could remind him very well of London. He motioned for me to come in, and so I did. The bishop, with his powerful build, was sitting on a chair, with the lights in the room off, and that scant light of day providing a little illumination around. Next to him was a large ancient confessional, a place where one encounters the infinite Mercy of God.

The Mgr. motioned for me to sit in front of him, but asked me to wait a moment: he showed me the Rosary, as if to make me understand that he was finishing reciting it and I had to wait a moment, because the things of God are always more important than any human dialogue. We then spoke for about forty minutes, which however seemed like an eternity, and I would have liked to have more time. It was a slow dialogue, with many sighs from His Excellency. He seemed almost worried about having to leave this world soon, in the grip of the greatest delirium. However, there was no lack of words of comfort and hope. Essential words, profoundly religious, profoundly Catholic, profoundly human. Just like the ones I quoted at the beginning: those last words, in that last legacy that I had the grace of receiving from Monsignor Williamson, there is everything a man has to know about the Faith, everything a man has to know about his main duties.

The humanity of a bishop and a father

Humanity, so much humanity, but that humanity that is perfectly represented in the humanity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and that Mgr. Williamson, beyond appearances and vain narratives, was truly able to recognize.

And it is precisely in this way that I would like to remember and speak of the English bishop, who gave up his soul to God on January 29th. I do not want to speak of what he did, of the positions he held, of his, let’s say, “institutional” roles: there are those who can certainly do it better than me, who would instead like to present my personal experience as a person who had the true grace, together with my family, to sometimes be in close contact with Williamson.

I remember well when, in the now distant 2019, after the important conference he held at the beginning of June in Reggio Emilia, he came to stay at our house: the next morning, making an appointment for breakfast at 08:00, he began to talk to me about the nightingale he had heard singing outside for almost the whole night. He was so struck by it that he continued to talk to me about it for years to come, asking me, year after year, what had happened to that nightingale with the melodious and harmonious song that the bishop, as a great connoisseur and admirer of classical music, had been able to recognize and reward in his memoirs. My son Tommaso, at that time, had just turned two, but he was already a big noisy chatterbox. During that famous breakfast, however, while His Excellency talked about nightingale songs, he remained silent, almost terrified by the imposing presence of the British bishop, who nevertheless did not fail to show smiles and his typical funny faces to my son. Shortly afterward we accompanied him to a place he had wanted to see for a long time, but which he was able to visit in full only a few years later, because that time we found it closed: the Castle of Canossa. When we reached the foot of the walls, once he had ascertained that the castle was closed to visitors, he looked at me seriously and said: «If you want and if you are familiar with him, you can still tell Don Davide Pagliarani (Rev. Pagliarani had recently become Superior General of the SSPX, ed.), that Mgr. Williamson tried to go to Canossa, but found it closed!», then letting out a typical British laugh. A few days later I actually told Don Davide Pagliarani by telephone, who in turn let out a healthy and sincere laugh.

Behind that apparently gruff English coldness of a great theologian and an excellent philosophy teacher such as Don Williamson, there was – and not too hidden – a big heart, a charitable and generous father. Despite his positions, which at times may have seemed harsh due to the duty of intransigence towards error, he never claimed in a personal speech, the presumption of having the license of a perfect Catholic.

Foresight on current issues

Williamson, however, was able to emerge from the shell of traditionalism alone, which often deals with many important quibbles, but without looking at some real, practical, imminent, bioethical problems. He was one of the few bishops to denounce some specific things created against human life and, therefore, against God who is its Creator and Lord.

Let’s think about the issue of vaccines, Covid, Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ, and many other issues that cost him dearly humanly. He was always able to see, well in advance, the contingent problems and the specific pitfalls into which souls could fall.

Not only the crisis in the Church – which is certainly the fulcrum of everything – but also more particular and current situations. Has he always guessed everything? Certainly not, after all his role was not that of a fortune teller, but he certainly knew how to warn of many dangers, denouncing them openly and without reticence. Moreover, on April 7, 2012, with a letter written together with two other bishops of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X he warned the General Council of the Society and the Superior himself of the imminent danger of an agreement with Rome, publicly opposing and, in fact, helping to avert the real danger that was being feared.

Episcopal simplicity and pragmatism

So much foresight and depth of thought in Bishop Williamson, but also so much simplicity and pragmatism. For those who were able to know him, especially in recent years, know how preponderant, in words but consequently also in the coherence of facts, the need to have “wild bishops” had become. That’s exactly what he called them, “wild bishops.” According to Msgr. Williamson, it was essential to leave bishops in this land, capable of moving autonomously in several parts of the world to respond to the colossal void and abyss in which the Church finds itself today, undermined by the deepest of crises. Some, perhaps understandably, saw the total of six episcopal consecrations made from 2015 to today by the English bishop as an exaggeration, but those who knew him, those who understood his thinking, like it or not, cannot fail to truly understand the reasons. The Church finds itself in such a state of gravity, exposing souls to such danger, that for Williamson it was essential to leave shelters, wild bishops who will be able to ordain, confirm and increase pastoral care and missions among the thousands of faithful who are still Catholics who want this, who have a fundamental need for this. They are, in fact, already doing it: making up, “wildly,” for what the Church is now unable to provide due to the lack of a truly Catholic leadership. When authority is lacking, or worse, it is blinded, there is no right recipe, and no one can claim to have it. Was Williamson right? We cannot know. History will tell, or better yet: God will tell. However, I know for sure that not even His Excellency ever thought or presumed to have made the right choice, much less a perfect one. However, he tried to do everything he did to remain faithful to God, to Jesus Christ, to the Tradition of the Church, that is true.

“The Resistance is full of defects and imperfections – he often repeated to me – because those who tried to build it are imperfect first and foremost, but as a Catholic bishop I had to try to do something to remain faithful to the Church, trying to give what souls need: bishops, who in turn can create new priests to give the sacraments and confrontation to the souls themselves”.

Apostle of the Holy Rosary

Pragmatism in trying to provide solutions to the crisis in the Church, but also in the life of the Faith itself. Monsignor was a great apostle of the Holy Rosary, considered for him the main weapon, the perfect prayer. Several times, during the conferences that we had the grace to host here in Italy, people, at the time of the final questions, asked him for solutions; what to do, how to behave to resist all the storms and temptations that assail us.

“Pray the Holy Rosary, 15 mysteries, every day. This will be enough for you! Because Our Lady promised it.” This is what he answered, doing his best to make people understand that the Catholic Faith is simpler than one might think, and that God revealed himself as humble to the humble, and not as learned to the learned.

Faith, Hope and profound Charity I have seen firsthand in this bishop, a true “dinosaur bishop” (Dinoscopus was his dear nickname, also used for his email address).

Emotion and awareness

Returning to that afternoon gloomy last October, I remember how, inside his breviary, he kept a memento of his brother in the priesthood and episcopate, Monsignor Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, who had passed away very recently. He looked at that photo, with shining eyes and a few sighs: “He was truly a good bishop, I pray so much for him“. So much emotion, so much charity, beyond all the positions that remain, in fact, something very earthly.

Monsignor Williamson knew how to look towards Heaven by infecting others. He also knew how to do it by describing and reviving the figure of his great bishop of reference, Mgr. Marcel Lefebvre, from whom he collected a great legacy, continuing throughout all the years of his episcopate, until a few days ago, to make it bear fruit.

He leaves a great void, an enormous void in the world of Catholic Tradition, in small but resistant realities, like the many present throughout the world and, thank God, also in Italy. He leaves it also and above all in me, in my family, in my young children, who yesterday did not want to listen to songs or watch cartoons, of their own accord, “because Mgr. Williamson died and we must respect this moment“, they told me, moving me. He leaves it in my 4-year-old daughter, Gemma Linda, who, returning from work, when Monsignor was still hospitalized, welcomed me at the door of her house showing me a drawing she had made where she had depicted the bishop while celebrating Holy Mass, which, also represented in the drawing, she and her friend Rebecca were attending. This and much more was able to inspire, with great sensitivity combined with rectitude, Mgr. Richard Nelson Williamson.

And this is my miserable but sincere legacy. No one is a saint before his time, and now Monsignor finds himself before the Judgement of God, and he needs His Mercy — “Si iniquitates observaveris Domine, Domine quis sustinebit?“

Let us pray for him, for his soul, for what he left us here on earth – bishops and priests – and for all those with whom he collaborated for so many years, in the service of souls and for their salvation, in the hope that he can pray and intercede for us, above all to take from him the great example of courage and the precise meaning of Christian martyrdom: he took strong positions in his life, he exposed himself, risking, in the true sense of the word, his skin. And yet always remaining calm, in the courage of his actions, not barricading himself, not hiding, never backing down from the enormous ministry that God, through Archbishop Lefebvre, had entrusted to him.

May this profound understanding and real vision of martyrdom of which His Excellency has made himself a clear example, also infect us to be simply good and true Christians.

«Heaven is a reality. This life is a reality. And the fact that I am about to die is a reality; and the tribunal of God is a reality» (Mons. Richard N. Williamson)

Cristiano Lugli