STAY TUNED: GOV. PRITZKER’S ERATIC CLOSURES HAVE FORCED US TO RESCHEDULE OUR ANNUAL BANQUET, featuring ALEXANDER TSCHUGGUEL, rising Austrian Catholic activist, convert and founder of the Boniface Institute.

Our Annual Banquet, at Carlisle Banquets in Lombard, Illinois will be COVID 19 Compliant.

Our Annual Banquet, previously set for October 22, 2020, has been postponed because of the erratic and unpredictable off-again/ on-again regulations on banquets from Governor Pritzker as well as Austrian restrictions on travel. We are rescheduling Mr. Tschugguel to appear at our banquet in early 2021 and will announce the date as soon as we have the new date set.

Thank you for your interest, your support, and your plans to attend. Stay tuned!

____________________________________________________________________________

Alexander Tschugguel was born in Austria in 1993. He is an Austrian conservative political and traditionalist Catholic activist. Mr. Tschugguel was baptized and raised in the Lutheran faith. When Alexander was fifteen years old, he converted to Roman Catholicism.

Mr. Tschugguel began working for Tradition, Family and Property, an organization of lay Catholics concerned about the moral crisis shaking the remnants of Christian civilization,when he was sixteen years old to protest abortion rights, same sex marriage and inclusion of gender studies and sex education in schools in Germany and Austria.

In 2014, Tschugguel co-organized a bus tour in Germany to support traditional marriage, in 2018 and 2019, he was the co-organizer of the Vienna March for Life. In May 2, 2019, he organized Rosary for Austria, a Latin Mass and prayer event at the Karlskirche.

On October 21, 2019, Tschugguel and an accomplice removed five statues, reportedly of the Inca fertility goddess Pachamama, from the Church of Santa Maria in Trapontina and threw them from the Ponte Sant Angelo into the Tiber. The statues had been “worshipped” earier in the Vatcan gardens, and were afterwards were on display as part of the Amazon Synod taking place in the Vatican.

Pacamama about to be disposed of at the Tiber.

To the question of some, purportedly astonished at the fact that a Catholic has the audacity to dictate his program to the successor of Peter, Tschugguel responded: “It is my duty to serve the Pope, and the best way to do it, when he takes a direction opposed to what the Church has always taught, is to shout to him: ‘Watch out, look, you are going in the wrong direction.’ It’s like when a person runs down a valley and is about to fall into a ravine, we should yell at them to come back, to go another way.”

Tschugguel who had removed the satues believing them to be a violation of the First Commandment, received support from various high-ranking Church officials, including Bishop Anthanasius Schneider who called the action a “highly meritorious, courageous and praiseworthy act of some brave Christian gentlemen. The gestures of these Christian men will be recorded in the annals of Church history as a heroic act which brought glory to the Christian name.”

“It is my duty to serve the Pope, and the best way to do it, when he takes a direction opposed to what the Church has always taught, is to shout to him: ‘Watch out, look, you are going in the wrong direction.’ It’s like when a person runs down a valley and is about to fall into a ravine, we should yell at them to come back, to go another way.”

Cardinal Raymond Burke explained: “I can understand why he found it intolerable that pagan idols be displayed in a Catholic church.” He said the situation reminded him of similar situations in Old Testament times, for example, the case of the Maccabee brothers who would not tolerate that the Catholic faith be denied through the worship of pagan idols. He continued: “I can only express my respect for him and my gratitude for his courageous witness to the faith.”

Cardinal Walter Brandmuller praised the removal of the Pachamama statues and called the men who performed this act “prophets.”

Tschugguel founded the St. Boniface Institute in 2019, with the goal of fighting paganism and globalism within the Catholic Church and to “rally those who do not want to bow down to ‘Mother Earth’.”

The institute is named for Saint Boniface who, according to tradition cut down Donar’s Oak, a pagan symbol of a god, and used the wood to build a church. Through the Institute, Mr. Tschugguel connects different traditionalist Catholic communities throughout Europe with each other.

In December of 2019, he organized a prayer protest outside of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. The protest was in response to the cathedral hosting the Life Ball, an LGBTQ-friendly annual charity event to raise money for HIV AND AIDS awareness.

In January of this year, he protested alongside leading Catholics, including Roberto de Mattei, and Archbishop Vigano, asking Pope Francis and the German Bishops Conference for “clarity and coherence” and to end “dissimulation deception” in the Catholic Church in Germany.

The group also organized the silent prayer protest, included 130 members of Catholic laity from Europe, South America, Canada and the United States.

Mr. Tschugguel was married in 2019 in a wedding celebrated by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, the auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mary Most Holy in Astana.