The General Chapter of the Fraternity elected Fr John Berg to the office for the next six years, as the FSSP announced on Thursday.
According to the information provided, Berg sees his work as continuity with his predecessor Andrzej Komorowski, who presided over the fraternity during the previous term of office.
The General Chapter has been meeting in plenary session since 3 July and will continue to meet until 18 July at the International Seminary of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Denton, USA.
The US-American Berg (born 1970) studied philosophy at Saint Thomas Aquinas College in California and theology at St Peter's Seminary in Wigratzbad, Bavaria. He obtained his licentiate in theology at the Pontifical University of Santa Croce in Rome.
After being ordained a priest in 1997, he lectured at the Seminary of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He was previously Superior General of the Fraternity of St Peter from 2006 to 2018. For the past six years, he has worked in pastoral care as a parish priest in Providence (Rhode Island) and Omaha (Nebraska), both parishes of the FSSP.
The Priestly Fraternity of St Peter was founded in 1988 as a reaction to the unauthorised episcopal ordinations by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in the Society of St Pius X. The Society of Apostolic Life of Clerics of Pontifical Right is in full communion with the Church.6
In 2022, Pope Francis confirmed to the community in a decree that, despite his restriction of the pre-conciliar liturgy, they may continue to use all liturgical books in the version prior to the liturgical reform.
The seat of the German-speaking district is in Opfenbach-Wigratzbad (district of Lindau, diocese of Augsburg), where the largest of the community's three seminaries is located.