During the 1960s, the miniature insignia of the Order of the Crown of Thorns was made by the now-defunct medals division of Spink and Son, who were Royal Warrant holders as medallists. This is the only example known to survive, formerly in the possession of Canon George Tull, Vice-Chancellor for Europe in the San Luigi Orders.
On 28 May 2013 the Prince-Abbot issued a Charter and Apostolic Mandate (no. 58/2013) to the Mission Gallicane d’Alsace. This Charter, issued by the Abbey-Principality in its capacity as one of the senior extant Vilatte-succession jurisdictions, served to regularize the position of the Mission as a canonical jurisdiction that is recognized among the descendants of the Eglise Gallicane of which Prince-Abbot Joseph III served as Primate. Several subsequent Primates of the Eglise Gallicane served as Prelats-Commandeurs of the Order of the Crown of Thorns and the Prince-Abbot stands in their episcopal lineage.
The Apostolic Mandate provided for the consecration of a bishop for the jurisdiction in the person of Canon Mgr. Raphaël Steck, who was duly consecrated on Saturday 29 June 2013 at the Eglise Luthérienne de Wolfisheim by the Most Reverend François Marie Fournier de Brescia OA assisted by other bishops (see photograph above). Mgr. Steck additionally becomes Prior of the Order of St. Columban. He has been appointed to the titular See of Hohenbourg and Honau and has taken the episcopal name of Raphaël-Magnoald.
In consequence of this, an Instrument of Intercommunion has been executed between the Order of Antioch and the Mission Gallicane d’Alsace and Bishop Raphaël-Magnoald has been admitted to membership in the Order of Antioch in the Second Class.
The connexion with the Order of St. Columban is noteworthy. The Order declined in the ninth-century after Christ and was revived by St. Tugdual I (Jean-Pierre Danyel, 1917-68), Primate of the Sainte Eglise Celtique, from whom both Bishop Raphaël-Magnoald and the Prince-Abbot are in succession, the Prince-Abbot having been ordained in an English branch of this Celtic jurisdiction.
The Grand Cross sash of the Order of the Crown of Thorns.
This extremely rare photograph shows William Patterson (Vergilius) Whitebrook (1871-1915), Archbishop of Whitby and a prelate of the first Old Roman Catholic mission to England initiated by Prince-Abbot Joseph III.
Whitebrook was born in St Pancras in 1871. His brother John Cudworth (1873-1961) would also become a bishop. Between 1899 and 1900 he was in business as a photographer, with a studio in Highgate, but his business did not prosper. Subsequently he read for the Bar, and was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, where he practiced at 5, New Court.
Whitebrook was involved with the Order of Corporate Reunion from an early age. He and his brother were acolytes at All Saints’, Lambeth, the church of Dr Frederick George Lee (1832-1902), who in addition to his priestly office in the Church of England was Archbishop and Primate of the Order of Corporate Reunion. In 1891 or 92 Whitebrook was consecrated bishop by Lee and George Nugée OCR (1819-92) (who as secretary of the Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom had presented to Pope Pius IX the reconciliation proposal between the Church of England and Rome that would form the foundation of the OCR in 1864.) On or before 19 February 1905, Whitebrook received additional episcopal commissioning from Andries Albert Caarel McLaglen (1851-1928) of the Ferrette succession, who was a bishop (later Primus) of the Free Protestant Episcopal Church and associated bodies. That date saw the formation of the Society for the Restoration of Apostolic Unity, which was a movement intended to revive the OCR that as well as the Whitebrooks involved Bishop Henry Bernard Ventham (Dom Columba Mary OSB, 1873-1944), a member of the OCR who had received consecration from Prince-Abbot Joseph III.
During 1906, Whitebrook was responsible for rescuing C.W. Montague Villiers (also known as Count Edward Rufane Benedict Donkin) (1871-1906), a suspended priest under Prince-Abbot Joseph III who subsequently made claim to have received the Episcopate. He had been tried at the Lewis Assizes in 1906 on grounds of being an imposter, whereupon the judge exonerated him fully and declared him to have been the victim of persecution. Villiers was abandoned by his family and, in poor health, was living on the streets. Whitebrook took him into his own home and nursed him there for the remaining three months of his life, also arranging for him to be received into the Catholic Church and funding the costs of his burial in Bexley cemetery.
On 27 December 1908, at his domestic chapel of St. Thomas of Canterbury, Bishopsthorpe, Stone Hill, Headley Down, Hampshire, Whitebrook was reordained by and exchanged consecrations with Archbishop Paolo Miraglia Gulotti (1852-1916) (Prelate-Commander of the Order of the Crown of Thorns for Italy), who had been consecrated by Prince-Abbot Joseph III in 1900. This action marked the initiation of the Independent Catholic Church under J.C. Whitebrook as Primate, based at W.P. Whitebrook’s chambers and counting a high proportion of legal men among its clergy. The church did not survive the First World War as an active organization, and Whitebrook was eventually received into the Roman Catholic Church.
It has been announced that 9 June will be the occasion for the dedication of H.M. Omukama Chwa II Kabalega of Bunyoro-Kitara as “Bunyoro Hero” by his grandson H.M. Omukama Rukirabasaija Agutamba Solomon Gafabusa Iguru I.
This is also the day on which, in 2009, H.M. Omukama Chwa II Kabalega was declared a “National Hero” of Uganda by President Musuveni of Uganda.
The anniversary of the birth of H.M. Omukama Chwa II Kabalega falls on 18 June.
H.M. Omukama Chwa II Kabalega was a key figure in the history of the Abbey-Principality of San Luigi and was responsible for bestowing the title of Mukungu upon the then-Prince-Abbot in 1885. H.M. Omukama Rukirabasaija Agutamba Solomon Gafabusa Iguru I today serves as Royal Patron of the Order of the Crown of Thorns and the Order of the Lion and the Black Cross.
The 19th Empango – the coronation celebrations of H.M. Omukama Rukirabasaija Agutamba Solomon Gafabusa Iguru I – will fall on 11 June.
The Most Revd. Juliusz Nowina-Sokolnicki (1920-2009) served as Assistant Bishop of the Apostolic Episcopal Church in Great Britain both as deputy to the late Archbishop-Count George Boyer and as bishop with special responsibilities for the Polish-speaking peoples. He was consecrated by the Most Reverend Bertil Persson, OCR, then-Primate of the Apostolic Episcopal Church, on 27 May 1983. Archbishop Persson was also the consecrator of the present Prince-Abbot of San Luigi (now also Primate of the Apostolic Episcopal Church), who from November 2008 served as Archbishop of the Apostolic Episcopal Church in Great Britain in succession to Archbishop-Count Boyer, and was thus for a few months Sokolnicki’s ecclesiastical superior.
Juliusz Nowina-Sokolnicki is best-known in his capacity as the head of one of the two entities that maintained rival claims to be the Polish government-in-exile during the 1970s and 1980s. Born in Pinsk, he completed secondary education and then took part in the September Campaign in 1939, following which he apparently made his way to Warsaw and distributed underground publications. In 1940, he was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Pawiak and then in Metz, where he was placed in a forced labour camp. Under these conditions his health deteriorated, and in 1942 he was released and returned to Warsaw, having been diagnosed with an incurable lung disease. He resumed insurgency against the Nazis and Communists as part of the shadowy organisation “Group of the Free”. In 1944, by means that are not clear, he escaped Poland and travelled through France to Italy, where he joined the Polish II Corps, an unofficial branch of the British Eighth Army.
He was demobilized in 1947 and in July 1948 settled in London. Throughout the following decade he was active in expatriate Polish associations. He was secretary of the Society for General Education, co-editor of “Bulletin of the Western Lands” from June 1950 and in 1958 founder of the Polish Association for the Defence of the Western Lands. In 1958 he became a member of the Supreme Council of the Union of Polish Eastern Territories and editor of the “Information Bulletin of the Eastern Regions of Poland.”
He was also politically active in the Polish cause. From 1951 he was involved with the Polish Independence League and with resistance to the Soviets; from this came the Struggle for Independence Convention which he founded. He was appointed to successive offices in the Polish Government-in-Exile and by 1970 had worked his way up to the position of Minister of Internal Affairs. In these years, strong alliances and animosities formed among members of the Polish diaspora, and these would become a major influence on the events of 1972. Most importantly, in 1954, President-in-Exile August Zaleski had refused to step down after the end of his seven-year term, citing the 1935 constitution and rejecting the post-war National Unity Act. The opposition to him then formed the Council of Three, which was recognized by some opposition members as a rival collective head of state for the ensuing eighteen years.
President-in-Exile Zaleski appointed Stanislaw Ostrowski as his successor in an announcement on 24 February 1971. However, in September of that year, Zaleski expressed serious misgivings on this matter to Sokolnicki. He feared that at age 80, Ostrowski was too old, and furthermore that he was too easily manipulated by opposition groups – of which the most obvious would have been the Council of Three and its followers. Zaleski asked Sokolnicki to succeed him instead, issuing him with documentation which has been the subject of fierce controversy ever since. As Zaleski had predicted, after his death on 7 April 1972, the Council of Three decided to dissolve itself and to confirm Ostrowski in office, thereby unifying the two largest Polish emigré groups.
Not unexpectedly, Sokolnicki was immediately to be denounced in the most vehement of terms by Ostrowski and his followers, but nevertheless he took up the Presidency-in-Exile undaunted, and gathered a number of supporters from among those who remained loyal to Zaleski and opposed to the Council of Three. These then formed the government of Free Poland in Exile, with Sergiusz Ursyn-Szantyr as Sokolnicki’s first Prime Minister.
Sokolnicki’s government-in-exile secured a number of successes. It was at his behest that the state governors of New Hampshire and New York initiated official memorials to the victims of the Katyn massacre. In 1986, he was initiator and co-founder of the Central European Community Council, which brought together governments-in-exile of the Communist states of Eastern Europe. Through Konstanty Zygfryd Hanff’s actions in the United States Sokolnicki maintained contact with anti-communist emigré groups there, notably “Fighting Solidarity” in the 1980s.
Sokolnicki also ensured that his cause became widely known through the conferral of the Orders and decorations of the Polish state, including the Order of Polonia Restituta (in which Archbishop Persson received the Grand Cordon) and the Order of St Stanislas, which he revived in 1979. The Most Revd. Prince Kermit Poling, OA, Royal Patron of the San Luigi Orders, to whom Sokolnicki was distantly related, received the Gold Cross of Merit from him in 1979. This aspect of Sokolnicki’s work was again not without its critics, not least in respect of its connexions to both corporate and personal fundraising. During the 1980s, Sokolnicki also served as a Vice-President of the London Appreciation Society, whose secretary, the late H.L. Bryant Peers, had been consecrated as a bishop of the Ancient Catholic Church in 1961.
At the fall of Communism in 1990, the Order of St. Stanislas was re-established as an international body and officially registered as a charity. Sokolnicki, whose family records stretched to over twenty generations, subsequently received the title of Prince from the head of the Hohenstaufen-Lanza family.
On 11 November 1990, in light of the upcoming Polish presidential elections, Sokolnicki issued an instrument dissolving his government-in-exile in favour of whoever would be the victorious candidate. From that point forward, he pursued a policy of absolute retirement from political activity and devoted himself to the Order of St. Stanislas. In 2009, at his last major public appearance, he attended that order’s thirtieth anniversary investiture.
>>Website containing relevant documentation (in Polish)
>>Biography by Dr. Norbert Wojtowicz at the site of the Polish Monarchist Association (in Polish)
The State funeral of Their Majesties King Peter II, Queen Alexandra, Queen Maria and His Royal Highness Prince Andrej of Yugoslavia takes place at Royal Mausoleum of St. George’s Church in Oplenac near Topola, today. This event reunites members of the Royal Family who were originally buried outside their homeland during the years when Yugoslavia was under Communist rule.
H.M. King Peter II was High Protector of the Order of the Crown of Thorns from 1960 until his death in 1970; the position has been held vacant in his memory ever since. In 1962 he issued Letters Patent recognizing the title of Prince de San Luigi and bestowing the title of Marquis de Valjevo upon its then-holder, Prince-Abbot Edmond II. Prince-Abbot Edmond II was present at the funeral of King Peter in the United States in 1970. The photograph below, which is a copy made using the technology of the era, shows King Peter with Prince-Abbot Edmond II (who is wearing the insignia of the Order of the Crown of Thorns) in 1959.
This little-known photograph of Prince-Abbot Joseph III appeared on 22 October 1910 in the El Paso Herald, a Mexican newspaper. It can clearly be seen that he is wearing the neck decoration of the Order of the Crown of Thorns.
Our thanks to Fr. Raphaël Steck KOCT for sending the picture.
The Abbey-Principality of San Luigi 
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