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Paul of the Cross and also affiliated to the Christian Friendship. The same church was also headed by a group of Italian exiles, including the Marquess Maria Maddalena Frescobaldi (1871-1839), founder of the Passionist Sisters of St. Penckler, spiritually directed by Diessbach and then by Lanteri, had been educated at the "Theresianum" in Vienna by the Jesuits and had maintained close relations with some of their leading figures, such as Father Maximilian Hell (1720-1792), the Court astronomer, and with the theologian Luigi Virginio (1756-1805), who became rector of the Minoritenkirche. In Vienna, the Catholic resistance had its fulcrum in the Minoritenkirche, of which Baron Joseph von Penckler (1751-1830) was provost. The success of the trip was such that Diessbach decided to move the center of his apostolate from Turin to the Habsburg capital. When, in 1782, Pope Pius VI (1775-1799) decided to go to Vienna as a " peregrinus apostolicus", Father Diessbach, accompanied by his main collaborator, the Venerable Pius Brunone Lanteri (1759-1830), preceded him by a month to prepare, with sermons, contacts, distribution of brochures, the reception of Austrian Catholics to the Pope.
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"In Vienna - which became in the second half of the eighteenth century the capital of anti-Curialism - Freemasonry and Enlightenment, Jansenism and liberal Catholicism sometimes seem to mingle in the same person to fight the same battle against the same opponents," writes the historian Carlo Francovich in his Storia della Massoneria in Italia (La Nuova Italia 1979, p. Vienna, the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, over which Joseph II of Habsburg-Lorraine (1765-1790) reigned, was at that time the European city in which the network of contacts and errors of the enemies of the Church was most densely interwoven. Father Nikolaus Albert von Diessbach (1732-1798), a former Swiss officer who had belonged to the Society of Jesus before its suppression (1773), between 17 founded in Turin, under the name of Amicizia Cristiana, an organization that aimed to resist this subversive project by fighting it with its own weapons: the dissemination of books and the secrecy that surrounded the members of the association (see Roberto de Mattei, La Biblioteca delle "Amicizie" : repertorio critico della cultura cattolica 1770-1830, Bibliopolis 2005). At that time, Jansenism, Gallicanism, the Enlightenment, different and heterogeneous forces, but united by their hatred of the Church of Rome, intertwined their efforts, in the shadow of the Masonic lodges, to destroy the Christian religious and social order.
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The Minoritenkirche is not only one of the most beautiful and oldest churches in Vienna, but, between 17, it represented the heart of Catholic resistance against revolutionary ideas. The significance of this news does not escape a Catholic historian.
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The Society will be able to take possession of this church, officially named Italienische Nationalkirche Maria Schnee (Italian National Church of Mary of the Snows) on June 3, 2022, the anniversary of its donation to the Italian congregation by Emperor Joseph II on June 3, 1784. The SSPX (Society of Saint Pius X) has announced that it has become the owner of the Minoritenkirche, in Vienna's inner city.