Thanks to Nicola dei Grandi for sharing with us these photographs which show how bad things were in the Church before the New Pentecost™. This is the ordination class (n.b., just the ordination class, not the whole seminary) of the archdiocese of Milan in 1953, the last year of the episcopate of Blessed Ildephonse Schuster, 95 men. (Last year’s class, anno renovationis LX, had 22.)
And here is a priestly ordination celebrated in the Duomo in the mid-1960s, by Schuster’s successor-but-one, Abp Giovanni Colombo, who was made a cardinal in 1965.
Now be quiet, nostalgic backwardists - all is well.
