Just came across this blog post on the evangelical efficacy of the priest with cassock and saturno praying on the street.
We're multiplying!
Apropos, yesterday, going out to the Church yard for my midday stroll after lunch, breviary in hand (in cassock and saturno, of course), a group of children from our charter school (renters of our building) immediately surrounded me, spontaneously embracing me or shaking my hand. A girl who had greeted me before the rest bragged to all the other children that this was her church, "this is my church, I'm in catechism class!". Another girl said "I like this church, it is a beautiful church, my church is ugly". I smiled and said, "good afternoon children, God bless you," and continued with my breviary walk as they go back to playing. That girl of our catechism class is one of an extended family with several children which I not infrequently meet before school for morning prayers in front of our Miraculous Medal WWII monument to the parishioners of the parish (including one priest) who died in that war.
This sort of thing, manifestations of appreciation for the visibility of the priesthood and of the Catholic faith, happens every day in this urban parish and in the neighborhood. What I have noticed is that, above all, the young people of the neighborhood, of all ages (especially teenagers and youth in their twenties), want to be noticed and greeted, and even given a religious word!
“The great boast of the new Church is dialogue. But how can this begin if we hide from the eyes of our prospective dialogue partners? In Communist countries the first act of the dictators is to forbid the cassock; this is part of a program to stamp out religion. And we must believe the reverse to be true too. The priest who declares his identity by his exterior appearance is a living sermon. The absence of recognizable priests in a large city is a serious step backward in the preaching of the Gospel…” --Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
N.B. There is still at least one priest in the world who has (rightly) never shown himself in public without donning his cassock, Pope Francis! It is the right (because a responsibility) of every priest, namely, to carry on the Catholic priestly public witness and apostolic evangelism, even/especially in the cassock.