In 1988, Pope St. John Paul II established the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri) as a Clerical Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right, and approved its constitutions. The Fraternity was founded in response to the Holy Father’s call to ecclesial unity and the new evangelization, hence the name denotes a filial love and loyalty to the Supreme Pontiff. The primary patron of the Fraternity from its inception was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who later became Pope Benedict XVI.