On the 25th anniversary of the illicit ordination of four bishops by traditionalist Bishop Marcel Lefebvre, the Society of Saint Pius X indicated a definitive break of talks with the Catholic Church. In a statement June 27, three of the four bishops originally ordained by Lefebvre expressed “their filial gratitude towards their venerable founder who, after so many years spent serving the Church and the Sovereign Pontiff, so as to safeguard the Faith and the Catholic priesthood, did not hesitate to suffer the unjust accusation of disobedience.” The document – titled “Declaration on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the episcopal consecrations (30th June 1988 – 27th June 2013)” – is signed by Bishops Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais and Alfonso de Galarreta.
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The head of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X said he has been receiving mixed messages from the Vatican for years over if and how the group might be brought back into full communion with the church. Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the society, claimed that top Vatican officials told him not to be discouraged by official statements from the Vatican, because they did not reflect Pope Benedict XVI’s true feelings. The Vatican press office declined to comment Jan. 4 on the claims.
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Pope Benedict XVI’s third visit to Germany last week was billed as the 84-year-old pontiff’s latest effort to help convince people in highly secularised Europe that their society would be better and more human if God were at its centre. He won high praise for a deeply philosophical paper given to the Bundestag in Berlin on the foundations for a free state of law (see page 10). In that address, he said it was “urgent” to start a “public debate” on the necessity of retrieving the natural law tradition in developing legislation. As with his speech at Westminster Hall a year ago, the Pope was hailed for reaching across the political and religious divide of Germany’s parliament and its intellectual class.
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It came during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of Pope John XXIII’s announcement of the Second Vatican Council – news that Pope Benedict had decreed that the “Lefebvrists”, the four bishops excommunicated for disobedience and who have never fully accepted the Council, could return to the Church.

The Pope instructed the Congregation for Bishops to “remit” the excommunications of four leaders of the schismatic Society of St Pius X (SSPX) otherwise known as Lefebvrists. The four men — Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson and Alfonso del Gallareta — incurred automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication in June 1988 when they were illicitly ordained bishops by renegade Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (d. 1991), who founded the SSPX in 1970 and the Seminary of Ecône in south-west Switzerland.
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Pope on Shoah: Never again may violence humiliate the dignity of man!

In his weekly audience Pope Benedict categorically condemned all attempts to deny the Holocaust and explained the reasons for the lifting of the excommunication of four bishops from the fraternity of St. Pius X. … Pope Benedict’s thoughts then turned to the Shoah, the memorial of which was celebrated this week. He said “the memories and images of my many visits to Auschwitz come back to me in these days, a death camp in which blind racial and religious hatred led to the ferocious extermination of millions of Jews and other innocent victims”.
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Pope Benedict XVI says he has “full and unquestionable solidarity” with Jewish people and he has warned against any form of Holocaust denial. The Pope’s statement comes after outrage at his recent reinstatement of an excommunicated bishop, who has said the genocide of Jews in gas chambers never took place.
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Pope Benedict XVI has lifted the excommunication of four bishops ordained against papal orders in 1988 by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The move was considered a major concession to the archbishop’s traditionalist followers. The Vatican said the decree removing the excommunication, signed Jan. 21 and made public three days later, marked an important step toward full communion with the Society of St. Pius X, founded by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1970.

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