Lefebvre, Marcel

(1905–91)

   Archbishop and Sect Founder.

   Lefebvre was born near Lille, France, and was ordained into the Roman Catholic priesthood in 1929. He served as a missionary in Gabon, was consecrated a Bishop in 1947 and became Archbishop of Dakar in 1948. He is remembered for his rejection of both the spirit and the letter of the edicts of the Second Vatican Council. Believing that democratisation was the work of the devil, he founded the ultraconservative Priestly Confraternity of St Pius X with its own seminary. In defiance of the Council, the order continued to celebrate the Latin Tridentine Mass and by 1976, Lefebvre had been suspended from his priestly functions. Although the quarrel was patched up with Pope paul vi, the movement continued to grow. New seminaries were founded in Argentina, France, Germany and the United States of America. Then, in 1988, Lefebvre consecrated four Bishops and in a sermon castigated the Church for the sins of ‘liberalism, socialism, modernism and Zionism’. He went so far as to maintain that the throne of St peter was occupied by an Anti-Christ. That afternoon Lefebvre and the four new Bishops were excommunicated and pronounced schismatic. Lefebvre’s rebellion was the most serious challenge within the Church to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

   P. Nichols, The Pope’s Divisions: The Roman Catholic Church Today (1982).