Marcel Lefebvre

Marcel François Marie Joseph Lefebvre (29 November 1905 – 25 March 1991) was a French Catholic archbishop who influenced modern traditional Catholicism.

In 1923 Lefebvre began studies for the priesthood; at the insistence of his father he followed his brother to the French Seminary in Rome, as his father suspected the diocesan seminaries of liberal leanings.

He later credited his conservative views to the rector, a Breton priest named Father Henri Le Floch.

He interrupted his studies in 1926 and 1927 to perform his military service.

Ordained a diocesan priest in 1929, he had joined the Holy Ghost Fathers for missionary work and was assigned to teach at a seminary in Gabon in 1932.

On 25 May 1929 he was ordained deacon by Cardinal Basilio Pompili in the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome.

On 21 September 1929 he was ordained a priest of Diocese of Lille by its bishop, Achille Liénart.

After ordination, he continued his studies in Rome, completing a doctorate in theology in July 1930.

Lefebvre asked to be allowed to perform missionary work as a member of the Holy Ghost Fathers, but in August 1930 Liénart required him to first work as assistant curate in a parish in Lomme, a suburb of Lille.

Liénart released him from the diocese in July 1931 and Lefebvre entered the novitiate of the Holy Ghost Fathers at Orly in September.

On 8 September 1932, he took simple vows for a period of three years.

Lefebvre's first assignment as a Holy Ghost Father was as a professor at St. John's Seminary in Libreville, Gabon.

In 1934 he was made rector of the seminary.

On 28 September 1935 he made his perpetual vows.

He served as superior of a number of missions of the Holy Ghost Fathers in Gabon.

He was the second son and third child of eight children of textile factory-owner René Lefebvre and Gabrielle, born Watine, who died in 1938.

His parents were devout Catholics who brought their children to daily Mass.

His father, René, was an outspoken monarchist, devoting his life to the cause of the French Dynasty, seeing in a monarchy the only way of restoring to his country its past grandeur and a Christian revival.

His father ran a spy-ring for British Intelligence when Tourcoing was occupied by the Germans during World War I.

In the late 1940s, Lefebvre established a ministry in Paris to care for Catholic students from the French colonies in Africa.

He and other missionaries in Africa thought young Africans would otherwise be attracted to radical ideologies, including anti-colonialism and atheism.

René died at age 65 in 1944.

In October 1945 Lefebvre returned to France to become rector of the Holy Ghost Fathers seminary in Mortain.

In 1947, he was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Dakar, Senegal, and the next year as the Apostolic Delegate for West Africa.

On 12 June 1947, Pope Pius XII appointed him Vicar Apostolic of Dakar in Senegal and titular bishop of Anthedon.

On 18 September 1947 he was consecrated a bishop in his family's parish church in Tourcoing by Liénart, now a cardinal, with Bishops Jean-Baptiste Fauret and Alfred-Jean-Félix Ancel as co-consecrators.

In his new position Lefebvre was responsible for an area with a population of three and a half million people, of whom only 50,000 were Catholics.

On 22 September 1948, Lefebvre, while continuing as Vicar Apostolic of Dakar, received the additional responsibilities of Apostolic Delegate to French Africa, with his title changed to titular archbishop of Arcadiopolis in Europa.

He became responsible for representing the interests of the Holy See to Church authorities in 46 dioceses in "continental and insular Africa subject to the French Government, with the addition of the Diocese of Reunion, the whole of the island of Madagascar and the other neighbouring islands under French rule, but excluding the dioceses of North Africa, namely those of Carthage, Constantine, Algiers and Oran."

Upon his return to Europe he was elected Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers and assigned to participate in the drafting and preparation of documents for the upcoming Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) announced by Pope John XXIII.

He was a major leader of the conservative bloc during its proceedings.

He later took the lead in opposing certain changes within the church associated with the council.

He refused to implement council-inspired reforms demanded by the Holy Ghost Fathers and resigned from its leadership in 1968.

In 1970, five years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, he founded the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), a community to train seminarians in the traditional manner, in the village of Écône, Switzerland.

In 1970, he founded the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) as a small community of seminarians in the village of Écône, Switzerland, with the permission of the local bishop.

In 1975, after a flare of tensions with the Holy See, Lefebvre was ordered to disband the society, but ignored the decision and continued to maintain its activities and existence.

In 1988, Pope John Paul II declared that Archbishop Lefebvre had "incurred the grave penalty of excommunication envisaged by ecclesiastical law" for consecrating four bishops against the pope's express prohibition but, according to Lefebvre, in reliance on an "agreement given by the Holy See [...] for the consecration of one bishop."

In 1988, against the express prohibition of Pope John Paul II, he consecrated four bishops to continue his work with the SSPX.

The Holy See immediately declared that he and the other bishops who had participated in the ceremony had incurred automatic excommunication under Catholic canon law, which Lefebvre refused to acknowledge.

Marcel Lefebvre was born in Tourcoing, Nord.