Pope to lift excommunications of four 'Lefebvre' bishops

Friday, January 23, 2009
PADDY AGNEW in Rome

IN WHAT appears to be an attempt to heal a 20-year schism in the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI is about to lift the excommunications of four traditionalist “Lefebvre” bishops, according to Italian media reports yesterday.

Whilst the Holy See would neither confirm nor deny the reports, many Vatican commentators believe the pope has already signed the pontifical decree cancelling the 1988 excommunications of four bishops from the Society of Saint Pius X, the society founded in 1970 by the controversial, traditionalist French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre who died in 1991.

Having served as a Vatican diplomat and then as superior general of the Holy Ghost Fathers, Archbishop Lefebvre made international headlines in the 1970s and 1980s through his virulent opposition to many of the changes embodied in the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council. the rest