Rebel cleric retires

Press, 1 July 1983, Page 6

Rebel cleric retires

NZPA-Reuter Econe A French ecclesiastic, Marcel Lefebvre, formally retired yesterday as head of his traditionalist Catholic organisation with a renewed attack on “modernists” in the Vatican.

The 77-year-old former Archbishop of Dakar, Senegal, who was stripped of all his priestly duties in 1976 for opposing changes introduced in the 1960 s at the Second Vatican Council, also said that the movement to unite all Christian churches was “a wind of heresy which has been blowing since the Vatican II reforms.”

Archbishop Lefebvre was speaking after ordaining 22 priests at a traditionalist seminary at Econe, Switzerland, run by his Pius X fraternity named after the most conservative Pope of modern times. He told a crowd of several thousand at the openair ceremony that Father Franz Schmidberger, aged 37, of Goettingen, West Germany would take over immediately as superior-gen-eral of the movement.

Archbishop Lefebvre said that because the Curia (Vatican hierarchy) was still occupied by “modernists,” theological error continued to spread in the Catholic Church. The' traditionalists who founded the frajgrnity in 1970 had wanted nothing

but to remain Catholic. He alleged that as a result of the Vatican II reforms, “Catholics are becoming like Protestants but the unfortunate Protestants are not being converted to Catholicism.” The rebel Catholic fraternity has about 80 centres, mostly in Europe and North America, with about 125 priests, 250 seiminarians and some 50 nuns.

The frail, silver-haired prelate said that he would continue to conduct pastoral duties at Econe. Officials explained that as the traditionalist movement’s only archbishop he would still be the sole person able to ordain preists.