Vatican City – Pope Benedict XVI met Monday with the head of the ultraconservative schismatic movement founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and both sides said they had agreed to take steps to resolve their differences.
Both the Vatican and Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of Lefebvre’s Society of St. Pius X, said the meeting was held in a spirit of love for the church. But the society has spurned previous efforts by the Vatican to bring it back into its fold.
Lefebvre founded the Swiss- based society in 1969, opposed to the liberalizing reforms of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, particularly its call for Mass to be celebrated in local languages and not in Latin.
He was excommunicated in 1988 after consecrating four bishops without Rome’s consent, and died in 1991. All four bishops were excommunicated.
The Society of St. Pius X claims about 450 priests and 180 seminarians and has a presence in 26 countries.
Pope Benedict, who also opposed what he considered excesses of Vatican II, had worked to head off the excommunication, negotiating with the society.
With Benedict now pope, some have speculated that there might be a new push to bring the society back under Rome’s wing.
