Abp. Viganò on Abp. Lefebvre

[Stone]

Abp. Viganò on Abp. Lefebvre
Archbishop Viganò suggested that the 1988 Consecrations of bishops
by Archbishop Lefebvre was 'a vital necessity for the safeguarding of the Mass of all time.'

Below an excerpt from the Q & A session with Archbishop Viganò held at the end of a conference he gave at the Summer University – CIVITAS on August 14, 2020 in France. His full address can be found HERE.



Question: Thank you, Monsignor, I ask you a second question: What do you think of Archbishop Lefebvre and his struggle, particularly in his most controversial act, the Episcopal Consecrations of 1988?

Response:

I can only look at Archbishop Lefebvre with admiration and much gratitude for his fidelity and courage. A courage and a fidelity that are unfailing in the face of so much adversity, hostility, and even relentlessness on the part of a hierarchy won over to the ideas of modernity and infiltrated by the Masonic supporters of a project of capillary destruction, without precedent, the devastating scope of which we realize today in its extreme consequences.

Archbishop Lefebvre must be seen as a holy man, not as a schismatic! As a fervent missionary and confessor of the Faith, a zealous defender of Tradition, the priesthood and the Catholic Mass. He exposed himself to severe sanctions, up to and including excommunication, because he felt that it was more right to obey God than men, to guard and transmit Tradition rather than embrace modernist doctrines.

His life is marked by piety, a spirit of sacrifice, a sense of duty, a righteousness of conscience and a great inner consistency. His is a life given to God and the Church, devoted to the service of souls, to evangelization, to the teaching and preaching of sound doctrine, to the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice and to the formation of young men called to the priesthood.

A life that is entirely a witness to the solidity of the Faith handed down to us by the Apostles, the Pontiffs, the Councils and the Holy Doctors of the Faith, and for which the Martyrs shed their blood.

Some consider the 1988 Consecrations as “a step too far.” Others recognize a vital necessity for the safeguarding of the Mass of all time.

Archbishop Lefebvre grasped the urgency of the times in which we live and the drama of a situation that has worsened and taken on new accents of gravity in recent years, making more evident the state of exception in which we find ourselves.

Some speak of disobedience; we speak of fidelity!

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre continued to teach and do what the Holy Church has always done and taught. He opposed liberalism, the destruction of the Mass and of the whole liturgical edifice of the Church, the ruin of the priesthood, of religious life and of Christian morals.

I repeat: some speak of disobedience; we speak of fidelity!