Marcel François Marie Joseph Lefebvre[a] CSSp FSSPX (29 November 1905 – 25 March 1991) was a French Catholic archbishop who greatly influenced modern traditionalist Catholicism.

In 1970, five years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, he founded the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX),[2] a community to train seminarians in the traditional manner, in the village of Écône, Switzerland.

"[4][5] 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.

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.

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.

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,[b] which Lefebvre refused to acknowledge.

[10] 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.

[9][12] His father ran a spy-ring for British Intelligence when Tourcoing was occupied by the Germans during World War I. René died at Sonnenburg aged 65 in 1944, having been sentenced to death one year before.

This idea of "safeguarding the Catholicism of the emerging African elite" was later adopted by Pope Pius in his encyclical on the missions, Fidei donum (1957).

Pope John XXIII replaced Lefebvre as Apostolic Delegate to Dakar on 9 July 1959, a position that would quickly evolve as the colonies gained their independence in the 1960s.

[38] After Senegal declared its independence in June 1960, its first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor proposed the country adopt its own form of socialism, which he as a Catholic believed compatible with Church doctrine.

Now at odds with the government, Lefebvre watched as the Holy See replaced European missionary bishops with Africans and tried to delay his own removal by asking for the appointment of a coadjutor, which met with no response.

During the council's third session (September to November 1964), Archbishop Pericle Felici, the secretary of the council and a prominent Curial conservative, announced that Lefebvre, with two other like-minded bishops, was appointed to a special four-member commission charged with rewriting the draft document on the topic,[53] but it was soon discovered that this measure did not have papal approval, and major responsibility for preparing the draft document was given to the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity.

[54] The CIP managed to get the preliminary vote (with suggestions for modifications) on the document postponed until the fourth session of the council, where, on 7 December 1965, an overwhelming majority approved the final text of the declaration Dignitatis humanae.

The Chapter then elected its leaders and proceeded with intense but respectful debate on the critical issue: the balance between the constraints of the order's religious life and the exercise of its missionary charge.

The Third Republic was reft by conflicts between the secular Left and the Catholic Right, with many individuals on both sides espousing distinctly radical positions (see, for example, the article on the famous Dreyfus affair).

It can only be understood in the light of the French Revolution and subsequent history... At the risk of a serious over-simplification, it is reasonable to state that up to the Second World War Catholicism in France tended to be identified with right-wing politics and anti-Catholicism with the left... [Lefebvre's] own alleged right-wing political philosophy is nothing more than straight-forward Catholic social teaching as expounded by the Popes for a century or more...In similar vein, the pro-SSPX English priest Michael Crowdy wrote, in his preface to his translation of Lefebvre's Open Letter to Confused Catholics:[61] We must remember that Lefebvre is writing against the background of France, where ideas are generally more clear‑cut than they are in Great Britain. ...

[74] In November 1970, Bishop François Charrière of Fribourg established, on a provisional (ad experimentum) basis for six years, the International Priestly Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) as a "pious union".

[80] In November 1974, two Belgian priests carried out a rigorous inspection on the instructions of a commission of cardinals,[79] producing, the SSPX claims, a favourable report.

On 24 January 1975, he asked the prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Religious, Cardinal Arturo Tabera, to terminate its status as a "pious union".

[86] In 1976, Mamie warned Lefebvre that saying Mass though Catholic Church authorities had forbidden him from exercising his priestly functions would further exacerbate his relationship with Rome.

[93] In spite of his suspension, Lefebvre continued to celebrate Mass and to administer the other sacraments, including the conferral of Holy Orders to the students of his seminary.

[102] Shortly after the agreement, however, Lefebvre announced that he had received a note from Ratzinger that asked him "to beg pardon for [his] errors", which he interpreted to mean that he would be made to accept the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the "spirit of Assisi".

Lefebvre referred to the alleged prophecy of Our Lady of La Salette that "Rome will lose the Faith" and declared himself obliged to consecrate a successor—if necessary, without papal approval.

[6] As the agreement did not specify a date for the episcopal consecration, should Lefebvre have died before it was granted, the Society would have been unable to ordain any seminarians and forced into submission to the Holy See.

There is no question of us separating ourselves from Rome, nor of putting ourselves under a foreign government, nor of establishing a sort of parallel church as the Bishops of Palmar de Troya have done in Spain.

[6]The next day, 1 July, the Congregation for Bishops issued a decree stating that this was a schismatic act and that all six direct participants had incurred automatic excommunication.

[105] On 2 July, Pope John Paul II condemned the consecration in his apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei, in which he stated that the consecration constituted a schismatic act and that the bishops and priests involved were automatically excommunicated:[106] In itself, this act was one of disobedience to the Roman Pontiff in a very grave matter and of supreme importance for the unity of the church, such as is the ordination of bishops whereby the apostolic succession is sacramentally perpetuated.

[109][110] Bisig became the first superior general of the newly formed Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), a group that reached an agreement with the Holy See.

Archbishop Edoardo Rovida, Apostolic Nuncio to Switzerland, and Bishop Henri Schwery of Sion, the local diocese, came and prayed at his body.