International Seminary of Saint Pius X

SSPX was founded, with the canonical approval of the Bishop of Fribourg, in 1970 by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, former Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers (1962–1968), a Father of the Second Vatican Council and one of the best-known prelates in Africa, where he spent much of his early pastoral ministry. He retired as head of the Holy Ghost Fathers in 1968 when the order began revisions of its constitutions, which Lefebvre considered modernist. • Illustration — A priest giving blessings after ordination at the SSPX seminary at Écône Shortly after his resignation, Archbishop Lefebvre was approached by seminarians from the French Seminary in Rome who, he said, were being persecuted for their adherence to traditional beliefs and doctrines. They sought advice on a conservative seminary to complete their studies. He directed them to the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. In 1970, urged by the Abbot of Hauterive and the Dominican theologian and priest, Fr. Marie-Dominique Philippe, to teach these seminarians personally, Lefebvre approached the Bishop of Fribourg, who, three months before resigning his see, approved, with a document predated by six days to 1 November 1970, the founding of SSPX at the level of a pia unio, the preliminary stage towards becoming an officially recognized religious institute or Society of Apostolic Life. Affluent Swiss laymen offered the seminary at Écône in Switzerland to the newly formed group. The seminary received a reputation as a "wildcat seminary" for its teaching of centuries-old practices which were being abandoned in most other parts of the church. The statements made by two apostolic visitors to the seminary in November 1974 resulted in Lefebvre's "Declaration" as a rebuttal. At the seminary, in 1988, he consecrated four bishops without papal approval, an act by which he incurred excommunication latae sententiae. Lefebvre resided in a private apartment on the property until his death in 1991 and is buried in a tomb nearby, which was visited by Cardinal Silvio Oddi in 1992. On 2 of July Pope Leo XIV excommunicated everyone included in SSPX.