Marcel Lefebvre was born on Nov. 29, 1905, in Tourcoing, France. After his baptism, his mother embraced him and said prophetically, “This one will have a great role in Rome, close to the Holy Father.” His parents were profoundly Catholic. From a family of eight children, two became missionary priests, three of the girls entered various religious communities, while the others founded large Catholic families.
While a boy, the young Marcel was an active member of the St. Vincent Society, dedicated to the care of the sick. He served Holy Mass every morning at 5:30 for many years. His sister relates that he was an example of charity in the home, seeking to help others when he could, doing extra chores around the house for his parents in order to lighten their burden.
He entered the French Seminary in Rome, obtaining his doctorate in Philosophy in 1925, and Theology in 1929 from the Gregorian Pontifical University. He was ordained a priest on Sept. 21, 1929, being then not quite 24 years old. His first assignment was to assist the parish priest in the working-class suburb of Lille, France.
In 1931, two years after his ordination and after much fraternal persuasion from his priest-brother René he decided to enter the Holy Ghost Fathers. Claude-Francois Poullart originally founded the Congregation of the Holy Ghost Fathers, the largest and most important missionary congregation in the world, in 1703. After its near disintegration following the French Revolution, the Venerable Francis Mary Libermann and his fellow missionaries of the Society of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which Libermann had founded in 1842, resuscitated it. The Holy See decided that since the object of the two societies was the same (preparing missionaries for abandoned souls), the new Society of the Immaculate Heart should be engrafted on the older Congregation of the Holy Ghost. This took place in 1848, and Ven. Libermann became the first Superior General of the united societies.
After only a year of novitiate Fr. Lefebvre was able to make his first vows and immediately join his brother in Gabon, Africa, arriving in October, 1932. In 1934, after teaching Holy Scripture and Dogma, he became Rector of the Seminary in Libreville. During this time he was to fulfill the role of teacher, plumber, electrician, printer, and general handyman.
In 1938 his beloved mother died. All who knew her considered her a saint. In the absence of her husband, during the First World War, Gabrielle Lefebvre cared for her children, managed the family textile factory, cared for the sick and dying, and was imprisoned for her resistance to the Germans. The illness she contracted from the hardships of this war was the cause of her subsequent death. Archbishop Lefebvre’s father was active in the French Underground during both World Wars. Captured by the Nazis in 1941, he spent three years in the concentration camp of Sonnenburg, where he died in 1944.
In 1946, Fr. Lefebvre returned to France to become Superior of a seminary in Mortain. He was sad to leave Africa, but his misgivings were compensated by the many happy memories he would have of the two years he spent in Mortain forming priests. He was nominated as Vicar-Apostolic of Dakar, Senegal, on June 12, 1947, and was consecrated bishop three months later on September 18. In the following year, he was appointed by Pius XII Apostolic Delegate for all of French-speaking Africa, in the diocese of Dakar, September 22. Finally, he was appointed the first Archbishop of Dakar in September 14, 1955.
His appointment to Dakar was a heavy blow to him. He did not know the language of the Senegalese. He did not know any of the fathers there. He was in completely unfamiliar territory. Nevertheless, in hindsight, he regarded the years he spent there as Apostolic Delegate from 1948 to 1959 as one of the happiest times of his life. In this capacity, he was visiting all the dioceses of French-speaking Africa, from Morocco to Madagascar. He had 64 dioceses of 18 countries under his care, and was responsible for the building of numerous schools, hospitals, churches and religious houses all over Africa. The extraordinary growth and vitality of the Church in Africa during these years was a source of great joy to him.
He also had the immense privilege, as Apostolic Delegate, of visiting Pius XII annually, giving reports of the dioceses under his care and offering names for the nominations of bishops and Apostolic Delegates. The Archbishop regarded Pius XII as a saint and a genius, humanly speaking. “[His Holiness],” wrote the Archbishop, “always received me with extraordinary kindness, taking an interest in all the problems of Africa.” These annual visits to the Holy Father and the irreplaceable advice given to him by Archbishop Lefebvre formed the basis of the remarkable encyclical on the missions Fidei Donum of Pius XII, which revitalized missionary work worldwide.
The missionary had finished his work. As the Second Vatican Council dawned on the world, it was time for the Archbishop to defend the Faith from the Church’s enemies. While not rejecting Vatican II wholesale, Archbishop Lefebvre has described it as, “the central event of this century…the greatest disaster of this century and of all the past centuries, since the founding of the Church.” Elsewhere he described it as a third World War, more devastating than the two previous wars because of the damage done to millions of souls.
What caused the Archbishop to use such strong words? In this Council he saw with precision the revolution of liberalism within the Church. It was Cardinal Suenens himself who described the Council as the French Revolution inside the Church. That is to say, it was the acceptance by the Church of the principles of the Revolution: liberty, fraternity, equality. Cardinal Ratzinger declared, “The problem of the Council was to assimilate two centuries of liberal culture.” Pope Paul VI, in his formal address for the closing of the Council, proudly declared, “You modern humanists, who renounce the transcendence of divine things, at least acknowledge this merit and recognize our new humanism, for we more than anyone practice the worship of man.” The Council, then, as Archbishop Lefebvre himself expressed it, was the “adulterous” union of the Church with the liberal modern world.
Although uncertain and somewhat surprised by their enormous success, the European alliance indeed affected a cataclysm in the life of the Church. The damage they caused can only now clearly be seen by the fruits of the Council: freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, separation of Church and State, all of which flow from the principles of liberalism.
In 1960, the Archbishop had been appointed to the Central Preparatory Commission of the Second Vatican Council by Pope John XXIII. This Commission was to check and examine all the documents and texts discussed at the Council. When the work of the Commission was finished, the Archbishop commented that all the documents were completely Catholic and hardly needed any retouching. When the Council convened, however, not one of the prepared documents was even discussed. Everything was thrown out. The liberals, with the acquiescence of Pope John, had hijacked the Council! Fr. Joseph Ratzinger (the future cardinal) called the absence of any Commission-approved text at the Council, “the great, astonishing, and genuinely positive result of the first session.” The work of the Commission had come to nothing, and the liberals had won the day…or so it seemed.
Without hesitation, Archbishop Lefebvre formed a resistance movement of 250 members (known as the Coetus Internationalis Patrum – the International Body of Fathers) who would do all they could to limit the destructive influences of the modernists during the Council. It soon became apparent, however, that the latter had been well prepared to meet any opposition, and the force of their influence simply ruled the Council.
The destruction of the Church by Her enemies had begun in earnest. The Bride of Christ was soon to be at the mercy of marauding vandals.
In January 1962, John XXIII insisted that Archbishop Lefebvre should have a diocese of his own in France. He was appointed to the diocese of Tulle. This was a very trying time for him. Even before the Council, he was considered a traditionalist, and the assembly of Archbishops and Cardinals in France wanted to exclude him from their number! He was saddened by the pettiness of the difficulties of the bishops in France, in contrast to the very real problems he had to face in Africa. Nevertheless, he was edified by the example of the priests in France at this time.
In July 1962, Mgr. Lefebvre was elected Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers for a period of twelve years. In this capacity, he had a unique opportunity to witness first-hand the vitality of the Church on the eve of the Council. He traveled all over the world, visiting the various houses of the congregation and observing its growth. But even this congregation had no special immunity or protection from the ravenous destruction of the liberating spirit of the Council.
By 1968, the Congregation of the Holy Ghost Fathers was being overrun by liberals. A special General Chapter was called to revise the Constitutions of the Congregation “in the spirit of the Council.” Archbishop Lefebvre resigned. He had seen more than enough of the demolition of the Church and he did not want to participate in its downfall. Before doing so, however, he complained about this to the Congregation of Religious, only to be told to go and have a long vacation! His resignation was accepted two days later, and he retired in Rome as chaplain to a convent on the Via Monserrato.
The Archbishop, however, was not to be in retirement for long. 1968 would see a new development in the life of Marcel Lefebvre: the Society of St. Pius X.
Further reading, available from Angelus Press: