Bernard Fellay - SSPX Superior General

SSPX Superior General

In July 1994 the General Chapter of the SSPX met at Écône and elected Fellay Superior General in succession to Father Franz Schmidberger. On 12 July 2006, he was re-elected to another twelve-year term, which expires in 2018. Some opponents of the SSPX, most notably the French web sites Virgo-Maria, Resistance-Catholique, and the TRADITIO Network, have criticized the 12-year terms as too long, noting that other religious orders have 4-year terms. However, the SSPX has not announced a change in the term lengths.

On 29 August 2005 Fellay was received in audience by Pope Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo. The audience was also attended by Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos and Father Schmidberger. They discussed the present state of the Church and of the SSPX, the Society's concerns about Modernism in the Church, the re-allowance of the Tridentine Mass, and the possible recognition of the SSPX by the Holy See.

By a decree of 21 January 2009 (Protocol Number 126/2009), which was issued in response to a renewed request that Bishop Fellay made on behalf of all four bishops whom Lefebvre had consecrated on 30 June 1988, the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, by the power expressly granted to him by Pope Benedict XVI, remitted the automatic excommunication that they had thereby incurred, and expressed the wish that this would be followed speedily by full communion of the whole of the Society of Saint Pius X with the Church, thus bearing witness, by the proof of visible unity, to true loyalty and true recognition of the Pope's Magisterium and authority. The canonical situation of the four bishops thus became the same as that of the other clergy of the Society, who are suspended a divinis.

The remissions have not been unanimously welcomed by all members of the SSPX. Fr. Florian Abrahamowicz, a SSPX's dean of Northeastern Italy, called the action "insulting," since it claimed to remit an excommunication of these four bishops that the Society had officially maintained since 1988 did not exist. Abrahamowicz was very soon expelled by the Italian chapter of the Society of Saint Pius X, whether for this reason or his Holocaust-related remarks.

Speaking in relation to the talks with Rome in an interview in July 2009, Fellay said of the significance of the Second Vatican Council that: "'We will not make any compromise on the Council. I have no intention of making a compromise. The truth does not tolerate compromise. We do not want a compromise, we want clarity regarding the Council.'" In February 2011, Fellay said that the reconciliation talks with the Vatican would soon be coming to an end, with little change in the views of either side. In addition to disputes over the changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council, new problems have been created by plans for the beatification of Pope John Paul II. Fellay said the scheduled beatification of Pope John Paul II on 1 May 2011 poses "a serious problem, the problem of a pontificate that caused things to proceed by leaps and bounds in the wrong direction, along 'progressive' lines, toward everything that they call 'the spirit of Vatican II.'" Nevertheless, Fellay is perceived as by far, of the four SSPX bishops, most inclined to Rome and is routinely criticised by the French web sites Virgo-Maria and Resistance-Catholique and the TRADITIO Network, among others, for his refusal to break off negotiations with the Vatican.