Letter from Archbishop Lefebvre to Eight Cardinals (August 27, 1986)

Source: FSSPX News

There is a great risk of becoming weary or of trivializing in our minds the great departures made on doctrine and on morals by official teaching in the Church, and by recent popes in particular.

This is why we must read and reread certain texts which allow us to keep intact our capacity for indignation, because they are based on the revelation of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

FSSPX.News offers a new dossier on the four Assisi meetings and is republishing Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's letter to eight cardinals on the occasion of this meeting.

Before the meeting in Assisi took place, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre addressed a letter to eight cardinals dated August 27, 1986.

“The speeches and actions of John Paul II in Togo, Morocco, and the Indies and at the synagogue in Rome cause a righteous indignation to rise up in our heart. What do the Saints, the holy men and women of the Old and New Testaments make of this? What would the Holy Inquisition do if it were still in existence?

“He who now sits upon the Throne of Peter mocks publicly the first article of the Creed and the first Commandment of the Decalogue.

“The scandal given to Catholic souls cannot be measured. The Church is shaken to its very foundations. If faith in the Church, the only ark of salvation, disappears, then the Church herself disappears. All of her strength, all of her supernatural activity is based on this article of our faith.

“Is John Paul II to continue ruining the Catholic faith, in particular at Assisi, with the planned procession of religions in the streets of the town of St. Francis and assignment of religions to the various chapels of the basilica with a view to practicing their worship for the intention of peace as conceived by the United Nations?

“It is what Cardinal Etchegaray, who is in charge of this abominable congress, has announced.

“Is it conceivable that no authoritative voice has been raised in the Church to condemn these public sins? Where are the Machabees? …”

The eight cardinals to whom the letter was addressed were Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, Archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Paul Zoungrana, Archbishop of Ouagadougou, Cardinal Silvio Oddi, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Marcelo González-Martin, Archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Hyacinthe Thiandoum, Archbishop of Dakar, Cardinal Alfons Stickler, Librarian of the Vatican Library, Cardinal Édouard Gagnon, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, and Cardinal Pietro Palazzini, Prefect for the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.