Origins of Archbishop Lefebvre’s 1974 Declaration (1)

When young Marcel announced his desire to become a priest to his family, his father, René Lefebvre, wanted him to go to Rome. His elder brother René had preceded him there, with the blessing of the Bishop of Lille. Indeed, the Bishop's approval was required to apply to the Pontifical French Seminary in Rome. The same approval was given to Marcel.

On October 25, 1923, the future Archbishop of Dakar arrived at the French Seminary on Via Santa Chiara to begin a training program that would last until 1929. The seminary had been founded in 1853 by Fr. Louis-Marie Barazer de Lannurien, a spiritual son of Fr. Francis Libermann, himself a founder of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit and the Immaculate Heart of Mary [the Holy Ghost Fathers, also known as the Spiritans], which Marcel Lefebvre would join a few years later.

The house was set up in a former “monastery built by Pius IV's nephew, Charles Borromeo, around 1560, a secret nest hidden in the ruins of the old pagan thermal baths,” as described by Fr. Raymond Dulac in his Souvenirs du Séminaire français [Memories of the French Seminary]. The chapel, which was in ruins at the time of establishment in 1854, was rebuilt according to the plan of Notre Dame des Victoires.

The Holy Ghost Fathers ran this house of ecclesiastical formation until 2009. The seminary was then entrusted to Fr. Henri Le Floch, rector from 1904 to 1927. During this period, he trained some sixty future bishops. He and all the other religious in the house “were consultors to the most important Congregations: Holy Office, Consistorial, Council, Sacraments,” Fr. Dulac says.

A Roman Formation

In his biography of Archbishop Lefebvre, Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais relates the testimony of the former seminarian of Santa Chiara regarding this direction: “Fr. Le Floch,” says Archbishop Lefebvre, “made us enter into and live the history of the Church, this fight that the perverse powers take to Our Lord. We were mobilized against this dreadful liberalism.”

And elsewhere: “He was the one who taught us what the popes were to the world and the Church, and what they had taught for a century and a half—against liberalism, modernism, and Communism, and the whole doctrine of the Church on these topics. He really made us understand and share in this battle of the popes to preserve the world and the Church from these scourges which plague us today.”

Archbishop Lefebvre was very grateful to this director: “a well-beloved Father, a Father who taught us to see contemporary events clearly by commenting on the encyclicals of the Popes,” and “I will never thank God enough for allowing me to know that truly extraordinary man.”

Other testimonials from seminarians of the same period sound similar. Fr. Dulac, who was a boarder at the French Seminary from 1920 to 1926, in the three short chapters of his Souvenirs du Séminaire français [Memories of the French Seminary], brings to life the atmosphere, steeped in Romanity, in which aspirants to the priesthood were immersed. Courses were taken at the Gregorian University and reviewed with seminary priests.

Another witness, Fr. Victor-Alain Berto, a student at the French seminary from 1921 to 1926, also expressed his gratitude to Fr. Le Floch, and his attachment to the Romanity he had acquired during his training. In Notre-Dame de Joie [Our Lady of Joy], a compilation of extracts from his letters, he writes: “How solid this Roman method is, what a synthesis we had the opportunity to make!”

He continues: “And how right Fr. Le Floch was to think and say that this doctorate [in theology], whose program includes an integral and sufficiently thorough knowledge of the formal principles of all theology, is the true doctorate of the Church [...] I sometimes wonder if I have learned anything in the last fifteen years”. A doctorate in theology which Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre obtained on July 2, 1930.

The distant origins of the November 21st declaration can therefore be traced back to this Roman ecclesiastical training that so deeply imbued the young seminarian, and to the love of the Church and the papacy in which he was so happily trained. It is to this attachment that Archbishop Lefebvre links the text of his declaration: 

“We hold fast, with all our heart and with all our soul, to Catholic Rome, Guardian of the Catholic Faith and of the traditions necessary to preserve this faith, to Eternal Rome, Mistress of wisdom and truth.”