Rome, Italy, Feb 2, 2004 / 22:00 pm
During a press conference which took place at a hotel near the Vatican, Bishop Bernard Fellay, leader of the traditionalist movement, “Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X”, started by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, attacked the ecumenical efforts of the Church and said dialogue with the Holy See was “at a stand still”.
Fellay, Superior General of the Fraternity, issued a letter addressed to select Cardinals in the Roman Curia and signed by him and the three other bishops who were excommunicated after being ordained by Lefebvre without Papal approval, which left the Fraternity in schism with the Catholic Church.
The letter was accompanied by a 50-page document called, “From Ecumenism to Silent Apostasy, 25 Years of a Pontificate,” in which Fellay expressed his evaluation of John Paul II’s papacy.
Fellay said the letter was sent to select Cardinals and not to the Pope—who that same afternoon at the Vatican presided at a ceremony honoring consecrated life—“because of the seriousness of the Holy Father’s state of health.”