On June 30, 1988 Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, creator associated with community of St. Pius X, and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer, bishop emeritus of Campos, Brazil, consecrated four bishops at the seminary of Econe, Switzerland, when you look at the existence of 10,000 faithful and a huge selection of priests and religious.
The four brand new bishops, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais (born 1945, France), Richard Williamson (created 1940, England), Alfonso de Galarreta (created 1957, Spain), and Bernard Fellay (born 1958, Switzerland), had been opted for by Archbishop Lefebvre one of the people of the community of St. Pius X as he explained in the sermon of the ceremony of consecrations because“they seemed to us the most apt, whilst being in circumstances and in functions which permit them more easily to fulfill their episcopal ministry, to confirm your children, and to be able to confer ordinations in our various seminaries.
Neither schismatic nor excommunicated
When you look at the exact same sermon, Archbishop Lefebvre emphasized the extraordinary circumstances justifying their grave decision:
It is really not I think it is my duty to provide the means of doing that which I shall call “Operation Survival,” operation survival for Tradition for me to know when Tradition will regain its rights in Rome, but. Today, this very day, is “Operation Survival.
Into training, it would have now been “Operation Suicide. if I’d made this cope with Rome, by continuing aided by the agreements we’d finalized, and by putting them” There isn’t any option, we should endure. For this reason , today, by consecrating these bishops, i will be believing that i will be keeping alive Tradition, in other words, the Catholic Church.”
One after the consecrations, in an interview published in the July-August 1989 issue of the SSPX’s magazine in France, Fideliter, the archbishop maintained that year
