SSPX was founded, with the canonical approval of the
Bishop of
Fribourg, in 1970 by
French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, former
Superior General of the
Holy Ghost Fathers (1962-1968), a Father of the
Second Vatican Council and one of the best-known
prelates in
Africa, where he spent much of his early pastoral ministry. He retired as head of the Holy Ghost Fathers in 1968 when the order began revisions of its constitutions, which Lefebvre considered
modernist. Shortly after his resignation, Archbishop Lefebvre was approached by
seminarians from the
French Seminary in
Rome who, he said, were being persecuted for their adherence to traditional beliefs and doctrines. They sought advice on a conservative seminary to complete their studies. He directed them to the
University of Fribourg,
Switzerland. In 1970, urged by the
Abbot of
Hauterive and the
Dominican theologian and priest, Fr.
Marie-Dominique Philippe, to teach these seminarians personally, Lefebvre approached the Bishop of Fribourg, who, three months before resigning his see, approved, with a document predated by six days to 1 November 1970, the founding of SSPX at the level of a
pia unio, the preliminary stage towards becoming an officially recognized
religious institute or
Society of Apostolic Life. Affluent Swiss laymen offered the seminary at
Écône in Switzerland to the newly formed group. The seminary received a reputation as a "wildcat seminary" for its teaching of centuries old practices which were being abandoned in most other parts of the church. At the seminary, in 1988, he
consecrated four bishops without papal approval, an act by which he incurred
excommunication latae sententiae. Lefebvre resided in a private apartment on the property until his death in 1991 and is buried in a tomb nearby, which was visited by Cardinal
Silvio Oddi in 1992. ==References==