Archbishop Lefebvre and the Vatican - Part I: The Documents (1987) - 1 October Letter of Archbishop Lefebvre to Cardinal Ratzinger

Eminence,

Shall your letter of July 28 be the dawn of a solution? A few clues allow us to hope for it:

• The absence of a declaration makes us think that, at last, we are recognized as perfectly Catholic.¹²
• The extensive contacts with a Cardinal who would visit us answers our wishes oftentimes expressed.
• The continuity of the liturgy according to the liturgical books as they were in the Church in 1962, deeply satisfies us.
• The right to continue the formation of our seminarians as we are currently doing, according to the norms of the Sacred Congregation for the Seminaries, is also for us the assurance of perpetuity for our work.

In order to go further towards a solution it seems indispensable to meet with the Visitor, either by his coming to Ecône or Rickenbach, in Switzerland, or by our meeting him at Albano, in order to be able to study possible concrete means of this definitive solution.

It is out of the question to relinquish authority over our seminarians. It would be opposed to the very right that you intend to give us.

I will be in Albano between October 16 and 20. I dare hope that the wish expressed above shall be able to be realized at that date in order to open the way.

Fr. du Chalard shall carry this letter to you. He will be able to bring back your answer.

Thanking you in advance, I beg Your Eminence to accept my respectful and fraternal sentiments in Christo et Maria.

† Marcel Lefebvre
P.S. We strongly wish that the Cardinal Visitor be Cardinal Gagnon.

¹² Note that Cardinal Ratzinger went back on this point and required a doctrinal declaration in the Protocol of Accord of May 5, 1988.