Pope Stresses Unity for Catholic Church : Tours Austrian Alps Where Renegade Cleric Threatens a Breakaway

Pope John Paul II toured the friendly green hills of Austria on Saturday, with a message of unity for the Roman Catholic Church, headed for its first schism in a century.

“Only a church of complete unity is the true bread for the world,” the Pope said in a German-language sermon at the Roman-founded city of Enns on the third day of his five-day visit to this predominantly Catholic country.

Saturday’s crowds for long, colorful outdoor ceremonies in gentle summer sunshine were large and enthusiastic. But in these same Alps next Thursday, renegade Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre says he will turn his back for good on a Vatican and a Pope he believes have lost their way.

“Whoever speaks or writes words of hostility in the church is far removed from Christ,” the Pope warned at Enns. “He who obstinately repeats such words hardens his heart and offers to others stones instead of bread.”

Tried to Avoid Break

Himself a theological conservative, John Paul has repeatedly tried to avoid a complete break with the ultraconservative traditionalist French bishop whose trademark is the old-style Latin (Tridentine) Mass scrapped by Vatican reforms.

“In these days we are particularly worried for the unity of the holy church in the faithfulness to the revealed truth,” John Paul said last week at the Vatican before leaving for his 38th trip abroad.

Lefebvre has been warring with what he calls a too-modern Vatican for nearly two decades.

“I exhort you, venerable brother, to renounce your projects,” John Paul wrote Lefebvre earlier this month.

A compromise agreement between the Vatican and the renegade archbishop was signed May 5 but abandoned after both sides had second thoughts.

The 82-year-old Lefebvre, who objects to reforms ordered by the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, says he will consecrate four bishops at his headquarters in Econe, Switzerland, on Thursday.

The Vatican has warned Lefebvre that such action will mean instant excommunication for them and for him. Church law requires express papal consent for the naming of a bishop. Aides traveling with the Pope on Saturday saw no chance of a last-minute compromise.

“Excommunication by whom? Schism from what?” Lefebvre scoffed at a recent press conference at which he said there was no chance of reconciliation with what he has called “a modernist Rome which does not have the complete Catholic faith any more.”

In brimstone sermons from his mountain headquarters, Lefebvre has attacked Vatican dialogues with other religions as heretical.

“I feel the end coming, and I need a successor so my seminarians will not be orphans,” Lefebvre said in explaining why he intends to finally carry out a consecration of bishops he has long threatened.

Lefebvre’s four bishops-to-be are French, Swiss, Argentine and American. The latter is Father Richard Williamson, 47, who heads a seminary of Lefebvre’s Fraternity of Saint Pius X in Ridgefield, Conn. Lefebvre believes that Pius X, who reigned from 1903 to 1914, was “the last truly Catholic pope.”

The soft-spoken Lefebvre was suspended but not excommunicated by Pope Paul VI in 1976 and has illegally ordained more than 200 priests since then. Currently, his movement claims around 250 priests and about 280 seminarians in 28 countries.

Infallibility Dogma

By breaking with the Vatican, Lefebvre would in effect be proclaiming his own branch of Catholicism. Schisms have marked the history of the church for the past thousand years, but the last major one occurred in 1870 when the so-called Old Catholics broke from Rome over the First Vatican Council’s dogma of papal infallibility. Communities of Old Catholics still exist in Germany and Holland.

With pageantry on his schedule and unity on his mind, John Paul continues his visit to Austria today with a round of ceremonies here in Salzburg, birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The Pope returns to Rome on Monday, formally elevates 25 new cardinals Tuesday and then, it seems, can only watch helplessly from afar while Lefebvre leads his traditionalists out of the church on Thursday.