Pope Warns Rebel Prelate’s Followers to Repent

Pope John Paul II on Saturday warned followers of Marcel Lefebvre that they will be excommunicated if they stay with the rebel French prelate, but he promised that the church will meet their traditionalist needs if they remain loyal to the papacy.

The Vatican announced Saturday that Msgr. Antonio de Castro Mayer, a Brazilian prelate who assisted Lefebvre in consecrating four traditionalist bishops, had been excommunicated.

Lefebvre and the four bishops were excommunicated Thursday after the archbishop defied the Pope and performed the consecrations without his approval. The consecration led to the first church schism in 118 years.

“No one should ignore that formal adhesion to the schism constitutes a grave offense to God and leads to excommunication established by the right of the church,” the pontiff said in his first public statement on the case since the consecrations in Econe, Switzerland.

In an apostolic letter to bishops, which was released in both Latin and Italian by the Vatican, John Paul urged Lefebvre’s followers to “fulfill the serious obligation to remain united with the Vicar of Christ in the unity of the church and not to continue to sustain (Lefebvre’s) movement in any way.”

A spokesman for Lefebvre in Econe said the prelate was not available for comment Saturday.

To those wishing to remain faithful to the papacy, John Paul promised to guarantee their traditionalist needs, giving special attention to the 16th-Century Tridentine Mass.

John Paul said he was setting up a special Vatican commission, headed by a cardinal, to “facilitate complete unification” with those Lefebvre followers who prefer to remain with the mainstream church. He said the panel would seek to preserve “their spiritual and liturgical traditions.”

Lefebvre and his followers reject many reforms of the Second Vatican Council, including the replacement of the Latin Mass with a simplified liturgy in the modern local language.