The Holy See has offered the Society of St Pius X founded by the late Vatican II rebel Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre the possibility of its own personal prelature if it accepts five conditions for a return to communion with Rome, European reports say. Catholic Online quotes a report in the Italian Newspaper, Il Giornale as saying the superior of the Lefebvrians, Bishop Bernard Fellay, met with Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, president of the Commission Ecclesia Dei, which deals with negotiations with the traditionalist group.
Bishop Fellay, who previously had written to the Pope asking for the revocation of the excommunication imposed by Pope John Paul II in 1988 on Archbishop Lefebvre and the four new bishops that he had wanted to consecrate without the consent of the Holy See (including Fellay), has received a letter from Cardinal Castrillon setting out the five points.
The conditions include the acceptance of the Second Vatican Council and the declaration of full validity of the Mass according to the reformed liturgy, two conditions that Lefebvre had assented to at the request of then Cardinal Ratzinger in 1988.
In return, the Vatican offers the group a canonical framework similar to that of Opus Dei, namely a personal "prelature", which would allow the Society to continue its activities and to train its seminarians.
The march of rapprochement was started in 2000, when the Lefebvrians made a Holy Year pilgrimage to Rome. It was followed by a brief audience granted by Pope John Paul II to Monsignor Fellay and the beginning of the long and laborious negotiations with Cardinal Castrillón.
Many things have changed since then however. The Lefebvrians asked, before making any step towards an agreement, that the old preconciliar missal, which fell into disuse after the liturgical reform, be liberalised.
The new pope, Benedict XVI, particularly sensitive to these issues, a year ago published the Motu proprio declaring the full citizenship of the old Mass allowing it in every parish, in fact stripping the bishop of the possibility of prohibiting it.
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