This Is a Great Pain for Us

June 18, 2026

The latest issue of the Letter to Our Brother Priests recalls these words of Archbishop Lefebvre, spoken during his homily at the 1976 ordinations, for which he was threatened with condemnation. This pain remains with us.

My dear friends, my dear colleagues, my dear brothers, who have come from all countries, from all walks of life, it is a joy for us to welcome you and to feel you so close to us at this moment, so important for our Fraternity and also for the Church. I believe, in fact, that if pilgrims have made the sacrifice of traveling night and day, coming from very distant regions to participate in this ceremony, it is because they were convinced that they were coming to attend a Church ceremony, because they will thus have the certainty, upon returning home, that the Catholic Church continues.

We are told that we are at an impasse. Why? Because from Rome, especially in the last three months, we have received exhortations, supplications, orders, and threats, telling us to cease our activity and not to perform these ordinations.

It is an immense, immense pain for us to think that we are in difficulty with Rome because of our faith! How is this possible? It is something beyond our imagination, something we could never have thought of, something we could never have believed, especially in our childhood, when everything was uniform, when the Church believed in its general unity, when it had the same faith, the same sacraments.

I told those who came from Rome: Christians are torn apart in their families, in their homes, among their children; they are torn apart in their hearts because of this division in the Church, this new religion that is being taught and practiced. Priests are dying prematurely, torn apart in their hearts and souls. We are in a truly dramatic situation! So, we have to choose between an appearance—I would say—of obedience—because the Holy Father cannot ask us to abandon our faith, that is absolutely impossible—and the preservation of our faith. Well! We choose not to abandon our faith. For in this, we cannot go wrong. The Church cannot be mistaken in what she has taught for two thousand years; that is impossible.

Tomorrow, perhaps, our condemnation will appear in the newspapers because of today’s ordinations; it’s quite possible. This censure, this condemnation, if there were one, these censures, if there were any, will be absolutely invalid.

Oh yes! We have faith in Peter, we have faith in the Successor of Peter. But as Pope Pius IX so aptly stated in his dogmatic constitution on the Roman Pontiff: the Pope received the Holy Spirit not to create new truths, but to sustain us in the eternal faith. This is the dogmatic definition of papal infallibility established by Pope Pius IX at the time of the First Vatican Council. And that is why we are convinced that by upholding the traditions of the Church, we demonstrate our love, our docility, and our obedience to the Successor of Peter.

( Extracts from the sermon delivered by Bishop Marcel Lefebvre on June 29, 1976 in Écône, exactly half a century ago ).

You can find the full transcript on this page.

(Source : Lettre à nos frères prêtres n°110 - La Porte Latine - FSSPX Actualités)
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