TALKS BETWEEN CHURCH AND LEFEBVRE DISSIDENTS OPEN
TALKS BETWEEN CHURCH AND LEFEBVRE DISSIDENTS OPEN
(ANSA) - Vatican city, September 26 - Talks between the Vatican and the ultratraditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) on formally reuniting the breakaway group with the Catholic Church began on Monday, the Vatican reported.
The group broke away from the church over theological differences stemming from the changes it adopted with the Second Vatican Council of some 45 years ago.
Last January, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication imposed on the SSPX's four bishops which he said ''could have prejudiced the opening of a door for dialogue'' with the leaders of the Society.
The excommunications were imposed when the four bishops were consecrated in 1988 in defiance of Rome by the SSPX's late founder, French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
Benedict's move sparked controversy because one of the four bishops was Richard Williamson was a known Holocaust denier, although the pope was said to have been unaware of this at the time.
Protests to Williamson's rehabilitation resulted in the pope writing an unusual personal letter to Catholic bishops in March to explain his reasons for his decision, which not only created tensions within the Church but also affected its relations with Jews.
Then in July, the pope released an apostolic letter entitled Ecclesiae Unitatem in which Benedict warned the SSPX that a number of doctrinal issues needed to be cleared up, stressing that it could not have ''canonical status'' within the Church until it does.
In reference to his lifting of the excommunications, the pope said he had taken the decision to help overcome ''every fracture and division within the church and to heal a wound experienced as increasingly painful''.
Despite its lack of official status, the SSPX is present in 59 countries and counts just under 500 priests and four bishops. It also runs seminaries in Switzerland, France, Australia, Argentina, the United States and Germany. photo: SSPX founder Archbishop Lefebvre
