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POPE-FELLAY (UPDATED) Aug-30-2005 (710 words) With photo. xxxi
Vatican says pope-schismatic bishop meeting based on wish for unity
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The desire to take concrete steps toward reconciliation and unity underlined a closed-door meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the head of a schismatic priestly society, said the Vatican's chief papal spokesman.
Joaquin Navarro-Valls, head of the Vatican press office, confirmed in a written press release that the pope met Aug. 29 with Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the Society of St. Pius X, at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.
The meeting, held at Bishop Fellay's request, took place "in a climate of love for the church" and was marked by "the desire to reach perfect communion," Navarro-Valls wrote.
Although both sides were "aware of the difficulties, the will to proceed forward step by step and in (a) reasonable time frame was demonstrated," the Vatican spokesman said in a text released by the Vatican.
Bishop Fellay said the 35-minute encounter with the pope resulted in "a consensus as to proceeding by stages in the resolution of problems."
However, he added in an Aug. 29 communique published on the society's Web site that the society was praying "that the Holy Father might find the strength to put an end to the crisis in the church by 'restoring all things in Christ.'"
Bishop Fellay is one of four bishops ordained against papal orders by the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988. The bishop is the current head of the Switzerland-based Society of St. Pius X, which was founded by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1969.
Archbishop Lefebvre, who died in 1991, rejected the liturgical reforms and concepts of religious freedom and ecumenism as formulated by the Second Vatican Council.
Pope John Paul II set up a Vatican commission, "Ecclesia Dei," in 1988 to offer pastoral care to Archbishop Lefebvre's former followers.
The commission's head, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, is in charge of keeping a channel of communication open with current leaders of the Lefebvrite group. The cardinal was present at the Aug. 29 meeting, Navarro-Valls said.
Bishop Fellay said in his written statement that the meeting with Pope Benedict "took place in an atmosphere of calm" and that they "broached the serious difficulties, already known, in a spirit of great love for the church."
"The audience was an opportunity for the society to manifest that it has always been attached -- and always will be -- to the Holy See, eternal Rome," he said.
Cardinal Mario Francesco Pompedda, the retired head of the Vatican's highest court, said until the group "submits itself to the legitimate authority of the pope and recognizes the resolutions adopted by the Second Vatican Council as doctrinal acts of renewal and openness of the church to the world," there could be no "full communion with the Lefebvrites."
"If they accept these points, the Mass in Latin will no longer be a problem, also because Pope (John Paul II) had already allowed it," the cardinal said in an interview published Aug. 30 by the Italian daily, La Repubblica.
Cardinal Pompedda said he would not call the Aug. 29 meeting a sign of "a new atmosphere" between the two sides, but the prevailing mood could "undoubtedly open up to the hope that the society may truly take those steps" that would let its members be reinstated into the church.
In a July interview with DICI, the press agency of the Society of St. Pius X, Bishop Fellay said there were two preconditions for extended talks with the Vatican.
When asked in the July interview what he would request in a meeting with Pope Benedict, he said he would ask the pope to lift the excommunication against himself, the other three bishops and Archbishop Lefebvre and to authorize, without restrictions, all Catholic priests to celebrate the Tridentine Mass, the rite replaced in 1969 with publication of the new Roman Missal.
"These are two preconditions which we cannot dissociate from any further doctrinal discussion," he said.
Though Bishop Fellay said "the issue of the Mass is not all" the group is concerned with, he added, "we must begin with something concrete."
END
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