Fr. Schmidberger writes in February:

The best service we can give to the Church, the pope and the bishops, is to insist inflexibly on our position, to preach the Gospel at any cost, to continue in the way in which we are engaged, and first of all to form true priests. Our disharmony with the present Rome does not come from us but from those who have broken with tradition. It is not us who are the defendant; we are the prosecution, and this not by a caprice, nor pharisaism, but in virtue of a sacred duty and with our heart full of sorrow.

In March, Father presents to Cardinal Ratzinger three big packages with the petitions of 129,849 traditional Catholics asking the pope to solve the problem of Tradition.

Meanwhile, the Archbishop writes his Open Letter to Confused Catholics.

The Society of St. Pius X could form in the whole world a clergy rooted in the faith; Econe would turn into an example for the formation of priests in our times.

In Ireland, a new church is bought in Dublin seating 700 faithful, and 10 new chapels open in Germany. A world-wide campaign led by the Society of St. Pius X protests against the blasphemous film, Hail Mary.

On July 22nd, Lady Kinnoull dies in Carmel, CA. She was the very first providential benefactress of the Society. English countess, very cultivated, knowing profoundly her religion with a solid attachment to tradition, with the character of a crusader, and with a great fortune, she supported financially General Franco during the Spanish War. Restless fighter, in 1964 she flew to Paris to meet Archbishop Lefebvre while he was still Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, to tell him that her fortune and influences would be at his service if he needed help to fight against the subversion within the Church. During the first years of the Society of St. Pius X in Fribourg she covered most of the expenses of that early foundation. At her death, the Archbishop wrote:

She could consider the young priests of the Society as her children because without her help at the beginning it would not have been possible to fulfill our priestly work.

On August 31st, Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro Mayer write another open letter to the pope, a solemn injunction this time:

Holy Father, your responsibility is heavily engaged in this new and false conception of the Church which is drawing clergy and faithful into heresy and schism. If the Synod of Bishops perseveres in this direction you will no longer be the Good Shepherd. Please put an end to the invasion of Modernism within the Church.

While at the Council there was a battle between conservative Catholics and ecumenist Liberals, now we are witnessing a struggle between the Liberals themselves. Thus we have the tragedy which is to unfold. Will the Revolution carry the day yet a second time, or will it be crushed?  Alas, unless God intervenes, there is every reason to believe that the Revolution will continue its devastating course.

At the end of the month, he talks about the 3 wars of his life: 

• 1st World War (1914-18), where he saw the destruction of whatever remained of Christian Europe;

• 2nd World War (1939-45), with the official recognition by all nations of Communism;

• and the 3rd War (1962-65), the worse one, wounding the very heart of the Church, the Second Vatican Council. After it, the liberal virus is instilled openly in the hierarchy and the faithful.

In our church of Geneva, October 27th, Archbishop Lefebvre asks traditional Catholics to consider our chapels as our parishes:

We are going to find ourselves in an ecclesiastical situation more and more grave, and this is why in my opinion we are obliged more and more to separate ourselves from this Conciliar stream, if not heretical, at least openly favoring heresy. In consequence, henceforth, we must consider our places of worship as true parishes and receive the sacraments in them, including the sacrament of marriage.

On November 6th, the Archbishop places before Cardinal Ratzinger our Dubia on religious freedom. We will wait one year for an answer.

In La Reja, Argentina, he celebrates his 80th birthday, November 29th. On December 1st, Bishop de Castro Mayer, who came from Brazil for the ordinations by Archbishop Lefebvre, and participates in the rite by imposing his hands with the other priests present on the 8 new ordinands. On the 3rd of December he himself proceeds to confer the tonsure and the minor orders to our seminarians, an unexpected event that makes our Archbishop quip:

This is the first time in the history of the Society that I have attended a ceremony of ordination!

1986

The pope visits Togo and India, again scandalizing the faithful by taking public part in ceremonies of a pagan nature.

In January, Cardinal Gagnon calls Archbishop Lefebvre to Rome and announces that the Holy Father wants him to be associated to Cardinal Ratzinger in the Society’s case.

Our house of Gabon is founded on January 14th, the mission being consecrated to St. Joseph. The president invites Archbishop Lefebvre to visit the country, which he does in February, this time to leave his priests in residence.

Regular missionary trips begin to New Guinea, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong. The pilgrimage of Chartres brings 15,000 faithful and more than 100 priests; more than 3,000 will also attend the pilgrimage to St. Nicolas de Flue.

During the ordinations of June at Econe, 125 priests impose hands on the young men who have come to reinforce the ranks. The priory of Wanganui, New Zealand opens on August 16th. A priory is also founded in Port du France, Martinique. Monthly Masses start in Luxembourg, and in Santiago, Chile, a big church is bought with 500 faithful in attendance. The Castle of Jaidhof is purchased in Austria to become a center of retreats and missionary work. A summer retreat in Lebanon brings 65 men to follow the Exercises. The Society of St. Pius X prepares a foundation for October in Zimbabwe, and starts a timid beginning of the apostolate in India.

In the U.S., at the beginning of August, the Society of St. Pius X sisters found a novitiate at Armada, MI. The headquarters of the Society moves from Dickinson, TX to St. Louis, MO.

The bishops of Gabon, who had been happy to visit with the Archbishop, but not so happy to have his priests among them, instigated by the papal nuncio, write the Archbishop expressing, of course, esteem and gratitude, but telling him also that they would like to see him reconciled with Rome. Their old superior answers on August 9th, scolding them without false charity, using the words of Saint Paul, to the Galatians:

I am shocked that you turn away so quickly from the one who has called you in the grace of Jesus Christ to pass to a different Gospel.

And then he says,

I am in a position to repeat these words to you because I am the one who has announced you the Gospel, the only one. The new gospel of religious freedom and of the rights of man is not the true gospel. We have a tragic choice to make, either to keep the Catholic faith and not to follow the authorities unfaithful to their task, or to follow blindly those authorities and accept a false gospel. You choose the unfaithful authorities; we choose the Gospel of our Lord, faithfully transmitted by the Church until 1960. We go to the rescue of those Catholics who have kept the sense of faith; founding a Society of St. Pius X house in Gabon I only continue what I did from 1932 to 1945 with the approval of the Church. You are the ones who have turned away to a different gospel. The true Catholics of Gabon are fully aware of it and now they thank God because they have found the true Gospel of their infancy. The day of our judgment, God will ask us if we have been faithful, not if we have obeyed unfaithful authorities. Obedience is a virtue relative to truth and to good. When it is submitted to error and to evil it is not a virtue, but a vice. May you remain disciples of truth and not of error.

The new academic year sees the opening of the seminary of Flavigny in France for the spirituality and philosophy years with 36 seminarians.

After the scandal of the ecumenical meeting of Assisi, Bishop de Castro Mayer exercises a public episcopal ministry along with Archbishop Lefebvre, and on November 29th, he confirms with great solemnity 450 children in our chapel of Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, in the Antilles, Archbishop Lefebvre is received by 250 people in Martinique and 500 in Guadaloupe.

The seminarians of Econe restore the Eucharistic Crusade for children, now extended throughout the world.

1987

The Society has 205 priests working in 23 countries and 263 young men filling the seminaries. In Ridgefield, the arrival of 19 new seminarians makes the house burst at the seams, and the General Council determines that it is time to move the seminary elsewhere, and to turn Ridgefield into a retreat house. St. Mary’s has 700 faithful, and in France a new Carmel is founded, the seventh after the foundations started by Mother Marie Christiane Lefebvre in 1977, one Carmel for each seminary.

January sees the death of Mother Mary Gabriel. Sister of the Holy Ghost, co-foundress and first General Superior of the Sisters of the Society of St. Pius X, missionary in Cameroon, in Banghi, in the Antilles, and Senegal, she founded the Society of the Daughters of Mary of Cameroon in Yaoundee, and devoted herself as a nurse in the leper hospital of Banghi. Always happy and humble, profoundly religious and exemplary, she was unable to accept the changes in her congregation, to the point that she felt like a stranger. With the permission of her superiors she helped her brother to found a religious congregation of women with identity of goals with the Society of St. Pius X.  A simple, happy, and strong soul, she cannot be forgotten by those who had the grace to know her.

On January 18th, dies Fr. Raymond du Lac, a renowned canonist who studied at the French Seminary with Archbishop Lefebvre, remaining friends to the end. He proved canonically that the Constitution Missale Romanum of Paul VI did not affect the right to celebrate the traditional Mass. Until the last day he remained an energetic defender of the Roman traditions the he learned under Fr. Le Floch.

On March 9th, Rome answers to our Dubia:  Religious freedom, they say, constitutes a novelty that can very well be put in accord with tradition. While Rome answers in this nonchalant manner, the South American bishops announce that 60 million Catholics have joined Protestant sects, and Cardinal Ratzinger optimistically declares that "we want to assimilate in the Church the best values of 200 years of liberal culture." Archbishop Lefebvre answers with his book, They Have Uncrowned Him.

In Gabon, 400 faithful already attend the Society chapel regularly, which makes the Archbishop of Libreville publicly attack our work. He pressures the government, and the Fathers are notified that by the end of the school year they must close the chapel and leave the country. Only a miracle can stop the persecution and the miracle happens. On the feast of the Sacred Heart, the chief of police of Libreville comes in person to tell the astonished community that nothing is going to happen and that they may finally remain.

The Society of St. Pius X founds in France the Confraternity for the Deliverance of the Souls in Purgatory, a work that keeps growing every year and that today is in possession of their own chapel in France.

If you do not name bishops to assure my succession, my duty will be to do it by myself.

After a "dialogue of deaf people" during 20 years that has become an unsuccessful monologue, everything seems to indicate that Rome is just waiting for the death of Archbishop Lefebvre to give the final stroke against traditional works.

Fatima, August 22nd, at the 70th anniversary of the apparitions: 2,000 people gather for a night vigil of prayer and a Pontifical Mass during which Archbishop Lefebvre consecrates the Society of St. Pius X to Our Lady, and inasmuch as it is in his power, he also consecrates Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. During his homily he says that there is an intimate link between the secret of Fatima and the post-Conciliar crisis.

A group of cardinals and bishops ask the pope in September to find a solution for the Society of St. Pius X. On the 1st of October the Archbishop accepts an Apostolic Visitor to come in the name of the pope to see what Tradition is all about. The Archbishop informs the press of a certain positive change in our relations with Rome. He goes to the Eternal City to continue the negotiations and on October 29th, Cardinal Ratzinger informs the Synod of Bishops that the pope has named Cardinal Gagnon as Apostolic Visitor to the Society of St. Pius X, much to the delight of some bishops and to the worry of others.

The great family of Tradition, surrounds Archbishop Lefebvre in Econe for his 40 years of episcopate on October 3rd. Before 80 priests, 150 seminarians, and 4,000 faithful, the Archbishop Lefebvre says in his homily that 2 mottoes have conducted his episcopal ministry, the one of the Society of St. Pius X, "Instaurare omnia in Christo," ["To restore all things in Christ] and "Credidimus Caritati," ["We have believed in Charity"] his own episcopal motto.

In November, more involved than ever, Bishop de Castro Mayer goes to our seminary in Buenos Aires to confer the tonsure and give the minor orders, as well as to ordain 3 subdeacons and 4 deacons.

The 11th of November, exactly 13 years after the first Apostolic Visit of 1974, Cardinal Gagnon and Msgr. Perl arrive in Econe. In a marathon visit till the 9th of December, they visit the 3 European seminaries, chapels, general house, groups of priests, schools, convents, retreat houses, up and down France, Germany, and Switzerland. In the Book of Honor of the seminary of Econe, Cardinal Gagnon writes a testimony of admiration for the work done in the seminary.

On December 8th, Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Cardinal Gagnon assists pontifically at the Mass celebrated by Archbishop Lefebvre during which 27 seminarians make their first engagement in the Society of St. Pius X. Thus, the Holy Father’s hand-picked delegate officially attends a Mass celebrated by a "suspended" bishop who receives members into a "suppressed" society, which "officially" does not exist.

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