Excerpt taken from "The True Face of Tradition: An Interview with Bishop Fellay" (Tradizione: Il Vero Volto - Milan, Sugarco, 2009), by Alessandro Gnocchi and Mario Palmaro:
Question: We are asking you this because it strikes us that the Fraternity of Saint Pius X speak little, not much, of Mons. Lefebvre. Usually, in ecclesial movements, in associations of a certain importance, the citing of the founder is always highly intense. It is natural that it be so. Why then, instead, do you (the Society) rarely mention Abp. Lefebvre?
Bishop Fellay: Archbishop Lefebvre never wanted to be considered the founder or head of a traditionalist movement. At Flavigny, in France, a group nurtured by priests devoted to the Traditional Mass asked the Monsignor to become their leader, but he refused. He explained that he was not the leader of anything, but simply a Catholic bishop. He never wanted any reference to his person .
It seems to me that this is a very Catholic way of conceiving his ministry.
Instead, what struck him and left him perplexed, was the fact that he was one of very few bishops who moved along those lines. He used to ask himself “Why is it that only Bishop Castro Mayer and myself do not want to follow this road which the Church has always condemned?” He did not boast about his choice to remain in Tradition with only a few others. On the contrary, he suffered being one of the few and felt the burden of the responsibility. This is why he never wanted to be considered a founder. All his life he continued doing that which the Church had given him mandate to do: nothing more, nothing less. [Page 48 - contribution and translation: Francesca Romana]
