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17 years ago, Archbishop Marcel-François Lefebvre died in Martigny, Switzerland, on March 25, 1991. Regardless of one's opinion of some events of his life, or of some of his decisions, or of some of his stronger words, it would be wrong not to acknowledge that without him the struggle for the preservation of much of what we cherish would probably have been lost. The fact that 17 years after his death "the question of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre" is still discussed in the highest halls of the Church, that his name is still mentioned among the words included in some of the gravest decisions of the Supreme Authority of the Church (cf. Letter to Bishops regarding the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum), and that the universal Church experiences in our age the great impact of the publication and implementation, not without hurdles, of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum show that the global movement for the advancement of the Traditional Roman Rite is inseparably linked to the life of this passionate man, whose name still causes passionate discussions.+
