Archbishop Lefebvre was educated at the fountainhead of Christianity. His best formative years were spent in the shadow of St. Peter’s of Rome. His would be a Roman mind, a Roman spirit, and a love for Rome which nothing could sever, much less the present Roman crisis.

To those little familiar with the fundamentals of his personality, it may appear paradoxical that the one man who so openly opposed Peter in the 20th century could be so attached to Romanitas. He confessed that, when the Roman pressure began against him, he “would have wished rather to die than to experience difficulties with the Pope.” Some of his writings taken from the Spiritual Journey express well the various aspects of Romanitas we wish to communicate to our readers.

“God, who leads all things, has in His infinite wisdom prepared Rome to become the Seat of Peter and center for the radiation of the Gospel. He willed that Christianity, cast in a certain way in the Roman mold, should receive from it a vigorous and exceptional expansion. Hence the adage: Onde Cristo è Romano.

“Schisms and heresies are often begun by a rupture with Romanitas, a rupture with the Roman liturgy, with Latin, with the theology of the Latin and Roman Fathers and theologians.
“Ours is the duty to guard this Roman Tradition desired by Our Lord…

Our conclusion will be that one cannot be Catholic without being Roman.

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Following in the wake of this defender of the papacy’s rights in the face of Peter, we need to understand the heavenly designs over the Eternal City, the synonymy between Catholic and Roman, and be willing to even suffer the spiritual martyrdom he went through for the sake of our Holy Mother, the Church of Rome.

Fr. Jürgen Wegner

Publisher