Franz Schmidberger (born 19 October 1946) is a priest of the

Society of St. Pius X The Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX; ("Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X"), FSSPX) is a canonically irregular traditionalist Catholic priestly fraternity founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Lefebvre was a leading traditionalist ...

, founded by Archbishop

Marcel Lefebvre Marcel François Marie Joseph Lefebvre (29 November 1905 – 25 March 1991) was a Catholic Church in France, French Catholic prelate who served as Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dakar, Archbishop of Dakar from 1955 to 1962. He was a major inf ...

Biography

Graduated in 1972 in the university of

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

, in the same year he entered the seminary of

Écône Écône is an area in the municipality of Riddes, district of Martigny, in the canton of Valais, Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by It ...

where he was ordained priest on 8 December 1975. Later he taught in the seminary of Weissbad, the first German speaking seminary of the Society. In 1978 he founded the seminary of Zaitzkofen in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, where he was appointed district superior from 1979. In 1982 Schmidberger was appointed superior general of the society of St Pius X (quitting the post of district superior). In 1994, he was succeeded by Bishop

Bernard Fellay Bernard Fellay (born 12 April 1958) is a Swiss traditionalist Catholic prelate who served as superior general of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) from 1994 to 2018. In 1988, Pope John Paul II announced that Fellay and three others were autom ...

. He subsequently served as 1st General Assistant (1994-2006), Austrian (1996-2000) and again German (2006-2013) district superior as well as regent of the Zaitzkofen seminary (2003-2005 and 2013-2020). With Fellay, he is said to be part of a faction that favours reconciliation with Rome on the basis of the Campos precedent, a program which is reportedly opposed by the other bishops of the SSPX. In a letter that he addressed to the Catholic bishops of Germany in October 2008, Schmidberger rejected the description that

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 16 October 1978 until Death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, his death in 2005. In his you ...

had applied to the Jews: "our older brothers in the faith", and declared that "for as long as they do not distance themselves from their forefathers' guilt through the avowal of Christ's divinity and baptism, they are complicit in the deicide".Der Spiegel: German Far-Right Hails Holocaust Denier Williamson
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Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schmidberger, Franz 1946 births Living people People from Riedlingen German traditionalist Catholics Traditionalist Catholic priests Members of the Society of Saint Pius X 20th-century Roman Catholics 21st-century Roman Catholics