Letter of Cardinal Seper to Mgr. Lefebvre

13 January 1979



Your Excellency,

I deeply regret that your state of fatigue did not allow you to return this morning to the Congregation for the conclusion of our exchanges. I send you best wishes for your health.

I enclose the introductory text which I read to you, in the presence of H. E. Mgr. Hamer, on the 11th of this month at the start of our meetings, and also the Ratio agendi from which I quoted three articles. It seems to me that these documents made the object of our talks quite clear, within the framework of the procedure in our Congregation, that is, the examination of the results of the Conference by the Ordinary Congregation of Cardinals, before their being sent for the definitive decision of the Holy Father.

According to your wish, I am sending you also the procés- verbal of these interviews, consisting, as I have informed you (point n. 4), of the questions put to you and the answers you gave to them, which were read to you at the end of each session. I enclose also, as parts of the acts, the written reply to question n. XVI b, which you sent to me. You will thus have the opportunity to study the acts at your leisure, and to add the corrections you consider necessary according to the oral responses you gave me in the course of the conference. I thank you for your readiness to return them within eight days, as you proposed, through the Apostolic Nuncio in Switzerland.

Finally, I take notice of the fact that you will ask the Holy Father to make the judgment himself, after studying this document. Like you, I hope a satisfactory solution can be found.

With warm and respectful devotion in the Lord,

Franc. Card. Seper
Prefect