World Notes SCHISMS

For the more than 6,000 worshipers in attendance, the ceremony in an Alpine meadow near the Swiss hamlet of Econe was deeply moving. To the Vatican, it was anathema. By consecrating four bishops against Rome's wishes, traditionalist Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, 82, opened the first schism in the Roman Catholic Church in eight decades. The result: instant excommunication for Lefebvre and his new prelates.

The excommunication is Rome's final action against Lefebvre, who opposed the liberalizing policies of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council and then set up his own seminary in Econe. An agreement worked out last month seemed to herald a reconciliation, but it collapsed three weeks ago. By going ahead with the ceremony, Lefebvre sought to perpetuate his 100,000-member renegade movement, since his newly consecrated bishops can in turn ordain their own priests. Dismissing his excommunication, the Archbishop declared, "I am a bishop of the Catholic Church who will continue to spread the faith."