Philippe Laguérie
| The Very Reverend Philippe Laguérie | |
|---|---|
| Superior General of the Institute of the Good Shepherd | |
| Successor | incumbent |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
30 September 1952 Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine |
| Nationality | French |
Philippe Laguérie (born 30 September 1952 in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine) is a French Traditionalist Catholic priest. He is the Superior General of the Institute of the Good Shepherd (French: Institut du Bon Pasteur), which upholds the Tridentine Mass.
Career
Laguérie was raised in a Roman Catholic family and he studyed for the priesthood at the International Seminary of Saint Pius X, in Écône, Switzerland. He was ordained a priest on 29 June 1979 by Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Society of St. Pius X. In 1984 he succeeded François Ducaud-Bourget as priest in charge of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris, and remained there until 1997. In 2002, he moved to Bordeaux where he illegally squatted the Saint-Eloi Church, before he re-examined his situation due to the creation of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, which had been established in 1988 by Pope John Paul II to re-establish contacts with the Society of Saint Pius X.
On 16 September 2004, Laguérie was dismissed from the Society by his superior bishop Bernard Fellay. Two years later, on 8 September 2006, he was chosen as leader of the newly founded Institut du Bon Pasteur, which received Pope Benedict XVI's approval, thus regularizing the situation of the Saint-Eloi Church following a signed convention with the archbishop of Bordeaux, Jean-Pierre Ricard.[1] He was reelected for another six years term on 13 August 2013. The Holy See ratified the decision on 13 September 2013.[2]
Controversies
Laguérie has been sometimes connected to the French far-right. In 1987, he took the defense of Jean-Marie Le Pen after his controversial remarks on the gas chambers usage in World War II and he criticized "the great Jewish banking who has held France in a dictatorship for forty-five years". He also claimed that some Holocaust denial thesis were "perfectly scientific".[3] After leaving the FSSPX, he was however very critical of Richard Williamson's negationist declarations, which he called on 13 February 2009, "scandalous and inadmissible ramblings".