Bishop Francis K. Schuckardt (1937–2006), founder and leader of the Fatima Crusaders, the Tridentine Latin Rite Catholic Church, also known as Tridentine Latin Rite Church (TLRC), and the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen of the Universe (CMRI), was an important figure in early U.S. Catholic traditionalism. Without a doubt, he was also one of the most controversial.
Schuckardt condemned the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and the post-conciliar developments in non-uncertain terms. Towards the end of the 1960s, he publicly declared Paul VI (sed. 1963–1978) an antipope and that the Holy See was vacant, the position that was later referred to as sedevacantism. Schuckardt founded a small religious community in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 1967, which soon attracted larger groups of followers. In 1971, he was ordained a priest and consecrated a bishop by an independent Catholic prelate.
The group expanded from Idaho and moved its headquarters to Mount Saint Michael in Spokane, Washington state 1978. TLRC was the organization’s official name incorporated in Washington state, as they could not register as either the Catholic Church or the Roman Catholic Church, even if they asserted they were nothing less. Thus, they rarely used the name TLRC, and the adherents usually called their group the Mary Immaculate Queen of the Universe Community, of which the Fatima Crusade was the apostolate. In contrast, outsiders, especially after moving to Spokane, often called them the Tridentines.
Continue reading “New Research Report: Francis Schuckardt, the Papacy, and the Apocalypse”
