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.

His adherents saw Schuckardt as the only true Catholic bishop in the era of general apostasy. He even claimed to have been mystically crowned pope to a small group of close disciples. At least from the early 1970s onwards, outsiders, including other Catholic traditionalists, regarded the TLRC as a heterodox group based on a personality cult and with suspicious apostolic succession. On his hand, Schuckardt did not accept other traditionalist groups; only sacraments administered by his group were valid.

Particularly during the early 1980s, even if the number of adherents grew, the situation within the TLRC became progressively chaotic. At least partly due to Schuckardt’s severe health problems and the strong medication he took, the bishop’s behavior became increasingly erratic, and a power struggle between two factions ensued. After being accused of, e.g., incompetency and sexual abuse in 1984, Schuckardt left or was forced to go, and his long-time associate and Vicar General Denis Chicoine (1937–1995) took charge of the community. Though most church members sided with the Chicoine faction and others would leave altogether, a small group of clergy, religious brothers, nuns, and laypeople stayed with Schuckardt. Some would follow him to different locations in California and the Seattle area until he died in 2006. By the end, he had no more than around a hundred adherents.

The larger group that stayed at Mount Saint Michael in Spokane after Schuckardt’s exit, for some time, was officially known as the Latin Rite Catholic Church or, more often, the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen (CMRI), sought help from other traditionalist bishops, only to clash with them after brief periods. CMRI is currently led by Bishop Mark Pivarunas (b. 1958), consecrated in the early 1990s by a Mexican bishop in the Thuc lineage. Today, CMRI is one of the largest sedevacantist groups in the world, which has chapels and provides sacraments in many places in the United States and other parts of the world.

This report, however, focuses on Francis Schuckardt and his group before and after the 1984 split, now led by Bishop Mary Fidelis. Still, I will give a very brief outline of the post-Schuckardt CMRI history.

See the report:

Francis Schuckardt, the Papacy, and the ApocalypseDownload

11 thoughts on “New Research Report: Francis Schuckardt, the Papacy, and the Apocalypse”

    1. Here’s some news from NZ”The Press” https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19830120.2.39
      BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
      Press, 20 January 1983, Page 4

      Poor fare for ‘bishop’
      A dissident Catholic “bishop” said yesterday that he and his followers were virtually living on cheese, crackers, and peanut butter on’ their trip through New Zealand. Mr. Francis Konrad Marie Schuckardt is travelling through New Zealand with 15 followers preaching the Tridentine Catholic rite. This rite was replaced in the early 1960s by a Church council known as Vatican II, a move that outraged some “traditional” Catholics such as Mr. Schuckhardt. They refuse to recognise the priests, bishops, and Pope of the Church who preach according to the new rite.
      Mr. Schuckhardt and his followers attracted attention from the news media and the Catholic Church in other centres when’ they’ sought accommodation free or at cut rates.
      He said yesterday that such charity was commonplace in the United States, he was amazed at the pettiness of the news media and the priesthood in concentrating on such trivial matters. Mr. Schuckhardt spoke to a reporter of “The Press,” in a small room at the Chateau Regency Hotel. He also, had another room at the hotel. Both, he said, had been given to him at half-price by the manager.
      Mr. Schuckhardt said that he required accommodation that had air conditioning and was quiet because he suffered from thrombo-phlebitis (blood clotting) angina (heart pains), and other ailments. His followers — brothers, priests and nuns — lived in much more modest places. The group was not living expensively. In fact, it was virtually living on cheese, crackers, and peanut butter, he said. The average New Zealand plumber would earn more a year than the whole group together. The interview was tape recorded, videotaped, and photographed by the “bishop’s” followers, who said they distributed the material to their adherents in the United States.
      Mr. Schuckhardt said that his group arrived in New Zealand at the end of November for a two-month visit to give New Zealand Catholics the traditional Mass, sacraments and teaching. The visit was made at the. request of New Zealanders.
      He was not seeking converts, contrary to one report that had been published, he said. He also denied that anyone connected with him had disrupted a church service, as another report had alleged. At the beginning of the trip he had been attracting crowds of 200 to 300. After the bad publicity, which he denounced as slander arid lies, the audiences had fallen as low as eight or 10. The meetings were held in hired halls. He did not get in touch with the local bishop, as would normally be required from a visiting priest, because the post-Vatican II Church was heretical as were those who followed it. He said that he would as soon ask the local head of the Methodist or Anglican Churches for permission to preach. He knew that the local Catholic hierarchy would not allow him to preach anyway. The nuns in the group dress in the long traditional garb no longer worn by most orders in the Church.

      Mr. Schuckardt said that he was a regularly ordained priest in the church before Vatican II. He had been made a bishop by another bishop who, like himself, was not recognised by the Church in Rome.
      The group’s seminary was in Washington state and it had a convent in Idaho. Members are devotees, of Our Lady of Fatima, whose following developed after three children said they saw a vision of the Virgin Mary at Fatima in Portugal in 1917. They take a strong anti-Marxist line.
      The Catholic Bishop of Christchurch, the Most Rev. Brian Ashby, asked to comment on the dissident priest, said, “May God bless the bishop and his associates, but I cannot approve what he is doing in the diocese of Christchurch since he is seeming to further practices which are not in accord with the present discipline of the Catholic Church.
      “Normally, Church visitors would seek permission to come into the diocese of a bishop and ask for approval for what they wanted to say or do. This courtesy has not been requested nor would approval have been given. “I have authority in the diocese and anybody preaching in the name of the Catholic Church needs approval. So, it is a disciplinary matter primarily,” Bishop Ashby said.
      “I gather that the bishop and his associates are furthering the cause of the Tridentine Mass which is not in accord with the present liturgical requirements of the Catholic Church.
      “I am quite certain that the loyalty pf the Catholic people of Christchurch lies with their bishop and his communion with the worldwide episcopate and the Pope in Rome,” Bishop Ashby said.

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  2. In the 2000s there was an internet forum that consisted only of ex-members of Schuckardt’s group.

    I still remember the discussions about whether he had declared himself pope (opinions were as varied as those presented in the report). I also very specifically remember one poster who considered Schuckardt a vile sexual predator, but was still convinced that Schuckardt had been a very effective exorcist, having personally witnessed how Schuckardt had driven a demon out of someone (he said that it made a loud cracking noise, like a whip). The poster was still confused (some 30 years later), why God had given such authority to a predator.

    I don’t even know why I remember this so specifically, that was the first time I had ever heard about the Schuckardt group.

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      1. I purchased the site theroguebishop.com and it now forwards to tridentines.com. Looks like it was only used for maybe 2005-2007. I got it in 2022. The internet archive doesn’t have anything saved.

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      2. I have read that from early publications that Schuckardt did not believe that the Tridentine Mass offered by priests other than his was invalid but illicit. This was due to the fact that they were offered without authority.

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    2. Yes Bryan is right. I tried to locate the site on the Internet Archive that includes multiple versions of old websites throughout the years. The Rogue Bishop site, as such, exists but strangely enough there is no content left.

      It’s interesting what you say about adherents’ view on Schuckardt’s as God’s tool vs. his behaviour. I remember talking to an ex-member of the Palmarian church how it was seeing their Pope Gregory XVII falling out of a car as he was so drunk or saying Mass visibly intoxicated. They said, “he was the Pope, and God’s elect, that’s the way he was”

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