 Lefebvre died on 25 March 1991 at the age of 85 from cancer in Martigny , Switzerland , less than three years after being excommunicated for carrying out the episcopal consecrations . Eight days later he was buried in the crypt at the society 's international seminary in Écône , Switzerland . Archbishop Edoardo Rovida , Apostolic Nuncio to Switzerland , and Bishop Henri Schwery of Sion , the local diocese , came and prayed at the body of the dead prelate . Later that year , on 18 September 1991 , Cardinal Silvio Oddi , who had been Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy from 1979 to 1986 , visited Lefebvre 's tomb , knelt down at it and prayed , afterwards saying aloud : " Merci , Monseigneur " . Thereafter Cardinal Oddi said he held Lefebvre to have been " a holy man " and suggested that the Society of St Pius X could be granted a personal prelature by the Holy See like that of Opus Dei . In January 1992 , the then @-@ superior general of the society , Fr . Franz Schmidberger , rejected this hypothetical offer by an unpublished private letter to the Holy See . The letter 's content was described by Bishop Richard Williamson ( subsequently expelled from the SSPX ) as basically saying that , " as long as Rome remains Conciliar , a fruitful and open collaboration between the two [ the SSPX and the Holy See ] does not seem possible . " 
