On September 28, 1977, David Bawden arrived at the SSPX seminary at Econe Switzerland. He had just turned eighteen a few days previous to entering the SSPX seminary. In January of 1978, Bawden was transferred to the seminary at Armada, Michigan, Saint Joseph’s House run by Fr. Donald Sanborn. On December 15, 1978, Fr. Sanborn called in Bawden and told him that a car would be leaving in about an hour to take him to the airport. He was also given a message to relay to Fr. Bolduc, that his plans would not work. The actual plans were not mentioned. Finally he was instructed to make two phone calls, one to his parents and the other to the airline to make arrangements to depart that day. No reason or other instructions were given. Another two seminarians were also dismissed that day. Previously that morning, prior to the first bell at 5:45 am, Fr. Hodgson had been awakened and told to leave before the seminarians awoke. He woke up a seminarian and asked him to take him to the airport. This seminarian did, returning about noon time to tender his own resignation from the seminary.
Bawden immediately appealed his dismissal to Archbishop Lefebvre, arranging to meet personally with Lefebvre at the August 15, 1979 Pilgrimage to Saint Marys, Kansas. This meeting was held about the 17th of August with Fr. Bolduc present as translator, Bawden, his parents and one of the other seminarians who had been dismissed on December 15. After about an hour’s conversation through translation, Lefebvre closed with a promise and then went into English, saying: The United States is my cross. Lefebvre promised four seminarians they would have a reason for their dismissal and could address this directly to himself. Secondly, they could apply to any SSPX seminary in the world and would be accepted or not, ignoring the previous dismissal entirely.
Bawden applied for readmission to Econe to Abbe Tissier de Mallerais. He received a reply that he was not being admitted, because he had been dismissed from Armada by Fr. Sanborn. Bawden wrote to Fr. Sanborn to remind him of the Archbishop’s promise, but never received a reply. Finally Bawden hand delivered two letters personally to Archbishop Lefebvre, one in late May 1980 and another January 5, 1981. Finally he had a letter hand delivered to Lefebvre in Econe in the Spring of 1981.
In order to show good faith, Bawden entered the brother program at Saint Marys in February of 1980, and resigned from the SSPX on March 5, 1981. In considering the events, Bawden decided to address the dismissal as being without cause, because no reason was ever given as promised, nor were other promises kept.
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Hello, I have been trying to follow this Pope Michael thing for a while and find it very interesting. Could you please elaborate as to why “Pope Michael” was expelled from the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X?
