When Father Élcio Murucci completed, in December 2024, half a century of priesthood, the Personal Apostolic Administration Saint John Mary Vianney (AAPSJMV) celebrated with a solemn Mass and effusive messages on social networks. Ordained on December 8, 1974, by Dom Antônio de Castro Mayer himself, Murucci represents the last living link of the generation that, alongside the emeritus bishop of Campos, raised a true wall against the reforms of the Vatican II Council. But, 24 years after the “regularization” of 2002, what remains of that resistance? An official structure, yes. Full fidelity to the spirit that animated Dom Castro Mayer? The facts and the harshest criticisms from radical traditionalists say no.
Dom Antônio de Castro Mayer did not see Vatican II “with good eyes.” This is a historical euphemism. The prelate, who participated in the Council as bishop of Campos (1948-1981), became one of the most intransigent voices against what he considered a “self-destruction” of the Church. In a personal letter to Paul VI, dated September 12, 1969, he denounced the Novus Ordo Missae for “omissions and mutations” that, in essential points, no longer expressed the theology of the Eucharistic Sacrifice defined in Trent. He refused to implement the new missal until his retirement, in 1981. He published pastoral letters and manifestos – such as the “Open Letter to the Pope and the Episcopal Manifesto” of 1983 – condemning ecumenism, collegialism, religious freedom and conciliar “latitudinarianism” as contrary to the perennial Magisterium. Ally of Dom Marcel Lefebvre and the TFP, Castro Mayer created, in 1981, the Priestly Union Saint John Mary Vianney: 25 priests and thousands of faithful who exclusively maintained the Missa Tridentina and formed, in practice, a “parallel diocese” in the North Fluminense region.
The crisis was unique in the history of the Church in Brazil – theme of a recent academic study published in March 2026 in the magazine Vértices, which describes the phenomenon as “unparalleled.” For two decades, the Union lived in an irregular situation, assisted first by Castro Mayer himself (deceased in 1991) and then by Dom Licínio Rangel. For many, it was the last trench against the “modernism” that, according to the bishop, had infiltrated the Church.
On January 18, 2002, John Paul II erected the Personal Apostolic Administration Saint John Mary Vianney by the decree *Animarum Bonum*. The “priests of Campos” returned to Roman communion. Dom Fernando Arêas Rifan, ordained bishop in 2002 by the Colombian cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, assumed the direction. Today the structure has 12 parishes and another 12 communities, headquarters in Campos, official website (adapostolica.org) and active presence on the networks. Father Murucci continues celebrating and preaching – vicar in Ururaí and other localities, with a YouTube channel where he distributes meditations and homilies in the ancient rite.
So far, everything seems like a victory. But the tone changes when one reads the criticisms coming from the harder traditionalist field, especially from the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (FSSPX). In texts still circulating on sites linked to the Fraternity, the priests of Campos are accused of “dreadful betrayal.” They ask: “What new public lie from Dom Rifan do they need?” They argue that the marriages celebrated in irregularity between 1981 and 2002 would have been declared null with the reconciliation, that the Union was “recognized without any requirement” and that Dom Castro Mayer would have been, in the Roman view, “schismatic.” The central point of the accusation is clear: by accepting the personal structure, the Administration would have traded pure resistance for obedience to Vatican II.
The most recent proof came in November 2025. Dom Rifan, at 75 years old, presented his resignation to the new Pope Leo XIV. In a private audience at the Vatican, he guaranteed to the Pontiff the “fidelity of the Administration to the traditional liturgy and to Vatican II.” The Pope accepted the resignation, but asked that Rifan remain in office for another 18 months “to reflect and prepare the successor.” Rifan, who has already edited pastoral letters defending the “continuity” of the Council and condemning as schismatic the positions of the FSSPX, made official what many traditionalists feared since 2002: the Administration is no longer a stronghold of resistance, but an “approved exception” within the conciliar Church.
Father Élcio Murucci, faithful spiritual son of Dom Castro Mayer, continues celebrating the Missa de sempre and defending the perennial doctrine. His faithful in Varre-Sai, Porciúncula and Ururaí find there the Catholicism that the founder loved so much. However, the institutional context has changed. The structure that was born to combat Vatican II now declares fidelity to it. It is the paradox that defines the AAPSJMV in 2026: it maintains the Tridentine rite by special grace from Rome, but lost, in the eyes of many who lived the Castro Mayer era, the spirit of combat without concessions that animated the Priestly Union.
While Father Murucci completes another year of apostolate, the uncomfortable question remains in the air of the North Fluminense: was the legacy of Dom Antônio de Castro Mayer preserved or domesticated? History – and the most radical critics – has not yet closed this chapter.