Cork sect excommunicated by Pope Leo say prayers for the pontiff at every Sunday Mass
Our Lady of the Rosary Church, Shanakiel, Cork. The breakaway Society of St Pius X (SSPX) purchased the former Church of Ireland church in the 1980s. Picture: Donal O'Keeffe
Prayers are said for Pope Leo every Sunday morning in Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Shanakiel, despite the pontiff earlier this month excommunicating every member of the congregation and the breakaway Catholic group to which they belong.
On Thursday, July 2, the Vatican decreed that priests and lay Catholics who are part of the ultraconservative group the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) are now excommunicated.
It came the day after the rebel group defied Pope Leo XIV by ordaining bishops without his consent, thus creating a schism in the 1.4-billion-member Church.
The Catholic Church considers the unauthorised ordination of bishops so serious that it causes those taking part in the ceremony to be automatically excommunicated.
However, the Vatican’s decree went further than had been expected, saying that all priests of the Swiss-based SSPX and all lay Catholics who “adhere formally” to the group are now excommunicated, meaning they cannot celebrate the sacraments validly.
The society was founded in the Swiss village of Écône in 1970 by the arch-conservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and denies the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.
Vatican II, as it is widely known, introduced a range of reforms for the Catholic Church and sought to repair its relations with other Christian denominations and with Jews.
The council also allowed for the Mass, until then said only in Latin, to be celebrated in local languages, a change the SSPX rejects, citing a preference for the Latin rite’s sense of mystery and formality.
The SSPX has approximately 1,500 priests, seminarians and other vocational members worldwide, with a following estimated to be in the region of 200,000 people. It is thought that in Ireland about 500 people attend its weekly Masses.
The Sunday morning after the mass excommunication, Latin Mass went ahead as usual at 11am in Shanakiel, with a congregation of about 100 people praying for the pontiff.
The church, which was originally St Mary’s Church of Ireland, has belonged to the SSPX since the 1980s.
The Mass, which ran for an hour and 45 minutes, was sung almost entirely in Latin, with incense burning throughout the ceremony.
Those attending ranged in age from small children to retired people, with many members reading from their own leather-bound Bibles and missals during the Mass.
The congregation seemed to be evenly split between male and female, with the women wearing mantillas, the traditional Christian lace head-covering.
The parish priest, Fr Jules Doutrebente, delivered the reading and read the Gospel in English. In his sermon, he said that when Archbishop Lefebvre founded the SSPX, he had called it “the survival of tradition”, and that continued to be the society’s motivation.
In canon law, he said, no penalty could be applied in the case of necessity, and with the SSPX having a necessity for new bishops, its members could therefore not be excommunicated. Thus, he added, there was no schism, and the society's members were not excommunicated.
“At every Mass, we name the name of the Pope; in order that the Pope may help us, we pray for him,” he said.
During the sermon, Fr Doutrebente announced that he will soon be replaced by a newly ordained priest, Fr Colm Begley, who will next month make Our Lady of the Rosary his first parish.
After the Mass, Fr Doutrebente told the Irish Examiner he was not authorised to speak for the SSPX, joking that, being French, his English would not be good enough anyway.
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