Breakaway traditionalist bishop incurs excommunication

Richard Williamson

Bishop Richard Williamson, who was dismissed from the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) in 2012, has incurred the automatic penalty of excommunication, after he ordained a bishop for his own breakaway group. Williamson consecrated Father Jean-Michel Faure, 73, as a bishop, in a ceremony held in Nova Friburgo, Brazil, on 19 March. Under Church law this act means both clerics were subject to automatic excommunication.

Bishop Williamson was one of four bishops ordained by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, in defiance of orders from the Holy See in 1988. That illicit ordination led to the excommunication of Archbishop Lefebvre and the bishops he had ordained.

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI lifted those excommunications, in what was widely seen as an effort to begin reconciling the SSPX and the Holy See. Soon after that Williamson had a disagreement with the SSPX and was ousted from them. He said he would oppose any plan for reconciliation with the the 'modernist cuckoos' of the Vatican and would continue working in 'resistance' against the Holy See.

Bishop Williamson attracted worldwide controversy in 2009, when it was revealed that he had questioned the extent of the Holocaust in a television interview. He was later found guilty of violating German law against Holocaust denial.