THE Catholic Bishop of Derry has spoken out against the religious grouping SSPX Resistance, which has a base in West Cork.
Bishop Donal McKeown, in the parish bulletin, reminded his parishioners that SSPX Resistance, which practises the Latin mass, is not connected to the Catholic Church.
The same group has a base in Reenascreena outside Dunmanway, where it is believed a number of locals attend the Tridentine (Latin) mass in a small makeshift chapel on the site.
Bishop McKeown is the second Catholic bishop to speak out about the group, after the Archbishop of Perth in Australia made similar comments last September and pointed out the SSPXR were not connected to the church in Rome.
‘Those Catholics who choose to organise, conduct or attend such celebrations of the mass are acting in opposition to the clear and authoritative decisions of the archbishop,’ the diocese in Perth said.
Last weekend Bishop McKeown said that ‘the priests associated with SSPX Resistance Ireland are not in full communion with the Catholic Church and they do not accept the full teaching authority of the Church.’
The SSPX Resistance grew out of the original Catholic splinter group SSPX (Society of St Pius X) after Vatican II. The founder SSPX Resistance, excommunicated bishop Richard Williamson, felt the SSPX were too liberal for his ideologies.
He was later convicted of Holocaust denial after saying in an interview that he didn’t believe the WWII gas chambers existed.
He also denied the existence of Covid, and the Reenascreena ‘priests’ were seeing during the pandemic shopping in Dunmanway without wearing masks. Williamson, who died in January of this year, ordained Giacomo Ballini as a bishop in the SSPXR and Ballini set up the priory in Reenascreena, where the Latin mass is said on a daily basis.
Bishop McKeown also reminded his flock that ‘the Catholic Church has no supervision whatsoever of priests or ministers of SSPX Resistance Ireland, who have no connection with the Diocese of Derry in terms of safeguarding practices and policies and are not overseen by the Bishop of Derry.’
This comment is believed to refer to fears that a defrocked priest has recently joined the group.
In 2017, the Guardian newspaper reported that SSPXR founder Williamson was accused of harbouring clergy accused of sexual abuse in his ‘renegade’ order, then headquartered in Kent in the UK.
