Cork sect excommunicated by Pope Leo to celebrate Mass 'as usual' on Sunday

Cork SSPX (Society of St Pius X) church to celebrate Mass ‘as normal’ despite their excommunication this week

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

Latin Mass will be celebrated “as normal” on Sunday in Cork’s Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Shanakiel, a breakaway Catholic sect has said, despite the Vatican this week excommunicating all of its members.

In a strongly-worded decree, the Vatican said priests and lay Catholics who are part of the ultraconservative group the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) are in schism with the wider Church and are now excommunicated.

That decree came after the rebel group defied Pope Leo XIV by ordaining bishops without his consent, creating a schism in the 1.4bn-member Catholic Church.

The unauthorised ordination of bishops is considered by the Catholic Church to be so serious that it causes those taking part in the ceremony to be automatically “out of communion” with the Church.

Thursday’s decree went further than expected by saying that all priests of the SSPX and all Catholics who “adhere formally” to the group are now in schism and excommunicated.

Schism after Vatican II

The Vatican warned that the Swiss-based SSPX now celebrates the sacraments illicitly, and cannot officiate marriages or hear confessions validly.

The society was founded in Écône in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and it denies the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, known widely among Catholics as Vatican II.

That 1960s gathering of bishops introduced a range of reforms for the Catholic Church and sought to repair its relations with other Christian denominations and with Jews. Vatican II also allowed for the Mass, until then celebrated only in Latin, to be celebrated in local languages.

The society rejected that change, citing a desire for the Latin rite’s sense of mystery and formality.

The SSPX has approximately 1,500 priests, seminarians, and other vocational members worldwide, and has a following estimated to be in the region of 200,000 people.

The society would not say how many members it has in Ireland, although it is thought that as many as 500 people attend its weekly Masses here.

In the 1980s, the society bought the former Church of Ireland St Mary’s church in Shanakiel, which had been consecrated in 1879, renaming it Our Lady of the Rosary Church.

Despite Pope Leo's pleas, Pascal Schreiber, Michael Goldade, Michel Poinsinet de Sivry, and Marc Hanappier were ordained as bishops at the Society of St Pius X seminary in Econe Switzerland, on Wednesday, leading to their automatic excommunication. Picture: Cyril Zingaro/Keystone/AP

Weekly Mass is celebrated on Sunday mornings, with neighbours saying that approximately 100 people attend each week.

One resident said that most congregants are “young, well-to-do, and not local”.

The SSPX is named after Pope Pius X, Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, who died in 1914.

Pius X inspired by Cork's 'Little Nellie'

In 1910, Pope Pius lowered from 12 to seven the age at which Catholic children can receive Communion. It was said he had been inspired to do so by tales of the great piety of Irish child Ellen Organ, who had died two years earlier at the age of four.

Little Nellie of Holy God, as she would become known, is remembered today as the “unofficial patron saint of Cork”.

She is buried close to Our Lady of the Rosary, in the derelict Good Shepherd Magdalene laundry.