BREAKING: Transalpine Redemptorists declare 'sede vacante'
The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer have announced their conclusion that the post-conciliar claimants to the papacy are illegitimate, and called for an Imperfect General Council.
The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer have announced their conclusion that the post-conciliar claimants to the papacy are illegitimate, and called for an Imperfect General Council.
(WM Reports) – The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer – commonly known as the “Transalpine Redemptorists” – have issued a declaration stating that “we cannot accept the current pretenders to the papacy from the time of the Second Vatican Council.”
The Transalpine Redemptorists were founded in 1987 with the blessing of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The founder, Fr Michael Mary, derives his holy orders from Lefebvre. The community operated on good terms with the SSPX for many years, until the majority of the community reconciled with the Vatican in 2008.
A community of nearly 30 members, “The Sons” have had operations in Scotland, USA and New Zealand. In recent years, they have experienced acrimonious relations with the bishop of Christchurch Diocese, NZ, who evicted them from the diocese in 2024.
In October 2025, the community issued a forceful open letter repudiating “the Synodal Church” and the reforms of Vatican II. While aspects of the October letter pointed towards the conclusion of a vacant See, it was not stated directly.
Since then, the community suffered the loss of a 24 year old brother from New Zealand, who is presumed to have drowned, although police are still treating the matter as a missing person case. Brother Ignatius went missing on 12 April. Police are not treating his disappearance as suspicious.
The May 2026 Declaration
The declaration, dated “2 May 2026, First Saturday, St Athanasius”, is accompanied by a letter and a set of notes.
The letter sets out in a more discursive form the situation in the Church following Vatican II, as well as its roots in previous decades. It sets out the doctrine of the pre-conciliar magisterium on “the deadly heresy of indifferentism” and other controverted points, as well as the facts of the last sixty years. It concludes from all this:
The First Vatican Council gave us a piercing light by which to see clearly in this darkness. It defined not only the infallibility of the Pope in his solemn magisterium but declared: “This See of St Peter always remains unimpaired by any error.”
Think carefully about what this means. God, Who is infallible Truth, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived, has revealed to the Church that the See of St Peter always remains unimpaired by any error. This is an article of faith. If the See of Peter were to teach error, then beyond any possible doubt, the person teaching that error is not a Catholic Pope. And if he is not a Catholic Pope, he is no Pope at all.
This is not a conclusion we have reached lightly. Already it is years too late in coming. It is a conclusion forced upon us by the Faith itself. It is God’s Providence that the Church has declared that: “This See of St. Peter always remains unimpaired by any error.” One sentence. A shaft of light for discernment through this darkness: the preVatican II Popes taught the truth. The post-Vatican II claimants teach error. No fudging. If Indifference is heresy and error all they who teach it cannot be legitimate successors of Peter.
We are not making a canonical judgement — only the Church can do that. But we are making a judgement of faith and practical necessity. We must choose whom we will follow. Will we follow the Popes who taught the faith without compromise, or will we follow those who have led the flock into the abyss of indifferentism?
The declaration includes a preamble of five short Articles on:
The Infiltration of the Church
Freemasonry and the Heresy of Indifferentism
The Second Vatican Council and Its Consequences
The Dogma (of Vatican II) as a Light of Discernment
The Present Crisis.
The conclusion itself is as follows:
The Church has been infiltrated by enemies from at least the time of Pope Gregory XVI.
The Freemasonic heresy of Indifferentism, combatted by Popes for over 200 years before Vatican II, was clearly taught at Vatican II by the false authority of false churchmen.
The papal pretenders from Paul VI through Leo XIV have taught and acted in flagrant contradiction to the undoubtedly Catholic pre-Vatican II Popes.
Since the Second Vatican Council, the apparent Popes have caused a spiritual catastrophe of the greatest imaginable proportions.
The new doctrinal, moral, liturgical, and disciplinary decisions since Vatican II cannot be accepted because they contradict what came before.
Accepting the false teaching of Vatican II separates us from the Catholic Church.
A Catholic cannot recognise a man as the Vicar of Christ and resist his teachings in matters of Faith and Morals, nor can he resist his commands in matters of discipline and liturgy
It concludes with a call for an Imperfect General Council:
Therefore, we call for an Imperfect General Council, a meeting of all Catholic bishops of the world who have kept the true faith, to pronounce on the status of the present papal pretender, Leo XIV, and on the status of his Conciliar Church predecessors.
And until such Imperfect General Council is convoked and its investigations are concluded, and until papal clarifications are issued, we cannot accept the current pretenders to the papacy from the time of the Second Vatican Council.
It also laments the community’s own history of “cooperation and compromise”:
We repeat what we have said in our Open Letter, namely that there has been a great mistake on our part to think that the hierarchy of the Novus Ordo was sufficiently Catholic for us to operate under its command. That mistake was the fruit of nearly 20 years of living the non-Catholic stance of recognising but resisting those whom we thought were the authorities of the Church. At an earlier date we should have seen that it was impossible to recognise these men who preach a different Gospel than the Gospel of Our Lord passed on to us from the Apostles unchanged. For, in making our “reconciliation” in 2008, we found ourselves in a situation where even though reconciling and recognising them, we were still forced by faith to resist the Conciliar authorities, although in a different manner. Recognition of the destroyers of the Faith and any submission to them at all is both impossible and endangering one’s Faith.
Our statement is new. Our perspective has changed. But our Faith has not changed. Holding the True Faith of our Fathers, we will continue to offer the True Mass. We will worship the True God. And we will work for an Imperfect General Council to bring about the triumph of Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
The declaration is signed by 28 members of the community, including 6 priests.
The notes that follow provide substantiation for the various claims made throughout the letter and declaration itself.
The WM Review reached out to Fr Michael Mary F.SS.R. for comment. He kindly provided the following:
“Since March 2025, we have been substantially supported by S.D. Wright of The WM Review, following our reading of Mr. Matthew McCusker’s articles. Mr Wright gave his time to explain my initial questions, to counter the false information propagated by the Salza‑Siscoe camp, and to direct me to scholarly articles by a German priest that answered them in depth. I later encountered Bishop Roy in Canada. What Messrs Wright and McCusker, and Bishop Roy share is unfeigned charity—caritate non ficta. Our community has patiently awaited and sincerely hoped for this letter and declaration.”
The declaration is available here.
Post-script: As I have been asked for my own views on the matter of the “Imperfect General Council” mentioned by the Redemptorists, along with Mgr Roy and others, here are a few comments:
Meetings between traditional clergy could be helpful for them, but that is really none of my business.
I am not wholly opposed to the idea that traditionalist bishops could hold an “Imperfect General Council”, but it seems to me to be subject to serious difficulties both in principle and in practice.
Some further thoughts are set out here.
HELP KEEP THE WM REVIEW ONLINE WITH WM+!
As we expand The WM Review we would like to keep providing free articles for everyone.
Our work takes a lot of time and effort to produce. If you have benefitted from it please do consider supporting us financially.
A subscription gets you access to our exclusive WM+ material, and helps ensure that we can keep writing and sharing free material for all.
You can see what readers are saying over at our Testimonials page.
And you can visit The WM Review Shop for our ‘Lovely Mugs’ and more.
(We make our WM+ material freely available to clergy, priests and seminarians upon request. Please subscribe and reply to the email if this applies to you.)
Subscribe to WM+ now to make sure you always receive our material. Thank you!
Read Next:
Follow on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram:
Twitter (The WM Review)
I have been thinking of them a lot lately, wondering if they would do this. Thank you for reporting this so quickly.
Ave Maria!
Still waiting for a persuasive argument regarding the problem of jurisdiction vis-a-vis an imperfect general council today.
Along those lines, it is interesting that nobody is applying ecclesia supplet to the subject (eg., didn’t +de Mallerais say that it supplied jurisdiction for everything necessary for the exercise of the apostolate?).
Short of a conversion of a number of conciliar bishops, the imperfect council solution seems a dead end, unless ecclesia supplet could cover it (but I’d need to see that worked out).