Pope excommunicates Williston-born priest over defiant bishop ceremony

ROME (Valley News Live) - A Williston, North Dakota, native is among four priests excommunicated by the Vatican after being consecrated as bishops without the approval of Pope Leo XIV.

Michael Goldade, born in Williston in 1980, was consecrated as a bishop Wednesday, July 1, in Écône, Switzerland, as part of a ceremony held by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, known as SSPX. The group is an ultraconservative Catholic society whose teachings reject key reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

The Vatican responded swiftly. On Thursday, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal office, issued a formal decree of excommunication, calling the consecrations “an act of a schismatic nature.”

The decree was signed by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“Such disobedience — which implies in practice the rejection of the Roman primacy — constitutes a schismatic act,” the decree read, citing a 1988 ruling by Pope John Paul II.

Excommunication is one of the most severe penalties in the Catholic Church, formally separating a person from the Church of Rome.

Also excommunicated were the two bishops who performed the consecrations, Alfonso de Galarreta and Bernard Fellay, along with the three other newly consecrated bishops: Pascal Schreiber, Michel Poinsinet de Sivry, and Marc Hanappier.

The Vatican’s decree goes further than the bishops themselves. It also excommunicates lay Catholics who formally align with SSPX, and declares that sacraments administered by SSPX ministers, including marriages and the sacrament of penance, are invalid.

Before his consecration, Goldade was serving as rector of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Dillwyn, Virginia. He was raised in St. Marys, Kansas, and was ordained as a priest in Winona, Minnesota, in 2004.

SSPX was founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was himself excommunicated in 1988 after a similar unauthorized consecration of bishops.

The Vatican urged all Catholics to “remain steadfast in communion with the Roman Pontiff” and to “refrain from taking part in celebrations and activities promoted by the aforementioned Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X.”