Home At Last: Transalpine Redemptorists Become Sedevacantists

Welcome, brothers in Christ!

Home At Last: Transalpine Redemptorists Become Sedevacantists

Some wonderful news broke earlier this month, on May 2, the feast of St. Athanasius, Doctor of the Church:

The ‘Congregation of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer’ (Filii Sanctissimi Redemptoris or FSSR), headquartered on Papa Stronsay island off the northern coast of Scotland, published a formal document in which they disavow the Vatican II Church and its apostate counterfeit Catholicism, declare their allegiance to the true Roman Catholic religion, and explicitly repudiate Leo XIV and his predecessors through Paul VI, as being false popes.

In short: The ‘Transalpine Redemptorists’, as they are also known, have become sedevacantists. Deo gratias!

The document, 21 pages in length, is entitled The Dogma to Steer By and follows an October 2025 Open Letter in which they had hinted at a sedevacantist position but without saying so explicitly: “Through years of trials and experience we have come to the unfortunate conclusion that the Traditional Catholic Faith, the Faith of all times and of the saints, is incompatible with the new, modern Church, the fruit of the Second Vatican Council. They simply cannot coexist in one body”, they stated at the time.

Both documents have been published on their web site:

• The Dogma to Steer By: Letter and Declaration (May 2, 2026)
• Open Letter to the Catholic Bishops, Priests, Religious and Faithful (Oct. 2025)

The Transalpine Redemptorists were established on Dec. 8, 1987. A brief historical account of their congregation can be found on their home page here.

As blogger Radical Fidelity notes, they are a “religious congregation that spent years trying to make ‘recognize and resist’ work from inside the system”, beginning with their own canonical regulation in 2008 under ‘Pope’ Benedict XVI. They were “held up as proof that one could preserve Tradition while remaining peacefully inside the post-conciliar structure”, but “That experiment has now publicly collapsed.”

The following excerpt from the ‘Letter’ portion of their newly-released document, The Dogma to Steer By, found on page 5, is most pertinent:

We must refuse the Modernist hierarchy, the false Second Vatican Council, the false teaching that masquerades as Catholicism but is in fact the ancient heresy of indifferentism dressed in modern clothes.

…

We are not saying that we should leave the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is the Ark of Salvation, the Mystical Body of Christ, the Bride without spot or wrinkle. We cling to her with all our strength.

But we must recognise that the institutional structures that claims [sic] to be the Catholic Church have been infiltrated. The men who occupy the offices belong to the Modernist religion and not to the Catholic Church. The teachings they promulgate are dangerous. The sacraments they have reformed are of doubtful validity and depart from Catholic doctrine. We cannot in good conscience submit to them.

Therefore, we must do what Catholics have always done in times of crisis: We must hold fast to the Faith as it has always been taught. We must give no juridical recognition to those who have departed from it, including Leo XIV and his bishops. You must find priests who offer the traditional Mass, who teach the traditional Faith, who reject the heresies of Indifferentism, Ecumenism, and Modernism. In other words: priests who are not in communion with the Conciliar apostasy. We must form communities of the faithful who support one another in living the Catholic faith in its fullness.

We work and pray for an Imperfect General Council, a meeting of all the Catholic bishops of the world who have kept the true Faith. Such a Council could pronounce on the status of the present claimants to the papacy and restore order to the Church. Until that day, which may be years away, we must be guided by the Magisterium of the holy Popes who have always taught the one true Faith in its integrity and purity.

In the ‘Declaration’ portion of the same document, the Transalpine Redemptorists state unequivocally:

1. The Church has been infiltrated by enemies from at least the time of Pope Gregory XVI [r. 1832-1846].

2. 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.

3. The papal pretenders from Paul VI through Leo XIV have taught and acted in flagrant contradiction to the undoubtedly Catholic pre-Vatican II Popes.

4. Since the Second Vatican Council, the apparent Popes have caused a spiritual catastrophe of the greatest imaginable proportions.

5. The new doctrinal, moral, liturgical, and disciplinary decisions since Vatican II cannot be accepted because they contradict what came before.

6. Accepting the false teaching of Vatican II separates us from the Catholic Church.

7. 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.

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.

The call for an ‘imperfect general council’ has also been made by the sedevacantist Bishop Pierre Roy at Unam Sanctam. At this point, Novus Ordo Watch does not take a position on such an endeavor, neither for nor against.

Attentive readers will have noticed that the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer do not include the false pope John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli) in their list of papal pretenders. And indeed, not all sedevacantists are convinced he was a false pope, or at least some do not want to publicly identify him as a false pope if they cannot prove it. For our part, we direct people’s attention to our resource page on John XXIII and especially to our article ‘The Impossible Encyclical: Pacem in Terris Turns 60′.

So far, the news of the Transalpine Redemptorists’ repudiation of the Vatican II Church has made relatively few waves. We therefore cannot provide a whole lot of links to third-party coverage of the development, but here are a few:

• BREAKING: Transalpine Redemptorists declare ‘sede vacante’ (WM Review)
• Transalpine Redemptorists Say the Not-So-Quiet Part Out Very Loud (Radical Fidelity)
• Traditional Redemptorists reject validity of popes since Vatican II (Michael Haynes at Per Mariam)
• Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer reject Pope Leo XIV and post-conciliar popes (Catholic Herald)
• An Imperfect Council? (Michael Haynes at Pelican Plus)

An interview with several of the Congregation’s members, including superior and founder Fr. Michael Mary Sim, was conducted by Stephen Kokx on May 4 and can be watched here (direct link here):

.
The Novus Ordo diocese to which the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer had belonged is that of Aberdeen, whose head honcho is ‘Bishop’ Edward Nicholas Gilbert, O.S.B. Aside from Aberdeen, the FSSR was also active in the dioceses of Christchurch, New Zealand, and Great Falls-Billings, United States.

Some of the priests of the Congregation were originally ordained by an SSPX bishop, which means their orders are not doubtful. Those that were ordained by a Novus Ordo bishop have since been ‘re’-ordained by Bishop Roy.

Towards the end of their Declaration (p. 9), the Transalpine Redemptorists draw attention to where they had been mistaken all these years:

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.

Indeed, as the Doctor of the Church St. Robert Bellarmine wrote, “it would be the most miserable condition of the Church, if she should be compelled to recognize a wolf, manifestly prowling, for a shepherd” (De Romano Pontifice, Book II, Chapter 30; Grant translation).

Lastly, we want to be sure to mention this snippet from the blog post published by the WM Review, linked above (and again here):

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.”

For years the Transalpine Redemptorists were publishing arguments and documentation against Sedevacantism because they were genuinely convinced that the position was false. It takes genuine humility to admit publicly that one has been wrong, especially for so long and on a matter so serious. We are very grateful that the Transalpine Redemptorists have now taken this step and cut themselves loose from the counterfeit hierarchy and counterfeit ‘Catholic’ church occupying the Vatican structures.

Let us thank Almighty God for this tremendous grace that has been bestowed upon them and joyfully welcome these men as prodigal sons returning home!