The Vatican’s SSPX excommunication Vatican edict declared the Society of St. Pius X to be in schism on July 2 after four bishops were consecrated without the papal mandate. In Kenya, Archbishop Philip Anyolo then told Kenyan Catholics to stay in communion with the pope and avoid SSPX activities.
Father Pierre Champroux answered on July 12 from Holy Cross Parish in Nairobi, saying the society’s mission was to provide people with “sound doctrine” and “all the sacraments received from Our Lord Jesus Christ.” He also said, “We are not a parallel church. We remain fully Catholic and attached to the See of Peter and to his successor, Pope Leo XIV,” a direct rebuttal to the archbishop’s warning.
Archbishop Philip Anyolo’s July 9 letter
Archbishop Philip Anyolo issued a pastoral letter on July 9 that told Kenyan Catholics to remain in communion with the pope and shun the SSPX and its activities. He also banned priests from celebrating Mass with SSPX clergy or inviting them to minister in the Archdiocese’s parishes and institutions.
Anyolo drew a narrower line than a blanket ban on every form of traditional worship. “It must be clearly stated, however, that the love for the sacred liturgy, reverence for tradition or attachment to the Latin Mass is not in itself schismatic,” he wrote, before adding that the problem arises with refusal of full communion with the Roman Pontiff and the bishops in communion with him, rejection in practice of the authority of the Pope, and the establishment of a parallel ecclesial life outside the canonical communion of the Catholic church.
Holy Cross Parish in Nairobi
The SSPX has an established presence in Nairobi’s Lovington area, where it operates Holy Cross Catholic Church and Holy Cross Church and Priory. The society also runs an international school, a congregation of women religious and has some local priests operating out of Nairobi, so the archbishop’s order reaches beyond a single chapel and into day-to-day church life.
Father Pierre Champroux is the priest in charge of the SSPX’s Holy Cross Parish in Nairobi, making his July 12 statement the local response most directly tied to the ban. His defense matters for Kenyan Catholics who attend SSPX worship or use its ministries, because the archdiocesan order draws a boundary around concelebration and ministry inside archdiocesan parishes and institutions.
1988 and the Vatican
The Vatican’s move echoed the society’s own history. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was excommunicated on July 1, 1988 after he consecrated bishops without the Vatican’s authority, and the July 2 declaration came 38 years later after the society consecrated four bishops without papal mandate.
That timeline is why the Kenyan response landed so quickly. The Vatican said the society stands outside schism; Father Pierre Champroux said the SSPX remains Catholic and attached to the See of Peter and to Pope Leo XIV.
How the Vatican’s declaration will affect SSPX operations and faithful in Kenya beyond the ban on shared Masses and ministry is not laid out in the available statements, so the immediate practical line for Catholics in Nairobi is the one already drawn: the Archdiocese has told them to stay with the pope, and SSPX has answered that it remains within the Catholic fold.
