Transalpine Redemptorists issue new statement as case heads to Vatican

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Transalpine Redemptorists issue new statement as case heads to Vatican

The Bishop of Aberdeen, Scotland, announced that he has been in touch with the Vatican to determine the group's canonical standing.

Nov 5, 2025
(LifeSiteNews) — A little over a week after the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer issued a statement on October 16 repudiating “the Synodal Church as distinct from the Divinely constituted Catholic Church,” the Bishop of Aberdeen, Scotland, announced that he has been in touch with the Vatican to determine the group’s canonical standing.

“The Diocese deeply regrets the tone, direction and key elements of this Letter,” Bishop Hugh Gilbert, OSB said on October 24. “The competent Dicasteries of the Holy See are also studying the situation and will provide canonical and doctrinal guidance.”

The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer is a traditionalist Catholic congregation with headquarters on the island of Papa Stronsay in northern Scotland, which is located in the Diocese of Aberdeen. The community was founded by Father Michael Mary Sim in 1987 under the auspices of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the Society of St. Pius X, and with the encouragement of Cardinal Édouard Gagnon.

Also known as the “Transalpine Redemptorists,” the group, which is still led by Fr. Michael Mary, as well as Fr. Anthony Mary, came to an agreement with the Vatican in 2012 under Benedict XVI. It has communities in the U.S. in Montana as well as Christchurch, New Zealand, though the group ran afoul of the Christchurch ordinary, Bishop Michael Gielen, who recently published a letter announcing that the Vatican supported his decision to expel them from the diocese.

On October 31, Fr. Mary issued a follow up statement on his community’s website. The post indirectly references Gilbert’s announcement but primarily focuses on Pope Leo XIV’s controversial claim made during a sermon at the Vatican where he said “no one possesses the whole truth.” It also rebuked the 6oth anniversary celebration of the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate held at Paul VI Hall.

Citing Scripture, the Council of Trent, papal documents issued by Pope Leo XIII and Gregory XVI, as well as other documents, Fr. Mary argued that we “consider there to be a new, modern Church” and that “the old Faith is not compatible with it.”

“During these gatherings, Catholicism was placed on the same level as all other world religions,” he said of the Nostra Aetate event. “There is a great need publicly to proclaim the True Faith and denounce error. The Mass of All Time is not enough on its own. Its inseparable companion is the Faith of All Time. The one without the other is senseless. They are two organs of the same body.”

READ: Traditionalist Redemptorists issue open letter to ‘repudiate the Synodal Church’

While commenting on Leo’s controversial sermon, Fr. Michael Mary stated plainly, “I’m sorry; if that is not complete denial of Catholicism as the only true Religion, the only means by which the One True God is worshipped, then I don’t know what is.”

“We can only read from this,” he continued, “that Leo XIV believes and teaches that the Catholic Church is not necessary for salvation. He has no desire to convert those whom he is addressing so that they may save their immortal souls, but instead insists that they should remain firmly within their false religion.”

Fr. Michael Mary added that: “It’s clear that Leo XIV’s teaching in these matters of Faith is not consistent with that which has gone before. It is equally clear from the silence of the Bishops, now and over the past 60 years, that they believe these things too.”

The priest also expressed shock over the inclusion of pro-LGBT Cardinal Matteo Zuppi at the Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage in Rome.

“The faithful fell at his feet to receive his blessing as he passed,” he noted. Yet “just days later, the same Cardinal Zuppi joined other non-Catholics lighting candles for peace at an interfaith prayer gathering, which seemed like a prelude to a One World Religion, its unity based not in the God of Truth, but human fraternity.”

“In such a religion there might be a place in a corner for the Traditional Latin Mass of All Time. But there will be no place at all for the Traditional Catholic Faith of All Time. The Truth of the past, and the truth of today cannot both exist at the same time in the one body,” he said.

Zuppi has repeatedly expressed pro-LGBT sentiments. He previously endorsed the book written by dissident Jesuit priest James Martin and heralded Fiducia Supplicans, which allows for clergy to bless same-sex “couples.” Zuppi, who was named cardinal in 2019 and appointed head of the Italian bishops’ conference by Pope Francis in 2022, also performed the wedding of the former Grand Master Mason of Rome in 2020.

During the Vatican celebration on Nostra Aetate, Cardinal Kurt Koch, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, shared that the document remarkably was in part prompted by the request of a Jewish historian.

“On the occasion of the meeting between Jules Isaac and Pope John XXIII on June 13, 1960, the Jewish historian presented the pope with a memorandum urgently calling for a new (way) of the Church relationship with today’s (man),” said Koch. “Pope John took up this request and commissioned the drafting of a declaration which … resulted in Nostra Aetate.”

Koch previously said that the Church does not have an official mission to preach conversion to the Jewish people.