The media often report on news to do with the negotiations between the Holy See and SSPX, founded by Mgr Lefebvre, who in his lifetime only consecrated four bishops without a papal mandate, in 1988. Their excommunication was lifted by Benedict XVI in January 2009, reports Vatican Insider.
Even less is said or known about the hundreds – some say a thousand – of “episcope vagantes” wandering around the world: bishops who have been illicitly consecrated as Christian bishops and who thus have apostolic succession but are not in communion with the Pope and as such are formally schismatic.
The Diocese of Fiesole has come under the spotlight in recent weeks because its Bishop, Mario Meini, issued a decree for the dissolution of the private association of faithful, the “Clarisse del Cuore Immacolato di Maria” (Clares of the Immaculate Heart of Mary), a new monastic community founded in 2008 and based in the convent of St Francis, in San Giovanni Val d’Arno, Italy, offered by the Franciscans.
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