Excommunication for traditionalist clergyman “ordained bishop” in the US without the Pope’s authorization

(ZENIT News / Washington, 12.03.2025).- The news broke not through a Vatican communiqué but in the modest chapel where the Servants of the Holy Family gather each Sunday in the foothills of Colorado. After the final blessing, Father Anthony D. Ward stepped forward and told his congregation what only a handful had known for more than a year: he had been consecrated a bishop in secret.

That moment—delivered without theatrics, almost with a sense of resignation—did more than confirm months of speculation. It placed Ward, once a peripheral figure in the world of Catholic traditionalism, at the center of a canonical storm that has echoes of an earlier era of ecclesial friction. By admitting that he received episcopal orders without papal authorization in March 2024, he effectively acknowledged the automatic excommunication that canon law imposes on any bishop who ordains without Rome’s approval, as well as on the man ordained.

The prelate who performed the rite was Archbishop Telesphore G. Mpundu, the retired head of the Archdiocese of Lusaka. His role, kept under wraps until Ward’s recent disclosure, adds a global dimension to what might otherwise have remained an obscure episode in the Rocky Mountains. In the eyes of the Vatican, however, the geography is secondary; the offense is unmistakably grave.

For decades, Ward and the community he founded in 1977 have lived on the Church’s periphery, suspended somewhere between loyal dissent and de facto separation. The Servants of the Holy Family present themselves as guardians of a liturgical inheritance they believe is endangered. Their daily life revolves around the older Roman rites, and their public messaging speaks of fidelity to Catholic doctrine in an age they view as marked by erosion and ambiguity. To supporters, they are steadfast protectors of tradition; to critics, they are an unregulated enclave with no ecclesial accountability.

Their ambiguous positioning is not a recent development. As far back as 2004, the then–bishop of Colorado Springs, Michael Sheridan, warned the faithful that the group was not in communion with the Catholic Church and that sacraments administered within the community lacked canonical standing. His decree was not a polite pastoral caution but a pointed appeal to Catholics to distance themselves from the group. A follow-up decree in 2013 reiterated that neither Ward nor the Servants were recognized by the diocese or by the Holy See.

Despite that long-running tension, Ward consistently portrayed his project as rooted in obedience—not to local ecclesiastical structures, but to what he believed to be the perennial teachings and liturgical life of the Catholic Church. His own biography reflects that conviction. Formed within the orbit of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in the 1970s, Ward embraced the traditional liturgy as a young priest before parting ways with the Society of St. Pius X and establishing his own community. That step set him on a trajectory distinct from both mainstream Catholicism and more radical breakaway movements: neither fully integrated, nor openly schismatic, but inhabiting a precarious middle ground.

For years, the Servants avoided the step that ultimately triggered this crisis. Rather than consecrate their own bishops, they sought out sympathetic prelates—sometimes retired, sometimes from distant dioceses—to confer minor orders, administer confirmations, and bless holy oils. Ward often cited these arrangements as proof that the community remained tethered to the wider Church, even if that tether was stretched thin.

The quiet ceremony on the feast of St. Joseph in 2024 changed everything. In canonical terms, the sacrament Ward received is considered valid but illicit—capable of conferring episcopal authority but obtained in a way that directly violates church law. The Vatican’s notification, delivered under the signature of Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, confirmed precisely that: both Archbishop Mpundu and Ward had incurred excommunication the moment the rite was performed.

Yet Ward chose not to frame the penalty as a rupture. In his announcement to the faithful on 16 November, he spoke of the consecration as a pragmatic necessity, a safeguard meant to ensure that the sacraments they cherish could endure in the face of what he described as growing liturgical restrictions. His tone was not defiant; it was the tone of someone convinced that canon law had collided with a higher duty.

The community rallied quickly around him. Statements circulated in the days after his announcement insisting that the Servants have no intention of declaring independence from Rome. They spoke of hope—hope that their status might eventually be regularized, hope that the Church could accommodate their attachment to older forms of worship, hope that the disciplinary blow would not define their future.

But the situation now unfolding is not simply an internal matter for a small Colorado community. It embodies the unresolved tension within global Catholicism over the legacy of tradition, authority, and reform—tensions that flare periodically but rarely with such stark canonical consequences. The Ward case also raises new questions about the extent to which individual prelates, even those long retired, may act out of personal conviction in ways that complicate the Church’s governance.

For the moment, Ward stands in an unusual position: a bishop whose sacramental powers are unquestioned, yet whose standing in the Church is gravely compromised. His authority is both real and forbidden; his community strengthened and imperiled at once.

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