Vatican prelate says only Pope can revoke SSPX Confession faculties
July 18, 2026
A prominent Vatican canonist said in an interview that only the Pope has the authority to declare that the confessions of SSPX priests are no longer valid.
Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta Ochoa de Chinchetru, the secretary of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts from 2007 until June 30, 2026, commented on the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s recent decree and explanatory note on the Society of Saint Pius X. In the explanatory note, the dicastery stated that “the holy People of God are warned that the sacred ministers of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X are illicitly administering the sacraments and that the sacrament of penance administered by them and the marriages they assist at are invalid.”
In doing so, the dicastery implicitly revoked Pope Francis’s decision that penitents “can validly and licitly receive” receive sacramental absolution from SSPX priests (Misericordia et Misera, 2016, n. 12). In 2017 the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei allowed local bishops the possibility of granting SSPX priests the faculties that would allow them to receive matrimonial consent, so as to ensure the validity of marriages.
Bishop Arrieta said that “these priests received the faculty to hear confessions by a pontifical act, and an act of the same nature is required to revoke it.”
Bishop Arrieta described the consecration of four new SSPX bishops as “a profound wound to the unity of the Church instituted by Christ” and dismissed the Society’s argument that a “state of necessity” required it.
“The argument of a ‘state of necessity’ invoked by them does not appear reasonable,” he said.
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