The Pillar says the Vatican’s canon-law office has contradicted the DDF on SSPX confessions and marriages. The reply it cites is unpublished and speaks only of marriages

The Explanatory Note published with the decree of 2 July 2026 warns that “the sacred ministers of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X administer the sacraments illicitly, and that the sacrament of penance administered by them and marriages assisted by them are invalid” (L’Osservatore Romano).

Pope Francis extended to SSPX priests the faculty to absolve validly “until further provisions are made” (Misericordia et misera 12, 20 November 2016). A 2017 letter of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, approved by the Pope, let local Ordinaries give SSPX priests the faculty to assist at marriages where a diocesan priest could not (letter). The Pillar reports that neither has been formally revoked, and no revocation has been published.

The decree names six: Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta and Bishop Bernard Fellay, “respectively principal consecrator and co-consecrator”, and the four newly consecrated bishops (L’Osservatore Romano). The slip does not affect the article’s argument.

The faculty to absolve was granted by Pope Francis himself in the apostolic letter Misericordia et misera of 20 November 2016 (n. 12), as the article says earlier. The 2017 document is the Ecclesia Dei letter on marriages, which itself cites Misericordia et misera (letter). The article also describes Ecclesia Dei as sitting within the DDF; the commission was closed in 2019 and its tasks given to the doctrinal congregation (motu proprio). The point that a papal act can be withdrawn only by the Pope stands.