Timeline: Richard Williamson

Richard Williamson, one of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988, died on 29 January 2025 aged 84. Expelled from the SSPX in 2012, he had incurred excommunication again in 2015 by consecrating a bishop in Brazil without papal mandate; his televised Holocaust denial in 2009 had led to a conviction for incitement in Germany.

In Nova Friburgo, Brazil, Richard Williamson, by then expelled from the SSPX, consecrated Fr. Jean-Michel Faure a bishop without a papal mandate. Under canon law both incurred automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication.

The Society of Saint Pius X expelled Richard Williamson, citing his distancing from the Society's leadership and his refusal to show due respect and obedience to his superiors. He had opposed the Society's talks with Rome.

Swedish television broadcast an interview in which Richard Williamson denied the existence of Nazi gas chambers. It aired as Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of the four SSPX bishops. The Vatican said the pope had not known of his views and required him to disavow them publicly; he never did.

Archbishop Lefebvre, with Bishop Antônio de Castro Mayer, consecrated Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson and Alfonso de Galarreta as bishops at Écône without a papal mandate, despite a formal canonical warning sent on 17 June 1988 by the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.