In March 2024, the retired Archbishop Telesphore Mpundu of Lusaka quietly consecrated Fr Anthony Ward as a bishop in the traditional Roman rite. Mpundu is a lifetime Novus Ordo prelate, ordained priest in 1972 and bishop in 1987, who led the Zambian bishops and then slipped into early retirement at seventy without explanation.
Ward, formerly of the SSPX and ordained by Lefebvre, founded the Servants of the Holy Family in Colorado in 1977. The Diocese of Colorado Springs long ago declared his group “not in good standing,” but he has spent decades doing the obvious “crime”: forming priests in the old rite and ignoring the postconciliar circus.
On November 16, 2025, Ward told his faithful that he and Mpundu had received letters from Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández, head of the doctrinal dicastery, declaring that both had incurred latae sententiae excommunication for episcopal consecration without papal mandate. The same Rome that cannot bring itself to discipline German bishops proposing same-sex blessings and women priests can move very fast when a traditional bishop quietly appears on the map.
Deny the moral law and you get a listening session. Consecrate a bishop in the old rite and you get the firing squad. The message is unmistakable: there may be endless doctrinal experimentation, but there may not be a parallel traditional hierarchy that could outlast the experiment.
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