Bishop Richard Williamson, a former English bishop of the Priestly Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), died on Wednesday at the age of 84 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage.

The Priestly Society of St. Pius X announced the former bishop’s death Thursday morning on its website. Williamson’s office shared an email with the Catholic Herald stating: “He was surrounded by clerics and faithful who have been keeping vigil with him for his final journey … They were praying right to the end.”

Born in London in 1940, Williamson belonged to the Church of England before being received into the Catholic Church in 1971. Soon after becoming Catholic, he joined the traditionalist Catholic movement founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and entered the SSPX seminary in Switzerland.

Lefebvre ordained Williamson as a Catholic priest in 1976 and, without the Vatican’s permission, consecrated him and three other priests — Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, and Alfonso de Galarreta — as bishops in 1988.

Subsequently, Lefebvre, Williamson, Fellay, Tissier de Mallerais, and de Galarreta were excommunicated from the Catholic Church following the illicit 1988 ordinations. 

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of the SSPX members with the hope of reconciliation with the schismatic traditionalist group that strongly opposed Vatican II and liturgical reforms of the Church’s sacraments. 

Williamson’s public denial of the Jewish Holocaust became an additional roadblock to full communion with the Catholic Church as well as a source of deep tension within the SSPX.

Following a 2009 television interview in which Williamson expressed his disbelief that Jews were killed in gas chambers in Nazi extermination camps, the SSPX took action and removed him as head of the society’s seminary in Argentina.  

Williamson was eventually expelled from the society for disobedience in 2012 after conducting confirmations in Brazil without his superior’s permission.  

Prior to his expulsion from the SSPX while carrying out pastoral ministries in South America, Williamson had held teaching positions at the society’s seminaries in the U.S. and in Europe and also served as the society’s second assistant general from 1988–1994. 

“Sadly, his path and that of the society separated many years ago,” the Jan. 30 SSPX statement reads. “We recommend the eternal rest of his soul to your fervent prayers.”

This article was originally published on Catholic News Agency.

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