Illicit Bishop’s Consecration of Traditional Priest ~ Tucho Excommunicated Both

This is a radically different situation from the situation in 1988. SHF has never been a recognised Order in the Church, unlike the FSSPX.

From Gloria.tv

In March 2024, the retired Archbishop Telesphore Mpundu, 78, of Lusaka, Zambia, ordained the US priest Anthony Ward in the Roman rite as a bishop.

Archbishop Mpundu was ordained in the Novus Ordo, a Priest in 1972 and a Bishop in 1987. He served multiple terms as president of the Zambia Bishops' Conference. In 2018, he requested early retirement at the age of only 70. No reason was given.

Ward was once once a member of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X and ordained by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. However, he left soon afterwards. In 1977, he founded an independent group in Colorado called the Servants of the Holy Family.

In 2013, the Diocese of Colorado Springs declared the group “not in good standing with the diocesan or universal Catholic Church”.

On 16 November 2025, Ward announced after Mass that he and Archbishop Mpundu had both been notified by Tucho Fernández - author of soft pornography and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - of an excommunication latae sententiae.

Archbishop Mpundu has issued no public statement regarding the consecration or the penalty.

Pictured: His Grace Telesphore George Mpundu, Emeritus Archbishop of Lusaka