A tiny island in the Orkneys. A renegade group of Catholic monks who have rejected every Pope since the 1960s. The planned illicit consecration of a bishop. The clandestine departure of three monks. And a mysterious death beneath the waves of the North Sea.

They seem determined to step into a schismatic chasm from which it will be very difficult to escape

While this might seem like the elements of an enigmatic murder mystery, all of the above has in fact taken place on the island of Papa Stronsay, home to the monks of the Congregation of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, also known as the Transalpine Redemptorists. A small community which is on the brink of schism with the Catholic Church.

Golgotha Monastery, where the monks live, has sheep, a diesel generator for electricity and kerosene burners for heating and hot water. The monks exclusively celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass, the ancient form of the Catholic liturgy. The community was reconciled with the Church under Pope Benedict XVI, but has now signed up to full-blown sedevacantism – the position that the Holy See has been vacant since the mid-20th century. In other words, they view the current Pope as illegitimate.

Unsurprisingly, this has brought them into conflict with the local Catholic hierarchy. On 25 July things will come to a head when the community plans to have its leader, Fr Michael Mary, consecrated as a bishop. The Diocese of Aberdeen, which has authority over the church in Orkney, has described the move as ‘unlawful and a grave act of disobedience, separating those taking part from communion with the Catholic Church’.

Yet the monks are sticking to their guns. The community’s Vicar General Fr Anthony Mary told me over email that ‘the infiltrators [of the Catholic Church] in Rome and throughout the world are generally liars and evil men… There is no justice from them. We do not expect any, given the multiple injustices that have been perpetrated against us.’

In October 2025, the monks released an open letter intended for ‘all who sense that something is tremendously wrong in the Church’. It railed against a series of Church documents and decisions, including Pope Francis’ Traditionis Custodes, which restricted access to the Old Mass. A return to calmer liturgical waters should be feasible under the current papacy. Yet the monks’ position that their Catholic vision ‘is incompatible with the new, modern Church’ has made clear that their issues are about much more than liturgy.

Then, in April this year, 24-year-old Brother Ignatius Maria (lay name Justin Evans) died after apparently getting into difficulty in the sea. This is not being treated as a suspicious event by the authorities, but the community described it as ‘shrouded in mystery’. Superior General Fr Michael Mary said Br Ignatius, whose body was recovered and buried on Papa Stronsay, had shown signs of ‘long-term hypothermia’.

Following the tragedy, the order released a 21-page document called ‘The Dogma to Steer By’. This denounced every pope since Paul VI (who reigned from 1963 to 1978) as ‘papal pretenders’. It rejected the Second Vatican Council for teaching ‘religious indifferentism, false ecumenism, and religious liberty’, and was peppered with conspiratorialist references to modernists and freemasons.

That’s not all. The document averred that ‘the institutional structures that claims to be the Catholic Church have been infiltrated’ since the time of Pope Gregory XVI (on the papal throne from 1831 to 1846), mused that the form of Mass currently celebrated by the vast majority of Catholic priests is of dubious validity, and called for a meeting of bishops sympathetic to the monks’ perspective.

To be fair to this community, which seems to have been lost in the mires of conspiratorial traditionalism, only a fool would say that all is well in the Church. There may be signs of a much-discussed ‘quiet revival’, but that is set against the backdrop of a steep long-term decline in Catholic practice in the West. However, setting yourself up as a true arbiter of Catholicism against the Church’s hierarchy seems, well, rather Protestant.

In the wake of the Dogma document, three monks left Papa Stronsay after contacting Bishop Gilbert of Aberdeen, using email addresses which their superiors were unaware of. They declined to comment for this article.

Now the planned consecration of Fr Michael Mary on the island is fast approaching. Monseigneur Pierre Roy, one of the figures involved in the event, is beyond even the fringes of the traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) – whose clergy were excommunicated by the Vatican at the start of July after four bishops were schismatically consecrated.

Fr Michael has sought to justify his consecration by modelling himself as a spiritual general fighting back against a Church hierarchy that ‘wages war against true Catholics’, a position which seems unlikely to convince sceptics about the merits of the move.

The community on Papa Stronsay had the potential to be a great thing: traditional monastic life at the edge of the world, in glorious Orcadia. Other traditionalist groups, like the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter, show that is possible to run busy churches from inside the Catholic tent. The traditional Paris to Chartres pilgrimage attracted a record 20,000 walkers this year, despite the official restrictions on the Old Mass.

Yet the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, originally set up with the blessing of SSPX founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, face the same problem as their much larger peer. They seem determined to step into a schismatic chasm from which it will be very difficult to escape.

It seems the unfortunate situation on Papa Stronsay highlights how the murkier edges of Catholic traditionalism can easily veer into conspiracy and schism.