Francesco Ricossa

Francesco Ricossa is an Italian priest and superior of an independent congregation of priests, called Istituto Mater Bonii Consilii, with headquarters in Verrua Savoia, near Torino, Italy.

Ricossa was ordained priest by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, when he was a member of the Society of St. Pius X. He then taught as a faculty member at the SSPX's main seminary at Écône, Switzerland, before a breakaway group that began to follow Guérard des Lauriers's Cassiciacum Thesis, or sedeprivationism.

The Ricossa group also uses the name "Sodalitium Pianum", which was the name of a reactionary papal secret spy organization established by Pope St. Pius X in order to ferret out Modernist heretics from the Catholic Church and cleanse ecclesiastical circles of revolutionaries. This Sodalitium Pianum was suppressed by Pope Benedict XV and finally later on by [...] Germany during World War II.

In 2002, Bishop Robert McKenna consecrated Rev. Fr. Geert Jan Stuyver as a bishop for Ricossa's group.

Ricossa is the editor of the quarterly journal Sodalitium, published by his Institute. As reported by the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism, "this periodical publishes many anti-Semitic articles, containing allegations such as Jewish links with the Freemasons and Jewish ritual [...].

Writing in 1993 of the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who twelve years later became Pope Benedict XVI, Ricossa declared him "99% protestant" and cast doubt on the validity of his appointment as cardinal, putting quote marks around that title in his regard.

See also

• Sedeprivationism
• Sedevacantism