This col­umn will dis­cuss re­cent de­vel­op­ments in both the Catholic and East­ern Or­tho­dox Church­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go. On the Catholic front, the Arch­bish­op of Port-of- Spain, Ja­son Gor­don, has writ­ten on the schism with­in the Ro­man Catholic Church that took place this year in the Catholic news­pa­per. Un­der­stand­ing the full con­text of the schism and its im­pli­ca­tions would re­quire thou­sands of words delv­ing in­to his­to­ry and canon law; how­ev­er, I will at­tempt to do my best in this col­umn.

The SSPX (Priest­ly Fra­ter­ni­ty of St Pius X), found­ed by Arch­bish­op Lefeb­vre in op­po­si­tion to the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil’s litur­gi­cal re­forms, en­tered schism in 1988, when Lefeb­vre con­se­crat­ed bish­ops with­out pa­pal man­date, and in 2026, af­ter the SSPX again con­se­crat­ed bish­ops against Pope Leo XIV’s ex­press pro­hi­bi­tion, the Holy See de­clared the act schis­mat­ic and im­posed latae sen­ten­ti­ae ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, for­mal­ly sep­a­rat­ing the SSPX cler­gy and for­mal­ly ad­her­ent lay faith­ful from com­mu­nion with Rome.

Any bap­tised Catholic who at­tends an SSPX Mass ha­bit­u­al­ly and ad­heres to their doc­trines runs the risk of be­ing ex­com­mu­ni­cat­ed from the Ro­man church at large. Some­one who is ex­com­mu­ni­cat­ed can have this penal­ty lift­ed by ap­proach­ing the dioce­san au­thor­i­ty to seek rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. In this case, I would imag­ine some­one would have to ap­proach Arch­bish­op Gor­don or some­one ap­point­ed by him to coun­sel schis­mat­ic per­sons.

The SSPX has over 700 priests world­wide, around five sem­i­nar­ies and hun­dreds of places of wor­ship. An ar­ti­cle in the UK Guardian es­ti­mat­ed that there were 150,000 to 200,000 parish­ioners go­ing to SSPX mass­es. How­ev­er, many ul­tra-tra­di­tion­al­ist on­line com­mu­ni­ties are sym­pa­thet­ic to their cause. There have been many schisms through­out the his­to­ry of Chris­tian­i­ty. The most no­table took place in 1054, when a Catholic car­di­nal placed a de­cree of ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion against the Or­tho­dox Pa­tri­arch on the al­tar of the Ha­gia Sophia. It is lo­cat­ed in mod­ern Turkey. The pa­tri­arch re­spond­ed by ex­com­mu­ni­cat­ing the car­di­nal, split­ting the church in­to West­ern Catholic and East­ern Or­tho­dox branch­es.

The 1054 schism re­sult­ed from sev­er­al the­o­log­i­cal de­bates. Most no­tably, the de­bate over an ad­di­tion to the Nicene Creed called the Fil­ioque, which was added by Rome and stat­ed that the Holy Spir­it pro­ceed­ed from the Fa­ther and the Son. These de­bates ul­ti­mate­ly led to the is­sue of au­thor­i­ty: whether the Pope in Rome was the fi­nal au­thor­i­ty as the suc­ces­sor of Pe­ter, or whether all Pa­tri­archs were equal, as the Or­tho­dox ar­gued.

The Luther­an and Protes­tant church­es be­gan their schism in 1517 when Mar­tin Luther de­nounced the Catholic prac­tice of sell­ing in­dul­gences for mon­ey.

This re­sult­ed in Mar­tin Luther be­ing ex­com­mu­ni­cat­ed in 1521 and caused the for­ma­tion of all Protes­tant church­es in the West, in­clud­ing Pres­by­te­ri­ans and even­tu­al­ly Pen­te­costal church­es.

New Or­tho­dox Church in Trinidad

It must be stat­ed that the Or­tho­dox and Catholic church­es have had friend­ly re­la­tions in re­cent decades. In 1965, Pope Paul VI and Ec­u­meni­cal Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras lift­ed the mu­tu­al ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tions that the Ro­man Catholic Church and the East­ern Or­tho­dox Church had placed against each oth­er in 1054.

In 2025, Pope Leo XIV be­gan dis­cus­sions with Pa­tri­arch Bartholomew of Con­stan­tino­ple to­wards re­solv­ing the the­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences be­tween East and West.

It is now ar­guably more lic­it in the eyes of Rome to vis­it an Or­tho­dox church than an SSPX church.

I re­cent­ly spoke with mis­sion­ary and Russ­ian Or­tho­dox Priest Fr Alexy Am­brose, of the Russ­ian Or­tho­dox Church Out­side of Rus­sia, to be­gin the work of con­struct­ing a church on the is­land of Trinidad. Fa­ther Am­brose, whose of­fi­cial ti­tle is Hi­eromonk, reached out to me with this quote for the T&T Guardian: “The East­ern Or­tho­dox Chris­t­ian parish in Trinidad and To­ba­go seeks to of­fer a place where faith, fam­i­ly, cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ty can flour­ish to­geth­er. At its heart is the Gospel of Je­sus Christ and the hope of sal­va­tion, ex­pressed through wor­ship, prayer, the Holy Sacra­ments and a life of ser­vice.

“We en­vi­sion an Or­tho­dox cen­tre that is gen­uine­ly root­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go: a place wel­com­ing peo­ple of every back­ground, re­flect­ing our na­tion’s rich tra­di­tions, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and re­spect for fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty. The ini­tial de­vel­op­ment may in­clude a church, ceme­tery and com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ties, with fu­ture phas­es po­ten­tial­ly pro­vid­ing ed­u­ca­tion, char­i­ta­ble as­sis­tance, health and well­be­ing pro­grammes, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, and op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal pro­duc­tion and skills de­vel­op­ment. This is an am­bi­tious un­der­tak­ing re­quir­ing care­ful plan­ning, sub­stan­tial re­sources and com­mit­ted peo­ple. We are cur­rent­ly eval­u­at­ing fea­si­bil­i­ty, costs, man­age­ment and fi­nanc­ing. Ul­ti­mate­ly, how­ev­er, our con­fi­dence rests not in our own strength but in Christ, whom we seek to serve by strength­en­ing fam­i­lies, help­ing our neigh­bours and liv­ing the Chris­t­ian faith.”

Hav­ing met with Fr Am­brose and learned some bib­li­cal Greek from him, I would en­cour­age peo­ple seek­ing knowl­edge about the an­cient writ­ings of the ear­ly church to meet with him and have a dis­cus­sion. You can fol­low the Face­book page East­ern Or­tho­dox Church in Trinidad and To­ba­go for more in­for­ma­tion.

In clos­ing, this is a dra­mat­ic time for litur­gi­cal church­es in T&T, with the Catholic Church deal­ing with a schism even while try­ing to re­build ties with the East­ern Or­tho­dox.