Pope Francis folded the responsibilities and budget of the commission responsible for traditional Catholics into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on Saturday. With the motu proprio Da oltre (trent’anni), the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, historically also tasked with leading negotiations with the canonically irregular Priestly Fraternity of St Pius X (SSPX), is suppressed, and its duties transferred to the CDF. Pope St John Paul II established the Ecclesia Dei Commission in 1988 to support traditional Catholics who did not follow Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre after he illicitly ordained four bishops to continue the work of the fraternity he founded for the preservation of traditional Catholic worship in the wake of the II Vatican Council and the post-Conciliar reform of the liturgy. Pope John Paul II ruled that the illicit ordination was a schismatic act, and confirmed that the SSPX leadership had incurred an excommunication latae sententiae resulting from their participation in the illicit episcopal consecration. Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 lifted the excommunications on the four bishops illicitly ordained, though the canonically irregular situation of the SSPX persists to this day, despite significant strides toward reconciliation. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI restored the right of priests to use the pre-Conciliar liturgical books, promulgated by Pope St John XXIII in 1962, for public worship with his motu proprio Summorum pontificum. Pope Benedict in 2009 expanded Ecclesia Dei’s competences and made the Prefect of the CDF the ex officio head of the Commission, recognising at the time that the outstanding issues between Rome and the SSPX were prevalently doctrinal. During the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pope Francis granted faculties to all SSPX priests to hear confessions. He later made that decision permanent, announcing it in the Apostolic Letter Misericordia et misera of 20 November 2016: