Daniel Dolan

Who is Daniel Dolan?

Daniel Lytle Dolan is a sedevacantist Traditionalist Catholic bishop.

A Detroit, Michigan native, Dolan began his preparation for the priesthood in 1965 at the archdiocesan minor seminary in Detroit. He continued his studies in the Cistercian Order and at the seminary of the Society of Saint Pius X in Écône, Switzerland, where he was ordained a priest by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on June 29, 1976. As a seminarian at Écône in autumn 1973, he came to the conclusion that "the only logical explanation" for the New Mass and the alleged heresy of the Second Vatican Council was that Pope Paul VI had lost the Roman pontificate.

Since then he has held the position of sedevacantism regarding Paul VI and his successors. In early 1977, Dolan returned to the United States where he would establish more than 35 traditionalist Mass centers. In early 1983, Archbishop Lefebvre directed the SSPX's American priests to follow the liturgical books of 1962. Lefebvre insisted that priests publicly affirm their allegiance to Pope John Paul II, which the sedevacantists among them, including nine American priests, including Dolan, refused. They were promptly expelled from the SSPX.