Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary refers to a number of different religious communities which all trace their roots to the St. Benedict Center, founded in 1940 by Catherine Goddard Clarke in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Feeney criticized Boston Archbishop Richard Cardinal Cushing for, among other things, accepting the church's definition of "baptism of desire".

[4] After Feeney repeatedly refused to reply to a summons to Rome to explain himself, he was excommunicated on February 13, 1953, by the Holy See for persistent disobedience to Church authority.

[1] Increasingly isolated in the Boston Catholic community, in January 1958, the group moved from Cambridge to a farm in the town of Harvard in Worcester County, where they settled.

[13] After an internal electoral struggle, and having lost a suit in civil court to compel his superiorship over the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Saint Benedict Center,[6] Dr. Fakhri Boutros Maluf, who had taken the name Brother Francis, left the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Saint Benedict Center and founded a splinter group in Richmond, New Hampshire, as "founding superior"[6][14] in the mid-1980s.

[23] The diocese and Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome found "unacceptable" the teachings of the St. Benedict Center, such as preaching that only Catholics can go to Heaven.

[citation needed] That same document further states that priests are forbidden to say Mass at any church or chapel owned by the St. Benedict Center or the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

In February 2021, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith held that the appeal had not been completed before the statute of limitations ran out, therefore the group must conform with the precepts.