of Saint Pius X, they believed that there had been novel interpretations of the traditional teachings of the church on issues such as religious liberty. One of The Nine, Dolan, admitted that while still a member of the SSPX, he had already concluded that the See of Peter was vacant. The Nine set up a new priestly society under the leadership of Kelly, their former District Superior. The eight priests were Thomas Zapp, Donald Sanborn, Anthony Cekada, Daniel Dolan, William Jenkins, Eugene Berry, Joseph Collins, and Martin Skierka. Additional priests joined shortly thereafter. Splits Within a few years, about half of the original nine SSPV priests separated from Kelly. Most of them formed an openly sedevacantist group, "Catholic Restoration", under the leadership of Dolan and Sanborn. Both were later consecrated as bishops in the episcopal lineage of the sedevacantist Vietnamese Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục. The other priests founded independent ministries. Cekada states that this resulted from the SSPV's intrinsic distrust of a centralized authority as existed in the SSPX, which makes the latter vulnerable to being "subverted with one stroke of a pen" to the Vatican. Rather than independent congregations being a weakness and something to be lamented, Cekada considers all such groups and priests taken together preferable to the SSPX, which has continued to hold negotiations with Rome and uses the 1962 Missal. Episcopal orders On 19 October 1993, Kelly was consecrated a bishop in Carlsbad, California, United States, by Bishop Alfredo Méndez-Gonzalez, the retired Bishop of Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Bishop Méndez had already publicly ordained Paul Baumberger and Joseph Greenwell, two seminarians of the SSPV, to the priesthood in 1990. Kelly's consecration was announced a few days after Méndez's death in 1995. Structures The SSPV currently has five permanent priories, and its priests serve a network of chapels, churches, and temporary Mass locations in 14 US states (as of 2020) and one Canadian province (Alberta). It operates only in North America. Associated religious communities The Daughters of Mary, Mother of Our Savior are a congregation of religious sisters founded by Kelly in 1984. Their congregation's motherhouse and novitiate are located in Round Top, New York, United States, in the Catskill Mountains area. The sisters have two additional houses in Melville, New York, and White Bear Lake, Minnesota where they run schools, and engage in other types of charity work, such as visiting nursing homes. The current