February 01, 2021 CWN Editor's Note: Addressing participants in the meeting organized by the National Catechetical Office of the Italian Episcopal Conference, Pope Francis recalled the Old Catholics after the First Vatican Council (1869-70). “If you do not follow the [Second Vatican] Council or you interpret it in your own way, as you wish, you are not with the Church,” he said. “It makes me think of a group of bishops who, after Vatican I, left, a group of lay people, groups, to continue the ‘true doctrine’ that was not that of Vatican I: ‘We are the true Catholics.’ Today they ordain women. The strictest attitude, to guard the faith without the Magisterium of the Church, leads you to ruin.”