In 1932, Nichols founded the Society of Clerks Secular of Saint Basil as a devotional society for clergy and laity dedicated to the celebration of the Western Rite. Nichols also consecrated Alexander Turner as a bishop in 1939. Turner pastored a small parish in Mount Vernon until Nichols' death in 1947, when he assumed leadership of the Society and concluded that there was no future for the Society of Saint Basil outside of canonical Orthodoxy. Turner described the situation the Society found itself in by saying: