In a specific pronouncement in 1976, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared devoid of canonical effect the consecration ceremony conducted for the Palmarian Catholic Church by Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục on 31 December 1975, though it refrained from pronouncing on its validity. This declaration also applied pre-emptively to any later ordinations by those who received ordination in the ceremony. Of those then ordained, seven who are known to have returned to full communion with Rome did so as laymen. When Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo conferred episcopal ordination on four men in Washington on 24 September 2006, the Holy See's Press Office declared that "the Church does not recognize and does not intend in the future to recognize these ordinations or any ordinations derived from them, and she holds that the canonical state of the four alleged bishops is the same as it was prior to the ordination." This denial of canonical status means Milingo had no authority to exercise any ministry.