As Wikipedia notes, "... SOAP ... is a protocol for exchanging XML-based messages ..." It's nominally language-independent (and platform-independent, encoding-aware, transport-neutral, ...).
Many Pythoneers are ... reserved about the complexities of and incoherent design of SOAP; Rob Riggs rants for many when he writes "... they invented SOAP for brainwashing software architects." Duncan McGreggor diplomatically summarizes "if you have to use SOAP, ... ZSI is the way to go."
Among pertinent Python-based implementations are ZSI, ...
The page on WebServices says more.