As Wikipedia notes, "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP ... 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 [http://wanderingbarque.com/nonintersecting/2006/11/15/the-s-stands-for-simple/ the complexities of and incoherent design of SOAP]; Rob Riggs rants for many when he writes "[http://lists.community.tummy.com/pipermail/frpythoneers/2007-April/001338.html ... they invented SOAP for brainwashing software architects.]" Duncan McGreggor diplomatically summarizes "[http://lists.community.tummy.com/pipermail/frpythoneers/2007-April/001337.html if you have to use SOAP, ... ZSI is the way to go.]"
Among pertinent Python-based implementations are ["ZSI"], ...