The Vatican has excommunicated followers of a conservative Catholic splinter sect, the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), a day after it consecrated four new bishops in Geneva against Pope Leo XIV's direct instruction.
The bishops from Society of St. Pius X were among those excommunicated by the Catholic Church on Thursday.
Baz Ratner/AP
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Baz Ratner/AP
ÉCÔNE, Switzerland (RNS) — A group of traditionalists directly defied Pope Leo XIV by ordaining four new bishops without his consent, calling it their "sacred duty" during a ritual-laden ceremony at the society's seminary in the Swiss village of Écône.
The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) had received repeated warnings from the Vatican that the ordinations would constitute a schismatic act and trigger the automatic excommunication of all bishops involved. On Thursday, the Vatican went further than expected, declaring that the four new bishops, the two bishops who consecrated them, all priests of the SSPX and all lay Catholics who "adhere formally" to the group were now in schism and excommunicated.
Excommunications are extremely rare, and generally mean the excommunicated person is no longer considered a member of the church and cannot receive the sacraments. Under the church's legal system, Catholics can be excommunicated for schism, defined as the refusal to submit to the Pope "or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him."
In its excommunication announcement, the Vatican offered the possibility of welcoming the former members back into the church.
Even before the consecrations, Pope Leo had published a letter dated June 29 addressed to the superior general of the society, the Rev. Davide Pagliarani. "I implore you and ask you with all my heart: Turn back!" the pontiff wrote, saying the consecrations would be a "sin of extreme gravity" for threatening the unity of the church.
Yet in a meadow filled with more than 1,000 clergy and another 15,000 faithful wearing free "Écône 2026" hats — which rendered the crowd as white-capped as the Alps around them — the SSPX proceeded as planned, with a statement read at the start of the ceremony declaring that "every punishment or sanction" brought against them "will have no validity."
Since his inaugural Mass, Pope Leo has championed a message of unity for the Roman Catholic Church. Now he faces the largest internal crisis of his young papacy.
"We are accused of not loving the pope," Pagliarani said in French during a sermon at the ceremony. "It's precisely because we love the pope as the vicar of Christ that we do not want to see the pope humiliated anymore, next to false priests representing false religions."
What is the Society of St. Pius X?
The Society of St. Pius X, a priestly fraternity, was founded in 1970 by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in opposition to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council from 1962 through 1965, which promoted the role of laypeople, ecumenicism and interreligious dialogue and enabled Mass to be celebrated in vernacular languages instead of Latin. In 1988, Lefebvre consecrated four bishops in Écône without approval from Pope John Paul II.
Wednesday's ceremony came 38 years to the day after Lefebvre was excommunicated alongside those four bishops — including Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta, who led Wednesday's consecrations and was again excommunicated Thursday. In 2009, after years of strained relations between SSPX and the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI remitted the 1988 excommunications as a step toward healing the rift. But doctrinal differences remained unresolved, with the SSPX still in a "canonically irregular" status within the church, according to the Vatican.
Pope Francis continued conciliatory efforts with the SSPX, allowing the society's priests to hear valid confessions in 2015 and, with the authorization of the local bishop, to officiate marriages formally recognized by the church in 2017. But Francis also announced restrictions on the Latin Mass in 2021, angering many traditionalists.
The latest consecrations could prompt Pope Leo to end the Vatican's decades of dialogue with the breakaway society. The Vatican's July 2 decree of excommunication states that
The Vatican has excommunicated followers of a conservative Catholic splinter sect, the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), a day after it consecrated four new bishops in Geneva against Pope Leo XIV's direct instruction.In a decree, it said the Society's total of six bishops were excommunicated - and, in a highly unusual move, it added that any lay members who "formally adhere" to the group "are to be considered schismatic and excommunicated". But those who left the SSPX would be welcomed back "with sincere affection".The Vatican later clarified that not all members would be excommunicated automatically, but those who "habitually participate" in SSPX celebrations and "formally share its doctrinal positions" would be. The SSPX was founded in 1970 in opposition to the modernising reforms made by the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s, at what was known as the Second Vatican Council. The Society is thought to number around 600,000 worshippers globally. In response to the Vatican's decree, Rita Reid, an SSPX worshipper from Jersey in the Channel Islands, said: "It actually makes me feel quite strong. "Before the consecrations yesterday I said to my husband, 'Do you know what? Even if they excommunicate us, go ahead, bring it on, it's not going to make one bit of difference.'"The Society rejects changes made to how Mass is celebrated - for example it still holds its services in Latin rather than everyday language, and priests face the altar rather than the congregation.In SSPX Masses the communion bread has to be given straight into the mouths of kneeling worshippers by the priest, as opposed to churchgoers being able to stand and hold it themselves.Women in the group also tend to cover their heads for services and followers of SSPX tend to be more socially conservative in general.The SSPX also opposes the modern Catholic Church's stance on more dialogue with other Christian denominations and other faiths.For Rita, 76, SSPX ceremonies are much more "profound", where she feels "the true presence of Jesus".She says there is no comparison with the standard Catholic Mass, which she describes as "so weak and wishy-washy".The retired B&B owner used to attend modern Catholic services as well as SSPX ones, but complained that in the standard Mass traditional social values - like no sex before marriage - was no longer taught."I think a lot of young people now that go to novus ordo [the standard liturgy] think 'oh well, it's all right, we can do these things'."The Society's main presence is in the US and France but it holds Masses at 26 locations around the UK, from Lerwick in Shetland down to Devon, with its main centre being in Wimbledon, South London.At one point in the 1980s, bishops from the Society were excommunicated for disobeying Rome, but that decision was later reversed.More recently, efforts had been made to reconcile with the SSPX, but the Vatican's response to this week's events was more aggressive than before, and more severe than predicted.It was widely expected that Wednesday's event in Geneva would lead to excommunication of the bishops involved.But the excommunication of all those lay people who continue to be a part of SSPX was a surprise to many, with the traditionalist group now as far from the centre of power of the Roman Catholic Church as it has ever been.Excommunication is one of the harshest punishments that can be given by the Church, effectively expelling the offender from the religion and excluding them from Catholic life.It means a baptised follower is "out of communion" with the Church - meaning they cannot receive the sacraments, for example going to confession, or get married within the Roman Catholic Church.The Vatican said on Thursday: "The sacred ministers of the Society of St Pius X administer the sacraments illicitly, while the sacrament of penance they administer and the marriages they witness are invalid."It means SSPX members now have to choose whether to stay part of a group that is in "schism", or leave
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