Vatican Excommunicates Six Bishops as Society of St. Pius X Defies Pope Leo

The Vatican on Wednesday declared six bishops excommunicated and formally in schism after the ultra-traditionalist Society of St. Pius X ordained four new bishops without papal permission, reopening one of the deepest rifts in the modern Catholic Church. The announcement marked a dramatic hardening of relations under Pope Leo XIV, who had personally implored the group to stand down only days earlier.

The ordinations took place on July 1 in Switzerland, where Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta presided over the ceremony, assisted by Bishop Bernard Fellay. The four priests consecrated as bishops were Pascal Schreiber of Switzerland, Michael Goldade of the United States, Michel Poinsinet de Sivry of France and Marc Hanappier of France. Under canon law, consecrating or being consecrated a bishop without a papal mandate triggers automatic excommunication, and the Vatican made that consequence explicit the following day.

In its decree, the Holy See declared that the four newly ordained bishops, the two bishops who consecrated them, all priests of the SSPX and any lay Catholics who "adhere formally" to the group were now in schism and excommunicated. The Vatican said the society administers the sacraments illicitly and that its clergy can no longer validly officiate marriages or hear confessions — a sweeping walk-back of years of quiet accommodation that had allowed some SSPX sacraments to be recognized.

Pope Leo had made a final appeal on June 29, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, sending a letter urging the society to "please turn back" and abandon the planned consecrations. The plea echoed a decades-old confrontation: the SSPX was founded by the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was himself excommunicated in 1988 after ordaining bishops in defiance of Pope John Paul II. Pope Benedict XVI lifted those excommunications in 2009 in a bid to heal the breach, but full reconciliation was never achieved.

The society, which rejects several reforms of the Second Vatican Council and celebrates the traditional Latin Mass, counts hundreds of priests and a worldwide network of chapels and schools. Church observers said Wednesday's decree effectively resets the relationship to its most adversarial footing in more than 15 years, leaving unclear how the roughly one million Catholics who attend SSPX chapels will respond. Vatican officials framed the move as a defense of church unity and papal authority, while SSPX leaders cast their defiance as a fight to preserve tradition against what they view as a drift from doctrine.