Vatican warns SSPX leaders their July bishop consecrations bring excommunication

Pope Leo XIV’s Vatican issued a final warning to the Society of St. Pius X on Wednesday, telling the breakaway traditionalist group that moving forward with a July 1 plan to consecrate four bishops without papal consent would amount to a schismatic act carrying automatic excommunication. The Vatican framed the announcement as a last-ditch effort to prevent a crisis as the new pope faces what the Vatican described as the gravest challenge to his authority so far.

In a statement through Vatican doctrine chief Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the Vatican said Pope Leo XIV was praying for SSPX leaders, adding that it hoped they “may reconsider the extremely grave decision they have made.” Vatican officials said the warning was aimed at disrupting what they described as an impending rupture with papal authority.

The scheduled consecrations are set for July 1, when SSPX leaders plan to ordain four new bishops. The Vatican said the move would create the first tangible test for Leo’s effort to heal divisions with traditionalist Catholics, a rift that widened during Pope Francis’ pontificate.

The SSPX traces its roots to opposition to changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. The group was founded in Écône, Switzerland, in 1970, and it became known for celebrating the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass, which it continued to do as the Vatican increasingly allowed Mass in the vernacular.

The break with Rome became formal in 1988, when the group’s founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, consecrated four bishops without papal consent. The Vatican then excommunicated Lefebvre and the four other bishops, and the group has remained without legal status in the Catholic Church, according to the AP report.

The AP report said the Vatican views the SSPX’s growth as a long-term threat because it operates outside Rome’s canonical structures. The report cited SSPX statistics saying the group today includes two bishops, 733 priests, 264 seminarians, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates, and 250 religious sisters representing 50 nationalities.

For its part, the SSPX leadership has said older bishops can no longer serve a global congregation as the group has expanded. The SSPX superior, Rev. Davide Pagliarani, announced earlier this year that the group would consecrate new bishops on July 1, arguing that its remaining two aging bishops can no longer meet the needs of the movement.

The Vatican invited Pagliarani to talks, but the AP report said the same theological and practical problems that have blocked rapprochement for decades left the sides at an impasse. In comments on the SSPX website, Pagliarani reiterated the need for the new bishops, saying that “Now, what is at stake today is not an opinion, nor a sensibility, nor a preferential option, nor a particular nuance in the interpretation of a text, but the faith and morals that a Catholic must know, profess, and practice in order to save his soul and reach paradise.”

As the July 1 date approaches, traditionalists who remain loyal to Rome and who oppose Francis-era restrictions on the old Latin Mass are also watching Leo’s response. The AP report said Rorate Caeli, a traditionalist blog that has closely followed the dispute, argued that Francis’ crackdown—known by the Latin title Traditionis custodes—created the “crisis” the SSPX says it is facing. In its Wednesday statement, Rorate Caeli wrote that the Vatican cannot “just punish,” and said it must show traditional Catholics are “once again welcomed and loved in the church” by returning to what it called the status quo before Francis’ restrictions.

The current standoff ties back to Francis’ shift in 2021, when he reimposed restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass that Pope Benedict XVI had relaxed in 2007. Francis said he was reversing Benedict’s approach because the older rules had become a source of division in the church and were being used by conservative Catholics opposed to Vatican II. Francis’ move, the AP report said, became one of the most divisive actions of his 12-year papacy, prompting Leo—who began his pontificate promising to heal divisions—to confront the challenge as a defining early test.