Pope Leo XIV warns SSPX against schismatic bishop consecrations

On June 29, Pope Leo XIV warned the Society of St. Pius X not to go ahead with episcopal consecrations planned for July 1, calling the move schismatic and saying it would deprive the faithful of the licit, and in some cases even valid, reception of the sacraments.

In a letter to SSPX superior general Davide Pagliarani, the pope urged him to desist. Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández wrote on May 13 that the announced ordinations lacked a papal mandate and would amount to a schismatic act, with formal adherence to that break carrying excommunication under Church law.

In February, the SSPX announced it would proceed with the consecrations because of what it called a grave state of necessity, and on May 26 it named the four priests chosen for the office: Pascal Schreiber, Michael Goldade, Michel Poinsinet de Sivry and Marc Hanappier. The group argued the bishops were needed to preserve the administration of sacraments reserved to bishops in the traditional rite and maintained it did not intend to create a parallel authority or claim jurisdiction.

Excommunication does not erase ordination, but it places clergy outside full communion with Rome and bars them from exercising ministry licitly inside the Church. SSPX bishops have no canonical function in the Church and do not licitly exercise ministry there.

The conflict reaches back to the society’s founding in 1970, when Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre created it in Ecône, Switzerland, as a traditionalist priestly society opposed to parts of the Second Vatican Council. When Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal approval on June 30, 1988, John Paul II declared the act schismatic and the bishops excommunicated. Benedict XVI remitted those excommunications in 2009, but the SSPX still lacked canonical recognition.