Vatican declares Society of St. Pius X in schism, excommunicates bishops

The Vatican declared the Society of St. Pius X in schism and excommunicated its bishops and priests after the traditionalist group consecrated four new bishops without a papal mandate at Écône, Switzerland. The July 2 move marked a sharp escalation in a dispute that has shadowed the Catholic Church for decades and now reaches from bishops to ordinary Catholics who attend SSPX chapels.

The consecrations took place on July 1 and produced four bishops: Pascal Schreiber, Michael Goldade, Michel Poinsinet de Sivry and Marc Hanappier. Pope Leo XIV had already written to SSPX superior general Davide Pagliarani on June 29, pleading with him to desist and warning that the planned act would deprive the faithful of licit and, in some cases, valid sacraments. That warning framed the Vatican’s response as more than a disciplinary dispute; it treated the ordinations as a direct rupture of communion with Rome.

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the Vatican’s doctrine prefect, had warned as early as May 13 that the announced episcopal ordinations would be a “schismatic act” and that formal adherence to the schism would entail excommunication. The Vatican later said Catholics who adhere to the SSPX schism could incur latae sententiae excommunication automatically under church law. It also said confessions and marriages celebrated within the society are invalid, a judgment that affects lay Catholics as well as clergy.

The Society of St. Pius X was founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in opposition to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Since then, it has promoted the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass and rejected key council teachings, placing it in persistent conflict with Rome over authority, liturgy and doctrine. Lefebvre’s own unauthorized consecration of four bishops in 1988 triggered the last major rupture, leading to his excommunication and that of the bishops he ordained. Pope Benedict XVI remitted those excommunications in 2009 in hopes of restoring full communion, but the reconciliation never closed the divide.

The SSPX defended the latest consecrations in an open letter and a 28-page Profession of Faith, saying it was acting for the “salvation of souls” amid doctrinal and moral confusion in the Church and describing the Vatican’s sanctions as unjust. Pope Leo XIV, for his part, has said the group is refusing fundamental elements of the Church, including parts of Vatican II.

The scale of the society shows why the clash is not confined to church insiders. SSPX statistics cited in 2025 put the group at 6 bishops, 751 priests and 264 seminarians, with an international footprint that gives the Vatican’s sanctions real reach across parish life, confession, marriage preparation and ordinations. The latest break suggests a harder Vatican line under Leo XIV and a wider struggle over who gets to define Catholic authority in the post-conciliar Church.