Catholic Church Excommunicates Breakaway Traditionalist Bishops And Their Followers

The Vatican swiftly imposed its harshest penalty of excommunication against bishops belonging to an ultra-traditionalist group who participated in an illicit Wednesday ordination.

The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) consecrated four bishops in Switzerland without the permission of Pope Leo XIV, who, citing the “attentive and generous attitude” of his papal predecessors, had issued a heartfelt letter Monday reminding that to “tear the seamless garment of Christ is a sin of extreme gravity.” The Catholic Church’s teaching of apostolic succession traces the continuing teaching authority of the bishops back to the Apostles chosen by Jesus Christ during His ministry throughout the Roman Empire.

“I plead with you and ask you with all my heart: please turn back!” the supreme pontiff wrote. “I urge you to consider carefully the spiritual good of the faithful, because the schismatic act you are about to undertake would deprive them of the licit and, in some cases, even valid reception of the Sacraments, which they love and seek for their sanctification.”

With a “sorrowful yet hopeful heart,” Leo — in what amounts to one of the most serious divisions he has faced during his barely one-year papacy — concluded. He observed that “[t]he Church is open to a path of dialogue and understanding that the Holy Spirit can make possible and fruitful.”

The consecrations, amid the ornate trappings of an ancient liturgy in Latin, nevertheless defiantly took place before an estimated 17,000 onlookers in a meadow in Écône, Switzerland — home to the SSPX’s international seminary. They were conducted by two bishops who were previously excommunicated for similar illicit consecrations in 1988.

“The Society sincerely regrets that, owing to exceptional circumstances, these consecrations had to be conferred without the authorization of the Holy Father,” an SSPX statement reads. “It regrets in particular that the Superior General of the Society was not afforded the opportunity to meet personally with His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, in order to set before him filially the grave reasons which rendered this ceremony necessary.”

“First of all, I want to express great sorrow,” Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said Wednesday, accordingto EWTN News. “I want to express great sorrow because, speaking of the unity of the Church, an act like this deeply wounds the unity of the Church. … My hope is that, despite what happened today, dialogue can resume and that a solution can truly be found here as well.”

At the time, Parolin claimed to be unaware of “the timing and the manner” of the forthcoming decree of excommunication. The wait for the Church’s formal response, it turns out, would not be long.

“Notwithstanding the warnings addressed to the Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X, Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta—having committed an act of a schismatic nature through the episcopal consecration of four priests without a pontifical mandate and against the will of the Supreme Pontiff—has incurred ipso facto [Latin for “the fact itself”] the penalties provided for by Canon 1387 and Canon 1364 § 1 of the 2021 Code of Canon Law,” a translation of the Italian decree by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith reads.

“Clerics and lay faithful are warned not to adhere to the schism of the Society of Saint Pius X, as they would thereby incur ipso facto the penalty of latae sententiae excommunication,” the decree concludes.

Recalling the history of attempted reconciliation between the Church and the Society, a canonical note simultaneously released with the excommunication warns “the holy People of God … that the sacred ministers of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X administer the sacraments illicitly, and that the sacrament of penance administered by them and the marriages at which they officiate are invalid.”

Urging the Catholic faithful to “remain steadfast in communion” with Rome and to avoid participating in SSPX activities, the note states the “Church, as a caring mother, will welcome with sincere affection and deep solicitude all those who wish to return to full communion.”

The Society of St. Pius X is a priestly fraternity founded in Switzerland in 1970 by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to oppose what it considers to be modernist infiltrations of the Church’s hierarchy and perversion of traditional Catholic doctrine. It claims a presence of seven bishops, 590 priests, and 187 seminarians across 62 countries — including 85 priests and 71 seminarians in 38 American states — ministering to roughly 600,000 lay persons, including an estimated 25,000 Americans.

Following numerous attempts by Paul VI, reconciliation between the Society and the Church appeared possible with the October 1978 election of Pope John Paul II. He received Lefebvre and his collaborators in an audience the following month and later lifted the suspension of the prelate’s ability to minister as a priest.

Three days of intense efforts between the two parties in April 1988, resulted in a common doctrinal Protocol Agreement being formalized and signed May 4, 1988.

Lefebvre, who died in 1991, however, ordained four bishops June 30, 1988, without a papal mandate, prompting the Vatican to swiftly notify him of the latae sententiae excommunication incurred by him and those he improperly ordained. Ratzinger, who assumed the papacy in 2005 as Benedict XVI, continued reconcilatory efforts with the Society, ultimately lifting the 1988 excommunication Jan. 24, 2009 to heal the division and encourage dialogue. Pope Francis, wishing to ensure unity of the faithful and their access to the Church’s sacraments during the 2016 Extraordinary Holy Year of Mercy, granted priests of the Society special faculties to hear confessions and absolve sins.

Incurred by “[c]ertain particularly grave sins,” the Church teaches excommunication (from the Latin for “exclusion from communion”) is “the most severe ecclesiastical penalty, which impedes the reception of the sacraments and the exercise of certain ecclesiastical acts, and for which absolution consequently cannot be granted, according to canon law, except by the Pope, the bishop of the place or priests authorized by them.”

The last formal excommunication publicized by the Church was declared July 4, 2024, after a canonical trial found Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the apostolic nuncio to the United States from 2011 to 2016, guilty of the crime of schism after a series of public statements in opposition to the authority of Pope Francis.

Likewise, bishops appointed by the state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association rather than the pope incurred automatic excommunication until a secret 2018 agreement between the Vatican and communist China. The agreement lifted several of those excommunications in an attempt to heal a rift between the two powers and restore full communion despite persecution forcing those loyal to the pope to express their faith underground.