The Vatican has declared the Society of Saint Pius the Tenth, a traditionalist Catholic group known for celebrating the old Latin Mass, to be in schism with the Roman Catholic Church. The move follows the group’s consecration of four new bishops on Wednesday without the Pope’s approval, a step Pope Leo the Fourteenth had personally appealed against a day earlier, urging the group to “turn back.”
In its decree, the Vatican’s doctrine office excommunicated the four newly consecrated bishops, along with two existing SSPX bishops involved in the ceremony, and went further than church law strictly requires by also excommunicating the society’s roughly 750 priests and warning that thousands of lay followers who formally align with the group could face the same sanction. The Vatican also declared that sacraments such as confession and marriage performed by SSPX clergy are now invalid.
The society was founded in 1970 by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in opposition to the modernising reforms of the 1960s Vatican II council, and this isn’t its first brush with schism. Lefebvre himself was excommunicated after consecrating bishops without permission in 1988, though those sanctions were lifted by Pope Benedict the Sixteenth in 2009.
The Vatican says it remains open to welcoming individual SSPX faithful back into the church through a formal process, but analysts say the harshness of Thursday’s response signals Pope Leo has run out of patience after a lengthy effort to negotiate with the group.
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