In Ecône, the Society of Saint Pius X consecrated four bishops on Wednesday without Pope Leo’s consent, a ritual act that the group called a “sacred duty” even as Catholic church law says all five men now face automatic excommunication. The ceremony was streamed live from the Swiss village, with one bishop from Switzerland, one from France and two from the US taking part in a public display of hierarchy policing itself.
A Parallel Church, Built to Resist
The Society of Saint Pius X did not hide what it was doing. A priest reading a statement at the start of the mass said, “Therefore before God we consider it a sacred duty toward holy church and toward souls to proceed with the consecration of bishops who are entirely faithful to her holy tradition and to her constant magisterium,” and added, “We consider every punishment and censure brought to bear against this step will have no validity.” That is the language of a parallel authority, one that rejects the chain of command while insisting on its own legitimacy.
Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta, who himself was consecrated without papal consent in 1988, placed his hands on the heads of the four new bishops in the ritual laying on of hands that Catholics believe confers the Holy Spirit from one bishop to another. The ceremony was carried out in French and translated into English, German, Italian and Polish, a reminder that this is no tiny private quarrel but a transnational structure with reach and discipline.
Pope Leo had tried to stop it. He called the ordinations a “schismatic act” and a “sin of extreme gravity” in a last-ditch effort to persuade the society to halt them. The Society of Saint Pius X, founded in 1970 in Ecône to oppose liberalising changes in the Catholic church, is considered a threat to Pope Leo’s leadership because it represents a parallel, ultra-Catholic church. The old machinery of authority does not like rivals, even when they speak the same language of obedience.
The Church’s Own Border Police
The clash is the first between the Vatican and the SSPX since 1988, when Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the society’s founder, and four bishops he had ordained without the permission of the then pope, John Paul II, were excommunicated, including a British bishop, Richard Williamson. In 2009, the conservative Pope Benedict lifted the excommunications. Shortly before, Williamson had caused uproar by denying the Holocaust. The church’s internal discipline has long worked like a border regime of its own: lines drawn, crossings punished, exceptions granted when power decides they are useful.
The Society of Saint Pius X has a wide reach. It has a significant following in the US, where it has a large operations base in Kansas, as well as in France, Argentina and other countries. It has nearly 1,500 priests, seminarians and other vocational members. That scale matters. This is not a fringe argument shouted from a corner. It is an organised network with its own institutions, its own loyalists and its own refusal of central control.
The group rejects central changes from the Second Vatican Council, held between 1962 and 1965, including allowing mass to be celebrated in local languages. Until then it had been said only in Latin. Even the live stream of Wednesday’s ceremony carried the old order outward, translated into multiple languages while insisting on a version of authority that refuses compromise.
Since Leo was elected in May last year, the first North American pope, he has made church unity a priority and has worked especially hard to heal rifts with traditionalists, which had deepened during the papacy of his predecessor, Francis. Wednesday’s ordinations now threaten that project with a rupture the church itself calls schism. The institution that preaches unity has once again shown how quickly it reaches for punishment when obedience slips.