A rebel group of ultra-conservative Catholics defied Pope Leo on Wednesday by ordaining bishops without his consent, triggering automatic excommunication and raising fears of the first significant schism in the Catholic Church since the 1980s. The Society of Saint Pius X consecrated four bishops in a ceremony streamed live from the Swiss village of Ecône, where the group was founded 56 years ago to oppose liberalising changes in the church.
Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta, who himself was consecrated without papal consent 38 years ago, placed his hands on the heads of the four new bishops — one from Switzerland, one from France and two from the US — in the ritual laying on of hands that Catholics believe confers the Holy Spirit from one bishop to another. Under Catholic church law, all five now face automatic excommunication.
A Direct Challenge to Papal Authority
The priest reading a statement at the start of the mass said the group considered 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." He added that the society considered "every punishment and censure brought to bear against this step will have no validity."
Pope Leo had made a last-ditch effort to persuade the society to halt the ordinations, calling them a "schismatic act" and a "sin of extreme gravity." The Society of Saint Pius X is considered a threat to Pope Leo's leadership because it represents a parallel, ultra-Catholic church with a wide reach. The group 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.
Rejecting Vatican II
The group rejects central changes from the Second Vatican Council, held between 61 and 64 years ago, including allowing mass to be celebrated in local languages. Until then it had been said only in Latin. The live stream of Wednesday's ceremony, carried out in French, was translated into English, German, Italian and Polish.
The ordinations could prove to be the first significant crisis for Pope Leo because they provoke a schism, an intentional rupture of the church's unity. Since Leo was elected about a year ago, 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.
Echoes of 1988
The clash is the first between the Vatican and the SSPX since 38 years ago, 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, 17 years ago, the conservative Pope Benedict lifted the excommunications. Shortly before, Williamson had caused uproar by denying the Holocaust.
Why This Matters:
The defiant ordinations represent more than an internal Catholic dispute — they expose the tension between institutional authority and ideological rigidity that has plagued the church for decades. For Pope Leo, who has prioritised unity and reconciliation with traditionalists, the schism threatens to fracture the church along lines that reforms from the Second Vatican Council were meant to heal. The Society of Saint Pius X's rejection of vernacular mass and other modernising reforms reflects a broader resistance to change within segments of global Catholicism, particularly in the US and parts of Europe. The group's willingness to accept automatic excommunication rather than compromise suggests a hardening of ideological positions that could embolden other ultra-conservative factions. At stake is not just the unity of the Catholic Church, but the question of whether religious institutions can adapt to contemporary realities without losing their most conservative adherents — or whether those adherents will simply form parallel structures that reject institutional authority altogether.