Vatican excommunicates members of right-wing breakaway group SSPX

Vatican excommunicates members of breakaway group SSPX for ordaining bishops without papal approval Thu 2 Jul 2026 at 9:09pm In short: The Vatican has excommunicated priests and lay Catholics who are part of a breakaway right-wing Catholic group that ordained bishops without Pope Leo's approval. The Society of St Pius X (SSPX) celebrates the ancient Latin mass and opposes the modernising reforms of the Catholic Church, which it considers to be rife with heresies and errors. What's next? The ultra-traditionalist group, which denies key church teachings, cannot officiate marriages or hear confessions validly, the Vatican has decreed. The Vatican has excommunicated priests and lay Catholics who are part of a breakaway right-wing Catholic group that ordained bishops without Pope Leo's approval. And, the Vatican decreed that they are in schism with the wider church. In a strong decree, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the top watchdog authority for the 1.4-billion-member religion, also warned Catholics globally that the Swiss-based Society of St Pius X now celebrates the sacraments illicitly. The ultra-traditionalist group, which denies key church teachings, cannot officiate marriages or hear confessions validly, the decree said. It is a strict teaching of the Catholic Church that only the pope can authorise the consecration of new bishops, in order to maintain the church's ties to Jesus's 12 apostles, who are considered the first priests and bishops. Vatican decree goes further than expected The church considers unauthorised ordination of bishops as so serious that it causes those taking part in the ceremony to be automatically excommunicated, or "out of communion" with the wider church, and unable to receive sacraments until they repent and ask for forgiveness. Thursday's decree said the two bishops leading the unauthorised ordination, held in Switzerland on Wednesday, had been excommunicated, along with the four priests who had become new bishops, which was widely expected. But the Vatican went further than expected and said that all priests of the Society of St Pius X and all Catholics who "adhere formally" to the group were now in schism and excommunicated. A schism is a term to indicate a severe, formal rupture inside the Catholic community. The society, known by its acronym SSPX, celebrates the ancient Latin mass and opposes the modernising reforms of the Catholic Church, which it considers to be rife with heresies and errors. Pro status quo The society was founded in opposition to the modernising reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Among other things, the 1960s church meetings revolutionised the Catholic Church's relations with other Christians, Jews and people of other faiths and allowed mass to be celebrated in languages other than Latin. In 1975, the SSPX founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, was suspended and the society was suppressed by the Vatican. In 1988, Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal consent. The Vatican promptly excommunicated Lefebvre and the four other bishops, and the group today still has no legal status in the church. Despite that original schismatic act, the group has continued to grow and today poses a threat to the Holy See since it represents a parallel, ultra-Catholic, pre-Vatican II church. The SSPX counts six bishops, 751 priests, 264 seminarians training in five seminaries, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates (lay people associated with an order) and 250 religious sisters representing 50 nationalities, according to SSPX statistics. Previous popes made SSPX concessions Despite his general distrust of traditionalists and a broader crackdown on the old Latin mass, Pope Francis went out of his way to offer concessions to the SSPX. In 2015, he decreed that Catholics could validly go to confession with SSPX priests, essentially recognising as legitimate the absolutions granted to Catholics who confessed their sins to SSPX priests. Francis had made the concession as a one-year gesture during his Jubilee of Mercy, but he then extended it indefinitely. He also made a provision to allow SSPX priests to celebrate marriages legitimately. The Vatican reversed those concessions on Thursday, declaring the sacraments of confession and marriage that SSPX priests administer to be invalid. First as cardinal and then as pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI had worked to heal the SSPX schism and bring the group back under Rome's wing. He made two major concessions as part of his outreach. In 2007, he relaxed restrictions on celebrating the traditional Latin mass throughout the Catholic Church. And in 2009, he removed the excommunications of the four SSPX bishops. The gesture, however, became an acute embarrassment for him and sparked a crisis with Jewish leaders because one of the four, Bishop Richard Williamson, was a known Holocaust-denier. And in a television interview that aired on Swiss television just before the pope's decree was made public, Williamson said he didn't believe Jews were killed in gas chambers during World War II. Benedict later acknowledged a simple internet search would have turned up Williamson's views. Williamson later ran afoul of the SSPX, which expelled him in 2012 for insubordination. He had ignored a deadline to "declare his submission" to its authority and had called for the society's superior to resign, the group said at the time. Williamson, who was ordained a priest by Lefebvre in 1976 and had taught in the society's seminaries in Europe, the US and Argentina, died in 2025. Et tu, Francis? Despite his concessions to the SSPX, Francis enraged many Catholic traditionalists by reversing Benedict's relaxation on celebrating the old Latin mass for the broader Catholic Church. Francis cracked down on its spread, arguing it had become a source of division in the church. While the SSPX is one fringe group out of communion with Rome, plenty of other traditionalists are in full communion with the Holy See. Leo, as part of his effort at promoting unity, allowed a prominent American cardinal to celebrate an old Latin mass in St Peter's Basilica last year. AP/Reuters