Pope Leo Strikes Back at Rebel Sect, Cementing Rift in the Church and Imposing the ‘Will of the Supreme Pontiff’

Pope Leo XIV’s decree that all formal followers of an arch-conservative rebel group within the Catholic Church “are to be considered schismatics and excommunicated” is a show of brute doctrinal force not seen since punishment imposed on the very same sect by Pope John Paul II. The declaration that the Society of St. Pius X is in schism with the Church of Rome follows the group’s consecration of four bishops on Wednesday, after the Successor of Saint Peter, in a personal letter, begged the group to abstain from such a defiant step. Some 17,000 people attended the consecrations at an Alpine meadow in Switzerland, near the town of Écône, where the society is headquartered.The excommunications — the most severe punishment known to canon law — apply not only to the bishops but also to the society’s priests and followers more broadly. Sacraments administered by the society’s priests, including confession and matrimony will be invalid.“Clerics and lay faithful are warned not to adhere to the schism of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, because they would ipso facto incur the penalty” of excommunication as well, the pope wrote in his decree.Such penalties are rare but not unknown to those who cross Rome. In 2002, a conference that included future Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, among others, confirmed Pope John Paul II’s excommunication of Romulo Antonio Braschi for attempting to ordain a group of Catholic women to the priesthood. However, that decree was ferendae sententiae, imposed after a review, rather than the current latae sententiae decision, which is ipso facto or automatic after violation of canon law.The society, known as SSX, is a traditionalist sect that clings to the “Old Form” of the Tridentine Mass, which dates from 1570 and is held in Ecclesiastical Latin. That version, whose name derives from the Council of Trent — a high-water mark of the Counter-Reformation — was replaced by the “Ordinary Form” in 1969 pursuant to the modernizing efforts of the Second Vatican Council.The SSX was founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in opposition to those modernizing currents, which also involved resetting the Church’s relations with Protestants and Jews. In 1988, in a forerunner of today’s defiance, the SSX consecrated four bishops without the permission of the Holy See. In response Pope John Paul II excommunicated Lefebvre and those four bishops. One of those bishops, Richard Williamson, maintained that “the historical evidence” did not prove that millions of Jews had been “deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler.” The excommunications were rescinded by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009. The society is named after Pope Pius X, who reigned from 1903 to 1914 and has been subsequently elevated to sainthood. He was an implacable foe of modernist reforms to the Church, and was especially devoted to the medieval Catholic philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas. In his first encyclical he wrote that “We champion the authority of God. His authority and Commandments should be recognized, deferred to, and respected.” Now the SSX is once again at odds with the Vicar of Christ. The Vatican has declared that the society acted “against the will of the Holy Father and in open violation of canon law.” Still, Pope Leo wrote that “the Church, as a caring mother, will welcome with sincere affection and lively solicitude all those who wish to return to full communion.”Before the consecrations the pope warned the SSX’s superior, Reverend Davide Pagliarani, that “to tear the seamless garment of Christ is a sin of extreme gravity.” In an explanatory note appended to the formal decree of excommunication the Vatican noted that the harsh response follows the “episcopal consecration of four presbyters, without pontifical mandate and against the will of the Supreme Pontiff.” The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the department of the Church which manages religious discipline, declared that the “excommunication newly separates the bishops and priests of the Fraternity of Saint Pius X from the Church of Rome.” Before the consecrations Reverend Pagliarani declared: “Far be it from us to separate ourselves from the Roman Church. We desire, on the contrary, to serve her by means that are extraordinary, as one would assist a mother in distress who requires particular help, even if such help is not understood by everyone.” The SSX has not commented since the excommunications were handed down. Reverend Pagliariani, in his homily at the consecrations, explained, “We are accused of not respecting the pope. But it is precisely because we love the pope as the vicar of Christ, as the head of the church, that we don’t want to see the pope humiliated anymore, on the side of false shepherds representing false religions.”

Pope Leo Strikes Back at Rebel Sect, Cementing Rift in the Church and Imposing the ‘Will of the Supreme Pontiff’

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