VATICAN CITY — A far-right traditionalist Catholic organization is on a collision course with Pope Leo XIV, announcing plans to consecrate four new bishops without the pope’s approval. Under Catholic Church law, doing so results in automatic excommunication for all bishops involved and is considered a deliberate break from church unity — what’s known as a schismatic act.
The upcoming ceremony represents the first significant crisis to confront Leo since he became pope. Church unity has been a central priority for him, and he has been working to ease tensions with traditionalist factions that grew worse during the previous pontificate.
The organization behind the move is called the Society of St. Pius X, commonly referred to by the acronym SSPX. It was established in direct opposition to the sweeping modernization efforts of the Second Vatican Council — a series of church meetings held in the 1960s that transformed how the Catholic Church related to other Christians, Jewish communities, and people of other faiths. Those meetings also opened the door to celebrating Mass in everyday spoken languages rather than Latin.
The SSPX’s founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, was suspended and the organization was formally suppressed by the Vatican in 1975. Then in 1988, Lefebvre took the dramatic step of consecrating four bishops without the pope’s blessing. The Vatican responded swiftly, excommunicating Lefebvre and all four bishops. To this day, the SSPX holds no recognized legal standing within the Catholic Church.
Despite that original break with Rome, the group has continued to expand. Today it operates as a kind of parallel, ultra-conservative Catholic structure rooted in pre-Vatican II traditions. According to the SSPX’s own figures, the organization includes two bishops, 751 priests, 264 seminarians studying at five seminaries, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates, and 250 religious sisters drawn from 50 different countries.
Under the church’s internal legal code, known as canon law, consecrating a bishop without papal approval automatically excommunicates both those performing the ceremony and those receiving the consecration. No formal declaration from the Vatican is required — the penalty takes effect on its own. However, some church law experts believe the Holy See will likely want to make some kind of public statement given how openly the SSPX is conducting the consecrations.
Excommunication is the most severe punishment available under canon law. The Rev. Robert Gahl of the Catholic University of America explained that it is considered a “medicinal” penalty — one intended to signal wrongdoing and prompt repentance. “The medicine may be bitter tasting, meaning that there’s a harsh feature of it because it’s a penalty, but it’s meant to bring about a change in the one who receives it,” he said.
Importantly, the excommunication does not cancel out the validity of the consecrations themselves. SSPX bishops and priests are considered validly ordained — just not lawfully so.
Leo has the authority to extend excommunications to lay Catholics who attend the ceremony, but most observers do not expect him to go that far.
Interestingly, despite his general wariness of traditionalist movements and a broader effort to limit the spread of the old Latin Mass, Pope Francis had gone out of his way to extend certain concessions to the SSPX. In 2015, he issued a decree allowing Catholics to make a valid confession with SSPX priests, effectively recognizing the legitimacy of those absolutions. What began as a one-year gesture tied to his Jubilee of Mercy was later extended with no end date. Francis also made arrangements for SSPX priests to perform valid marriages.
Experts now say Leo could potentially pull back some of those concessions as part of the Vatican’s response to the new round of unauthorized consecrations.
Pope Benedict XVI had previously made significant efforts to bring the SSPX back into full communion with Rome. In 2007, he eased restrictions on celebrating the traditional Latin Mass across the broader Catholic Church. Then in 2009, he lifted the excommunications that had been imposed on the four SSPX bishops back in 1988.
That latter decision quickly turned into a serious embarrassment. One of the four bishops whose excommunication was lifted, Bishop Richard Williamson, was publicly known as a Holocaust denier. In a television interview broadcast on Swiss television shortly before the Vatican’s announcement became public, Williamson stated that he did not believe Jews were killed in gas chambers during World War II. The revelation sparked outrage among Jewish leaders. Benedict later acknowledged that a basic internet search would have surfaced Williamson’s views before the decision was made.
Williamson’s troubles didn’t end there. The SSPX itself expelled him in 2012 for insubordination, saying he had missed a deadline to formally acknowledge the group’s authority and had called for its superior to step down. Williamson, who was ordained a priest by Lefebvre in 1976 and had taught at SSPX seminaries in Europe, the United States, and Argentina, died in 2025.
While Francis extended concessions to the SSPX, he simultaneously angered many Catholic traditionalists by reversing Benedict’s broader relaxation of the Latin Mass, arguing it had become a source of division within the church.
It’s worth noting that the SSPX is one fringe group operating outside of Rome’s authority. Many other traditionalist Catholics remain in full communion with the Holy See. As part of his unity efforts, Leo permitted a prominent American cardinal to celebrate a traditional Latin Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica last year.
