Four new bishops were ordained Wednesday by a traditionalist Catholic splinter group in a small Alpine village in southwestern Switzerland, directly defying a personal appeal from Pope Leo to halt the unauthorized ceremony.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, one of the Vatican’s most senior officials, condemned the event, saying it had “deeply wounded” the unity of the Catholic Church’s 1.4 billion members worldwide.
“This is in itself a schismatic act,” Parolin told reporters in Rome, using language that signals a serious break within the Catholic community.
Thousands of supporters gathered in the tiny hamlet of Écône to witness the ordination of bishops from the ultra-traditionalist Society of St. Pius X — just two days after Pope Leo had personally urged the group to stand down.
In a letter written Monday to the society’s leader, Rev. Davide Pagliarani, the pope wrote: “I plead with you and ask you with all my heart: please turn back!”
Under Catholic Church law, only the pope holds the authority to approve the consecration of new bishops, a tradition rooted in maintaining the Church’s spiritual lineage back to Jesus’ 12 apostles, who are considered the original priests and bishops.
The Church treats unauthorized bishop ordinations as one of the gravest possible offenses. Anyone who takes part in such a ceremony is automatically excommunicated — meaning they are cut off from the broader Church and barred from receiving sacraments unless they repent and seek forgiveness.
The Society of St. Pius X rejects the core teachings of the Second Vatican Council, a major gathering of Catholic bishops held in the 1960s that brought sweeping reforms to the global Church, including efforts to improve relations with Jewish communities and other Christian denominations.
Among those reforms was a change allowing Mass to be celebrated in local languages rather than exclusively in Latin. The society rejected that shift, arguing that the Latin rite preserves an important sense of mystery and formality in worship.
The group, which claims 733 priests around the world, has long maintained a strained relationship with the Vatican. Society leadership argued that ordaining new bishops was necessary to ensure enough church leaders to guide the organization.
The Vatican had put the society on notice back in May, warning that proceeding with unauthorized ordinations would result in excommunication.
