The Vatican has declared that six bishops associated with the ultra-conservative Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) incurred automatic excommunication following unauthorized episcopal consecrations on July 1, 2026, in Écône, Switzerland.
The Holy See described the ordinations as a schismatic act that constitutes a formal break in ecclesial communion.
The two consecrating bishops and the four newly ordained bishops—including one American—proceeded without the mandatory approval of Pope Leo XIV.
The severe penalty bars those involved from receiving any church sacraments.
The Vatican also warned that lay members who knowingly and formally align themselves with the traditionalist society place themselves outside full communion with the Catholic Church.
Additionally, the Holy See revoked faculties previously granted to SSPX priests to validly celebrate the sacraments of confession and marriage.
This means the wider Catholic Church no longer recognizes these specific rituals as valid when administered by the society's clergy.
Prior to the ceremony, which drew an estimated 15,000 global onlookers to the SSPX headquarters in Switzerland, the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church attempted to halt the ordinations.
Pope Leo XIV, the first-ever U. S.
-born pontiff, wrote a personal letter to the Superior General of the society, pleading: "I plead with you and ask you with all my heart: please turn back!"
Background of the SSPX
Founded in the 1970s by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the SSPX arose to preserve the Traditional Latin Mass against the liturgical and theological reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
The society has since expanded to an estimated 600,000 adherents worldwide.
The current rift mirrors a 1988 incident where Archbishop Lefebvre similarly consecrated four bishops without papal authority, triggering automatic excommunications that Pope Benedict XVI later lifted in 2009 during an unresolved reconciliation effort.
The SSPX operates multiple seminaries, schools, and hundreds of chapels globally.
It maintains its American headquarters in Kansas and runs the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Dillwyn, Virginia, serving an estimated 25,000 adherents across the United States.
While expressing deep sorrow over the formal rupture, the Holy See continues to pray that members of the breakaway society will one day be restored to full communion with the Catholic Church, according to CBS News.
