VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV is facing his first major crisis with traditionalist Catholics: A breakaway group attached to the traditional Latin Mass announced plans to consecrate new bishops without papal consent in a threatened revival of schism.
The Swiss-based Society of St. Pius X, which has schools, chapels and seminaries around the world, has been a thorn in the side of the Holy See for four decades, founded in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council.
In 1988, the group’s founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, consecrated four bishops without papal consent, arguing that it was necessary for the survival of the church’s tradition. The Vatican promptly excommunicated Lefebvre and the four other bishops, and the group today still has no legal status in the Catholic Church.
But in the decades since that original break with Rome, the group has continued to grow, with branches of priests, nuns and lay Catholics who are attached to the pre-Vatican II traditional Latin Mass.
For the Vatican, papal consent for the consecration of bishops is a fundamental doctrine, guaranteeing the lineage of apostolic succession from the time of Christ’s original apostles. As a result, the consecration of bishops without papal consent is considered a grave threat to church unity and a cause of schism, since bishops can ordain new priests. Under church law, a consecration without papal consent incurs an a …