ÉCÔNE, Switzerland (RNS) — A group of traditionalist Catholics directly defied Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday (July 1) by ordaining four new bishops without his consent, calling it their “sacred duty” during a ritual-laden ceremony at the society’s seminary in the Swiss village of Écône.
The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) had received repeated warnings from the Vatican that their episcopal consecrations would constitute a schismatic act and trigger the automatic excommunication of all bishops involved. On Thursday (July 2), the Vatican went further than expected, declaring that the four new bishops, the two bishops who consecrated them, all priests of the SSPX and all lay Catholics who “adhere formally” to the group were now in schism and excommunicated.
In an eleventh-hour appeal, Pope Leo had published a letter dated June 29 addressed to the superior general of the society, the Rev. Davide Pagliarani. “I implore you and ask you with all my heart: Turn back!” the pontiff wrote, saying the consecrations would be a “sin of extreme gravity” for threatening the unity of the church.
RELATED: Leo urges SSPX to ‘turn back’ as breakaway traditionalists plan bishop consecrations
Yet in a meadow filled with more than 1,000 clergy and another 15,000 faithful wearing free “Écône 2026” hats — which rendered the crowd as white-capped as the Alps around them — the SSPX proceeded as planned, with a statement read at the start of the ceremony declaring that “every punishment or sanction” brought against them “will have no validity.”
Since his inaugural Mass, Pope Leo has championed a message of unity for the Roman Catholic Church. Now he faces the largest internal crisis of his young papacy.
“We are accused of not loving the pope,” Pagliarani said in French during a sermon at the ceremony. “It’s precisely because we love the pope as the vicar of Christ that we do not want to see the pope humiliated anymore, next to false priests representing false religions.”
The Society of St. Pius X, a priestly fraternity, was founded in 19 …