Vatican excommunicates SSPX priests and bishops after unauthorized ordinations
The Holy See declared priests, bishops and lay adherents of the Society of Saint Pius X in schism and excommunicated them after the group ordained four bishops without papal approval.
The Vatican announced Thursday that priests, bishops and lay members of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) are in schism and have been excommunicated after the group ordained four new bishops without papal consent. The doctrinal office issued a decree that excommunicates the four newly ordained bishops and the two bishops who performed the ceremony, and it extends the penalty to SSPX priests and lay adherents who formally align with the society.
The decree warns that any cleric or lay faithful who formally follows the SSPX will automatically incur excommunication. It also states that sacraments administered by the group, such as marriage and confession, will be considered invalid.
"They break the unity of the Church and incur very specific sanctions – fundamentally, excommunication," Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, said on Wednesday.
Pope Leo XIV had previously described the ordinations as a “schismatic” act and a “sin of extreme gravity,” and he reiterated that the Church would welcome those who wish to return to full communion.
The SSPX, founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, has long opposed reforms of the Second Vatican Council, including teachings on religious freedom, ecumenism and the use of vernacular languages in the liturgy. One of the newly ordained bishops, Father Michael Goldade, who heads the society’s seminary in Virginia, described the mainstream church as a “desert that kills everything that it touches.”