Pope Leo XIV is not even two years into his pontificate and he is already facing one of the most delicate episodes of his ministry: a new rupture within the Church.
In a defiant move and despite repeated warnings from Rome, the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) went ahead Wednesday with the consecration of four new bishops without a pontifical mandate — an act of open disobedience to the authority of the pope that, under canon law, carries automatic excommunication for the six bishops involved.
The Vatican’s official response is now awaited and could include a formal declaration of schism, as Rome had warned in the days leading up to the ceremony.
In 1988, after Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the SSPX, consecrated bishops without a papal mandate, Rome responded two days later. On July 2, St. John Paul II published the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei, in which he spoke openly of a “rupture” of ecclesial communion and created a commission to help reconcile faithful linked to the society.
A repeated act of defiance
The illicit ceremony took place in a meadow in Écône, Switzerland, home to the SSPX international seminary — the same place where Archbishop Lefebvre
