A group of traditionalist Catholics consecrated four bishops on Wednesday in defiance of a plea from Pope Leo XIV, creating the biggest internal crisis of his young papacy and setting the stage for the first major schism in the Roman Catholic Church this century.
The group, the Society of St. Pius X, went ahead with the ritual-laden ceremony despite Leo’s last-minute appeal to the breakaway group “to desist from your intended act” and his separate warning that it was “a sin of extreme gravity.” Vatican officials had also said that the bishops would face automatic excommunication if the consecration was not canceled, though the Vatican did not immediately comment on their status after the group proceeded with the ceremony.
The event marked an escalation in a 56-year standoff between the Catholic leadership in Rome and the society’s leaders, who first moved against the Vatican in 1970 in protest of its efforts to modernize the church.
The society rejects the decisions of the Second Vatican Council, held in the 1960s, which included allowing priests to hold services in vernacular languages instead of only in Latin. It objects to the council’s efforts to heal the divisions between Catholicism and other Christian faiths, as well as with other religions. And it insists on the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church even as it accuses the modern church of being full of heresies and errors.
The society consecrated four bishops in 1988, during the papacy of John Paul II, who swiftly excommunicated them along with the society’s founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
The ceremony on Wednesday was the most serious challenge to Leo’s authority since his election as pope last year and a blow to his efforts to bridge divisions within the church. From the start of his pontificate, Leo has sought to soothe tensions between Catholics who want to modernize the church, including by ordaining female priests, and conservative members who favor more traditional approaches, including a return to holding Masses only in Latin.
In a sermon on Wednesday, the Rev. Davide Pagliarani, the society’s superior general, acknowledged that the consecration was perceived as an act of rebellion.
“The greatest sacrifice that God can ask of us is that of being treated as rebels while we want to serve the church as a mother in difficulty, overwhelmed, suffering,” Father Pagliarani said.
“Basically, we speak two different languages,” Father Pagliarani said. The language of his group focused on “faith in all its simplicity,” he said. The language of the Catholic Church was, he said, “the language of inclusion, dialogue, accompaniment.”
The factions, he added, were “increasingly moving apart from each other.”
The homily was in French, but most of the ceremony was in Latin. That was in keeping with the society’s rejection of the modernizing decisions of the Second Vatican Council, which took place in the 1960s.
Despite the Vatican’s opposition, the group said that some 17,000 worshipers came to the ceremony in Écône, a small village in Switzerland nestled at the foot of the Alps where the society installed its first seminary in 1970. Many were families dressed in their Sunday best.
Stephen Bullivant, who teaches theology at St. Mary’s University, a Catholic college in London, said the ceremony was a proxy for the “polarized debate taking place within the church around the Second Vatican Council, the current direction of the Catholic Church, all the troubles of secularization and decline of priests.”
The members of the Society of St. Pius X were “flag bearers of a particular view on all that,” he added.
For all its clinging to the church’s past, the events in Écône this week, which began on Monday with the ordination of new priests, were smoothly organized, widely publicized and covered by international news outlets. Participants, even the many toddlers, wore scannable wrist bands that functioned as digital wallets at the no-cash gathering. A QR code appeared on screens during the service, allowing participants to donate money digitally.
Commemorative baseball caps were handed out, providing some respite when a violent thunderstorm soaked the participants. Souvenirs included a gift set of wine, the Cuvée Écône 2026.
The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a prominent Catholic author, said these were all illustrations of how the society was seeking to bolster its influence, even at the expense of damaging the broader church.
“They’re having a huge party,” Father Reese said. “This is a marketing event. They want to be the leaders of the conservative dissenters in the Catholic Church, even if it means leading people out of the Catholic Church, which is what they’re doing.”
In recent months, the Vatican and the society sought to find common ground, but meetings between the group’s leadership and the Vatican’s top doctrinal official went nowhere.
For Catholic watchers, Wednesday’s ceremony was something of a déjà vu moment, reminding them of the society’s decision, nearly four decades ago, to consecrate four bishops. Despite the bishops’ excommunication, the group continued to grow. According to its own statistics, the society currently has 751 priests, nearly 400 nuns and monks, and 264 seminarians. It runs schools and churches in 77 countries, including about 100 churches in the United States. Participants from dozens of countries attended Wednesday’s consecration.
Some seemed relaxed about the possible backlash from the Vatican. “The pope, we respect him, we pray for him, but it’s like sometimes you see that your dad is doing stupid things,” Bernadette Gabioud, a French truck driver, said.
“You respect your dad because he’s your dad,” she added. “But at the same time you tell yourself that you have to do what is necessary to preserve the home.”
Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 lifted the excommunications of the surviving bishops, two years after he relaxed restrictions on celebrating the traditional Latin Mass in a gesture of outreach to all Catholics still attached to the old rite. But an uproar ensued after it emerged that one of the bishops had denied the Holocaust.
The society has insisted that the consecrations should not be considered a schismatic act, because the bishops will not have jurisdiction over a territory. The group recognizes the authority of the pope and his bishops, and it insists that there is no intention to create a parallel church.
The consecrations were necessary, it says, because the two bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre were aging and could no longer keep up with the needs of the expanding church. The four new bishops are between the ages of 36 and 53.
Some experts said they thought the dispute would blow over, given how the church had managed to bridge previous disagreements between the Vatican and the society.
The Rev. Charles Murr, a retired Catholic priest who still celebrates the traditional Latin Mass, said: “In 1988, there was also an excommunication, right? And a few years later, it was dropped.”
“I think there will be a rapprochement,” he added, “and I think it’s going to be sooner than you can imagine because things move quickly today.”
