The Vatican excommunicated six bishops from the ultraconservative Society of St Pius X on Thursday, while warning that any lay believers who “formally adhere” to the breakaway Catholic group would suffer the same fate.
The Vatican decree comes a day after the traditionalist group consecrated four new bishops, openly defying a plea from Pope Leo XIV to desist and exacerbating a rift dating from 1988 when the group earlier consecrated four bishops.
Calling the ceremony “an act of schismatic nature,” the Vatican’s powerful Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith — which is charged with defending Catholic doctrine — explained in an accompanying note that the consecrations were “in open violation of canonic law” and the excommunicated bishops “schismatics”.
For the Holy See, consecrating bishops without the approval of the pope, the head of the Catholic Church ruling over some 1.4 billion faithful, is a direct act of insubordination, leading to the automatic excommunication of the bishops involved.
The excommunication covers the newly-ordained bishops — two French, an American and a Swiss — and the two existing bishops who presided over the ceremony in Econe in southwest Switzerland.
The rite, attended by thousands of worshippers from around the world, began with the society’s secretary general, Foucault Leroux, stating that “any penalties and censures… are null and void”.
Superior General Davide Pagliarani called it a “historic” day.
“Are we breaking with the Church in order to keep the faith? That is a false dilemma. We belong to the Church first through faith, through the integral profession of the Church’s faith,” he said during his homily.
– ‘Caring mother’ –
The Society of Saint Pius X, which has around 600,000 followers around the world, comprises fundamentalist Catholics who strongly oppose the liberal reforms imposed by the Vatican II Council in the 1960s.
Adhering to a strict interpretation of Roman Catholic tradition, the society holds masses in Latin celebrated by priests with their backs turned to the congregation.
Founded in 1970 by divisive French Bishop Marcel Lefebvre, the group triggered a rift with the Vatican by consecrating four bishops in 1988, prompting their excommunication.
Those excommunications were later lifted by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.
In its note explaining the reasons for the current excommunications, the Vatican appeared to express frustration with the group, saying the “many attempts” since the time of Pope Paul VI, who died in 1978, to bring those who adhered to the movement back into the fold “have proved fruitless”.
Lay faithful would also be excommunicated and “regarded as schismatics” were they to “formally adhere” to the group, the Vatican said, warning that confessions and marriages presided over by the newly ordained bishops would be “invalid”.
“The Church, as a caring mother, will welcome with sincere affection and lively concern all those who desire to return to full communion,” wrote the Vatican.
A 1996 document from the former Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, which interprets canon laws, stated that faithful who might engage in “mere occasional participation” with the group without adopting its “attitude of doctrinal and disciplinary disunion” would not be excommunicated.
– ‘Extreme gravity’ –
Wednesday’s new consecrations took place in the same spot as those performed in 1988, in the meadows near the society’s seminary in Econe, a village in the Rhone valley, with the Alps towering above.
The accompanying mass in Latin lasted five and a half hours.
In a letter to the society Monday, Pope Leo warned that “to tear the seamless garment of Christ is a sin of extreme gravity”.
“I plead with you and ask you with all my heart: please turn back!” he wrote.
The Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, told journalists Wednesday that the Church felt “deep sorrow” over the ordinations.
“An act of this kind deeply wounds the unity of the Church,” he said.
AFP
