Vatican excommunicates rebel SSPX bishops
July 2, 2026
The Vatican on Thursday imposed some of the highest penalties available under the Catholic Church's canon law on a breakaway group that consecrated four bishops in defiance of the pope.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Catholic watchdog authority, announced that the four newly consecrated bishops, as well as two other bishops, will be expelled from the church or excommunicated.
It also warned that the faithful "who adhere formally" to the group, the Society of Saint Pius X (SPPX), are also considered "schismatic" and therefore excommunicated.
The term schism indicates a severe, formal rupture inside the Catholic community, while excommunication excludes an individual from receiving sacraments, getting married according to Catholic rites, or holding church office, among other things.
The moves annul the concessions granted by the Vatican in the past to bring the group, which has long had strained ties with Rome, back into the official Catholic fold.
What did the SSPX do?
On Wednesday, the SSPX ordained four bishops at a ceremony attended by some 15,500 people and their children near its seminary in Econe, Switzerland, despite having being requested by Pope Leo XIV not to do so.
According to the strict rules of the Catholic Church, only the pope can authorize the consecration of new bishops, and anyone doing so without such authorization has carried out a "schismatic act."
Thursday's decree said the two bishops leading the unauthorized ordination, along with the four priests who had become new bishops, were all excommunicated, thus losing all their ecclesiastical offices and honors.
In an even more severe move, it said that they and all formal followers of the group are in schism with the Catholic Church.
SSPX, an ultratraditionalist Catholic group
The SSPX was founded in 1970 by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and other Catholics who opposed the reforms introduced by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.
Those reforms included holding masses in languages other than Latin and the cultivation of ties with other Christian denominations and other faiths, known as ecumenism.
Edited by: Karl Sexton
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