Pope Leo XIV has warned Catholic rebels risking excommunication over their plan to consecrate bishops without papal approval that “if they make that choice, I am sorry, but we must move forward.”
The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a breakaway ultra-conservative priestly fraternity, is set to consecrate four bishops on July 1, despite the Catholic Church’s requirement that appointments be approved by the pope. The Vatican has warned the group, which has repeatedly clashed with the papacy, that members involved in the consecrations would risk excommunication, but the SSPX has doubled down.
Superior General Davide Pagliarani said the group’s members would “rather die than renounce” their ultra-traditionalist principles. If the SSPX were to be excommunicated, it would mark a major setback in decades of efforts by Rome to repair one of the most prominent traditionalist ruptures in modern Catholicism.
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Leo spoke about the feud for the first time on Tuesday, telling reporters that while he was “considering making another appeal to say: ‘Do not do this, let us try to live in communion within the church,” the decision to proceed is “their choice.”
“Certainly, division among Christians is always a painful point. But they refuse to accept certain fundamental elements of the church, starting with several points from the Second Vatican Council,” he said, according to the National Catholic Reporter.
Newsweek has contacted SSPX for comment via email.
What Is the SSPX?
The society was founded in 1970 by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in opposition to reforms introduced by the Second Vatican Council, including changes to mass and the church’s approach to relations with other religions.
While the SSPX recognizes the pope and accepts much of Catholic teaching, it believes that the Vatican has made modernist “errors that are destroying Catholic faith and morals,” as Pagliarani wrote last month in a declaration of Catholic faith addressed to Leo.
In recent years, the fraternity has been particularly critical of the Vatican’s 2023 declaration Fiducia Supplicans, which authorized nonliturgical blessings for people in same-sex relationships and other “irregular” situations while maintaining the church’s teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman.
Inside the SSPX-Vatican Dispute
The SSPX announced in February that it would ordain bishops without the pope’s approval in July. The Vatican’s head of discipline, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, told the society in May that doing this would be “a schismatic act”—a formal rupture—with the papacy, which would require excommunication.
However, the group has stood by its plans, insisting it is being faithful to the original values of the Roman Catholic Church.
In May, it announced the names of the four bishops it plans to consecrate:
Father Michael Goldade (United States)Father Pascal Schreiber (Switzerland)Father Michel Poinsinet de Sivry (France)Father Marc Hanappier (France)
“Our determination to serve the holy Catholic Church remains unwavering, in the consciousness of the imperative duty faithfully and integrally to hand on what we ourselves have received—namely, what the Church has always believed, taught, and practiced,” the group wrote in its announcement on May 26.
The July consecrations would not be the first time the group defied the Vatican. In 1988, Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal approval, prompting the Vatican to declare the act schismatic and impose excommunications.
In the years that followed, however, the Vatican sought to heal the divide through a series of reconciliatory measures—including lifting the excommunications of the surviving bishops in 2009 and opening doctrinal talks with the society, but a full reconciliation was never reached.
The dispute is part of a wider debate within the Catholic Church between those who embrace the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and traditionalists who argue the church has strayed too far from its original teachings and practices.
Four Priests at Risk of ExcommunicationFather Michael Goldade
Goldade, 45, was born in North Dakota and raised in St. Marys, Kansas, one of the SSPX’s main centers in the United States. Ordained in 2004, he serves as rector of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Virginia, where he oversees the formation of almost 100 seminarians. Previously, he led SSPX communities in Connecticut and Missouri and served as an assistant to the society’s U.S. district superior.
Father Pascal Schreiber
Schreiber, 53, is a Swiss priest who has held several senior leadership roles within the SSPX. After serving as superior of the society’s Swiss district, he became rector of the Heart of Jesus Seminary in Zaitzkofen, Germany, in 2020, overseeing the training of future priests from across Europe and beyond.
Father Michel Poinsinet de Sivry
Poinsinet de Sivry, 42, was ordained in 2008 after studying at SSPX seminaries in Flavigny and Écône. He has spent much of his ministry in Catholic education, including leading schools in Paris, before taking on broader pastoral responsibilities within the French district.
Father Marc Hanappier
Hanappier, a French priest, is the least publicly profiled of the four nominees. The SSPX selected him alongside Goldade, Schreiber and Poinsinet de Sivry as part of what appears to be a generational transition in the society’s leadership, with all four men belonging to a younger cohort than the bishops Lefebvre consecrated in 1988.