What to know about the breakaway traditionalist Catholics defying Pope Leo XIV
Source: Associated Press
What to know about the breakaway traditionalist Catholics defying Pope Leo XIV
NICOLE WINFIELD and JAMEY KEATEN
Updated Wed, July 1, 2026 at 12:06 AM EDT 5 min read
ECONE, Switzerland (AP) — The ultratraditionalist Society of St. Pius X is defying Pope Leo XIV by consecrating four bishops without his consent at its seminary in Econe, Switzerland. The move incurs an automatic excommunication for the bishops involved, and amounts to a "schismatic act" — or a willful rupture of unity in the Catholic Church.
The ancient Latin Mass and ceremony, being celebrated Wednesday before thousands of faithful, marks the first major crisis for Leo. The American pope has prioritized church unity and healing tensions with traditionalists that worsened during the Pope Francis pontificate.
A group founded in dissent
The society, known by its acronym SSPX, was founded in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Among other things, the 1960s church meetings revolutionized the Catholic Church's relations with other Christians, Jews and people of other faiths, and allowed Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than Latin.
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