As the Society of St. Pius X continues preparations to consecrate several bishops without a papal mandate, leaders within the group have begun preparing the ground for the seemingly inevitable canonical consequences.
For months, the society’s leadership have insisted they will go ahead with the consecrations, currently scheduled for July. In February, Rev. Davide Pagliarani, the superior general of the SSPX, said the decision to consecrate new bishops was made after he requested an audience with Pope Leo XIV in August 2025 which remains ungranted, and after he recently received a letter from the Vatican “which does not in any way respond to our requests.”
Pagliarani has stated that consecrating new bishops is essential to securing the society’s future, ensuring that it has the sacramental means to ordain priests. He has also stated that the work of the society is itself essential because, according to him, “in an ordinary parish, the faithful no longer find the means necessary to ensure their eternal salvation.”
At the same time, the SSPX have insisted that any dialogue with the Vatican must include matters of doctrine and ecclesiology over which the society “disagrees” with the Church, “particularly regarding the fundamental orientations adopted since the Second Vatican Council” — something the Holy See has said it will simply not accept.
Through all of this, the society’s leadership has appeared to strike a tone of aggrieved seekers of compromise, while insisting their illicit consecrations will go ahead without papal mandate.
Last Sunday, the society’s Bishop Bernard Fellay appeared to warn supporters of the group that “there is an enormous probability that all of you, we included, may be excommunicated, declared schismatic” by the Vatican if the consecrations proceed as expected.
Although Fellay claimed “there is a very high probability” that everyone — bishops, priests, and laity — affiliated with the SSPX would be canonically excommunicated “because they [the Vatican] already said it in public,” the Vatican has made no such statement, and the assertion is not supported by the relevant canon law on the subject.
However, the bishop’s statement appears in line with an SSPX communications strategy, to portray itself as a the victim of a vindictive and unreasonable Vatican, unwilling to meet its supposedly modest requests.
Key among these “requests” has long been an audience for its superior with Pope Leo XIV. And, as the scheduled consecrations draw closer, those around the SSPX and sympathetic to it have increasingly highlighted Leo’s refusal to meet with Pagliarani as evidence that Rome isn’t interested in reconciliation — and is even goading the SSPX into a fuller and more formal breach.
But while that portrayal might serve a convenient narrative, the reality is Leo’s refusal to meet with the SSPX leadership is more likely to be an act of charity towards the society’s leaders, and a desire to keep a moment of ultimate crisis at bay for as long as possible.
More: https://x.com/frbmulcahyop/status/2049907481933975558?s=46&t=IydJ-X8H6c0NM044nYKQ0w
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