Vatican says Lefebvrists excommunicated after new bishops ordained

The Vatican said Thursday that the

ultraconservative Lefebvrist group has been excommunicated after

it ordained four new bishops without a pontifical mandate on

Wednesday.

Pope Leo XIV had made a last-ditch appeal pleading with the

group not to go ahead with the ordinations, saying this would

lead to schism.

The Vatican said the excommunication decree was signed by

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for

the Doctrine of the Faith.

It was released 24 hours after the ceremony ordaining the

bishops in Écône, Switzerland.

It said the fraternity's bishops who performed the ordinations,

Alfonso de Galarreta and Bernard Fellay, and the newly

consecrated bishops, Pascal Schreiber, Michael Goldade, Michel

Poinsinet de Sivry, and Marc Hanappier, had carried out "an act

of a schismatic nature".

"The excommunication newly separates the bishops and priests of

the Fraternity of Saint Pius X from the Church of Rome," the

Vatican said.

"As for the lay faithful, those who formally adhere to the

Fraternity are to be considered excommunicated".

The Switzerland-based fraternity, whose official name is the

Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) and has hundreds of thousands of

followers, was founded in 1970 by late French Archbishop Marcel

Lefebvre in opposition to the changes adopted with the Second

Vatican Council of some 60 years ago.

This is its second break from the Catholic Church.

The first was cemented with the excommunication of four bishops

Lefebvre consecrated without the Apostolic Mandate in 1988.

Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication in 2009 and Pope

Francis subsequently said SSPX priests can celebrate marriages

in traditionalist churches under some circumstances, a move that

was followed by attempts to bring the group fully back into the

fold.

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