What Pope Leo XIV most wished to avoid has happened, and soon, under his authority: a solemn decree of excommunication. The Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X, founded by Monsignor Marcel Lefebvre in 1970 with the purpose of restoring to the Catholic Church the tradition broken in its judgment by the Second Vatican Council, was warned: if, as they had announced, any of its bishops consecrated a new bishop, consecrating and consecrated would automatically be excommunicated.
But neither the integral Lefebvrian Priestly Fraternity was intimidated by the threat nor did the Vatican tremble: the Holy See immediately issued the decree of excommunication for the two “consecrators” and the four new “consecrated,” as well as for all the “faithful laity” who formally adhere to the new “schism” (I use the current canonical vocabulary, anachronistic like this whole story, one more). And all this barely a year after his election.
I have opened these lines by pointing out that what Pope Leo most wanted to avoid has happened. He was elected and accepted the election precisely to circumvent the schismatic threat from the most traditionalist sectors. Let us recall his first intervention, carefully weighed, drafted, and read: we want to be a “missionary Church open to all,” “to build bridges through dialogue,” “uniting ourselves all to be one people, always in peace.” He was elected and accepted the election to accommodate some and others. “All, all, all,” he later said, adopting the words of Pope Francis.
It sounded good, but at the first sign of trouble, Canon Law reasserts itself with its unappealable criterion, setting borders and customs, creeds and canons, conditions and papers. A single person, always a man “chosen by God,” once again has the final word, the supreme power to close or to open, to impose excommunication or to lift it. The Church called Catholic or universal identifies itself again with an inevitably particular form (historical, cultural, theological, dogmatic, canonical), and this in the name of the Infinite or the Breath without forms or borders.
We find ourselves thus with a pope deeply animated by the desire to safeguard communion taking sides very quickly for the logic and interests of the system, and dictating excommunication. With the aggravating factor that Canon Law –the voice of the system, not of communion– exempts him from any personal responsibility, since it concerns what in canonical jargon is called excommunicatio latae sententiae, that is, a penalty incurred automatically by whoever commits a certain canonical crime such as the episcopal consecration of a priest without papal authorization. Thus, it is not the Catholic institution nor the pope who excommunicates the offender, but rather he who executes a “schismatic act” and excommunicates himself. Cynicism of the system.
With this –a historical irony that has gone unnoticed– Leo XIV joins the list of three of his predecessors with the same name who have protagonized the most significant episodes of rupture in Church history: the first was Leo the Great, in the 5th century, the first bishop of Rome who attempted to possess jurisdictional power over all Churches; he condemned the bishops who at the Council of Chalcedon (451) refused to accept the dogmatic formula proposed by him, according to which Jesus Christ is one divine person (the eternal Word incarnate) possessing two complete natures (divine and human), each with its own properties; the condemnation did not only reach the recalcitrant bishops but also the Churches that supported them, and they remain “outside communion” of the Orthodox Churches and of the Roman Catholic Church, namely: the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church, the Eritrean Tewahedo Orthodox Church, the Malankara Syriac Orthodox Church, and the Nestorian Church. Later, exactly 500 years later, in 1054, Leo IX excommunicated Michael Cerularius, patriarch of Constantinople, for not submitting to the authority of the Roman papacy, which led to the schism still in force between the Catholic Church of Rome and all the Orthodox Churches that remained tied to his patriarch. And thirdly, another 500 years later, in the year 1521, Leo X excommunicated Luther and provoked the division that still persists between the Roman Catholic Church and all Protestant Churches.
It is entirely unthinkable that the schism between the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X and the Roman Catholic Church has the historical impact and temporal extent of the great schisms mentioned, but the motives alleged are the same and ultimately reduce to one: the Roman claim to possess the keys of Christ and of communion, and to impose its doctrine and authority on other Churches.
In 2026, five centuries after Luther and Trent, when all human and worldly internet advances unstoppably, when three political dictators and a few technomagnates rival each other to impose their devastating project on the world with the power of money, weapons, and AI assistants, Lefebvre’s ideas and those of his followers seem like genuine aberrations to me, but I do not find it less strange that a pope responds with an excommunication sentence, just as he did 1500 years ago, just as he did 1000, and just as he did 500: I believe in no type of communion or excommunication dictated from the heights of a sacred hierarchy, much less when dealing, as is the case here, with whether the memory of the liberating prophet Jesus should be celebrated in Latin or in the language of each people, facing away or facing forward, according to the Trent ritual or Vatican II.
Let us move forward. If Leon XIV’s will to avoid this excommunication was so clear, why did he decree it? It would have been enough for him to authorize episcopal consecrations, or to repeal the penal canonical norm in this specific case, or to decree that the infringed ecclesiastical norm is not “of divine law.” He had the power to do so. Why didn’t he apply it? Perhaps because he thought he shouldn’t or couldn’t. Surely out of fear: fear of relaxing the demands of communion too much, fear of setting dangerous precedents, fear of betraying his mission and undermining his sacred authority. These are the same reasons or the same fears for which the pope, even if he wanted to immediately lift the decreed excommunication—and although he possesses the power to do so—will not. Herein lies the contradiction inherent in all supposedly absolute power and in pontifical absolute power specifically. All popes of the past and present are devilishly trapped in the contradiction of the absolute system from which they are both guarantors and victims. This hierarchical clerical system is more absurd today than ever. Does anyone think that with such credentials the Church can present itself as a sacrament of peace and communion for a torn humanity?
What would be the alternative, then? It would require inventing another model of communion in another model of Church where everyone, everyone, everyone fits, and not just in word. The alternative would not mean giving free rein to caprice and chaos. It would mean entirely renouncing the sacred pyramidal model derived from above, and returning to the universal community and each local community the power of the word and of decision. It would mean ceasing to identify union with uniformity and ceasing to measure communion by the degree of submission. It would mean betting on unconditional and permanent dialogue. It would mean not absolutizing any belief, rite, or norm, even while recognizing the need for a minimum common institutional framework, always provisional and relative, and never by indisputable divine will revealed from above but by our basic social condition. It would mean allowing whoever wishes to abandon a given framework to do so without anyone condemning them for it or excommunicating them, and without anyone ceasing to recognize them as brother in communion in a broader and more open community. How can a Church that preaches the Gospel of love, tolerance, and magnanimity *urbi et orbi* be credible if, at the same time, it proves incapable of embodying it within its own bosom, always particular and open?
But won’t all this be pure illusion far removed from reality and practice? It depends on whether we still have a minimum of common sense and an elemental trust in this human species. Is it illusory to think that a couple with a shared life project or a political party with a program or any human group with a commitment to common action, when coexistence or action within a given framework is no longer possible for multiple reasons, can separate “humanly,” to live in peace and be faithful to their social commitment and continue recognizing, respecting, and even loving each other? Is there another realistic and possible way out for social coexistence in general? And even if this seems fanciful, could we not expect it to be possible among those who claim to breathe the spirit of universal freedom and fraternity that Jesus announced?
Would it be illusory to think that diverse people or groups who do not profess the same Christological dogmas or who do not understand them in the same way, who are not subject to the same legal and doctrinal framework nor obey the same bishop or the same pope, can feel and recognize themselves in deep communion, insofar as both are animated by the spirit of liberating freedom and healing compassion from Jesus? ¿Would it be illusory to aspire that a universal ecumenism so free and plural can occur among all the Churches that are or will be, including of course the Roman Catholic Church with its particular pope, but also the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X and any community of Christian men and women detached from any patriarchal, clerical, and hierarchical framework? Will it not be illusory to believe that another real and lasting ecumenism can exist? Should not the Church, therefore, be conceived and configured as a universal communion of all communities that wish to be part of it, without condemnations or excommunications, no matter how great the theological, ritual, institutional differences may be? Is that not the horizon that inspires the World Council of Churches, of which, by the way, the Roman Catholic Church is not a member?
Is it not to that what any living organism on Earth invites us, since in it life always and only emerges from a network of creative relationships? Will it not be possible to manifest in the Church that primordial mystery of life that arose on our planet 4.4 billion years ago? It would be enough to breathe the spirit, the fresh breath that animates the entire universe from the infinitely small to the infinitely large. Will suffice will, conviction, wisdom.
José Arregi
Aizarna, July 14, 2026
www.josearregi.com