León XIV exhausted the path of dialogue to prevent the consecration of four bishops by the Fraternity Saint Pius X without papal mandate. With the rupture consummated, the Vatican declared the excommunication foreseen by Canon Law.
Rarely has a pontificate been subjected so quickly to an authority struggle. Barely a year after his election, León XIV has had to face a crisis that no Pope desires at the beginning of his ministry: the public rupture of communion with a sector of the Church itself. His response to this crisis not only sets the course for this conflict but also hints at how he will exercise the Petrine ministry in the coming years.
On July 1st, the Fraternity Sacerdotal San Pío X consecrated four new bishops in Écône (Switzerland) without authorization from the Roman Pontiff. This decision had been announced for months, and both the Fraternity and the Holy See were fully aware of its gravity. Canon Law considers that gesture an act of schismatic nature and foresees excommunication latae sententiae for those who perform it, meaning automatic. A day later, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith officially confirmed that both the consecrating bishops and the four new bishops had incurred this canonical sanction.
The Fraternity Sacerdotal San Pío X, founded by the French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970 as a reaction to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, today has over 700 priests, hundreds of seminarians, and houses in more than seventy countries. Although it has never completely broken its spiritual ties with Rome, it has also not fully accepted the authority of the Council or of subsequent popes, maintaining an irregular canonical situation for decades.
What is truly significant about this episode is that León XIV did everything in his power to avoid reaching that outcome, but he refused to grant extraordinary privileges to a group whose only justification was to maintain the appearance of a non-existent communion.
Two days before the consecrations, the Pope sent a personal letter to the general superior of the Fraternity, Davide Pagliarani. In it, he appealed to the communion of the Church, asked that a rupture which he described as painful not be consummated, and insisted that the doors of dialogue remained open. His request was clear: not to “tear Christ’s tunic.”
The response was negative. The consecrations took place anyway.
And there appeared another trait of the new pontificate. León XIV showed that dialogue and firmness are not incompatible terms. Those who expected a compromise solution found out that the new Pope clearly distinguishes between dialoguing and renouncing what he considers essential. He tried to avoid the rupture until the last moment, but once consummated, he exercised without hesitation the authority proper to his ministry.
It is not the first time the new Pope has given this impression. Since the beginning of his pontificate, he has demonstrated a remarkable serenity in maintaining positions that he knows are controversial, without raising his tone but also without yielding when he considers fundamental issues at stake. This combination of capacity for dialogue and firm convictions is beginning to outline one of the characteristic traits of León XIV.
Recent history also shows that Rome had been trying to avoid this outcome for decades. John Paul II excommunicated Marcel Lefebvre after similar consecrations in 1988. Benedict XVI later lifted that excommunication as a gesture of reconciliation, although the Fraternity never recovered a normal canonical situation. Francis kept various pastoral channels open and continued seeking rapprochement. León XIV thus inherits a conflict that no Pope has managed to resolve and which is now once again coming to the forefront.
It would also be simplistic to interpret this episode as a mere liturgical conflict. Beyond the use of Latin or the forms of celebration, what was at stake was the effective recognition of the authority of the Pope and of the Second Vatican Council. For the Holy See, the new consecrations made it impossible to continue speaking of a simple internal disagreement.
All this does not prevent the episode from leaving open questions of a greater scope. It is inevitable that, in the middle of the 21st century, the word excommunication evokes a certain sense of anachronism. For many believers, it is difficult to understand that a Church which proclaims the Gospel of fraternity continues to resort to legal categories born in a strongly hierarchical and patriarchal organization. Perhaps the real debate is not only about excommunication, but about the model of the Church: a Church sustained mainly by law and power, or a community whose strength springs, above all, from the moral authority of the Gospel, inspiring paths of liberation, equality, and inclusion.
Inma Calvo Torrejón
Sources consulted
Vatican News. The Pope’s last call to Fraternity San Pío X before the episcopal consecrations (June 29, 2026).
Vatican News. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith declares excommunication after illicit episcopal consecrations (July 2, 2026).
Code of Canon Law, canons 1013, 1382 and regulations on latae sententiae excommunication.
Historical documentation on the Priestly Fraternity San Pío X and the excommunications of 1988.
Contextual information published by El País and Cadena SER regarding the episcopal consecrations and the attempts at mediation by the Holy See.