{"id":565898,"date":"2026-07-02T22:04:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T22:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/565898\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T22:04:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T22:04:17","slug":"vatican-excommunicates-followers-of-global-catholic-sect-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/565898\/","title":{"rendered":"Vatican excommunicates followers of global Catholic sect \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Vatican has excommunicated a rebel group of ultraconservative Catholics <\/a>who defied Pope Leo<\/a> by ordaining bishops without his consent, creating a schism in the Roman Catholic church.<\/p>\n

In a statement on Thursday, Cardinal V\u00edctor Manuel Fern\u00e1ndez, who heads the Holy See\u2019s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, said the group from the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), founded in the Swiss <\/a>village of \u00c9c\u00f4ne in 1970, had \u201ccommitted an act of a schismatic nature\u201d which, under canon law, was punishable with automatic excommunication.<\/p>\n

The Vatican <\/a>went further than expected and said all priests of the SSPX and all Catholics who \u201cadhere formally\u201d to the group were in schism and excommunicated. The Vatican also reversed concessions on sacraments made to the society by the late Pope Francis, meaning confessions and marriages administered by its priests are invalid. <\/p>\n

A schism is a term to indicate a severe, formal rupture within the church.<\/p>\n

\"CatholicCatholic bishop of the Society of Saint Pius X Alfonso de Galarreta attends the ceremony in Econe on Wednesday. Photograph: Harold Cunningham\/Getty \"AA nun walks down from the Seminary of Econe prior to the unapproved consecration of bishops on July 1st. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini\/AFP via Getty <\/p>\n

Andrea Vreede, the Vatican correspondent for NOS, the Dutch public news radio and TV network, said: \u201cThe Vatican hopes that by being harsh on the bishops, the priests and faithful, maybe some of them will repent and turn back to mother church. Because it\u2019s not nice to be excommunicated.\u201d <\/p>\n

Pope Leo had made a last-ditch effort to persuade the society to halt the ordinations, which took place during a ritual-filled ceremony on Wednesday, calling them a \u201cschismatic act\u201d and a \u201csin of extreme gravity\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the society said the ordination of bishops who \u201care entirely faithful\u201d to the Catholic church\u2019s \u201ctradition\u201d was \u201ca sacred duty\u201d.<\/p>\n

An estimated 16,500 people gathered in Ec\u00f4ne for the ceremony, including members of New Force, an Italian neo-fascist political party, and National Future, a new far-right force threatening the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni\u2019s chances of winning a second mandate in general elections next year.<\/p>\n

Despite being a splinter group, the SSPX, which has nearly 1,500 priests, seminarians and other vocational members, has made strides in attracting a following of an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people around the world, especially in the US, France and Argentina. <\/p>\n

The society rejects \u200bcentral changes that emerged from the second Vatican council \u2013 a landmark gathering of cardinals, patriarchs, bishops, theological experts and others between 1962 and 1965 \u2013 including allowing mass to be celebrated in local languages. Until then it had been said only in Latin. It also rejects dialogue with other religions and does not recognise other Christian churches.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very minor group but they are very loud and very ultra-right,\u201d said Vreede.<\/p>\n

\"PeoplePeople attending the unapproved ceremony in Econe. Photograph: Harold Cunningham\/Getty <\/p>\n

Since Leo was elected in May last year, the first North American pope has made church unity a priority and has worked especially hard to heal rifts with traditionalists, which had deepened during Francis\u2019s papacy.<\/p>\n

The society had pursued the ordinations for three reasons, said Vreede. First, with only two ageing bishops left, the order needed new ones. It bided its time after Leo was elected and, seeing that he wore the classic papal vestments and revived the tradition of going to the summer retreat in Castel Gandolfo, close to Rome, had hoped he would be more tolerant of them than Francis was, only to discover he mostly followed in his predecessor\u2019s footsteps.<\/p>\n

Last, the order is hoping it can gain traction from the global far-right resurgence. \u201cThe world is so much turning towards extremism, and they think they might flourish with that,\u201d added Vreede, who expects Leo to continue to prioritise unity and not try to appease the traditionalists. <\/p>\n

The clash is the first between the Vatican and the SSPX since 1988, when Archbishop \u200bMarcel Lefebvre, the society\u2019s founder, and four bishops he had ordained without the permission of the then pope, John Paul II, were excommunicated, including a British bishop, Richard Williamson. In 2009, the conservative Pope Benedict lifted the excommunications. Shortly before, Williamson had caused uproar by denying the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeo will be very unhappy about [what\u2019s happened], but he saw it as inevitable,\u201d Vreede said. \u201cIt has happened in the past and it might happen again. It\u2019s a nuisance but it won\u2019t damage him. It\u2019s not a very important schism and I think people will appreciate his coherence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marco Politi, a Vatican journalist and author, said that while the SSPX put on \u201ca big show\u201d, the schism would not have a dramatic impact on Leo or the Catholic church, especially given the roughly 1.4 billion Catholics in the world compared with the society\u2019s small number of followers.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone saw that Leo tried to find an agreement with them, and the reaction shows his firm stance,\u201d he added. \u201cThe other element is that even though there are the most conservative factions in the Catholic church, when one goes against the pope and gets excommunicated, they are rarely on the side of the excommunicated.\u201d \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Vatican has excommunicated a rebel group of ultraconservative Catholics who defied Pope Leo by ordaining bishops without…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,2512,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,2515,2423,7,8,2517],"class_list":["post-565898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-catholic-church","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-pope-leo-xiv","tag-switzerland","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-vatican"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116852652964090183","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}