The schism leaves conservatives more isolated and with fewer arguments. Perhaps, in this way, the Holy Spirit makes the Church freer to speak to eight billion people.
Not even the June 30’s heartfelt appeal by Pope Leo XIV (“why tear the seamless tunic of Christ?”[1] ) prevented the celebration of the episcopal ordination of four priests of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X: Pascal Schreiber, Michael Goldade, Michel Poinsinet de Sivry, and Marc Hanappier (July 1, 2026, Écône, Switzerland).
The celebrants, Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta and, alongside him, Bishop Bernard Fellay, like the ordinands, took on the risk of depriving the faithful who turn to them of “the licit and, in some cases, even valid reception of the sacraments.”
The baroque, aestheticizing character of the ceremony (from the finely worked chasubles to the tunics, from the red gloves to the strictly white shoes, from the cassocks with surplices worn by all the priests present to the liturgical furnishings) contrasted with the grassy field setting with removable tent structure, and with a storm that blew away some decorations. The screens outside the liturgical space showed a typical mountain gathering.
The Latin liturgy according to the pre-conciliar rite was further burdened by the rather disjointed chanting of the rosary. There were thousands of attendees and hundreds of priests present, all belonging to the Lefebvrist Fraternity.
The opening presentation announced the consecration as necessary because of the betrayal of the faith by the Church and because of the faithful’s irrepressible request. Their intended role: auxiliary bishops at the disposal of the Fraternity.
The homily was delivered by the Superior General, Fr. Davide Pagliarani. Structured around four points (faith, hope, charity, and the sacrifice of Christ), it was shot through with many polemical points. I will reconstruct three of them, all inspired by a rhetorical sophism.
They tell us we must choose between the integral faith to which we belong and the Church, but we are in the Church because we are in the faith, and vice versa. Ours is a natural belonging, like being a child within a family or belonging to a nation.
The second point was when he spoke of their condition as “rebels”: not at all, he said, because we are sons.
Finally, speaking of the Pope, he said: they accuse us of criticizing him and not loving him, while we are the only ones who defend him and who do not want him humiliated—whether when he appears as an equal among the leaders of heretical Christian confessions, or even more so when he stands alongside representatives of other religions, which are false and incapable of bringing salvation.
He identified the evil gripping the peoples of the world as the glorification of man. Man’s self-exaltation makes him a candidate for estrangement from God and traps him in evil. Turning then to the ordinands, he exhorted them with two evangelical images: to be at once lambs and lions, and also doves and serpents. He pointed them to the examples of Cyril of Alexandria and his struggle for the faith, and of the Fraternity’s founder, Marcel Lefebvre, and his struggle for the Eucharist.
The schism has been consummated. What remains now is to await the formal imposition of censure by the Holy See.
A Definitive Step
With great confidence, the Superior General of the Fraternity, Fr. Davide Pagliarani, announcing the ordination on February 2, said:
“I take on, I fully take on, the responsibility for this decision. I take it on first before God, before the Most Holy Virgin, before St. Pius X. I take it on before the Pope […] And I take on this responsibility also before the Church. Before the Fraternity and all its members.”
He is convinced that “any canonical penalties would have no real effect”[2].
Thirty-eight years after the first episcopal ordinations and fifty-six years after the founding of the Priestly Fraternity, the rupture of ecclesial communion caused by the current consecrations allows for a few assessments. The first concerns finality. In 1988, the fear was about the pull that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s choice might exert within the ecclesial body—how many of the doubtful, discontented, or disoriented by the changes would follow the dissident into withdrawal from ecclesial communion.
Now the challenge is different. The mass exodus of communities and wave of support did not materialize except to a very limited degree (recall that the Coetus Internationalis Patrum, the conservative bloc of Council fathers chaired by Lefebvre, numbered 250 bishops). Today the outlook is one of stability for the Lefebvrist group, which could persist for a long time, as shown by the many schisms in the past—this being the only one motivated by rejection of the Second Vatican Council.
Within this context of stabilization, one can also point to its marginality. Had the Fraternity accepted, in 2012, Benedict XVI’s offer of a personal prelature along with the “doctrinal preamble,” their reintegration would have heavily influenced the direction of the universal Church’s path, which was already being pushed toward a reductive reading of the Council. This would have lent support to the reasonable conclusion that only a conservative reading of Vatican II could bring the schism to an end—with significant effects on the overall balance of forces, foreseeably even in the 2013 conclave (which elected Pope Francis).
The current rupture, though pastorally and theologically very grave, neither changes nor conditions the Church’s fundamental direction, nor its path of fidelity to tradition and Scripture.
Possible Heresy and Dialogue Against All Odds
The second assessment looks ahead: the possible shift from a schismatic condition to a heretical outcome. Church history authorizes us to consider this. It is easy for a schism (a rupture of ecclesial communion) to develop over time into a heresy (a change in Church doctrine).
This has happened with other dissident movements that initially wore only the garments of schism. It is telling that in the most recent “profession of Catholic faith” (June 24, 2026), the texts of the Council, the magisterium of the popes, and the entire theological-pastoral reflection of these past decades have entirely disappeared[3]. A heretical outcome in the field of ecclesiology and theology does not seem implausible.
The third assessment concerns the Church itself—its systematic and persistent choice to keep dialogue open even beyond all hope. There have been many unilateral, freely given gestures, many proposed canonical solutions (society of apostolic life, ordinariate, prelature), and countless meetings, even ones that were plainly unproductive—all so as not to betray the dialogical and communal substance affirmed by Vatican II.
As the canonist Eugenio Corecco already observed in 1988, in an interview with Francesco Strazzari and myself:
“One must think about how the Church understands itself today. Since Paul VI lifted the excommunication of the Eastern Christians, and after the repeated requests for forgiveness voiced also by John Paul II, an extremely sensitive point has formed in the Church’s conscience—comparable to a scar—that makes us think: “let everything happen, but let us not cling to any form of institutional rigidity that could become a reason for a break in unity.” This could make plausible the Holy See’s attitude of doing nothing, absolutely nothing, that might give rise to a rupture. In this sense, it is not a matter of naivety, but the soundest position one could take from the standpoint of faith” (Regno-att. 14, 1988, 363).
The decades that followed, right up to Pope Leo’s appeal yesterday, bear this out.
Numbers and Issues
A remarkably long season that, on one hand, has seen the consolidation of the Lefebvrist world, and on the other, can be read through four successive periods marked by a constant openness to dialogue.
Stabilization is visible both in the numbers and in the themes of dissent: 184 houses, 14 districts, 800 churches, chapels, and places where Mass is celebrated, 2 university institutes, 94 schools, 7 retirement homes, 6 bishops, 733 priests, 264 seminarians across 6 major seminaries and 54 minor seminaries, 123 religious brothers, 195 sisters, plus 26 “affiliated” religious families.
Present in 37 countries, the Fraternity has its strongholds in France, Switzerland, and the United States. Estimates of the faithful range from a cautious 100,000 to a more generous half a million.
The points of conflict with the universal Church are widely known: opposition to episcopal collegiality, to religious freedom, to ecumenical and interreligious dialogue (particularly with Judaism), to liturgical reform, to dialogue with the modern world, to modernism, to democracy, and so on—right up to more recent issues such as the treatment of the divorced and remarried, homosexuals, the norms governing the old rite, Marian titles, synodality, theological pluralism, and the diaconal ordination of women.
Four Seasons of Dialogue
A long season in which dialogue with Roman authorities has always remained open, though it was especially cultivated on four occasions: in 1988, at the moment of the schismatic choice; in 2001; between 2007–2009; and between 2015–2017.
As early as 1974 a discussion began between Lefebvre and a cardinals’ commission, with meager results. In 1987, however, a protocol of agreement was signed with the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—only for Lefebvre to repudiate it within two days, and then bury it for good with the ordination of the four bishops in 1988. On that occasion, John Paul II, in the letter Ecclesia Dei, pointed to the fragility of the dissident bishop’s appeal to tradition:
The root of this schismatic act lies in an incomplete and contradictory conception of tradition—incomplete, because it does not sufficiently consider the living character of tradition […] inaccurate and contradictory […because] it opposes the universal magisterium of the Church.
In 2001, talk of a possible agreement resurfaced when the Ecclesia Dei Commission (created in the wake of the papal letter) was strengthened with prominent names and elevated to a pontifical commission of cardinals. This move also followed the significant jubilee pilgrimage the Fraternity had made on August 8, 2000.
Once again, the outcome was negative. A subsequent letter to the cardinals, signed by the Lefebvrist bishops and titled From Ecumenism to Silent Apostasy, made this clear:
By disregarding the constant and unanimous teaching of tradition, according to which the mystical body of Christ is the Catholic Church and outside of it there is no salvation, this ecumenism has, as it were, destroyed the Church’s finest treasures.
Many Aspects Still Unclear
The period 2007–2009 was perhaps the most intense phase of talks. After Bishop Bernard Fellay’s meeting with Pope Benedict (August 2005), the liberalization of the pre-conciliar rite (July 2007), and the lifting of the excommunication of the four bishops (2009), an agreement seemed within reach. But the dialogue was derailed by the media exposure of Lefebvrist bishop Richard Williamson’s antisemitic and Holocaust-denying statements, by the Fraternity leadership’s refusal to sign the protocol, and later by the removal of Bishop Fellay as Superior General in favor of the more radical Davide Pagliarani.
Another significant round of dialogue between the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X and the Vatican Curia took place under Pope Francis, between 2015 and 2017. The Argentine pope’s less theological, more pastoral approach made it possible to recognize the validity and lawfulness of confessions heard by dissident priests and of marriages they celebrated. Once again, however, this credit of goodwill collapsed, using Francis’s pastoral choices as a pretext[4] .
Many aspects of the Society of St. Pius X remain unclarified: its finances (strictly centralized), cases of abuse (widely present but routinely downplayed), its alignment with right-wing political forces (antidemocratic and authoritarian), and its harsh internal conflicts (departures, frictions, tensions with neighboring traditionalist circles, and returns to the Church of Rome).
A history far more troubled than the image conveyed by the celebration of the new bishops’ ordinations.
Originally published here https://www.settimananews.it/vescovi/lefebvriani-vescovi-dallo-scisma-alla-eresia/ republished with permission
[1] https://www.settimananews.it/papa/lettera-ai-lefebvriani-tornate-sui-vostri-passi/
[2] https://www.settimananews.it/vescovi/lefebvriani-altri-vescovi-altra-scomunica/
[3] https://www.settimananews.it/chiesa/lefebvriani-ginnastica-pre-scisma/
[4] https://www.settimananews.it/chiesa/lefebvriani-impossibile-un-accordo/
