After Defying Pope Leo XIV, Vatican Excommunicates Right-Wing Dissident SSPX Bishops

The decree from the Doctrine of the Faith reaches past SSPX clergy to the lay faithful who formally adhere. Bernard Fellay, absolved by Benedict XVI in 2009, now stands excommunicated a second time.

There is a famous Latin phrase to describe the authority of the pope: Roma locuta est, causa finita est — Rome has spoken, the case is closed. Or perhaps, in a parlance more familiar to the American pope who loves tennis: game, set, match.

For the right-wing dissidents of the Society of St. Pius X, the old maxim came true on Thursday morning, when Rome formally declared their excommunication.

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith published a decree declaring that all six bishops involved in Wednesday’s illicit consecrations at the society’s seminary in Switzerland have incurred excommunication latae sententiae — automatic, triggered by the act itself.

The decree names the two consecrating bishops, Bernard Fellay and Alfonso de Galarreta, along with the four men they raised to the episcopate: Pascal Schreiber, Michael Goldade, Michel Poinsinet de Sivry, and Marc Hanappier. Under canon law, only the pope can lift these excommunications.

Then comes the warning that gives the decree its reach: Catholic clergy and lay faithful who adhere to the society’s schism incur the same automatic penalty. Rome has never cast this net so widely over Écône. In 1988 the named penalties stopped with the bishops; this decree runs through the society’s priests and into the pews.

Canonists advising the Holy See have drawn the line carefully. A Catholic who occasionally attends Mass at an SSPX chapel has not severed communion with the Church. The penalty falls on those who consciously and formally adhere — in faith and in worship — to a schismatic authority, a stable decision to stand with Écône against Rome. That word “formally” now carries the weight of souls.

The distinction matters in this country more than most. The society operates chapels across the United States, and its American following has grown in recent years, fed by a media ecosystem that treats defiance of Rome as fidelity to it. Families who found their way to an SSPX chapel seeking reverent liturgy now face a question none of them sought: whether staying means leaving the Catholic Church.

Readers of Letters from Leo have watched this collision build for months. Here’s the background.