Pope Leo XIV is not even two years into his pontificate and he is already facing one of the most delicate episodes of his ministry: a new rupture within the Church.
In a defiant move and despite repeated warnings from Rome, the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) went ahead Wednesday with the consecration of four new bishops without a pontifical mandate — an act of open disobedience to the authority of the pope that, under canon law, carries automatic excommunication for the six bishops involved.
The Vatican’s official response is now awaited and could include a formal declaration of schism, as Rome had warned in the days leading up to the ceremony.
In 1988, after Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the SSPX, consecrated bishops without a papal mandate, Rome responded two days later. On July 2, St. John Paul II published the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei, in which he spoke openly of a “rupture” of ecclesial communion and created a commission to help reconcile faithful linked to the society.
A schism is a tragedy for any pope. In the case of Pope Leo XIV, it also carries a more personal resonance: The pope belongs to the Augustinian order, the same religious family to which Martin Luther belonged, whose break with Rome helped lead to the Protestant Reformation and the fracturing of Western Christianity.
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