Pope Leo
Just over a year after the start of his pontificate, Leo faces the first major challenge of his papacy from the SSPX (Fraternity of Saint Pius
The ordinations, the pope told the group, would be a “schismatic” act. If they are carried out, the new bishops will be, that is, officially excluded from the sacraments of the Church.
“I beg of you and I ask with all my heart: please retreat!” the pope wrote in a last-minute letter to society. “I pray for you, because tearing the seamless tunic of Christ is an extremely serious sin. May the Lord enlighten your consciences and awaken your hearts.”
In Catholic teaching, the bond, or communion, between bishops and the pope is the cornerstone of the Church’s unity. has made strengthening the unity of the Church a priority, but the society’s decision to proceed with the consecration of bishops without the pontiff’s consent will be seen as a serious violation of canon law.
The SSPX has an active presence in the United States, with headquarters in Missouri and a seminary for training priests in Dillwyn, Virginia. One of the bishops to be ordained is Father Michael Goldade, who heads this seminary.
The group was founded in 1970 in Switzerland by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a French prelate, but five years later it was officially suppressed by the Bishop of Fribourg. In 1988, the group ordained four bishops without papal approval, leading to their excommunication.
At the center of the split with the official Church were Lefebvre and his followers, opposed to the reforms introduced in the 1960s by the Second Vatican Council.
The “Lefebvrists” do not accept what the council taught about religious freedom, about ecumenism (the teaching about other Christian denominations and religions) and the reforms to Catholic worship. One of the council’s main reforms was the condemnation of all forms of anti-Semitism.
Ultraconservatives insist they need to ordain bishops without approval because the Catholic Church is in a “state of emergency” due to what they see as the introduction of liberal and “modernist” ideas. The group believes it must prioritize “the salvation of souls” and, in recent days, published a 28-page “Catholic profession of faith” to “enlighten souls in the face of modern errors.”
Although the SSPX has around 700 priests and 600,000 followers around the world — a relatively small number, considering that the Roman Catholic Church has 1.4 billion faithful and around 400,000 priests — the threat to unity is being taken seriously by the pope.
Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, a close ally of Leo, told CNN that “the danger” is “the creation of a parallel structure within the ecclesiastical body of the Church”.
He stated that the pope made numerous invitations for society to reconsider its plans. “They are a small group, but they misuse the Church’s rites when it comes to having bishops ordained,” said the cardinal. “He (Leão) takes the issue very seriously and that is why he carried out multiple interventions.”
In recent decades, several popes have sought reconciliation with the group, and in 2009 lifted the excommunications of the four bishops ordained in 1988. However, one of these bishops, Richard Williamson, was later found to have falsely claimed that the Nazis did not use gas chambers in the Holocaust, and was later prosecuted and convicted by a German court. He was subsequently expelled from society.
Although the pope has appealed to society not to proceed with the ordinations of bishops, the group is well advanced in its preparations. A website was created detailing four days of events surrounding the ordinations, including the offer of a 75 Swiss franc commemorative box with four bottles of wine.
In his statements to journalists on June 16, the pope said he was open to dialogue, but also aware of the limits with regard to imminent ordinations. “If they make that choice, I’m sorry, but we must move on,” he said.
