ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday begged a breakaway group of traditionalist Catholics to call off its plan to consecrate new bishops without his consent, calling the move a schismatic act and a “sin of extreme gravity.”“I plead with you and ask you with all my heart: please turn back!” Leo wrote in a letter to the Rev. Davide Pagliarani, the superior of the Society of St. Pius X.Leo issued the letter a day before the society planned to consecrate four new bishops at its seminary in Econe, Switzerland. Under church law, the consecrations constitute a schismatic act and incur automatic excommunication for the four bishops and the bishop administering the consecration.The society, known as the SSPX, was founded in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council. Among other things, the council revolutionized the Catholic Church’s relations with other religions and the laity, and allowed Mass to be celebrated in vernacular languages rather than Latin.
In 1988, SSPX founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal consent, a grave crime under church law. The Vatican promptly excommunicated Lefebvre and the four other bishops, and the group today still has no legal status in the church.
