Vatican declares ultra-traditionalist sect schismatic, takes grave measures

The Society of St. Pius X is a breakaway Catholic sect founded in 1970 by Marcel Lefebvre, a French archbishop who took issue with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. After consecrating four new bishops in 1988 without the approval of the Vatican, Lefebvre was excommunicated. He died three years later.

The Vatican lifted the canonical excommunication on Lefebvre’s prelates in 2009 in hopes of restoring the group’s “full communion” with Rome, although SSPX remained without canonical status. The Catholic Church’s efforts since to bring SSPX back into the fold appear to have been in “vain.”

‘To tear the seamless garment of Christ is a sin of extreme gravity.’

The SSPX, which has a global membership of roughly 600,000 members and 700 priests, crossed the Rubicon on