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Lefebvre’s schism repeated 38 years later
The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X once again separates itself from Rome through illicit episcopal consecrations carried out against the Pope’s will, despite the generous efforts of Pope Saints Paul VI and John Paul II, the decision by Pope Benedict XVI to lift the excommunication, and the faculties granted by Pope Francis.
By Andrea Tornielli
It is a troubled history, marked by generous attempts, doors kept open, and opportunities offered. It is a painful story, characterized by two grave ruptures that led the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, to separate itself from the Pope and from communion with the Church of Rome by committing the schismatic act of consecrating bishops without the pontifical mandate and against the will of the Vicar of Christ.
The rupture consummated on 1 July has serious consequences not only for the Lefebvrite bishops and priests but for all the faithful. As stated in the Explanatory Note of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the priests of the Priestly Fraternity “illicitly administer the sacraments, and the sacrament of penance they administer and the marriages at which they assist are invalid.”
Lefebvre’s decisions
During the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who belonged to the conciliar minority opposed to certain reforms, nevertheless affixed his signature to the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) as well as to the Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis humanae). It should also be recalled that Lefebvre celebrated the 1965 Mass, which contained the first still-experimental liturgical reforms.
After founding the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X in 1970, with its own seminary at Écône in the Swiss Diocese of Fribourg and with the approval of the diocesan bishop, François Charrière, Lefebvre refused to celebrate according to the new Roman Missal, and in 1974 described the innovations introduced by the most recent Council as “novelties destructive of the Church.”
“We reject,” he declared in writing on 21 November 1974, “and have always rejected following the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendency, which manifested itself clearly in the Second Vatican Council and after the Council, in all the reforms that have sprung from it. All these reforms have indeed contributed, and continue to contribute, to the demolition of the Church.”
The diocese withdrew its recognition of the Priestly Fraternity, but the Holy See sought dialogue with the Archbishop.
Pope Paul VI established a commission to hear his concerns, and in 1975 asked Lefebvre to close the Écône seminary and not to proceed with further priestly ordinations. Pope Paul VI wrote to the Archbishop three times and sent prelates whom he trusted to visit the traditionalists’ headquarters.
After yet another refusal, Marcel Lefebvre was suspended a divinis. He could no longer celebrate Mass. Nevertheless, in August of that year, he presided over the very Mass that had been prohibited to him, before ten thousand faithful and four hundred journalists, gaining enormous media attention.
In September 1976, Lefebvre was received in audience by the Pope at Castel Gandolfo. The meeting produced no result. Speaking with French philosopher Jean Guitton in September 1976, who had urged him to do “everything possible and impossible to avoid” a schism, Paul VI replied: “I feel this exactly as you do. Indeed, infinitely more than you: it is the first real cross, in the past thirteen years, of my pontificate. But I can tell you that I have done everything possible to avoid it.”
He added: “I do not see… how, in fact, within a few months, one will not be compelled to transform this non-communion into excommunication.” In fact, this did not happen. Not months, but several years would pass, despite the Successor of Peter’s hand always being extended.
The doctrinal agreement signed by Lefebvre
After the election of John Paul II, Lefebvre seemed to look upon Rome differently. On 18 November 1978, the Archbishop was received in audience, and in a letter dated 8 March 1980 addressed to the Pope, the prelate wrote that he had “no hesitation regarding the legitimacy and validity of your election,” and had “never claimed” that the post-conciliar Mass “is in itself invalid or heretical.”
An agreement to heal, at least in part, the disagreements and lift the suspensions a divinis appeared possible ten years after that meeting with John Paul II, in April 1988.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, together with the Dicastery’s Secretary, Archbishop Alberto Bovone, personally conducted the difficult negotiations with Archbishop Lefebvre and several of his collaborators over the course of three days (11–13 April). The most significant encouragement came on the eve of the summit from the Pope himself.
With patience and intelligence, Cardinal Ratzinger succeeded in signing a common doctrinal protocol with the traditionalist bishop. The text was finalized during a meeting held in Rome on 4 May 1988 and was signed by Cardinal Ratzinger and Archbishop Lefebvre the following day.
In that text, the Archbishop and the members of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X promised “always to be faithful to the Catholic Church and to the Roman Pontiff”; they declared that they “accept the doctrine contained in No. 25 of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium of the Second Vatican Council concerning the ecclesiastical Magisterium and the assent that is due to it”; they undertook “to adopt a positive attitude of communication with the Apostolic See, avoiding all polemics” regarding certain points taught by the Council or concerning the subsequent reforms of the liturgy and canon law, which seemed to the traditionalists “difficult to reconcile with Tradition.”
“We further declare,” the protocol states, “that we recognize the validity of the Sacrifice of the Mass and of the sacraments celebrated with the intention of doing what the Church does,” according to the rites promulgated by Paul VI and John Paul II.
The agreement also addressed other matters: the Priestly Fraternity was to become a Society of Apostolic Life, thus enjoying full autonomy, and “for practical and psychological reasons, the consecration of a bishop who is a member of the Priestly Fraternity is considered useful.”
Everything appeared to have been resolved.
The first schismatic act
But suddenly, on the morning of 6 May 1988, the French bishop overturned the negotiating table. He changed his mind and privately informed Cardinal Ratzinger that he intended to consecrate new bishops on 30 June.
Archbishop Lefebvre’s decision appears to have been prompted by his conviction that the Holy See had not found suitable episcopal candidates among the clergy of the Priestly Fraternity, and by his fear that the new bishop would come from outside the Fraternity.
A further meeting on 24 May ended without result, and on 2 June Lefebvre wrote to John Paul II informing him of his dramatic decision: he and his followers would wait “for a more favorable moment for Rome’s return to Tradition,” praying that “today’s Rome, infected by Modernism, may once again become Catholic Rome.”
On 29 June, twenty-four hours before the announced consecrations, Cardinal Ratzinger sent the Archbishop a telegram: “For the love of Christ and of His Church, the Holy Father asks you, in a fatherly yet firm manner, to come to Rome today, without proceeding with the episcopal ordinations announced by you for 30 June.”
But Lefebvre had already made his decision. The following day, assisted by the elderly Brazilian prelate of the Diocese of Campos, Antonio de Castro Mayer, he consecrated as bishops four priests of the Priestly Fraternity: Bernard Fellay, Alfonso de Galarreta, Richard Williamson, and Bernard Tissier de Mallerais.
On 1 July, the consecrating bishops and those consecrated incurred latae sententiae excommunication for having committed a schismatic act.
Whereas in 1988, Cardinal Ratzinger had concluded a doctrinal agreement with the traditionalists of Écône, only for everything to be undone over essentially practical issues, in the negotiations of the following years, the Holy See would show itself willing to grant the maximum from the standpoint of a canonical solution, while the Lefebvrites would continue to maintain that “doctrinal clarity” was lacking, in effect demanding that the Catholic Church and the Pope renounce parts of the Council and parts of the post-conciliar Magisterium.
The pilgrimage of 2000 and Pope Benedict’s concessions
The attempt at reconciliation with the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X resumed in August 2000. The Lefebvrites made a Jubilee pilgrimage to Rome and processed in orderly fashion through St. Peter’s Square. Bishop Fellay, accompanied by Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, was received for several minutes by John Paul II.
Contacts continued and intensified after the election of Pope Benedict XVI, who, through two decisions taken two years apart, responded to the requests of the traditionalists.
On 7 July 2007, he issued the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, liberalizing the use of the 1962 Roman Missal, predating the Council, which was regarded as the extraordinary form of the liturgy of the Latin Church.
On 24 January 2009, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the 1988 excommunication of the four bishops illicitly consecrated by Lefebvre.
The decree lifting the excommunication was a unilateral act of reconciliation, healing the existence of a mini-schism and opening the door to dialogue with the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X.
Unfortunately, publication of the decision was leaked by the broadcast of an interview with one of the Lefebvrite bishops whose excommunication had been lifted, Richard Williamson, who, speaking to a Swedish broadcaster the previous November while in Germany, made Holocaust-denying statements concerning the extermination of the Jews in Nazi gas chambers.
The interview provoked very harsh criticism of Pope Benedict XVI, who had expressed the hope that the lifting of the excommunication would be followed by the Lefebvrite bishops’ “prompt commitment” to “take the further steps necessary to achieve full communion with the Church, thus demonstrating true fidelity and true recognition of the Magisterium and the authority of the Pope and of the Second Vatican Council.”
The 2011 doctrinal preamble and Pope Francis’ faculties
Years passed, and in September 2011, at the conclusion of a series of doctrinal discussions requested by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, the Holy See presented a brief document asking the Lefebvrites to sign it.
The text essentially contained three points, together with the request to subscribe to the “profession of faith” required of anyone assuming ecclesiastical office, assuring “religious submission of will and intellect” to the teachings that the Pope and the College of Bishops “propose when they exercise their authentic Magisterium,” even when these are not proclaimed in a dogmatic manner, as is the case with most magisterial documents.
Signing the preamble, Vatican authorities repeatedly stated, did not mean putting an end to “the legitimate discussion, study, and theological explanation of individual expressions or formulations contained in the documents of the Second Vatican Council.”
This attempt also came to nothing. Fellay declared the proposed doctrinal text unacceptable.
In the following years, doctrinal preambles were set aside, and canonical solutions—such as an apostolic administration or a personal prelature—were studied. But Bishop Fellay, then Superior of the Lefebvrites, made it known that “the Priestly Fraternity is not seeking, first and foremost, canonical recognition.”
Meanwhile, the interlocutors had changed, and Pope Francis occupied the Chair of Peter.
On the occasion of the Jubilee of Mercy in 2016, Pope Francis granted the priests of the Priestly Fraternity the special faculties to hear confessions and validly absolve the faithful. A measure intended to unite the faithful, this faculty was subsequently extended on a stable basis beyond the Extraordinary Holy Year through the Apostolic Letter Misericordia et misera.
Although the excommunication of their bishops had already been lifted in 2009, Lefebvrite priests continued to operate without being incorporated into the ordinary jurisdictional structure of the Roman Catholic Church. Through this act, Pope Francis wished to make a gesture of dialogue and pastoral reconciliation, thinking above all of the good of the faithful who follow the Priestly Fraternity.
New schism, invalid confessions and marriages
On 2 February 2026, the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X announced that new bishops would be consecrated on 1 July.
On 12 February, the Superior of the Priestly Fraternity, Fr. Davide Pagliarani was received in Rome by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The Prefect proposed to the Lefebvrites “a specifically theological path of dialogue, with a clearly defined methodology, concerning issues that have not yet received sufficient clarification,” in order to identify “the minimum requirements necessary for full communion with the Catholic Church,” together with a canonical solution: “The possibility of conducting this dialogue presupposes that the Fraternity suspend its decision regarding the announced episcopal ordinations.”
Despite repeated appeals and warnings not to proceed with the new episcopal ordinations, despite repeated invitations to dialogue, the Lefebvrites, while professing obedience to the Successor of Peter in words, in practice opened no avenue whatsoever and gave no consideration to the requests of the Successor of Peter, instead proceeding with their plan, thereby formalizing a new schism.
Responding to a journalist’s question at Castel Gandolfo on 16 June, Pope Leo XIV stated, “Certainly, division among Christians is always a painful matter, but they refuse to accept certain fundamental elements of the Church, beginning with several points of the Second Vatican Council. If that is the choice they make, I am sorry, but we must move forward.”
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