These traditionalist Catholics are defying Pope Leo XIV, and embracing their outsider status

VATICAN CITY — The Society of St. Pius X will consecrate four bishops without papal consent on July 1 at its Swiss seminary, defying Pope Leo XIV and incurring automatic excommunication under Vatican law. The traditionalist group, which rejected modernizing Catholic reforms and celebrates Latin Mass, is livestreaming the event as a four-day spectacle with merchandise, embracing rather than hiding its schismatic status nearly four decades after its founder first broke with Rome in 1988.

The SSPX, founded in 1970 to oppose Vatican II reforms, now operates globally with 733 priests, 264 seminarians and affiliated religious communities across 50 nationalities. The four new bishops — Pascal Schreiber, Michael Goldade, Michel Poinsinet de Sivry and Marc Hanappier — will bolster leadership as the group's two surviving original bishops age, expanding what theologians call a parallel ultra-Catholic church outside papal communion.