The author of ‘Heal Me With Your Mouth’ also declared that lay Catholics who formally adhere to the Society are likewise to be considered schismatic and excommunicated.
The Vatican has formally declared that the bishops involved in the July 1 episcopal consecrations at Écône, Switzerland, have incurred automatic excommunication for proceeding without papal approval.
According to a decree issued on July 2 by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the consecrations constituted what Rome describes as “an act of a schismatic nature” because four priests were elevated to the episcopacy without a pontifical mandate and despite the explicit opposition of Pope Leo XIV.
The ceremony took place at the Society of Saint Pius X seminary in Écône, the same location closely associated with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the historic consecrations of 1988.
Bishops Alfonso de Galarreta and Bernard Fellay, who served as principal consecrator and co-consecrator respectively, were named in the decree alongside the four newly consecrated bishops: Bp. Pascal Schreiber, Bp. Michael Goldade, Bp. Michel Poinsinet de Sivry, and Bp. Marc Hanappier.
The Vatican stated that all six men incurred latae sententiae excommunication automatically through the act itself, with the penalty reserved to the Apostolic See.
In an accompanying explanatory note, the Dicastery argued that the consecrations represented a rejection of Roman authority and therefore amounted to schism under canon law. Vatican officials cited the 1988 apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei, issued following Archbishop Lefebvre’s original episcopal consecrations, as precedent for the decision.
The decree goes further than the sanctions against the bishops themselves. Rome now states that priests of the Society of Saint Pius X are to be regarded as schismatics and subject to excommunication under canon law.
The Vatican also declared that lay Catholics who formally adhere to the Society are likewise to be considered schismatic and excommunicated under the conditions outlined in earlier Vatican documents dating from 1996.
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