Overview
- The Fraternidad Sacerdotal San Pío X held a large ceremony in Écône on Wednesday, July 1, where Alfonso de Galarreta and Bernard Fellay consecrated Pascal Schreiber, Michael Goldade, Michel Poinsinet de Sivry and Marc Hanappier as bishops.
- On Thursday the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a decree that described the consecrations as an act of a schismatic nature and confirmed that the six participating bishops incurred latae sententiae, or automatic, excommunication.
- The Vatican has withdrawn sacramental faculties from FSSPX ministers and said confessions and marriages they now perform are canonically illicit or invalid.
- The decree warns that clergy or laity who formally adhere to the FSSPX will incur the same penalty but also states the Church will pastorally receive anyone who repents and returns to full communion.
- The move closes years of failed talks that began after Marcel Lefebvre's 1988 illicit consecrations and the 2009 partial lifting of sanctions, and it affects a movement of several hundred priests and roughly half a million faithful with strong bases in France and other countries.