SSPX will consecrate bishops on July 1 despite Vatican ‘threat’

[Stone]

SSPX will consecrate bishops on July 1 despite Vatican ‘threat’
The Society of St. Pius X rejected Cdl. Fernández's call to suspend the July 1 consecrations, insisting the state of ‘grave necessity’ demands action to preserve Catholic Tradition.



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Feb 19, 2026
(LifeSiteNews [Slightly adapted - not all hyperlinks included from original]) — The SSPX episcopal consecrations will go forward as planned.

Today, February 19, Father Davide Pagliarani, the Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), published a communique, as well as a letter to Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández – and several annexes – to announce that the SSPX has decided to go ahead with the episcopal consecrations on July 1.

After the SSPX first made known on February 2 its intention to consecrate more bishops, Fernández, the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) met with Pagliarani on February 12, insisting that he should halt these consecrations and first enter into a theological dialogue with the Vatican.

In response to Fernańdez’s proposal for dialogue, Pagliarani wrote, “[W]hile I certainly rejoice at a new opening of dialogue and the positive response to my proposal of 2019, I cannot accept the perspective and objectives in the name of which the Dicastery offers to resume dialogue in the present situation, nor indeed the postponement of the date of 1 July [for the episcopal consecrations].”

He noted also that he had requested this dialogue himself in 2019, “when I suggested a discussion during a calm and peaceful time, without the pressure or threat of possible excommunication, which would have undermined free dialogue—as is, unfortunately, the situation today.”

On February 2, the head of the SSPX argued for the consecrations on the grounds of a “state of grave necessity”: “After having long matured his reflection in prayer, and having received from the Holy See, in recent days, a letter which does not in any way respond to our requests, Father Pagliarani, in harmony with the unanimous advice of his Council, judges that the objective state of grave necessity in which souls find themselves requires such a decision,” the official statement reads.

In his now-published February 18 response to Fernández, Pagliarani welcomes such a theological dialogue and reveals for the first time that he had “proposed it exactly seven years ago,” in January of 2019, to the Vatican. Pagliarani had been elected into his office as superior general of the SSPX in July of 2018. As he now states in his letter to the head of the DDF, “the Dicastery did not truly express interest in such a discussion, on the grounds – presented orally – that a doctrinal agreement between the Holy See and the Society of Saint Pius X was impossible.”

That is to say, Pagliarani himself had offered to start such a doctrinal discussion with the Vatican in 2019, which was then rejected by officials in Rome. He goes on to explain to Fernández in his letter that the SSPX “always” welcomes a doctrinal discussion, calling it “desirable and useful.”

While in 2019 such a discussion could have taken place “during a calm and peaceful time, without the pressure or threat of possible excommunication, which would have undermined free dialogue,” Pagliarani points out that “unfortunately” this is now not the case.

And indeed, in a February 12 statement after the meeting with Pagliarani, Fernández had warned that, should the Society go ahead with the episcopal consecrations without approval from Rome, these consecrations would “constitute a decisive rupture of ecclesial communion (schism), with serious consequences for the Fraternity [of St. Pius X] as a whole.” He thus not only threatened the soon-to-be bishops with canonical penalties, but also all the members of the SSPX.



Read more here.