Sadness and joy as breakaway Catholic group nears schism

Defying the Vatican, the traditionalist Catholic Society of Saint Pius X will ordain its own bishops on July 1, despite the risk of being considered schismatic.

ECONE, Switzerland – The Society of St Pius X celebrated the ordination of new priests on June 29, just two days before it could trigger a full schism with Rome by consecrating its own bishops.

The ultra-traditionalist breakaway Catholic group is on a collision course with the Vatican – and people have come from around the world to see it.

“It’s extraordinary. It’s a long-awaited moment, a gift,” said Maria, the mother of Father Pelayo Muskett Bunge, an Argentine priest who had just been ordained.

He and the four other new priests – another Argentine, a Belgian, a Spaniard and a Frenchman – laid their hands on the heads of their loved ones to bestow their first priestly blessings.

Thousands of the faithful crowded around them after attending the four-hour ceremony, held in sweltering heat in a field in Econe, a village in the Rhone valley in Alpine south-west Switzerland, at the foot of the mountains near the society’s seminary.

The Society of St Pius X is a group of fundamentalist Catholics that strongly opposes the liberal reforms of the Catholic Church imposed by the Vatican II Council in the 1960s.

The brotherhood was founded by the controversial French bishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970.

“We have priestly ordinations every year,” but this time they take on a special significance given the “prospect of episcopal consecrations” on July 1, explained Alexandre Maret, 41, a Swiss parishioner who knew Lefebvre, who died in 1991 aged 85.

“What he explained to us back then is still relevant today: the doctrinal battle has barely changed,” he added.

The community follows a strict interpretation of doctrinal and liturgical tradition and condemns ecumenism – working for closer unity with other Christian traditions.

The society says it is present in more than 75 countries across six continents, with over 750 priests and nearly half a million faithful.

In 1988, it illicitly consecrated four bishops, resulting in immediate excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church – a measure lifted in 2009.

However, the society is preparing to repeat the act of dissent on July 1.

It intends to consecrate four new bishops – two French, one American and one Swiss – arguing it has only two bishops left, and they are the ones responsible for ordaining new priests.

“It’s a very pivotal event for our times in the church,” said Samuel Putz, a 26-year-old American lay member who lives in the same Kansas town as F