When the Vatican excommunicated the priesthood of a rebel conservative faction last week, creating the biggest schism in Roman Catholicism in decades, it also hoped to drive the group’s many followers back to the mainstream church.
Instead, according to interviews with some of the faction’s followers in Argentina, Italy and Switzerland, the punishment has been met with defiance.
“It changes nothing,” said Blandine Guillaumin, 42, a teacher at a school run by the group in France. Ms. Guillaumin said she would remain part of the faction, called the Society of St. Pius X, even if the Vatican went ahead with its threat to excommunicate worshipers who stayed loyal to the breakaway group.
“We are sure we are doing God’s will,” Ms. Guillaumin said. It is the society, not the Vatican, she said, that represents “pure, authentic Catholicism.”
Ms. Guillaumin’s defiance embodied the climax of a 56-year-old impasse between the Vatican and the society, founded in 1970 to protest the Roman Catholic Church’s modernizing turn after the Second Vatican Council, which took place between 1962 and 1965.
The society bemoans the council’s change to the form of Catholic services. Though the council allowed priests to hold services in vernacular languages, the society still celebrates the Traditional Latin Mass, arguing it preserves a sense of reverence and mystery. » | Elisabetta Povoledo | Reporting from Écône, Switzerland, where the Society of St. Pius X consecrated new bishops in defiance of Pope Leo XIV. | Sunday, July 5, 2026
