Vatican's schism ripples through southern parishes

The Vatican excommunicated six bishops from the ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X on Thursday, according to the BBC and France 24, after the group consecrated four new bishops in open defiance of Pope Leo XIV's direct plea for unity. The decree warned that lay believers who "formally adhere" to the breakaway Catholic fraternity would face automatic excommunication as well. The move marks the first major crisis of Pope Leo's papacy and represents a formal schism between Rome and a traditionalist movement that has resisted the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

The Society of St. Pius X, which claims around 600,000 followers globally according to the BBC, has long denied key tenets of modern Catholic doctrine. The group's defiance came after decades of tension with the Vatican over the use of the Latin Mass, clerical celibacy and other liturgical practices. The Washington Post reported that the bishops consecrated by the sect acted against explicit papal instruction, forcing the Vatican's hand into what amounts to a formal ecclesiastical break.