#St thomas aquinas seminary sspx trial#

In September 1970, shortly after his retirement as Superior General of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, Lefebvre was approached by eleven members of the Pontifical French Seminary in Rome. The founder and central figure of the society was the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who had served the Catholic Church as Apostolic Delegate for French-speaking Africa, Archbishop of Dakar, and Superior General of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, a missionary order of priests.

Like Traditionalist Catholicism in general, the SSPX was born out of opposition to changes in the Catholic Church that followed the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).

Lefebvre, the society's founder, celebrating Tridentine Mass While its critics claim the society's priests were not explicitly granted the requisite jurisdiction, it contends that they possessed 'supplied jurisdiction' for confessions due to a ' state of necessity'. The significance of these recognitions is that, unlike other Catholic sacraments, both confession and marriage require canonical jurisdiction for their validity.

#St thomas aquinas seminary sspx trial#

In addition, the Holy See named SSPX bishop Fellay as judge in a canonical trial against one of the society's priests.

The 2010s saw growing recognition by the Holy See of its sacramental and pastoral activities, with Papal recognition extended indefinitely in 2017 to confessions heard by its priests, and local ordinaries allowed to grant delegation to its priests for officially witnessing marriages. The society's canonical situation remains unresolved. Though the SSPX denied that the bishops incurred any penalty, claiming canon law in their defense, the declared excommunication of the surviving bishops was at their request removed in 2009 in the hope of speedily reaching 'full reconciliation and complete communion'. Tensions between the society and the Holy See reached their height in 1988 with the Écône consecrations: Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without the Apostolic Mandate and against a personal warning by Pope John Paul II, resulting in Rome declaring that the bishops who consecrated or were consecrated had incurred latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication. There are a number of organisations derived from the SSPX: most notably the Society of Saint Pius V (SSPV), a group mostly in the United States and the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), which was made a society of apostolic life under Pope John Paul II in 1988.

The present Superior General of the society is the Reverend Davide Pagliarani, who succeeded Bishop Bernard Fellay in 2018. The society is named after Pope Pius X, whose anti- Modernist stance the society stresses, retaining the Tridentine Mass and pre-Vatican II liturgical books in Latin for the other sacraments. In 2022, the society reached over 700 priestly members. The society was initially established as a pious union of the Catholic Church with the permission of François Charrière, the Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg in Switzerland. The Society of Saint Pius X ( SSPX) ( Latin: Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Pii X FSSPX) is an international fraternity of traditionalist Catholic priests founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a leading traditionalist voice at the Second Vatican Council with the Coetus Internationalis Patrum, and Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers until 1968.