Background
Update — October 7, 2026
- SSPX. No ruling on the society's July recourse had been reported by 7 October. Its Christ the King pilgrimage to Lourdes (24–26 October) remains scheduled despite the local bishop's ban on its liturgies in the sanctuary; see SSPX consecrations 2026.
- Leo XIV in France. Archbishop Viganò said the Élysée address promotes the "exact opposite of the Magisterium" (LifeSiteNews), and traditionalist commentary also focused on Leo's call at Notre-Dame to put communion with Peter's successor above personal preferences (timeline).
- Interreligious dialogue. On 16 September Bishop Strickland urged Catholics to reject the Vatican note A Journey of Hope over a passage on proselytism (timeline).
- Media. The Remnant's Catholic Identity Conference met near Pittsburgh on 2–4 October, with Bishop Athanasius Schneider as keynote speaker (InfoVaticana).
- Converts and influencers. France 24 reported that a La Croix investigation found one in five adults baptised in 2025 whom it interviewed cited Catholic influencers as a factor; a researcher it quoted said the influencers' image is modern but their content very traditional (France 24). Commonweal reported that Chicago and nineteen other dioceses are surveying adults entering the Church (Commonweal).
- Coming up. The Amoris laetitia meeting runs 7–14 October (see below), and the DDF has said it will publish a document on transmitting the faith, Venite ad me, in mid-October (EWTN News; InfoVaticana).
Overview
Between autumn 2025 and early October 2026, news for traditionalist Catholics ran on two tracks. Pope Leo XIV adopted a gentler tone toward Catholics attached to the pre-1970 Mass and granted some permissions case by case, while the legal framework of Traditionis custodes (2021) stayed in force. Meanwhile the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) consecrated four bishops without a papal mandate on 1 July 2026, and the Holy See answered the next day with a decree declaring the Society in schism. Fuller treatments are in Leo XIV and the Latin Mass, the 2026 SSPX consecrations and liturgy law after Traditionis custodes.
Leo XIV and the Latin Mass: a gentler tone, the same law
- October 2025. Leo personally allowed Cardinal Raymond Burke to celebrate Mass in the older form at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter's Basilica on 25 October, for the annual Ad Petri Sedem pilgrimage (Catholic News Service).
- November 2025. The apostolic nuncio to Great Britain said the Pope did not intend to overturn Francis's restrictions but would grant two-year dispensations to bishops who asked for them (Catholic News Service).
- January 2026. At his 7 January general audience Leo called the Second Vatican Council a guiding star for the Church's journey (Vatican News), opening a series of catecheses on the Council's documents. Rorate Caeli argued that month that many cardinals at a consistory favoured relaxing Francis's rules (Rorate Caeli); TradWatch™ has seen no independent confirmation.
- March 2026. On 5 March Leo received the sociologists Stephen Cranney and Stephen Bullivant, authors of a forthcoming study of U.S. Latin Mass Catholics (OSV News). In a message signed for him by Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and sent to the French bishops' spring assembly in Lourdes, he asked them to find concrete solutions to include Latin Mass Catholics generously while preserving communion (Crux; America). The Catholic Herald read it as a signal of openness rather than a change in the law (Catholic Herald).
- July 2026. In an interview published by The Tablet on 29 July, Roche said Leo would keep Traditionis custodes and would not return to the broader permissions of Benedict XVI's Summorum Pontificum (Catholic Herald; LifeSiteNews).
- August 2026. On 14 August the Vatican published Leo's letter to Roche, dated 29 June, for a liturgical conference at Mount Angel Abbey in Oregon, calling for fidelity to the approved liturgical texts and instructions (Holy See; America).
- September 2026. During his visit to France (25–28 September), Leo pressed for unity and dialogue with French traditionalists, according to Religion News Service (RNS).
The SSPX consecrations and the schism decree
- February. By early February the SSPX had announced consecrations for 1 July, and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) arranged talks (Catholic World Report). The meeting, led by the DDF prefect Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, took place on 12 February (America). On 18 February Superior General Davide Pagliarani confirmed the date, citing unresolved disagreement over the Second Vatican Council; Catholic World News reported that the Society had rejected a Vatican offer (Catholic World News).
- May–June. On 13 May the DDF warned that the consecrations would be a schismatic act carrying excommunication (Catholic World Report). On 30 June Leo appealed to the Society to turn back, warning that its faithful would be deprived of the licit, and in some cases valid, reception of the sacraments (America).
- 1 July. At Écône, Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta, assisted by Bishop Bernard Fellay, consecrated Pascal Schreiber, Michael Goldade, Michel Poinsinet de Sivry and Marc Hanappier (America; EWTN News).
- 2 July. A DDF decree signed by Fernández confirmed the automatic excommunication of the six bishops involved, declared the Society's clergy schismatic, warned that lay faithful who formally adhere incur excommunication, declared confessions and marriages celebrated by SSPX priests invalid, and set out a procedure for returning to full communion (NPR; Catholic World Report; America).
- 3 and 11 July. The SSPX wrote to Leo rejecting the excommunications as objectively unjust and invalid and denying that it is in schism (EWTN News). On 11 July it lodged a preliminary recourse with the DDF, seeking revocation of the decree and arguing that the recourse suspends it (America; The Catholic Thing). Canonists disputed that a recourse can suspend penalties incurred automatically, and The Pillar judged the Society's prospects poor (The Pillar). The Tablet reported that bishops were warning lay Catholics against the schism (The Tablet).
- Since then. USCCB News quoted Vatican officials and scholars who argue that the dispute was never primarily about the Latin Mass (USCCB News). On 17 August Bishop Athanasius Schneider, in a statement published by Diane Montagna, argued that the Society had faced a tragic choice (Substack). In August the Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes withdrew the Society's authorisation to celebrate Mass and the sacraments in the Lourdes sanctuary, affecting its annual Christ the King pilgrimage in October, which the Society said it would hold in adapted form (EWTN News; InfoVaticana).
- A separate case. On 25 July, bishops described as sedevacantist consecrated Fr. Michael Mary (Sim), founder of the Transalpine Redemptorists, on Papa Stronsay in Orkney; the Diocese of Aberdeen declared him excommunicated the same day (Catholic World Report). See sedevacantism.
How traditionalist media responded
The SSPX's news service, FSSPX.News, set out its case in advance (FSSPX.News). After the recourse, Rorate Caeli published the Society's communiqué (Rorate Caeli), and The Remnant presented it as a test of whether Leo would practise the synodality he preaches (The Remnant).
Roche's July interview drew the sharpest responses. Diane Montagna disputed his claim that the traditional liturgy is readily available to Catholics who want it (Substack). Integrity Magazine argued that a strategy of keeping quiet had failed (Integrity Magazine). PerMariam questioned how much weight to give a prefect it expects to leave office soon (PerMariam).
Outlets themselves made news. In July 2025 the board of LifeSiteNews removed co-founder John-Henry Westen as CEO and editor-in-chief, then reinstated him ten days later (CatholicVote; CatholicVote). The same month Google's Blogger briefly took the Italian blog Messa in Latino offline (Catholic World News). In France, Riposte catholique closed in March 2026 and was relaunched by an independent collective in May (Le Salon Beige; Après la Ciase). Strickland, through his Pillars of Faith apostolate, wrote in September 2026 that he had not moved from his positions (OnePeterFive).
Official texts behind the story
The key texts are Ecclesia Dei (1988), which called the first Écône consecrations a schismatic act; Benedict XVI's 2009 letter to bishops, which said the Society had no canonical status until doctrinal questions were clarified; Summorum Pontificum (2007); Traditionis custodes (2021) with Francis's accompanying letter; and Leo XIV's 29 June 2026 letter to Cardinal Roche.
What to watch in late 2026
- The SSPX recourse. Coverage of the appeal noted that canon 1735 gives the authority thirty days to respond, after which further recourse can follow (America; The Pillar). Any ruling, and the form it takes, will shape whether the Society can pursue the matter further.
- Amoris laetitia at ten. A closed-door meeting of bishops' conference presidents on Amoris laetitia opens in Rome on 7 October; Vatican officials say the text is not being rewritten and that a synthesis will be published, and Leo is scheduled to celebrate the closing Mass on 14 October (AP via CP24; Vatican News). See Amoris laetitia and Fiducia supplicans.
- Assisi at forty. LifeSiteNews has reported Leo's planned attendance at a gathering marking the 40th anniversary of John Paul II's 1986 Assisi day of prayer (LifeSiteNews).
- The Rome pilgrimage. In 2025 the Ad Petri Sedem pilgrimage was allowed a traditional Mass in St. Peter's (Catholic News Service). For 2026 (23–25 October), InfoVaticana reported in September that a Secretariat of State letter had declined permission "this year" and that the pontifical Mass would instead be celebrated at St. Mary Major (InfoVaticana); TradWatch has not seen an official Vatican statement.
- The liturgy dicastery. Reports since March, first relayed by InfoVaticana from the journalist Damian Thompson, that Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect since 2021, will leave the Dicastery for Divine Worship remain unconfirmed (InfoVaticana).
- Dispensations and France. How bishops use the two-year dispensations the nuncio described, and what concrete solutions the French bishops adopt after the March letter and the papal visit.
- New research. Cranney and Bullivant's Oxford University Press study of U.S. Latin Mass Catholics is due around the end of 2026 (OSV News).