The Illicit Episcopal Ordinations of the Society of St. Pius X
Interview with Cardinal Koch, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity
Jan Halatyk: Yesterday, on July 1, 2026, the two bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, Alfonso de Galarreta and Bernard Fellay, ordained 4 traditionalist priests as bishops in Écône, Switzerland, without a papal mandate. This brings the conflict history between the Popes and the Society of St. Pius X, which has been simmering since the 1970s, to a conclusion. In this episode of the podcast Communicatio, I am speaking about this significant event in the history of the Catholic Church with Kurt Cardinal Koch, who has been the Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity since 2010. My name is Jan Halatyk. I am a co-publisher and managing editor of the journal Communio.
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[Interviewer:] Cardinal Koch, how do you, as a theologian and bishop who comes from Switzerland and worked there for a long time, classify the illicit episcopal ordinations that took place yesterday in Écône in the Valais?
[Cardinal Koch:] The Fraternity has indeed qualified this event as a historical act. I would see it that way too, though in a completely different sense. Because if we look at the history of the Church, there have always been schisms following various councils. Even in the earlier councils after Ephesus, after Chalcedon, in the 19th century after the First Vatican Council, and now again after the Second Vatican Council.
It is always about the same thing: the Church is accused of having betrayed tradition and introduced something new that never existed in tradition. The fundamental problem here also seems to be how one can be faithful to tradition while simultaneously being open to new challenges. However, looking at history, we see that these problems were resolved over time. When it is so close, there is obviously no hope for an immediate solution. But I hope that there will be other ways in the future.
Before we go deeper into the concept of tradition, perhaps a brief look at the immediate background. Pope Leo XIV sent a monitory letter to the Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X on June 30, right before the event. In it, he surprisingly first explicitly praised their love for the liturgy, their commitment to priestly formation, their apostolic zeal, and their strive for fidelity to tradition. On the other hand, he called on those responsible in the Society to repent, stating that tearing Christ's seamless garment is a grave sin.
How do you assess this personal letter from Pope Leo, and do you approve of him intervening so late in the matter?
I suspect he absolutely wanted to say this on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, from the pillars of the Roman Church. But it was probably too late, because the preparations were already complete, and the people had arrived. However, I think it's good that he said it anyway. I also find it positive that he highlights the positive aspects that are important to him, and that, on the basis of recognizing those positive elements, he challenged and warned against this step all the more.
What was interesting about yesterday's ceremonies is that the lack of a papal mandate had to be compensated for by a justification for why these ordinations were being carried out anyway. The Superior General also explained in detail in his sermon why the Society took this step. How do you assess this self-justification?
It leans toward self-authorization for the ordinations because they did not receive permission. This naturally reminds me of the concept of self-authorization in completely different contexts, namely on the progressive side, where groups say: we have to take everything into our own hands and authorize ourselves to do what the church leadership does not want. This shows once again how traditionalists and progressives can sometimes be sick in the same hospital, even if in extremely different wards.
The extremes meet. Would you say that the traditionalists here are modern in that they emancipate themselves from papal authority, which they actually want to strengthen and protect?
I hope not. I agree with the substance of that, but I hope the concept of the modern isn't viewed purely negatively; modernity also has positive connotations. But it certainly points in that direction. I would rather speak of self-contradictions: on the one hand, conjuring up the authority of the Pope with beautiful words, but then going one's own way at the decisive moment. To me, that gives the impression of an abstract recognition of the Petrine primacy rather than a concrete recognition of the current Pope and all Popes since the Second Vatican Council. I simply see a contradiction there.
Yes, the narrative is that they want to follow the Vicar of Christ on Earth—the Pope—in filial devotion. At the same time, however, they claim the Pope is surrounded by advisors who have fallen prey to modernist errors. Are the advisors of Pope Leo XIV the problem?
I think if that were the case—if the Pope were surrounded by such modernists and one wanted to express love for the Pope—then one would have to draw the opposite conclusion. Namely, to set a good example of how to stand by the Petrine primacy in fidelity to Church tradition, and they should have listened to the Pope. This strikes me as a fundamental contradiction that I cannot resolve.
Perhaps let us return to the question of the concept of tradition. In 1988, immediately after Archbishop Lefebvre carried out ordinations without the Pope's permission, John Paul II responded in his apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei, speaking of an incomplete and contradictory concept of tradition in Lefebvre. Incomplete and contradictory—what did the Pope mean by that, and does it still apply in the same way today?
Incomplete probably because they do not keep the entirety of tradition in view. They essentially declare that 2,000 years of tradition, up to the Second Vatican Council, was broken off. In this respect, these are fragments of tradition, but not the whole tradition. This is in contrast to the Second Vatican Council, which looks back at the entire tradition and repeatedly looks back to the era of the Church Fathers, quoting Holy Scripture, the Fathers, and history. In this sense, the Second Vatican Council has a comprehensive concept of tradition, whereas I consider it very fragmented among the Lefebvriens.
Pope Benedict XVI himself also spoke of them "freezing" tradition with the Second Vatican Council, which is inherently contradictory. Because if you look at the texts of the Second Vatican Council, next to Holy Scripture, Pope Pius XII is the most frequently cited reference. And that is basically not accepted; instead, it is assumed that a rupture occurred with the Second Vatican Council that can no longer be reconciled with tradition. But that completely contradicts the texts of the Second Vatican Council itself.
Pope Benedict, in his [2005] Christmas address, also tried to counter these hermeneutics of rupture on both the traditionalist and progressive sides with a hermeneutic of reform. Would you still consider this instrument of a hermeneutic of reform—about which you have written a book yourself—to be the appropriate key for interpreting the Council today?
I thought it was very meaningful that Pope Benedict XVI dedicated his first Christmas address to the Roman Curia to this topic, the Second Vatican Council. He spoke against the hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture, but also against a hermeneutic of pure continuity as advocated by the Society, saying that both are actually absurd. Instead, it is about a hermeneutic of reform, which states that the Second Vatican Council stands within a fundamental tradition but has responded to new challenges. It is a combination of fidelity to tradition and openness to the present and the future. And I believe that is a truly meaningful hermeneutic.
Pope Benedict specified this back then using the topic of religious freedom, showing that Dignitatis Humanae is not a break with tradition, but actually points back to the entire tradition of early Christianity. I don't really understand why the Society cannot be open to this path pointed out by Pope Benedict.
Of course, they quote the statements made by Gregory XVI and Pius IX, where liberalism was sharply condemned, and they argue that what Dignitatis Humanae did at Vatican II stands in blatant contradiction to that. Pope Benedict said that what was condemned in the 19th century is not identical to what the Council recognized.
Could you explain that once more?
What was said in the 19th century—that truth is absolute and cannot be relativized—still applies today. But that was not the subject of Dignitatis Humanae. Rather, it was about how the Church behaves in the modern situation of a separation of Church and State. Pope Benedict spoke of a "healthy secularity" and clearly pointed out that religious freedom is precisely the fundamental condition for the Church's missionary mandate, because the Church can only fulfill its mission if the State guarantees the freedom to do so.
It seems to me that this collides with another point held by the Society of St. Pius X, namely their conviction that all states should actually be Catholic states and cannot guarantee any freedom other than the freedom of the Catholic Church. That is, of course, completely detached from reality.
Yes, yes, they ultimately see the universal kingship of Christ as violated by the fact that the Church now recognizes freedom of religion and conscience.
Perhaps let us move on to topics that directly concern your Dicastery. The points of contention also include ecumenical openness; this is rejected by the SSPX as false indifferentism, and they still demand that all non-Catholics return to the bosom of the one true Church. Why has this demand, which connects to the dogma of the Council of Florence, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, actually become difficult today under modern conditions?
I think it is difficult even under theological conditions, because this formula, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, naturally applies to Catholics who are convinced that the Catholic Church points the way to eternal salvation. But we already have the fundamental conviction in Holy Scripture, and then also in tradition, that God wills the salvation of all people and that He then also finds other ways for people to attain salvation who have never come into alignment with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
If the Society now essentially sends everyone to hell who is not in the Catholic Church, then I don't know how this fundamental conviction of Holy Scripture—that God wants all people to be saved—can still be justified at all. And the danger, of course, is that the theological judgment places itself above the ultimate judicial will of God, and I consider that theologically very problematic.
This corresponds to what Marcel Lefebvre once said in a sermon: Protestants cannot go to heaven.
Yes, he bypasses the eschatological judgment of God Himself here.
Perhaps let us also take a look at Nostra Aetate, which opened a new chapter in the Catholic Church's relationship with Judaism. For the Society, it is very clear—and they have emphasized it once again—that the covenant was terminated with the coming of Christ, and that Jews, including those today, share the guilt of deicide as long as they do not confess Jesus as the Messiah of Israel. What do you think of this type of theology of Judaism?
Behind this, I believe, lies an incongruous definition of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments—the idea that the New Testament has, as it were, overcome the Old Testament. In contrast, the Catholic Church assumes a fundamental unity between the two Testaments and is convinced that ultimately there is only one book and not two different books, but rather one history of salvation of God with His people Israel, and the revelation in Jesus of Nazareth. This cannot be reconciled even with many views held by the Church Fathers. The Second Vatican Council did not only refer to Holy Scripture and Paul, but also to traditions in Church history.
I consider this vision of the Society to be anachronistic in light of the Shoah. What happened there was one of the triggers for Nostra Aetate, prompting a rethink of the relationship through the shock of the Shoah. The Society seems unable to go along with this. In doing so, it naturally points to a fundamental problem of Nostra Aetate and the history that followed, because I think the fundamental question of how the statement regarding the permanent validity of God's covenant with Israel, which we recognize, can be reconciled with the New Testament statement that something new entered history with Jesus Christ so that neither Jews nor Christians are offended—this question does not yet seem to me to be fully resolved theologically.
Would you say then that the lack of willingness to learn theologically from Auschwitz leads to a kind of theological annihilation of Judaism for the SSPX, if they say that the Old Covenant has been definitively invalidated?
Of course, but the Old Covenant is already present as a testament. Hence, there is also a fear that Marcionite tendencies play a role here, and secondly, that Judaism is the matrix of Christianity. I don't know how one can stand by Christianity if one dismisses one's own mother from history. That doesn't go well in family history, and it certainly doesn't go well in Christian history.
Yesterday we saw that the SSPX strikingly staged the aesthetic glow of the old rites. At the same time, we can see, especially in the USA and also in France, a growing interest among the younger generation in these traditionalist forms of Christianity. A perhaps somewhat delicate question: isn't this also an impetus for the Catholic Church, as it currently stands, to review its books—perhaps to appreciate the particular truth contained within traditionalism and use it as an occasion for self-critical reflection?
Yes, I think it could lean toward self-righteousness if we simply condemn the Society and say they are on the wrong track, without asking whether there are fundamental deficits in the Church today that are being recalled by the Society.
First, I think of the unresolved question of the relationship between the two forms of the one Roman Rite, as Pope Benedict called it. Pope Benedict showed a path there; Pope Francis curbed it somewhat radically. I think we need to rethink this, especially for those faithful who feel drawn to this form of liturgy without sharing the entire ideological superstructure of the Society. For these faithful, I think we must look for new ways.
A second problem is the ecclesiological pluralism we have today in ecumenism, where basically all churches and ecclesial communities are treated as equivalent, so that it is essentially a matter of indifference which church you belong to; there, the uniqueness of the Catholic Church, as pointed out clearly by the Second Vatican Council, is forgotten.
And thirdly, religious pluralism—the idea that all religions are equally ways to God. These theses are widely held today, and it would be good to use the confrontation with the Society as an opportunity for self-examination, to consider what needs to be changed here. Because only in this way can we credibly represent to the Society that these evils they name are not contained in the Council, but are tendencies that appeared after the Council.
Especially since the Roman Dicasteries have repeatedly written against these misinterpretations—take Dominus Iesus against religious pluralism, but also various other statements inviting a correct interpretation of the ecumenical opening clause subsistit in.
Perhaps a final question. It has just been formally confirmed that the ministers and recipients of the illicit episcopal ordination have excommunicated themselves, thus establishing a schism. If an episcopally structured parallel church establishes itself on the right wing, shouldn't we say that the responsibilities should shift from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith over to the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, so that the debate can perhaps be continued in a somewhat more moderate, less agitated manner? What would you say to this proposal of transferring the files of the Society to your ecumenical portfolio?
I am not entirely sure whether we can speak of a schism yet. In 1988, Pope John Paul II also spoke of a schismatic act. That is not necessarily identical, because a schismatic act affects those who performed the act and those who allowed it to be performed on them. That is not yet the actual schism itself. Secondly, an excommunication is a medicinal penalty meant to invite repentance so that one finds the way back, rather than being definitive. In this respect, I would almost think it is premature to carry out this transfer just yet.
Secondly, I would also question whether the term "parallel church" is accurate in all respects, because there is actually no parallel structure. The Society only has auxiliary bishops; it has not appointed any Ordinary. The Ordinary is a priest, and for a parallel structure, the episcopal office would naturally be decisive. This is also not entirely understandable to me. It was Archbishop Lefebvre, and then it was Archbishop Fellay who led the Society; now they have transitioned to a priest, and they actually only view bishops in terms of their power of orders, without any power of jurisdiction. But that does not correspond to the tradition of the Church either.
But can you see any signs of a critical self-revision among the current actors of the Society that would suggest an acceptance of a remediation of the schismatic act that has now occurred?
At the moment I don't see it, but it would also be far too early. If we look at the situation of the Old Catholics, it took decades before it was possible to talk about that situation anew. And I think that with the Society of St. Pius X, I hope at least, it will be possible in the future to resume conversations so that they can find their way back into the Catholic Church.
So, a reminder of patience as a theological virtue and relying on the working of the Holy Spirit, who, as the master of the impossible, might after all lead to changes that are not yet foreseeable, Cardinal.
We are responsible only for the possible. The impossible is the realm of the Holy Spirit.
Cardinal, thank you for this conversation.
[Translation of the German transcript.]
