“This is the drama we are living, in ecclesial groups which are moving away from the Church, putting in question” the authority of bishops and of the church, he said.
In 2016, a breakaway traditionalist Catholic group, the Society of St. Pius X, accused Francis of sowing confusion and errors about the faith, joining a chorus of conservative criticism over what they perceived as the pontiff’s lax doctrine.
In 1969, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the society, opposed to the modernizing church reforms of the 1960s. In one of the more spectacular chapters of the Vatican’s long-running duel with traditionalists, he and four other bishops were later excommunicated by the Vatican after the archbishop consecrated them without papal consent.
This article originally appeared here.
