The joy seems to have been short-lived for the four Catholic priests who were ordained bishops on Wednesday during a grand ceremony in the small village of Écône in Switzerland, in front of thousands of faithful Catholics.
On Thursday morning, the announcement came from the Holy See: excommunication - exclusion from the full communion of the Catholic Church.
Ordaining bishops without Pope Leo XIV's approval constitutes a break with the Catholic Church and entry into schism. This leads to excommunication.
The bishops belong to the ultra-conservative breakaway group, the Priestly Brotherhood of St. Pius X, which accuses the church of being full of heresies and errors such as modernism and liberalism.
