After a group of traditionalist Catholics consecrated four bishops on Wednesday in defiance of Pope Leo XIV, a top Vatican official has expressed “great sorrow” and suggested the Holy See will issue formal excommunications in connection with the action.

The Priestly Society of Saint Pius X – the SSPX – conducted the consecrations at their seminary facility in Écône, Switzerland, in ceremony led by SSPX Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta

“Deep sorrow – I wish to express deep sorrow,” the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, told journalists on Wednesday, “because, when speaking of the unity of the Church, an act of this kind deeply wounds that unity.”

“We know that episcopal ordinations performed without a papal mandate break the unity of the Church and incur very specific sanctions,” Parolin said, “fundamentally, excommunication.”

“I do not know the timing or the manner in which this excommunication will be imposed,” Parolin also said, noting as well that consecrating a bishop without papal permission is “an act that is schismatic in itself.”

Galarreta, the bishop who performed the illicit SSPX consecrations on Wednesday, had been excommunicated once already.

He was one of four bishops who received the penalty after being consecrated by the Society’s founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, against Pope St. John Paul II’s commands in 1988. Lefebvre and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer also received excommunication for ordaining the four men, and died with the penalty still formally in place.

Pope Benedict XVI lifted those excommunications in 2009, though all clerics of the SSPX remained legally suspended and the Society has remained in what the Holy See has called a “canonically irregular” situation.

Pope Francis offered significant accommodations to SSPX clergy, including the recognition of their faculties to hear confessions and celebrate marriages, but angered many traditionalists with a 2022 law severely restricting the older Catholic liturgical forms.

In a letter published Tuesday, Pope Leo XIV pleaded with the breakaway group not to go forward with the planned consecrations, urging the Society “to consider the spiritual good of the faithful carefully.”

“[T]he schismatic act you are about to undertake,” the pontiff wrote, “would deprive them of the licit and, in some cases, even valid reception of the sacraments, which they love and seek for their sanctification.”

In his remarks to journalists on Wednesday, Parolin suggested the crux of the issue is not so much the liturgy as it is the teaching of the Vatican Council II.

“[T]he history of the Church continues,” Parolin said, calling the 1962-1965 Vatican Council II “a milestone in that history – one that must be accepted and properly implemented.”

“I hope,” Parolin said, “that – building on the dialogue efforts already undertaken in the past with the Society of Saint Pius X – we can move forward despite this serious wound and find a way to resolve the problem.”