LeLeo XIV Praises Freedom of Conscience While Attempting to Excommunicate the SSPX for Expressing Theirs
The Liberty Medal, Rome’s legally defective formula and its attempt to isolate SSPX priests, schools and families
On 3 July, Pope Leo XIV accepted the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal, awarded for his promotion of religious liberty and freedom of conscience and expression. In his acceptance address, he praised the “dictates of conscience”, freedom from coercion, and the right of individuals, communities and associations to give public expression to their faith.¹ On precisely the same day, Father Davide Pagliarani addressed the Pope concerning Rome’s condemnation of the Society of Saint Pius X. “In conscience,” he wrote, “we did not believe we could evade the moral duty we owe to souls.” The Society had sought understanding for “a sincere case of conscience”. Instead, Pagliarani said, “we received a stone”.²
The coincidence exposes a glaring moral, pastoral and rhetorical incoherence at the heart of Leo XIV’s present policy. Before the American public, conscience is treated as sacred, religious association as socially beneficial, and freedom from coercion as a mark of civilisation. Within the Church, a specifically Catholic claim of conscience has been answered with six declared censures, a legally defective attempt to characterise an entire priestly society as excommunicated, threats against lay adherents, and a programme calculated to sever ordinary Catholics from their priests, chapels, schools and communities.
There is no simplistic juridical contradiction here. The Pope may defend civil immunity from state coercion while exercising ecclesiastical authority over Catholics, for the First Amendment is not canon law, and religious liberty cannot be invoked as a general exemption from the Church’s legitimate discipline. Yet that distinction cannot absolve Rome of the obligation to exercise its own authority according to truth, justice, canonical equity and the salvation of souls, nor can it disguise the extraordinary disparity between Leo’s universal rhetoric of conscience and the indiscriminate treatment directed towards traditional Catholics.
Liberty ordered towards truth
Much of Leo XIV’s Liberty Medal address deserved commendation. The Pope grounded human dignity in man’s creation in the image of God, affirmed that dignity precedes the State, whose task is to protect rather than manufacture it, defended human life from conception until natural death, and rejected the impoverished modern idea that freedom consists merely in doing whatever one desires. Authentic liberty, he said, requires knowing the truth and adhering to the good “even at great cost”.³ This is a recognisably Christian conception of freedom, because liberty is not emancipation from nature, moral law or God, but the capacity to recognise the true and choose the good.
The address became more problematic when Leo moved from freedom as morally ordered choice to religious liberty. He praised the freedom necessary to follow the “dictates of conscience” while remaining “free from fear and coercion”, and then affirmed:
“This same freedom also ensures the right of every person to worship according to one’s own belief, and of individuals, communities and associations to give public expression to their faith.”
The most favourable interpretation is that Leo was speaking only of civil immunity from coercion. No State can compel supernatural faith or manufacture religious conviction. Even Dignitatis humanae describes religious liberty as immunity from coercion in civil society, while affirming that men remain obliged to seek and embrace religious truth and that the traditional duties of men and societies towards the true religion remain intact.⁴
The distinction is essential. A person may possess a civil claim against coercion without possessing a moral right before God to offer false worship. Leo XIII condemned the unqualified liberty of worship founded upon the proposition that every man may choose any religion or none; false religion may require civil toleration to prevent greater evils, but error does not thereby acquire moral rights.⁵ Leo XIV’s address did not articulate that distinction, and its orthodox meaning must therefore be supplied from elsewhere. Yet the theological ambiguity of the speech is not its most remarkable feature. More striking is the contrast between the religious freedom Leo praised and the ecclesiastical policy Rome had announced only the day before.
Six declared censures—and a formula that failed
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued two distinct documents on 2 July: a formal decree and an explanatory note. They cannot simply be merged into a single juridical act. The decree names six men—Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta, Bishop Bernard Fellay and the four newly consecrated bishops—and declares that they incurred automatic excommunication in connection with the episcopal consecrations celebrated without a pontifical mandate and what Rome characterised as a schismatic act.⁶ Whatever judgement is reached concerning necessity, imputability or the distinction between disobedience and schism, the decree is at least personal in form, because it identifies particular persons and attributes particular acts to them.
The decree does not declare that every SSPX priest or lay attendee has already been excommunicated. Instead, it warns priests and lay faithful not to adhere to the alleged schism because they would incur automatic excommunication. Its language is conditional and prospective. The explanatory note then says something substantially different, asserting that all sacred ministers belonging to the SSPX “are in schism and must therefore be considered schismatics”, while laypeople who adhere formally are likewise to be considered schismatic and excommunicated.⁷
That contradiction is not incidental. In the document possessing recognisable penal form, the alleged offence of ordinary priests and laypeople remains future and conditional; in the explanatory document, their supposed penal condition is treated as already existing. The contradiction must be resolved in favour of the decree, because canon 18 requires laws imposing penalties or restricting rights to be interpreted strictly. A penalty cannot be enlarged by inference, analogy or accompanying commentary.⁸
More fundamentally, an explanatory note is not, merely by describing itself as such, one of the juridical instruments by which penalties are ordinarily imposed or declared. It is not a penal law, an individual penal precept, a judicial sentence or an individual declaratory decree issued following the procedure required by canon law. It may express the Dicastery’s doctrinal or disciplinary judgement, but it cannot, without clear juridical authority and operative form, transform hundreds of unnamed priests and an indeterminate number of laypeople into juridically declared excommunicates.
The result is therefore straightforward: the formal decree declares six censures, while the broader formula against SSPX priests and laity lacks demonstrable penal effectiveness. Rome has attempted to create the public impression that the whole SSPX is excommunicated, but it has not successfully accomplished that result in the juridical form it published.
Excommunication cannot be distributed by membership
Even had the explanatory note possessed the required penal form, its collective method would remain incompatible with the personal structure of Catholic penal law. Excommunication is not an institutional adjective but a medicinal censure affecting a human person because of a personally imputable external offence. Canon 1321 presumes innocence and permits punishment only where an external violation is gravely attributable to the individual through malice or culpability. Penal laws are to be interpreted strictly, and the accused must be afforded the rights necessary for defence.⁸
None of this occurred for the Society’s more than seven hundred priests. No individual accusation was communicated to each priest, no opportunity was provided for each man to answer an allegation of schism, no adjudication established what he did, intended or understood, and no individual decree gave reasons in fact and law for finding that each priest personally refused submission to the Roman Pontiff or communion with those subject to him. Institutional membership cannot supply those missing elements.
A priest serving a chapel thousands of miles from Écône did not thereby assist in the episcopal consecrations, and a missionary, school chaplain or seminary professor cannot be made personally guilty of schism merely because he belongs to the same priestly society as the six bishops named in the decree. Nor does accomplice liability cure the defect, because canon 1329 requires the personal participation of identifiable accomplices and, in the case of an automatic penalty, assistance necessary for the commission of the offence. Belonging to the same organisation is not indispensable participation in a particular consecration.⁸
A corporate body cannot receive Holy Communion, form a guilty intention, act under grave fear, mistake a state of necessity or abandon contumacy. An association may be investigated, regulated or deprived of canonical recognition, but excommunication applies to individual natural persons whose external delict and responsibility have been personally established. The DDF has therefore substituted collective classification for individual adjudication and attempted to infer schism from belonging. Its explanatory note may communicate that intention, but it does not make the intention legally effective.
Pagliarani’s appeal to conscience and necessity
Pagliarani’s appeal to conscience does not, by itself, prove the consecrations lawful. Conscience is not an autonomous source of truth, and sincerity cannot transform every prohibited act into an innocent one. Yet the invocation of conscience is canonically relevant because Pagliarani’s stated judgement concerns necessity and an asserted moral duty towards souls, and the Code expressly requires such circumstances to be examined.
Canon 1323 exempts from penalties persons acting by reason of necessity or grave inconvenience in specified circumstances, together with those who without fault mistakenly believe such necessity exists. Canon 1324 addresses cases involving diminished imputability, culpable mistake or a necessity not wholly excusing the act. Where its attenuating circumstances apply, an automatic penalty is not incurred, although a lesser penalty or penance may subsequently be imposed.⁹
These canons do not automatically vindicate the six bishops, but they do make individual examination indispensable. The legal question cannot be exhausted by observing that consecrations occurred without pontifical mandate; it must also be asked whether necessity existed, whether the actors believed it existed, whether such a belief was culpable, and whether the full imputability required for an automatic penalty was present.
Pagliarani had informed Leo XIV that the Society believed episcopal provision necessary for priestly formation and the continuing care of souls. Rome was entitled to dispute that conclusion, but it was not entitled to treat the stated case of conscience and the Code’s provisions concerning necessity as though they did not exist. The published decree does not demonstrate why the asserted necessity, or the potentially excusing and mitigating provisions of canons 1323 and 1324, failed in relation to each individual bishop. It asserts automatic censures and then accompanies them with a note attempting to spread the accusation across an entire priestly body.
That is especially incongruous when Leo XIV, on the same day, praised the capacity to adhere to what one judges true and good “even at great cost”. The Society’s judgement may be disputed, but it plainly claims to be acting upon that principle, accepting condemnation, opprobrium and institutional hardship because it believes the Faith and the needs of souls require episcopal continuity. In Philadelphia, costly fidelity to conscience was celebrated; in Écône, it was condemned without adequate individual examination.
The laity have not been collectively excommunicated
The attempted extension of the decree to the laity is still less effective. The explanatory note incorporates the conditions of a 1996 note concerning formal adherence, which require more than physical presence at an SSPX chapel or practical association with the Society. They require an internal schismatic will and its external manifestation. Intention must be considered, and cases must be judged individually in the competent internal or external forum.¹⁰
The DDF’s own reconciliation procedures likewise concede that the culpability of laypeople “cannot be presumed automatically” and must be evaluated case by case. They distinguish those alleged to adhere formally from those who attend only for liturgical or spiritual reasons and those who, despite knowing of the dispute, do not reject the Magisterium or the authority of the Pope.¹¹ The reference to the 1996 criteria therefore defeats any suggestion of automatic collective excommunication, because a general explanatory note cannot perform the individual adjudication that its own incorporated standard requires.
Attendance is not schism, nor are supporting a school, serving Mass, singing in a choir, teaching catechism, cleaning a chapel or contributing towards its maintenance. Such actions might become evidence in an individual case if accompanied by the deliberate external rejection of papal authority, but they do not themselves constitute that rejection. As Nuntiatoria has already demonstrated in “Attendance Is Not Schism: Rome, the SSPX and the Canonical Rights of the Laity”, the formal decree names six bishops, not every priest, parent, teacher, child and chapel-goer. Rome’s rhetoric cannot substitute for the personal offence and personal imputability required by law.¹²
The contradiction in Rome’s reconciliation policy
The DDF’s own distinctions expose a still deeper contradiction. It acknowledges that Catholics may attend SSPX chapels solely for liturgical or spiritual reasons while continuing to recognise papal and Magisterial authority, and that such people are not automatically culpable of schism. Nevertheless, the reconciliation procedures require even these non-culpable Catholics to decide not to frequent the Society in future.¹¹
Personal guilt cannot be presumed—but separation is demanded even where guilt is absent.
That is not the remission of excommunication but an administrative demand for disengagement imposed upon people whom Rome itself admits may not have committed any offence. The practical object therefore extends beyond penal justice. It is to detach the faithful from the Society’s sacramental and communal life, depriving chapels of congregations, schools of families, and priests of those who seek their ministry.
The Society’s published statistics record more than seven hundred priests, hundreds of seminarians, hundreds of houses and Mass locations, and scores of schools.¹³ Behind those numbers are children receiving catechesis, converts under instruction, couples preparing for marriage, penitents seeking absolution, the sick receiving the last sacraments and families burying their dead. When Rome instructs Catholics to abstain not only from SSPX celebrations but from its “activities”, the pressure reaches schools, retreats, pilgrimages, youth groups, confraternities, charitable works and ordinary Catholic friendships.
A parent must ask whether choosing an SSPX school will be treated as formal adherence; a teacher must wonder whether remaining at the school endangers her standing in the Church; an elderly Catholic may be pressured to abandon the chapel attended for decades; and families may be divided between those who remain and those frightened into departure. This is collective punishment in pastoral effect, even though the attempted collective censure lacks penal effectiveness.
Undeclared censures and the rights of the faithful
Even if, for argument’s sake, an individual SSPX priest had personally incurred an automatic excommunication, the explanatory note has not issued an individual declaration against him. That distinction carries important practical consequences for those unnamed priests, because canon 1335 §2 provides that where a latae sententiae censure has not been declared, the prohibition against administering sacraments, sacramentals or acts of governance is suspended whenever one of the faithful requests them for any just cause.¹⁴
“Any just cause” is deliberately broader than danger of death. A serious spiritual need, illness, family circumstances or the lack of reasonably accessible traditional ministry may constitute a just reason. This argument concerns the unnamed priests whom the explanatory note seeks to characterise collectively; it does not place them in the same external canonical position as the six bishops personally addressed by the formal decree.
The DDF’s defective formula therefore does not produce the universal sacramental paralysis its rhetoric suggests. An unnamed priest has not been individually declared censured merely because a general note describes the Society’s clergy as schismatic. As both the canonical analysis published by InfoVaticana and Kennedy Hall’s “The Formula That Failed” have observed, where recognisable penal form exists, only six persons are named; where the wider body is mentioned, penal form is absent.¹⁵
Confession and marriage: a note cannot silently revoke papal acts
The explanatory note also asserts that confessions heard by SSPX priests and marriages assisted by them are invalid.⁷ That assertion requires far greater juridical precision than the DDF has supplied.
The validity of confession does not depend merely upon whether a priest is excommunicated. It requires priestly ordination and the faculty to absolve. Pope Francis granted SSPX priests that faculty in Misericordia et misera, stating that it would remain until further arrangements were made.¹⁶ Likewise, marriage validity depends upon canonical form and the required delegation. In 2017 the Holy See authorised local ordinaries to delegate priests to receive consent at SSPX marriages and, where necessary, to grant that faculty directly to an SSPX priest.¹⁷
The 2026 explanatory note mentions neither papal provision. It does not expressly identify itself as the “further arrangement” envisaged by Francis, state clearly that the universal faculty for confession has been withdrawn, specify the effective date of withdrawal, or distinguish between marriages celebrated without delegation and those celebrated under faculties granted by a local ordinary.
Canon 21 establishes that, in doubt, the revocation of a previous law is not presumed. That principle does not mean that an explanatory note could never participate in a valid revocation if it possessed specific papal approval, sufficient juridical authority and clear operative language. The difficulty is that the published note does not clearly identify such authority or contain an express and precise revocatory provision.¹⁸ Consequently, the faculty granted by Francis cannot simply be presumed abolished from ambiguous or general language, and marriages celebrated with valid delegation remain valid. Even an express future revocation could not retrospectively invalidate marriages already contracted under lawful delegation.
Canon 144 concerning supplied jurisdiction in common error or positive and probable doubt may also remain relevant in individual cases. The DDF’s categorical declaration does not address it. The note therefore creates sacramental anxiety without providing the precision required to sustain its own assertion, which is particularly perverse because Francis’s concessions were expressly intended to relieve uneasiness of conscience among the faithful. Rome now seeks to disturb those consciences through a legally inadequate formula.
Conscience for the pluralist, coercion for the traditionalist
The moral incoherence is now unmistakable. Leo XIV praised a freedom which “holds sacred the inner sphere of the person” and protects religious communities in giving public expression to their faith. On the same day, Pagliarani told him that the Society had acted from a sincere case of conscience and had received a stone.
As Nuntiatoria observed in “Bread, Stones and the Rock of Peter: The SSPX Answers Rome”, the Society’s letter was not simply a protest against punishment but an accusation that ecclesiastical authority had failed in fatherhood. A father may judge his son wrong, forbid his proposal and impose proportionate correction, but he must still hear the case, answer the asserted necessity and provide a lawful path by which obedience can be rendered without sacrificing the good believed to be at stake.¹⁹
The published decree did not demonstrate why the asserted necessity and the potentially excusing or mitigating provisions of canons 1323 and 1324 failed in relation to each individual. Rome did not establish personal schism among hundreds of priests, individually adjudicate the alleged guilt of laypeople, clearly revoke the papal faculties its explanatory note now appears to contradict, reconcile the Society, or clarify the precise assent demanded of its clergy. Instead, it declared six censures, attached an explanatory note attempting to produce effects the note was incapable of producing, and encouraged the world to believe that priests, faithful, chapels and schools had collectively fallen outside the Church. The following day, Leo XIV accepted a medal for freedom of conscience and religious expression.
The medal as a standard of judgement
The Liberty Medal was awarded for courage and conviction in securing religious liberty and freedom of conscience and expression. Those principles must now become a standard against which Leo XIV’s treatment of Catholics is judged. The issue is neither whether conscience automatically makes the SSPX right—it does not—nor whether the Pope possesses disciplinary authority—he does. The issue is whether ecclesiastical authority may praise conscience rhetorically while refusing to examine it adequately in law; whether it may celebrate the public freedom of religious associations while attempting to infer schism from institutional membership; and whether it may protect pluralist religious communities from coercion while applying pressure intended to fracture Catholic congregations, schools and families.
Canon law requires personal imputability, penal law requires juridical form, canonical equity demands proportion, and pastoral charity demands concern for the innocent. Leo XIV cannot credibly commend religious associations for publicly expressing their beliefs while his administration attempts—unsuccessfully in law but severely in pastoral effect—to make association with traditional Catholic communities perilous. He cannot praise freedom from coercion before America while pressuring non-culpable Catholics to abandon their chapels, nor can he extol conscience abroad while declining to provide an adequate answer to the case of conscience presented before Peter.
On 3 July, Leo XIV accepted a medal celebrating liberty, while Father Pagliarani appealed to conscience and recalled the words of Christ concerning the son who asks his father for bread.
The medal represents the language this pontificate offers to the world. The stone represents what traditional Catholics have received.
The question now is whether Peter will continue to offer stones.
¹ National Constitution Center, “Liberty Medal”; Leo XIV, “Address on the Acceptance of the Liberty Medal of the National Constitution Center”, 3 July 2026.
https://constitutioncenter.org/about/liberty-medal
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/speeches/2026/july/documents/20260703-liberty-medal.html
² Davide Pagliarani, “Letter to the Holy Father regarding the Decree of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith”, Écône, 3 July 2026.
https://fsspx.news/en/news/letter-holy-father-regarding-decree-dicastery-doctrine-faith-59956
³ Leo XIV, “Address on the Acceptance of the Liberty Medal”, especially the passages concerning life, authentic freedom, conscience and public religious expression.
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/speeches/2026/july/documents/20260703-liberty-medal.html
⁴ Second Vatican Council, Dignitatis humanae, nos 1–3.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatis-humanae_en.html
⁵ Leo XIII, Libertas praestantissimum, nos 19–23.
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_20061888_libertas.html
⁶ Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Decree Concerning the Society of St Pius X in Light of the Episcopal Consecrations Celebrated Without a Papal Mandate”, 2 July 2026.
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20260702_decreto-scomunica-fsspx_it.html
⁷ Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Explanatory Note Regarding the Situation Arising from the Episcopal Consecrations Celebrated by the SSPX without a Papal Mandate”, 2 July 2026.
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20260702_nota-esplicativa-fsspx_it.html
⁸ Code of Canon Law, cann. 18, 1321, 1329 and 1331.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib1-cann7-22_en.html
https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib6-cann1311-1363_en.html
⁹ Code of Canon Law, cann. 1323–1324. Canon 1324 §3 excludes the operation of a latae sententiae penalty where the attenuating circumstances listed in §1 are present.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib6-cann1311-1363_en.html
¹⁰ Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, “Explanatory Note on the Excommunication for Schism Incurred by Adherents of the Movement of Bishop Marcel Lefebvre”, 24 August 1996, nos 5–10.
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/intrptxt/documents/rc_pc_intrptxt_doc_19960824_vescovo-lefebvre_it.html
¹¹ Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Procedures for the Reconciliation of Some Lay Faithful Coming from the Society of St Pius X”, 2 July 2026.
https://www.doctrinafidei.va/content/dam/dottrinadellafede/documenti/2026-07-02-Prassi-riconciliazione.pdf
¹² “Attendance Is Not Schism: Rome, the SSPX and the Canonical Rights of the Laity”, Nuntiatoria, 3 July 2026.
https://nuntiatoria.org/2026/07/03/attendance-is-not-schism-rome-the-sspx-and-the-canonical-rights-of-the-laity/
¹³ Society of Saint Pius X, “SSPX Statistics 2025”, figures as of 1 November 2025.
https://fsspx.news/en/news/sspx-statistics-2025-56151
¹⁴ Code of Canon Law, can. 1335 §2.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib6-cann1311-1363_en.html
¹⁵ “The Formula Used by Tucho to Excommunicate Priests and Laypeople Lacks Penal Effectiveness”, InfoVaticana, 2 July 2026; Kennedy Hall, “The Formula That Failed: Why Tucho’s Note Does Not Excommunicate You”, Mere Tradition, 3 July 2026.
https://infovaticana.com/en/2026/07/02/the-formula-used-by-tucho-to-excommunicate-priests-and-laypeople-lacks-penal-effectiveness/
https://meretradition.substack.com/p/the-formula-that-failed-why-tuchos
¹⁶ Francis, Misericordia et misera, no. 12.
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_letters/documents/papa-francesco-lettera-ap_20161120_misericordia-et-misera.html
¹⁷ Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, “Letter to the Ordinaries on the Faculties for the Celebration of Marriages of the Faithful of the Society Saint Pius X”, 27 March 2017.
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2017/04/04/170404d.html
¹⁸ Code of Canon Law, can. 21.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib1-cann7-22_en.html
¹⁹ “Bread, Stones and the Rock of Peter: The SSPX Answers Rome”, Nuntiatoria, 3 July 2026.
https://nuntiatoria.org/2026/07/03/bread-stones-and-the-rock-of-peter-the-sspx-answers-rome/
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Gregory of Tours states that Denis was bishop of the Parisii and was martyred by being beheaded by a sword. The earliest document giving an account of his life and martyrdom, the “Passio SS. Dionysii Rustici et Eleutherii” dates from c. 600, is mistakenly attributed to the poet Venantius Fortunatus, and is legendary.
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