ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday begged a breakaway group of traditionalist Catholics to call off its plan to consecrate new bishops without his consent, calling the move a schismatic act and a “sin of extreme gravity.”
“I plead with you and ask you with all my heart: please turn back!” Leo wrote in a letter to the Rev. Davide Pagliarani, the superior of the Society of St. Pius X.
Leo issued the last-ditch appeal a day before the society plans to consecrate four new bishops at its seminary in Econe, Switzerland. Under church law, the consecrations constitute a schismatic act, or an intentional rupture of the unity of the Catholic Church, and incur automatic excommunication for the four bishops and the bishop administering the consecration.
In response to the pope’s letter, Marc-André Mabillard, media manager for the society, expressed “great sadness to not be understood by our leader,” and added: “We are changing absolutely nothing in our plans.”
Asked by phone about the prospect of excommunication, Mabillard said: “We don’t fear it. It pains us immensely, but we believe that the good we seek is greater than the pain that will be inflicted upon us.”
The ceremony poses the first major crisis for the American pope, who has stressed the need for church unity since the start of his pontificate. He has worked especially hard to heal tensions with traditionalist Catholics who prefer the old Latin Mass, that worsened in some ways during the Pope Francis pontificate.
The society was founded in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council. Among other things, the council revolutionized the Catholic Church’s relations with other religions and the laity, and allowed Mass to be celebrated in vernacular languages rather than Latin.
Its members celebrate the ancient Latin Mass and have accused the modern church of being rife with heresies and errors. The society insists that only the SSPX is upholding the true faith of Christ and has justified the consecrations, citing a “state of necessity” to minister to its faithful.
In 1988, SSPX founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal consent. The Vatican promptly excommunicated Lefebvre and the four other bishops, and the group today still has no legal status in the church.
The Vatican in 2009 lifted those original excommunications as part of its outreach to try to bring the group back under its wing. But the Vatican has warned that a similar fate awaits the new bishops if Wednesday's consecrations go ahead.
In his letter, Leo repeated the Vatican's offer of dialogue and said that going through with the consecrations would be counterproductive for the SSPX faithful.
“I urge you to consider carefully the spiritual good of the faithful, because the schismatic act you are about to undertake would deprive them of the licit, and in some cases, even valid reception of the sacraments,” he wrote.
Despite the original 1988 schismatic act, the group has continued to grow and today poses a threat to the Holy See as a parallel, ultra-Catholic, pre-Vatican II church. The SSPX counts two bishops, 751 priests, 264 seminarians, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates and 250 religious sisters representing 50 nationalities, according to SSPX statistics.
Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
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Pope Leo XIV holds his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
MONACO (AP) — Monaco ’s chief prosecutor said Tuesday that the suspect who placed an explosive device that injured three people, including a reported Ukrainian tycoon, acted alone and remains at large.
Police in the principality have opened an attempted murder investigation into Monday night's incident but aren’t qualifying it as a terrorism investigation, Prosecutor Stéphane Thibault told reporters. The motive remains unclear.
One of the three injured is a woman in life-threatening condition, he said. A man is no longer in life-threatening condition while a child's life isn’t in danger, he said. He didn’t provide their identities.
The suspect left immediately after the incident on foot, using stairs to get away via a small street to the neighboring French town of Beausoleil, according to surveillance footage.
In a picture captured from CCTV cameras and published by French media, the suspect can be seen in a street wearing a black jacket, light-colored pants, white shoes and a black hat that partly conceals his face.
Media reports identified Ukrainian construction tycoon Vadym Yermolaiev as being among the injured. Ukrainian news site Ukrainska Pravda said he was targeted by Ukrainian sanctions in 2023 for ties to Russia.
The injured woman is being treated at a hospital in Nice, Christophe Mirmand, the minister of state for Monaco, told French news broadcaster LCI on Tuesday. Her partner and a 13-year-old child suffered less severe injuries but remain in the hospital, he added.
The explosion occurred around 9 p.m. on Monday at the entrance of a residence near the French border.
The three victims were “apparently returning home peacefully” in the early evening, according to surveillance footage, Mirmand said. “They were caught in the explosion as they crossed the threshold of their apartment building,” he said.
The victims are “regular” residents of Monaco, but authorities do not yet know whether the family had been threatened in the past, Mirmand said.
“It appears that the family was specifically targeted,” he emphasized, noting that the alleged perpetrator “had walked around the area several times while waiting for the victims,” according to surveillance footage.
The attack has shocked the elite principality on the Mediterranean Coast. Monaco’s Prince Albert II described it as “an odious act” and said all the country's services were mobilized to ensure security.
Yermolaiev, a Ukrainian-born businessman originally from the city of Dnipro, built his fortune through the Alef Group, a diversified holding with interests including commercial real estate, manufacturing and agriculture. He became one of the country’s best-known property developers, leading projects that reshaped parts of Dnipro’s city center, and has regularly appeared in rankings of Ukraine’s wealthiest businesspeople.
In an interview with Forbes Ukraine, Yermolaiev said he renounced his Ukrainian citizenship and became a Cypriot citizen in 2017.
In December 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy imposed sanctions on Yermolaiev as part of a broader package targeting individuals and companies Kyiv said had business links to Russia or Russian-occupied territories.
A coastal playground for the rich and famous, Monaco is renowned as much for its tax-friendly incentives and Formula 1 Grand Prix as its glamorous royal family. The small principality is widely regarded as one of the safest places in the world, including through its extensive surveillance network composed of thousands of CCTV cameras covering most public spaces.
Monaco’s population of 38,000 is multinational, with only a fifth of the population actually citizens of the principality.
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AP journalist Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to the story.
A view of the entrance to the residential building where an explosive device seriously injured three people in Monaco, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
A view of the residential building where an explosive device seriously injured three people in Monaco, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
Investigators examine the scene at the residential building where an explosive device seriously injured three people a day earlier in Monaco, Tuesday, June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
A police officer guards in a street in Monaco, Tuesday, June 30, 2026, a day after an explosive device seriously injured three people at a residential building in Monaco. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
FILE - A luxury car drives along Monaco Harbor, Nov. 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole, File)
