Breakaway Catholic sect in Kansas defies Vatican in serious test for Pope Leo
ST. MARYS, Kan. - The prayers were in Latin. The women and girls wore veils. And yet, as they knelt and accepted Communion on a blazing prairie summer day, the dozens of faithful Catholics were committing a sin in the eyes of the pope.
Traditionalist Catholics have been coming to this tiny town 90 miles west of Kansas City for more than 40 years, drawn to the teachings of the global Society of St. Pius X, which embraces the Latin Mass and rejects other modernist changes of the Catholic Church. Over time, members of SSPX, who favor large families and oppose boys and girls swimming together, have dominated the life of St. Marys, culminating three years ago when the towering Immaculata church opened with its 24-karat gold-plated statue of the Virgin Mary and bells that ring out regularly over the Flint Hills.
Then, on July 2, the Vatican issued an edict that effectively expelled members of the congregation and the other 600,000 worldwide adherents of SSPX from the church. The excommunication of the sect, issued after its leadership in Switzerland improperly consecrated four bishops, made everything happening inside this church since then a violation of Catholic law.
W. Shawn McKnight, the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, said that the archdiocese is no longer affiliated with SSPX and that continuing to worship there is sinful.
“The faithful should be aware that, as the Holy See has explained, the ministry exercised by the Society is not legitimate in the life of the Church: The sacraments celebrated by its ministers are illicit,” the archbishop said. “… Such participation is not merely discouraged but is gravely contrary to the unity of the Church.”
Now the 5,000 SSPX members in St. Marys - the largest SSPX group in the United States - face a choice. Should they continue to worship in defiance of the Vatican, or shift to the mainstream Catholic church a few blocks away?
Many remain defiant. Others are considering pulling their kids out of the SSPX school or moving to other conservative churches in the area.
“It’s unfortunate. It’s sad it’s happened, but it won’t change anything,” church member Daniel Gillman, 37, a history teacher, said after a weekday service. “It’s okay to disobey a lower rule in service of a higher one.”
The excommunication of SSPX marks the most serious internal challenge yet for Pope Leo XIV, the first U.S.-born pope, who has defined his papacy around “unity” and healing ideological divisions within the church that deepened during the tenure of his predecessor, Pope Francis.
He has faced a number of obstacles: a vocal minority of conservative Catholics in the U.S. who said they felt marginalized by Francis; criticism from the Trump administration, which views Leo as overtly political for his criticism of the Iran war and his support for immigrants; and a movement of devout younger Catholics seeking more traditional modes of worship, such as the older Latin Mass restricted by the Vatican.
Some Catholics have criticized Leo for declining to meet with the leaders of SSPX, especially because he has promised to dialogue with the church’s more conservative members. But there was widespread understanding even among conservative Catholics that excommunication was an almost unavoidable response after SSPX consecrated the four forbidden bishops.
The Rev. Antonio Spadaro, undersecretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, said the Holy See was putting an end to the decades-long dispute with SSPX.
“For years one could belong to the [SSPX] and live in a canonical twilight - neither fully inside nor formally outside, benefiting from Rome’s patience while contesting Rome’s authority,” he said. “The decree closes that twilight. It says, with a clarity that is itself a form of charity, that communion is not a mood, and that one cannot keep the name ‘Catholic’ while raising a separate altar and calling it fidelity.”
In St. Marys, a photo of Pope Leo is still displayed prominently in the entryway of the 1,500-seat Immaculata church. Gillman said the congregation prays for the pope at every service - three daily Masses and four on Sundays, two of which are standing room only.
He compared the Holy See’s actions to that of a senile relative.
“It’s distressing, but in the same sense, if your father is off his rocker, you have to ignore what he says because he’s not in his own mind.”
James Vogel, director of communications for the U.S. District of the Society of St. Pius X, said the society had filed a “recourse” to the Vatican’s excommunication ruling Monday, which the society said effectively should pause the judgment as the appeal process moves forward.
“This is not a moment of glee. We’re not happy this is the way it played out,” he said. “This recourse is a sign we consider ourselves loyal sons of the church.”
The schism, the most serious in the church since the late 19th century, is rooted in a rebellion by a French archbishop, Marcel Lefebvre, who in 1970 led a group of traditionalists outraged by the modernization of the church during the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s. They named the group of priests after an early-20th-century pontiff, Pius X, who was a staunch opponent of theological modernization.
They opposed changes to the liturgy meant to bring the clergy closer to their flock - moving toward a service said in local languages, where the priest faced his congregation as opposed to having his back to it.
More broadly, Lefebvre objected to the church’s new outreach to other religions. For him, Catholicism was the “one, true faith” and the only path to heaven. That gap would widen during Pope Francis’s years, when Francis affirmed, among other things, that Muslims and Catholics both worship “one living and merciful God.”
SSPX followers embrace Lefebvre’s thinking today.
“‘No one comes to the Father but through me,’” said Mark Moser, 69, a kitchen designer who lives across the street from the church, quoting the Bible verse John 14:6. “We’re going off the word of God. He said it. There’s no feeling involved. It is what it is.”
In 1988 - in an act similar to what transpired in Switzerland on July 1 - Lefebvre defied the Vatican by consecrating four bishops, including one later expelled for denying the Holocaust. He and the other clerics were swiftly excommunicated. Pope Benedict XVI later reversed this edict, allowing the rebels back into the fold.
Moser said that many in St. Marys had already made their peace with the ongoing rift with the Vatican because they’ve been living with it for a long time. Others expressed doubts about the extremity of SSPX’s theology and have turned away.
Some who have left and joined traditional Catholic churches were told their marriages were invalid, former members said.
In 1978, Lefebvre purchased a former Jesuit mission property in St. Marys and began building a school, now a K-12 institution with 900 students, and reopened the shuttered Jesuit college in 1981. The community of St. Marys - a sleepy burg that at the time had only 1,800 residents - began to change.
Conservative Catholics like Moser from around the country began moving in, with stricter values that often clashed with locals. The movement eschewed birth control, and it is not uncommon to see families with 10 or more children riding around town in large passenger vans. Locals recalled checking out Hardy Boys books from the library only to discover previous readers had taken markers to the boys’ shorts and tank tops, turning them into more modest garb.
“It was pretty much just a contentious relationship,” said Kathleen Rankin, a nurse in the Kansas City area who grew up in St. Marys and whose father was city manager during that era.
“The whole feeling was that they were coming to take over the town and make it their town,” she said. “When they first got there they would tell us we were all going to hell.”
In fact, SSPX members did come to dominate the city commission, where they pushed for closure of the town’s popular swimming pool - deemed too costly to maintain - after initially requiring SSPX boys and girls to swim at separate times. They also threatened the regional library branch with closure if librarians did not remove certain LGBTQ-themed books from the shelves.
Church members note that they bought up moribund businesses downtown and helped turn it into a thriving hub - with a religious bookstore, general store and cafe - as the St. Marys population grew to more than 2,700, a rare rural Kansas community that’s growing, not shrinking.
“If you didn’t know we are the ‘scary cult,’” Gillman said mockingly, “it’s classic Americana.”
SSPX says it has more than 25,000 adherents in the U.S., including outposts in Virginia, Idaho, Kentucky and Platte City, Missouri, the U.S. headquarters. Though small, SSPX communities have had an outsize influence as they operate as “complete traditionalist Catholic ecosystems, with schools, chapels, youth groups, retreat houses and businesses serving families committed,” said R. Andrew Chesnut, who heads the Catholic studies department at Virginia Commonwealth University.
As in mainstream Catholic churches, SSPX in St. Marys has also dealt with allegations of misconduct by its priests.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which began investigating sexual abuse allegations in a number of Catholic churches, including SSPX, in 2019, recently wrapped up an inquiry into SSPX priests in St. Marys and referred one case to the state attorney general’s office that is still under review, a spokesman for the attorney general said.
Vogel said that he could not comment on the specifics of the case but that the church has a policy of cooperating with law enforcement and child protective services investigations and supports the victims of child sexual abuse.
One recent day in the church’s quiet basement, Cecelia Bryan, a church member and mother of 11, was teaching a sewing camp, helping one girl make a long skirt in gingham trimmed with cherries.
“It’s sad what we can’t be treated like a good father would treat their children,” Bryan said. “We’re not doing anything wrong.”
She said she would continue attending the church there regardless of what happened in Rome.
“I’m not a theologian or a canon lawyer,” she said, “This is where I find peace of soul.”
Faiola reported from Rome. Michelle Boorstein and Razzan Nakhlawi in Washington and Stefano Pitrelli in Rome contributed to this report.