‘Catholic manosphere’ clashes with Pope after excommunication of bishop ordained by rogue sect

On the remote Orkney island of Papa Stronsay, a group of traditionalist Catholic monks consecrated a bishop last week, openly defying repeated warnings from the Vatican.

The illicit ceremony by the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, a renegade sect at Golgotha Monastery, marked the latest flashpoint in a confrontation between Pope Leo XIV and the traditionalist Catholic movement.

The new bishop, Fr Michael Mary, was promptly declared guilty of an “act of schism” and excommunicated by the Vatican. But in a defiant sermon last week, Mary declared that he required no mandate from Rome, “because there is no pope”.

The rift stretches far beyond an isolated monastery in Scotland. It reaches into one of the fastest-growing currents in western Catholicism, where a new generation of conservative believers has embraced the Latin Mass, traditional family life and an increasingly influential online counterculture. Welcome to the “Catholic manosphere”.

At the centre of the movement stands the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), the largest and most influential traditionalist order. The group has been at loggerheads with Rome since its foundation in 1970 and now threatens the first crisis of Leo’s papacy.

Ignoring pleas from the Vatican, more than 15,000 SSPX followers gathered in the Swiss village of Écône last month to see four bishops ordained without papal consent.

Leo, who had condemned the ceremony as a “sin of extreme gravity”, pleading with SSPX “with all my heart” to “turn back”, promptly excommunicated all Catholics who “adhere formally” to the movement. It was the toughest Vatican action against the group in decades.

In the eyes of its critics, SSPX is steeped in blood and hatred. The crowd in Écône included members of Italian neofascist parties, highlighting far-right political ties that have underpinned the movement for decades.

The group’s founder, French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, was an enthusiastic supporter of the pro-Nazi Vichy regime during the Second World War in France, where he later backed Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, and was also a vocal champion of rightwing military dictatorships, from Spain to South America, until his death in 1991.

SSPX has consistently been accused of antisemitism. Lefebvre founded the movement in protest at reforms by Pope John XXIII in the early 1960s, including conciliatory moves towards Judaism. The British bishop Richard Williamson was expelled from the society in 2012 after making statements denying the Holocaust.

The French war criminal Paul Touvier, indicted for collaborating with the Gestapo and sending Jewish people in Lyon to Nazi death camps, was found hiding in an SSPX monastery in Nice in 1989.

Representatives of the group have perpetuated a myth that Jews murder Christian children and use their blood in religious rituals.

Former followers have compared SSPX to a cult. Women in some communities were forbidden from wearing trousers, while boys had their heads shaved for transgressions such as talking to girls. The group places particular emphasis on the blood of Christ and reveres blood-stained relics of favoured saints.

SSPX has about 600,000 followers internationally, a fraction of the world’s 1.4 billion-plus Catholics. But the group has vocal support and has made a concerted effort to expand, capitalising on the global resurgence of the political right.

On his appointment last year, Leo pledged to unite a divided church. But like his predecessor, Francis, the new pope has swiftly been dragged into clashes with conservatives over issues ranging from immigration to the environment.

To traditionalists, the Pope’s move to excommunicate SSPX and Mary at Golgotha was a declaration of war on conservative Catholicism. The Vatican insists it is more fundamental: an attempt to stop the emergence of a parallel church.

Traditionalist Catholicism has developed its own 21st-century counterculture. Figures such as Kennedy Hall, a Canadian podcaster and author, move effortlessly between discussions of weightlifting, fatherhood and the Latin mass, presenting them as parts of the same project to recover masculine authority.

Around these influencers, an online ecosystem has emerged, blending traditional theology with self-improvement, pronatalism and a resistance to feminism.

To its critics, the movement is defined by rigid gender roles, patriarchal family structures and hostility to modern liberal values. To its supporters, it represents one of the few parts of western Christianity still confident enough to resist an increasingly secular culture.

Speaking to The Observer, a senior Vatican official described its appeal as “a cultural refuge from modernity”, attracting people with a “siege mentality” who consciously define themselves against the surrounding world.

“You are part of a club… It appeals to those who don’t like progressive views… It’s a rejection of modern liberal values,” the official said.

SSPX has gained traction in the US, where it claims to have about 100 churches and 25,000 followers, including allies within Donald Trump’s Maga movement. The traditionalist revival has spawned a raft of religious orders such as the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, as well as lay groups, home-schooling networks and online influencers.

Ben Harnwell, international editor of War Room, the podcast hosted by former Trump adviser and Maga “godfather” Steve Bannon, describes the traditionalist movement as “a convoy” of loosely connected conservative communities heading in the same direction.

“The SSPX is clearly, indisputably the flagship of that convoy movement, of that armada,” said Harnwell. “Because it is so large, it cannot be ignored or dismissed as just a few eccentric malcontents.”

Successive popes tried for decades to keep that flagship within the Catholic fleet, but Rome has always played a long game, assuming the movement would eventually return to the flock or fade away. But the ceremony in Écône last month was a body blow to any hopes of reconciliation.

Harnwell said many “moderate conservatives” had hoped Leo would be more conciliatory than Francis. Instead, the excommunication confirmed what “more militant traditionalists” had feared all along. “We’d been saying since day one not to trust Leo… he’s every bit as modernist as Francis,” he said.

The backlash against Leo is fast gaining wider political momentum. The US vice-president, JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, has emerged as an influential figure in the post-liberal conservative movement, fusing religious belief with hardline populist politics.

Vance clashed with Leo over his criticism of the Iran War earlier this year and prompted outrage when he warned the Pope to “be careful when he talks about matters of theology”. The tech billionaire Peter Thiel, one of Vance’s main backers, has compared Leo to the antichrist.

SSPX and its supporters also accuse the Vatican of a double standard. They argue that Rome has shown greater flexibility in negotiations with Beijing over appointing bishops in China than with Catholics who, they argue, are trying to preserve the church’s historical faith.

Yet not all conservatives support the SSPX’s defiance. John Yep, chief executive of Catholics for Catholics, a US-based conservative advocacy group, said the dispute was “one of the first big tests” of Leo’s papacy.

He sympathised with SSPX, he said, but the society had been wrong to consecrate bishops without Rome’s approval.

“Their reasons do not justify direct disobedience on such a high level,” said Yep, though he acknowledged that many conservatives are still uncertain where Leo intends to lead the church.

Inside the Vatican, officials insist Leo’s intentions have been widely misunderstood. The Pope, they insist, is not rejecting conservative Catholicism but defining its limits.

Antonio Spadaro, a senior official at the Holy See’s dicastery of culture and education, argued that Leo has moved to reassure conservatives on doctrine and struck a careful balance on the role of female priests but quietly appointed women to senior administrative posts, expanding their authority without meddling with Catholic teaching.

Catholics remain free to celebrate the Latin mass, reject modernity and hold deeply conservative views on family life, Spadaro said. What they cannot do is appoint their own bishops while claiming to belong to the Catholic church.

The dispute is “no longer a quarrel about Latin and liturgy”, Spadaro said. It is about “a rival church”.