From August 19-21, 2025, eight thousand pilgrims from forty-four different countries participated in the official Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) Pilgrimage to Rome during this Jubilee Year. Among the participants were two SSXP bishops and some seven hundred priests, religious men, and women. Video taken from the top of Michelangelo’s dome during the grand entrance through the Holy Doors shows thousands of SSPX priests and faithful singing the Nicene Credo in one voice while processing to the altar of the Holy Father.
No doubt a few naysayers will be disposed to criticize the SSPX for this public demonstration of loyal opposition. Such an attitude is misguided and myopic, and here is why: From the very beginning, the SSPX has consistently defended themselves against the charge (and mortal sin!) of Schism. To refuse to have any association with 1.5 billion Catholics worldwide would indeed suggest a schismatic mentality. And since the SSPX is not in Schism, they have every right to exercise their right as Catholics to take part in the life of the Church, including pilgrimages through the Holy Doors on the occasion of a Jubilee Year. In fact, they should insist on that right!
So, making a public pilgrimage to the Holy City is in line with the spirit of Archbishop Lefebvre himself, who maintained to the moment of his death in 1991 that he had never left the Church, never changed anything, nor introduced something new. His motto was Tradidi quod et accepi (I passed on what I received), and so to his dying breath he had insisted that he was a priest of the Catholic Church doing what he had been trained to do in seminary—to preach and defend the Traditional Catholic Faith of Our Fathers.
As a lifelong Traditional Catholic who is not SSPX, I would argue that this Pilgrimage to the Eternal City should be celebrated because it makes it clear to the enemies of Tradition that the spiritual sons of Archbishop Lefebvre are also faithful sons of the Church.
Now, to be clear, had the SSPX decided to participate in the Synod on Synodality or some Pachamama ritual then, yes, that would represent false compromise and a betrayal of the spirit of Archbishop Lefebvre. But they did not do this and, instead, exercised their right as loyal sons of the Church to take advantage of the graces (and indulgences) offered during a Jubilee Year.
And since the Society has been waiting for sixty years for the Vatican to rediscover her traditional moorings, what better opportunity than a Jubilee Year and under a new pope to drive the point home once again: “We have changed nothing. We are not schismatic. We only seek to faithfully transmit what we have received.”
As a lifelong Traditional Catholic who is not SSPX, I would argue that this Pilgrimage to the Eternal City should be celebrated because it makes it clear to the enemies of Tradition that the spiritual sons of Archbishop Lefebvre are also faithful sons of the Church. They obviously have no wish to start their own Church or crown their own pope, but rather, they have every intention to defend the Traditions of the Catholic Faith until this unprecedented crisis in the Church subsides. Until then, they are the loyal opposition, and nobody gets to tell them that they are not Roman Catholics.
Yes, but do they reject Vatican II? Perhaps this SSPX Pilgrimage to Rome can finally put an end to that stale canard, which is the last refuge of small-minded critics with an obvious ax to grind. I was asked about this at a recent conference in Kenya (Africa), and here was my response:
