The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) has established, effective 1 July 2026, a new procedure for the reconciliation of priests and certain lay faithful coming from the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (FSSPX). The document, consisting of two separate texts—one for priests and another for the laity—includes as annexes a Professio fidei and a Formula adhaesionis that those concerned must date and sign.
The date of entry into force coincides with that of the episcopal consecrations celebrated by the Fraternity in Écône without a pontifical mandate, on the past 1 July.
The procedure envisaged for priests
According to the text, the priest who decides to leave the FSSPX, “willing to accept the Second Vatican Council and the legitimacy of the novus ordo Missae, although attached to the usus antiquior,” must fulfil five steps: find an Ordinary (diocesan bishop or major superior of a clerical institute of pontifical right) willing to receive him ad experimentum; write in his own hand a letter to the Holy Father presenting himself and requesting the remission of any censures he may have incurred; attach the certificate of priestly ordination; attach the signed Professio fidei and Formula adhaesionis; and have the Ordinary himself forward the documentation to the Dicastery, declaring his willingness to receive him.
The document covers both those ordained “by an excommunicated or irregular bishop” and those who, validly and licitly ordained, later joined the Fraternity.
Once the documentation is received, the DDF will draft the Rescript remitting the censures, signed by the Prefect and by the Secretary of the Doctrinal Section, and will send it to the Ordinary authorising him to receive the priest for a probationary period “of at least one year and not more than three,” at the end of which incardination may proceed. If the probationary period does not conclude successfully, the Ordinary must return the Rescript to the Dicastery, together with a report on the reasons for non-incardination.
The laity: imputability assessed case by case
The second text addresses “the question of imputability or degree of subjective responsibility” of the lay faithful who have formally adhered to the FSSPX or who frequent its chapels and request entry into full communion with the Catholic Church. The Dicastery warns that the imposition of a penalty on these laypeople “cannot be presumed automatically, but must be assessed case by case,” since imputability requires “full knowledge and deliberate consent.”
As examples of proven imputability, the document mentions two situations: laypeople who belong to the Third Order of the FSSPX and those who habitually participate in its celebrations “formally sharing its doctrinal positions.”
By contrast, those who have frequented the Fraternity “only for liturgical or spiritual reasons” are not considered imputable, nor are those who, although aware of the tensions with the Holy See, “do not reject the Magisterium or the authority of the Roman Pontiff.”
For the first two situations, the reconciliation procedure consists in presenting the signed Professio fidei and Formula adhaesionis to the local Ordinary. The Ordinary will receive them “at the times and in the manner he deems most appropriate,” and may, if suitably adapted, use the Rite of admission to full communion with the Catholic Church for those already validly baptised. For the other two situations, “it will suffice to approach a priest in full communion, with the decision not to frequent the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X in the future.”
The annexes: profession of faith and formula of adherence
The Professio fidei (Annex A) reproduces the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and the three customary clauses of the 1989 profession of faith: faith in what has been divinely revealed, firm acceptance of definitive teachings on faith and morals, and the “religious assent of will and intellect” to non-definitive authentic magisterial teachings.
The Formula adhaesionis (Annex B) requires a promise of fidelity to the Catholic Church and to the Roman Pontiff, abstaining “from any public statement” contrary to his person or his Magisterium (citing canons 1373 and 1365); acceptance of the doctrine of n. 25 of the dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium on the Magisterium and the adherence due to it; the obligation, with regard to the doctrines of the Second Vatican Council or subsequent liturgical and canonical reforms “that may seem difficult to reconcile with previous declarations of the Magisterium,” to follow “a positive line of interpretation under the guidance of the Magisterium”; a declaration accepting the validity of the Sacrifice of the Mass and of the sacraments celebrated according to the typical editions of the liturgical books promulgated by Paul VI and John Paul II; and a promise of adherence to the common discipline of the Church, first and foremost the 1983 Code of Canon Law.
A change of cycle
The new procedure represents a hardening compared with the line followed in recent decades. Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of the four bishops consecrated in 1988 in 2009, and Francis granted the priests of the Fraternity faculties to validly hear confessions (2015, extended indefinitely in Misericordia et misera) and a channel for delegation in marriages (2017). The new document, which expressly contemplates the existence of censures to be remitted both in priests and in certain laypeople, is published in the immediate context following the episcopal consecrations in Écône, carried out without a pontifical mandate.