The Vatican

The Society of St. Pius X, which opposes the modernizing reforms of the Catholic Church, consecrated bishops without the pope’s consent.

Consecrating a bishop without the pope’s consent amounts to a schismatic act, or an intentional rupture of the unity of the Catholic Church.

Under church law, the consecrations are a schismatic act and incur automatic excommunication for the four bishops and the bishop administering the consecration.

The U.S.-born pope was writing in his first encyclical, a sweeping and eagerly anticipated manifesto.

History’s first U.S.-born pope, whose family history includes both enslaved people and slave owners, delivered the apology in his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), which was released Monday.

Leo hit out at “unscrupulous people and organizations” behind decades of mafia-linked toxic waste dumping.

The visit kicked off a series of day trips that Leo will be making over the next few weeks, up and down the Italian peninsula.

The audience comes at a fraught time between Washington and the Holy See, after weeks of presidential criticism from the first American pontiff.

The president accused the pope of "endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people" for criticizing the Iran war.