Pope Francis has granted permission for priests of the traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X to celebrate valid marriages, in another sign that the quasi-schismatic group are on the verge of being reconciled back into the Church. In a ruling approved by Francis, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has said that SSPX clergy can celebrate wedding liturgies providing they are assisted by a priest from the local diocese who would act as a witness to the vows. However, if there are no diocesan priests available the CDF states that a priest of the society can conduct the ceremony on his own.

The latest move, authored by Cardinal Gerhard Muller and by Arcbishop Guido Pozzo, who is in charge of the Vatican body tasked with reconciling the group back into the Church, states it is part of the process of “institu-tional regularisation” of the SSPX. Significantly, the state-ment says the group is in a “canonical irregular” situation” only “for the time being.”
Known as the Lefebvrists after their founder- a French missionary Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre -the society broke away from the Church in protest at the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

This split occurred definitively when Archbishop Lefebvre ordained four bishops for the society without Holy See approval.

Today the group, which celebrate the sacraments solely according to the old rite, remain in a sort of canonical limbo: al-though excommunicated Arch-bishop Lefebvre’s ordinations of his bishops were valid because he himself was a legitimate bishop.