Tensions between the society and the Holy See reached their height in 1988 with the Écône consecrations: Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without the Apostolic Mandate and against a personal warning by Pope John Paul II, resulting in Rome declaring that the bishops who consecrated or were consecrated had incurred latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication. There are a number of organisations derived from the SSPX: most notably the Society of Saint Pius V (SSPV), a group mostly in the United States and the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), which was made a society of apostolic life under Pope John Paul II in 1988.

The present Superior General of the society is the Reverend Davide Pagliarani, who succeeded Bishop Bernard Fellay in 2018. The society is named after Pope Pius X, whose anti- Modernist stance the society stresses, retaining the Tridentine Mass and pre-Vatican II liturgical books in Latin for the other sacraments. In 2022, the Society reached over 700 priestly members. The Society was initially established as a pious union of the Catholic Church with the permission of François Charrière, the Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg in Switzerland. The Society of Saint Pius X ( SSPX) ( Latin: Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Pii X FSSPX) is an international fraternity of traditionalist Catholic priests founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a leading traditionalist voice at the Second Vatican Council with the Coetus Internationalis Patrum, and Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers until 1968.

Sspx superior general