The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the guidelines on Thursday, the same day the DDF formally declared the bishops and clergy of the breakaway traditionalist order to be in schism and...

The declaration came just one day after the group illicitly consecrated four bishops in defiance of warnings from Vatican officials and the pope himself.

"[E]piscopal ordinations performed without a papal mandate break the unity of the Church and incur very specific sanctions,” Parolin said, “fundamentally, excommunication.”