"[4] The FSSP consists of priests and seminarians who intend to pursue the goal of Christian perfection according to a specific charism, which is to offer the Mass and other sacraments according to the Roman Rite as it existed before the liturgical reforms that followed the Second Vatican Council.

[7] That was abrogated by the 2021 motu proprio Traditionis custodes that emphasized deference towards the Mass of Paul VI and added restrictions to which clergy could perform the Roman Rite according to the pre-Vatican II form.

[8][9] On 4 February 2022, two priests of the fraternity were received by Pope Francis in private audience, who subsequently issued a decree confirming that the FSSP could continue to celebrate the traditional liturgy publicly in their own churches or oratories, or anywhere else with the consent of the local ordinary.

[10][11] The decree was dated 11 February 2022, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and coincidentally the same day that the FSSP consecrated themselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary after a nine-day novena.

For the honour and glory of the holy Catholic Church, for the consolation of the much troubled faithful, and for the peace of their conscience, the undersigned, members until now of the Fraternity of Saint Pius X, declare with profound regret over the illicit consecration of bishops on 30 June [1988] that they have remained within the Catholic Church as pars sanior of this same Fraternity, and that they have but one desire: to be able to live as a religious society in this Church and place themselves at her service under the authority, of course, of the Roman Pontiff, her supreme head.The FSSP was established on July 18, 1988, at the Abbey of Hauterive, Switzerland, by twelve priests and twenty seminarians, led by Josef Bisig, all of whom had formerly belonged to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's Society of Saint Pius X; they were unwilling to follow that movement into what the Congregation for Bishops and Pope John Paul II declared to be a schismatic act and grounds for excommunication latae sententiae due to the consecration of four bishops without a papal mandate.

As of November 2023[update], the fraternity included 569 members: 368 priests, 22 deacons, and 179 non-deacon seminarians in 146 dioceses spread among Australia, Austria, Benin, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, New Zealand, Poland, Switzerland, the United States, and Vietnam.

In 2015, the fraternity established in Guadalajara, Mexico, Casa Cristo Rey, an apostolate which it plans to develop into a house of formation for first-year seminarians for native Spanish-speaking postulants.