Nature as Idol: Vatican’s Pagan Exhibition Unveiled

Portal VaticanNews reports on an exhibition by Vivian Suter at Rome’s Botanical Garden and Via della Conciliazione 5, inaugurated by Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, where nature is elevated to co-creator status in artistic works. The “Dicastery for Culture and Education” frames this as a challenge to “dominant, sleepwalking categories,” claiming humanity’s “inseparable bond with nature” is foundational to existence. Suter’s canvases—altered by Guatemalan hurricanes, mud, animal footprints, and jungle elements—are presented as a dialogue with the environment, with curator Cristiana Perrella declaring they remind us “we are part of the environment.” The exhibition explicitly ties itself to the ecological themes of Bergoglio’s *Laudato si’* and antipope Leo XIV’s *Dilexi Te*, urging care for “our common home.”

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Pantheism Disguised as Artistic Innovation

Cardinal Mendonça’s assertion that Vivian Suter’s work reveals an “inseparable bond with nature” inverts the ordo creaturarum (order of creation) by erasing the distinction between Creator and creation. Nature is falsely deified as a “co-author” of art, a heresy unequivocally condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors: “There exists no Supreme, all-wise, all-provident Divine Being distinct from the universe” (Proposition 1). Suter’s method—allowing mud, rain, and animal traces to dictate her canvases—parallels the naturalist error denounced by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane: “The Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (Proposition 57), when such “progress” subordinates divine order to chaotic material forces.

The exhibition’s installation, praised for evoking “the lush vibrancy of the tropical landscape,” embodies the modernist heresy of immanentism—replacing supernatural revelation with earthly sentimentality. Pius XII’s Humani Generis (1950) condemned this as “erroneous mysticism,” where nature usurps grace. Nowhere does the article mention God as the author of creation; instead, it reduces humanity to a mere component of an “interconnected world,” negating the imago Dei (image of God) in man.

Ecological Syncretism and the Abandonment of Redemption

The exhibition’s alignment with Bergoglio’s *Laudato si’* and antipope Leo XIV’s *Dilexi Te* exposes its role in advancing religious indifferentism. By framing environmentalism as a quasi-sacramental duty (“care for our common home”), the “Dicastery” reduces the Church’s mission to secular activism—a betrayal of Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas: “The Kingdom of our Savior encompasses all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The article’s silence on Christ’s kingship over creation is deafening; instead, it parrots the naturalistic mantra of an “ecological debt,” implying salvation lies in material reparation rather than the Blood of Christ.

Suter’s claim that she “began painting with nature rather than merely about it” epitomizes the modernist dissolution of objective truth. St. Pius X’s Pascendi Dominici Gregis identified this as the core error of Modernism: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (Proposition 58). When hurricanes and dogs become “co-creators,” art degenerates into idolatry—a regression to pagan animism condemned by the Council of Trent.

The Vatican’s Descent into Cultural Apostasy

The Conciliazione 5 programme—featuring themes like “imprisonment, migration, the environment, and poverty”—exposes the post-conciliar sect’s surrender to Marxist dialectics. By partnering with Sapienza University (a bastion of secular humanism) and showcasing artists who prioritize political narratives over beauty, the Vatican tacitly endorses what Pius XI condemned as “the cult of man” (Divini Redemptoris). The article’s boast of “extending beyond the Vatican’s borders” through art admits the conciliar church’s true goal: not the salvation of souls, but assimilation into the world.

Moreover, the exhibition’s venues—the Botanical Garden and a “24-hour window gallery”—symbolize the neo-church’s fixation on transient spectacle over eternal verities. Contrast this with Pope Pius XII’s exhortation in Mediator Dei: “The Church has no wish to outlaw every new form of art, but must ensure they are subordinated to the divine cult.” Here, art serves not liturgy, but the zeitgeist of ecological panic.

Conclusion: A Call to Reject the Neo-Pagan Agenda

This exhibition is not mere cultural outreach—it is liturgical sabotage. By celebrating nature as divine collaborator, the Vatican apparatus denies creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing) and Original Sin, which corrupted the natural order. True Catholic art, as defined by the pre-1958 Magisterium, directs the soul toward God through harmony, dignity, and transcendence—qualities utterly absent in Suter’s mud-splattered canvases.

As the conciliar sect abandons the Depositum Fidei (Deposit of Faith) for environmentalist pandering, faithful Catholics must recall the words of Pope St. Pius X: “The Church alone is the guardian of truth.” Let us reject this neo-pagan spectacle and cling to the unchanging splendor of Tradition, where creation sings the glory of its Creator—not the heresy of its own divinity.

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Source::
Vivian Suter and her inseparable bond with nature   (vaticannews.va)
Article date: 02.11.2025