Catholic News Agency reports that on November 15, 2025, the usurper of the Apostolic Palace (“Pope” Leo XIV) addressed filmmakers including Spike Lee and Cate Blanchett, claiming cinema expresses humanity’s “longing for infinity” and calling it a “workshop of hope.” The article describes this “pontiff” praising films like The Sound of Music and Life Is Beautiful while urging artists to make “cinema an art of the Spirit.” The report frames this as the Vatican endorsing cinematic art as a vehicle for spiritual exploration, with “Vatican News” ironically quoting Bergoglio’s predecessor Paul VI about the Church’s “friendship” with artists.
Naturalism Replaces Supernatural Faith
The address constitutes pure religious indifferentism, reducing the sensus divinitatis (innate sense of the divine) to vague artistic sentiment. When the antipope declares cinema helps people “examine the world as if for the first time” and “rediscover… hope essential for humanity,” he substitutes the theological virtue of hope (Spes) with emotional catharsis. Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas (1925) explicitly condemns such naturalism: “When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony.” The article’s complete omission of Christ the King as the sole source of hope reveals its apostate foundation.
Cinematic Experience as Counterfeit Liturgy
The description of cinema as a threshold where “vision becomes sharper, the heart opens up” mimics sacred language while evacuating it of meaning. Compare this to the Catechism of the Council of Trent on actual churches: “The faithful are to consider that things which are set apart for divine worship by the blessing and ceremony of the Church are holy and august.” By claiming darkened theaters are “beating hearts of our communities,” the antipope inverts St. Pius X’s warning in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) against Modernists who “make all consist in a certain religious sense derived from man’s needs.”
“I find comfort in the thought that cinema is not just moving pictures; it sets hope in motion!”
This blasphemous parallel to Eucharistic transformation (“fiat motus spei” instead of “fiat panis corpus”) exposes the talk’s core heresy. True hope comes solely through sanctifying grace, not aesthetic stimulation. The 1917 Code of Canon Law (Canon 1258) forbade Catholics from participating in non-Catholic worship precisely to avoid such syncretism.
Omission of the Church’s Judgmental Office
Notably absent is any reference to the Church’s munus regale (kingly office) to judge artistic works by divine law. Pope Leo XIII’s Immortale Dei (1885) states: “The Church has the right to require that the civil power shall help her in training the people to whatever pertains to the worship of God.” Instead, the antipope encourages filmmakers to “confront the world’s wounds” without defining sin or redemption. This follows the condemned modernist error in Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (1864): “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55).
Algorithmic Age as Scapegoat for Apostasy
The warning against “algorithmic logic” thinly veils contempt for doctrinal certainty. When the address praises films that “do not merely console, but challenge,” it adopts the very relativism denounced in St. Pius X’s Lamentabili Sane (1907), which condemned the proposition that “Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him” (Error 58). The article’s celebration of “difference when evocative” directly contradicts Vatican I’s definition of dogma: “The meaning of Sacred Dogmas… must always be retained which Holy Mother Church has once declared” (Dei Filius, Ch.4).
The meeting’s culmination—Spike Lee presenting a basketball jersey—epitomizes the desacralization. As the False Fatima Apparitions document notes, Masonic operations use “spectacular acts” to divert from apostasy. Here, cinematic spectacle becomes the new sacramental, replacing the Mass as the “intersection of desires.” True Catholics must heed Pius XI’s command in Quas Primas: “Rulers of nations… if they wish to preserve authority… must govern with Christ.” This Vatican spectacle denies Christ’s kingship, offering artistic emotion instead of divine grace.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV to moviemakers: Film can portray ‘longing for the infinite’ (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 15.11.2025