The Catholic News Agency portal (January 20, 2026) reports that antipope Leo XIV will celebrate the Holy Thursday “Mass of the Lord’s Supper” at St. John Lateran, reversing his predecessor Francis’ practice of holding the service in detention centers. Monsignor Giovanni Falbo calls Francis’ innovation an “exception” motivated by “predilection for the poor,” while praising Leo XIV’s decision as restoring “uninterrupted practice of the last century.” This theatrical shuffling of modernist liturgical experiments constitutes not a return to tradition, but evidence of the conciliar sect’s fundamental rupture with Catholic ecclesiology.
Liturgical Innovation Masquerading as Tradition
The article’s central deception lies in framing the Lateran celebration as resuming “the uninterrupted practice of the last century.” In reality, Pius XII’s 1955 Maxima Redemptionis had already gutted the Sacred Triduum by:
“restoring greater historical fidelity in the celebrations” (according to Falbo)
when in fact it demolished the ancient Holy Week rites. The 1955 reforms:
- Eliminated the Mandatum‘s triple repetition (for priests, clerics, and laymen)
- Destroyed the organic connection between Tenebrae and the Triduum
- Reduced the Communion of Presanctified on Good Friday to a truncated parody
Pius XII’s Mediator Dei (1947) had already condemned such archaeologism:
“It is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device” (§64).
By celebrating the Novus Ordo service at the Lateran, Leo XIV merely exchanges one form of modernist experimentation for another. The post-conciliar rite itself remains an anthropocentric fabrication, as Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci demonstrated in their 1969 Short Critical Study of the New Mass:
“The Novus Ordo represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent.”
The Masonic Roots of “Service” Theology
Falbo’s justification for Francis’ detention center liturgies – “a praiseworthy intention” showing “predilection for the poor” – exposes the naturalistic inversion at modernism’s core. The article admits these services resulted in “a certain privatization of the celebration” by excluding Roman clergy. This reflects the Freemasonic “cult of humanity” condemned in Pius IX’s Quanta Cura (1864):
“They do not hesitate to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an insanity, namely, that ‘liberty of conscience and worship is each man’s personal right.'”
The foot-washing of female and non-Christian detainees constituted sacrilege, violating Clement XI’s 1704 decree forbidding women’s inclusion in the Mandatum. More fundamentally, it reduced the sacramental priesthood to social work – precisely the heresy condemned in Pius XI’s Quas Primas (1925):
“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 Empty Chair of the False Bishop
Falbo’s claim that Leo XIV seeks “to behave as bishop of Rome” by occupying the Lateran cathedra constitutes blasphemous theater. Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code renders any heretic’s ecclesiastical office ipso facto vacant. Since the conciliar sect denies:
- The necessity of the Catholic Faith for salvation (Lumen Gentium 16)
- The propitiatory nature of the Mass (General Instruction of the Roman Missal 79)
- The Church’s right to govern temporal affairs (Dignitatis Humanae 2)
its leaders manifestly defect from the Catholic Faith.
St. Robert Bellarmine’s De Romano Pontifice (II.30) proves Leo XIV cannot be pope:
“A manifest heretic cannot be Pope, as Cajetan affirms… because he is not a member of the Church, that is, neither a Christian nor a member of the body of the Church.”
The Silence That Condemns
The article’s omissions prove more damning than its content. No mention is made of:
- The Traditional Latin Mass, the only authentic Roman rite
- The Eucharistic fast obliterated by Paul VI
- The ancient practice of consecrating holy oils on Maundy Thursday morning
Instead, we find celebration of the conciliar sect’s endless self-referential innovations. As Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907):
“The Modernists… lay the axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibers.”
This liturgical shuffling between detention centers and cathedrals constitutes the “abomination of desolation” foretold in Daniel 9:27 – the perpetual sacrilege of a counterfeit church performing empty rituals in stolen temples. Until the Roman hierarchy publicly abjures Vatican II and returns to integral Catholic doctrine, no ceremony at the Lateran – however “traditional” in appearance – can mask their apostasy from Christ the King.
Source:
Pope Leo to celebrate Holy Thursday Mass at St. John Lateran after hiatus under Pope Francis (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 20.01.2026