EWTN News reports on the January 18, 2026 celebration of the Santo Niño (Infant Jesus) feast in Cebu, Philippines, drawing 5.2 million attendees. The article emphasizes the event’s spiritual nature over tourism, tracing its origins to Ferdinand Magellan’s 1521 arrival when he gave a Santo Niño statue to Queen Juana upon her baptism. “Pope” Leo XIV sent a message stressing baptismal unity and service to marginalized groups, while Archbishop Alberto Uy preached about being “united with Christ” through “redeeming love.” The festivities included a fluvial procession reenacting the statue’s historical arrival and nine days of novenas at Basilica Minore del Santo Niño.
Pagan Rituals Disguised as Catholic Piety
The article’s description of devotees shouting “Pit Senyor” (“call upon the Lord”) during processions reveals the syncretic nature of this devotion. Such emotional outbursts bear the marks of animist practices prevalent in pre-colonial Philippines rather than latria (worship due to God alone) as defined by the Council of Trent (Session XXV). The reduction of Our Lord to a “Batobalani sa Gugma” (“magnet of love”) constitutes blasphemous sentimentalism, reducing the Second Person of the Trinity to a charm for earthly consolations. As Pope Pius XI warned in Quas Primas:
“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… For Christ cannot be said to reign where the eternal and immutable commandments are disregarded.”
The spectacle of millions venerating a statue while remaining silent about their duty to reject conciliar heresies demonstrates how modernist clergy have replaced doctrinal formation with emotional pageantry.
Historical Revisionism Concealing Colonial Exploitation
The article whitewashes Magellan’s 1521 expedition as Christian evangelization when historical records prove his political alliance with Rajah Humabon served Portuguese imperial ambitions. The baptism of Queen Juana mirrors the forced conversions condemned by Pope Paul III in Sublimis Deus (1537), which forbade coercing natives into the Faith. By celebrating this event as Christianity’s “beginning” in the Philippines, the conciliar sect perpetuates the naturalist myth that sacramental validity depends on cultural adaptation rather than ex opere operato grace.
St. Robert Bellarmine’s principle applies here: “Fides non imperatur, sed proponitur” (“Faith cannot be commanded, but proposed”) (De Laicis, Ch. 23). The imposition of baptismal rites upon political leaders without proper catechesis constitutes sacrilege, making the Santo Niño statue’s origins spiritually suspect.
Theological Vacuum in Modernist Messages
“Archbishop” Uy’s homily exemplifies post-conciliar apostasy by declaring: “When we are connected with God, every moment is filled with love, and we serve others with compassion.” This statement omits the essential Catholic truth that connection with God requires sanctifying grace, impossible outside the true Church (Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam). His theme – “United in Faith and Love” – deliberately avoids mentioning the necessity of professing all Catholic dogmas for salvation (Council of Florence, Cantate Domino).
Similarly, the antipope’s message urging “charity and solidarity toward those on the margins” ignores the first spiritual work of mercy: admonishing sinners. Nowhere do these modernists warn participants that receiving “communion” in conciliar sect structures constitutes idolatry due to their invalid rites and heresies. This silence confirms their complicity in leading souls to perdition.
Naturalistic Rituals Replacing Sacramental Life
The nine-day novenas and fluvial procession constitute superstitious practices condemned by the Council of Trent (Session XXV):
“All false reliquaries shall be abolished… and all superstition shall be removed… so that for the future no images be… worshipped superstitiously.”
True Catholic devotion always directs the faithful toward the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and sacramental confession – both conspicuously absent from the article’s description. Instead, the event centers on a statue, violating the First Commandment’s prohibition against graven images (Exodus 20:4-5). The disaster office’s crowd counting reveals the conciliar sect’s fixation on quantitative metrics over qualitative conversion of souls.
Symptomatic of Conciliar Apostasy
This festival embodies three key errors of Vatican II:
1. Religious indifferentism: Presenting the Santo Niño devotion as compatible with pagan cultural elements (Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors #15-17)
2. Liturgical abuse: Replacing the Mass with theatrical processions (St. Pius X, Tra le Sollecitudini)
3. Evolution of dogma: Redefining “devotion” as emotional display rather than assent to revealed truth (St. Pius X, Lamentabili Sane #22, #58)
As Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre warned before his own compromise: “When Rome returns to tradition… we will return to Rome.” The Cebu spectacle proves millions remain enslaved to conciliar innovations because true shepherds have abandoned regnavit a ligno Deus (“God reigned from the Wood”) for emotional pageantry.
Source:
Devotion, not tourism: 5 million mark Santo Niño feast in Philippines (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 20.01.2026