Antipope’s Lenten Call: Words Over Penance
Vatican News portal reports that antipope Leo XIV, in his Lenten message for 2026, urges Catholics to practice abstinence from offensive words, emphasizing listening, fasting for justice, and communal conversion. This message, while appearing pious, fundamentally rejects the supernatural essence of Lent as a time for penance, reparation, and conversion from sin, instead promoting a naturalistic, human-centered approach that aligns with Modernist errors condemned by the pre-Conciliar Church.
Substitution of Supernatural Penance with Naturalistic Ethics
The antipope’s message reduces Lent to a program of ethical self-improvement, centering on “abstinence from words that offend” and “fasting that opens us to the deep desire for justice.” This is a deliberate omission of the Catholic Church’s unchanging doctrine on Lent as a penitential season focused on satisfaction for sin and union with Christ’s sacrifice. Pre-1958 teaching, as seen in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (Can. 1251-1253), mandates fasting and abstinence as means of mortification and reparation. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, establishes that Christ’s reign requires public obedience to divine law, not merely personal ethical refinement. The message’s silence on sacramental confession, satisfaction, and reparation for offenses against God reveals a substitution of Catholic penance with secular humanism. By framing fasting as a tool to “identify and order our ‘appetites'” toward social justice, it echoes the condemned error in the Syllabus of Errors (Error 58): “All the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches…” Here, “justice” is naturalistic, divorced from supernatural charity and the restoration of God’s honor.
Omission of Sacramental and Doctrinal Realities
The message is glaringly silent on the sacramental economy of salvation. There is no mention of contrition, confession, or the Eucharist as the source of grace for Lenten observance. This omission is not accidental but symptomatic of the post-Conciliar Church’s apostasy. St. Pius X, in Lamentabili sane exitu, condemns the Modernist proposition that “the sacraments merely serve to remind man of the presence of the ever-benevolent Creator” (Prop. 41). The antipope’s focus on “listening” and “community” reduces religion to immanent experience, denying the objective efficacy of sacraments. Furthermore, the absence of any reference to mortal sin, hell, or the final judgment—central to Catholic Lenten preaching—exposes a denial of revealed truth. As Pius IX’s Syllabus condemns (Error 16): “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation,” this message implies that abstaining from harsh words suffices for salvation, sans doctrinal assent or sacramental grace.
Promotion of Modernist Individualism and Relativism
The rhetoric of “listening to the cry of those who are anguished” and “allowing ourselves to be challenged by reality” promotes a subjective, experiential faith condemned by Lamentabili. Proposition 20 states: “Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God.” The antipope’s emphasis on personal “inner openness” and “ordering desires” aligns with this Modernist error, where divine revelation is supplanted by human intuition. The call to “disarm our language” in “political debates” and “social media” injects secular political correctness into Lenten spirituality, violating the Catholic principle that the state must recognize Christ’s kingship (Pius XI, Quas Primas). The message’s vagueness about “justice” and “peace” mirrors the condemned indifferentism of the Syllabus (Error 15): “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.” Here, “justice” is divorced from God’s law, promoting a naturalistic morality that Pius IX anathematized.
Contrast with Integral Catholic Teaching on Lent and Christ’s Kingship
Integral Catholic doctrine, as defined before 1958, presents Lent as a journey of conversion to Christ the King, whose reign must permeate all life. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declares: “the Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men… and His reign extends to all nations.” Lent, therefore, is not about social harmony but about submitting every aspect of life to Christ’s law. The antipope’s message, by focusing on “words of hope and peace” without referencing Christ’s sovereignty, reduces the season to a therapeutic exercise. Moreover, Quas Primas warns that when “God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of authority were destroyed.” The antipope’s omission of Christ’s kingship in public life—despite the Syllabus condemning Error 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State”—implicitly endorses secularism. True Lenten conversion, per Catholic tradition, involves public profession of faith and rejection of modernist errors, not merely private ethical refinement.
Symptomatic of the Conciliar Apostasy and Sedevacantist Reality
This message epitomizes the “abomination of desolation” spoken of by St. Pius X. The language is bureaucratically gentle, avoiding prophetic denunciation of sin—a stark contrast to pre-Conciliar Lenten instructions that called for cry of the prophets against idolatry and apostasy. The antipope Leo XIV, as a manifest heretic, cannot be a legitimate pope. St. Robert Bellarmine, cited in the file on sedevacantism, teaches: “A manifest heretic… by that very fact ceases to be Pope.” Leo XIV’s message denies essential doctrines: the necessity of penance, the objectivity of sin, the primacy of divine law. Thus, his Lenten call is not a pastoral instruction but an act of apostasy, reinforcing the sede vacante situation. The post-Conciliar “Church” has exchanged the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary for a “table of assembly,” and here, it exchanges Lenten penance for a “fast” of words—a sacrilegious parody. As the file on false Fatima apparitions notes about modernist tactics: the focus shifts from supernatural threats (sin, hell) to naturalistic ones (social discord), diverting from the “main danger: modernist apostasy within the Church.” This message precisely performs that diversion.
Conclusion: A Call to Reject the Conciliar Sect and Return to Tradition
The antipope’s Lenten message is a theological and spiritual disaster. It replaces the Catholic Lent—a time for mortification, confession, and reparation—with a program of naturalistic ethics and social listening. This aligns with every error condemned in the Syllabus of Errors and Lamentabili sane exitu. The faithful must reject this modernist innovation and adhere to the immutable Tradition of the Church. True Lenten conversion requires: public acknowledgment of Christ’s kingship (as in Quas Primas), sacramental confession, fasting as union with Christ’s passion, and a life ordered to God’s law, not human “justice.” The conciliar sect, occupied by antipopes like Leo XIV, has no authority to dictate Lenten practice. Catholics must seek valid priests and bishops who uphold the pre-1958 faith, celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass and observing Lent as the Church has always done—with penance, not platitudes.
Source:
Pope’s Lenten message: Abstain from harsh words and rash judgement (vaticannews.va)
Date: 13.02.2026