The “Pope’s” War on Life: A Modernist’s Naturalistic Gospel
[Vatican News] portal reports that the antipope known as “Pope” Leo XIV addressed the Pontifical Academy for Life on February 16, 2026, condemning war as “the most grave attack… against life and public health” and advocating for a “one health” approach that integrates environmental, social, and medical policies to combat “structural inequalities.” The speech, dripping with the language of contemporary globalism and secular humanitarianism, presents a vision utterly divorced from the supernatural ends of the Catholic Church and the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Its core thesis is that the Church’s mission is to collaborate with worldly powers in building a terrestrial utopia of “health equity,” a task it frames as the paramount pro-life duty. This is not a development of Catholic social teaching; it is its systematic inversion, a synthesis of the very errors condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus Errorum and by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu.
1. Theological Bankrupcy: The Omission of the Supernatural Order
The entire address operates on a purely naturalistic plane. The antipope speaks of “life and health,” “structural causes,” “social and environmental policies,” “income, education,” and “democratic culture.” He creates a complete vacuum where the supernatural destiny of man, the necessity of sanctifying grace, the redemptive sacrifice of Calvary, and the ultimate good of eternal salvation should be. This is the hallmark of Modernism, which St. Pius X defined as the synthesis of all heresies, reducing religion to a mere “sense of the divine” and a promoter of human welfare (Lamentabili sane exitu, Props. 20, 22, 25). The Syllabus condemned the error that “the science of philosophical things and morals… may and ought to keep aloof from divine and ecclesiastical authority” (Error 57) and that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (Error 57). Leo XIV’s speech embodies this error in reverse: it consigns the Church to being a mere auxiliary of secular sciences and policies, a “partner” in a UN-style sustainable development agenda, utterly silent on its primary role as the sole dispenser of grace and truth.
The concept of “one health” is particularly pernicious. It is framed as an ecological and social principle: “human life is incomprehensible and unsustainable without other creatures.” This is a step toward pantheistic immanentism, blurring the essential distinction between the Creator and His creation. It echoes the pantheism condemned in the Syllabus: “God is identical with the nature of things… and God is one and the same thing with the world” (Error 1). By making human health dependent on “ecological factors” and “interdependence of various forms of life” in a way that excludes the explicit necessity of God’s grace and the moral law, it promotes a naturalistic religion. The true Catholic view, as taught by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas, is that Christ’s reign is spiritual and primary, and while He has authority over all creation, the health of the soul is infinitely superior to the health of the body: “Let Christ reign in the mind… in the will… in the heart… in the body.” Leo XIV’s “one health” inverts this, making bodily and ecological integrity the integrated whole.
2. The Erasure of Christ the King and the Social Kingship
The most glaring and damning omission is any mention of Our Lord Jesus Christ as King. The speech is a masterpiece of secular rhetoric that could have been delivered by a UN Under-Secretary-General for Health. There is no reference to the doctrine so solemnly defined by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas (1925), which the antipope’s predecessors until 1958 would have held as dogma: “The kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men… His reign extends not only to Catholic nations… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians” (Quas Primas, 31). Pius XI established the feast of Christ the King specifically to combat the secularism (“laicism”) that “denied Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations” and sought to “subordinate [the Church] to secular power.” Leo XIV’s entire program is the precise opposite: he subordinates the Church’s voice to the secular agenda of “multilateral organizations” and “international cooperation,” urging the Church to “strengthen international and multilateral relations” rather than to proclaim the exclusive rights of Christ the King over all nations, laws, and institutions.
Pius XI taught that rulers and states have a duty to “publicly honor Christ and obey Him,” and that peace and order flow from this recognition: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed” (Quas Primas, 31). Leo XIV speaks only of “common good,” “solidarity,” and “justice” in a generic, Enlightenment-derived sense, devoid of their foundation in the lex divina. He calls for a “democratic culture” uniting “efficiency, solidarity, and justice.” The Syllabus Errorum explicitly condemned the idea that “the State… is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits” (Error 39) and that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55). The antipope’s vision is a softer, more “pastoral” version of this very separation, where the Church has no public authority to teach or govern nations but merely offers “expertise” and “care” within a framework defined by secular powers. This is the “democratic culture” of 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.”
3. The Modernist Hermeneutic: From Doctrine to “Complex Factors”
The antipope’s methodology is pure Modernism. He reduces the Church’s pro-life mission to a complex analysis of “variables such as income, education or the neighborhood one lives in.” This is a direct echo of the condemned proposition: “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Lamentabili sane exitu, Prop. 26). The absolute moral law of “Thou shalt not kill” is subordinated to a socio-economic analysis. He states: “It is often said that life and health are equally fundamental values for all, but this statement is hypocritical if… we ignore the structural causes and policies that determine inequalities.” This inverts Catholic moral theology. The intrinsic evil of abortion, euthanasia, or the direct killing of civilians in war is not made “hypocritical” by social inequality; it remains intrinsically evil regardless of “structural causes.” By making the condemnation of war contingent on addressing “inequalities,” he implies that the moral weight of the attack on life is measured by its socio-economic impact, not by its violation of the natural law. This is the “evolution of dogmas” condemned by St. Pius X: “They aim at such a development of dogmas as appears to be their corruption” (Lamentabili, Intro).
His call to “recognize how health is influenced and promoted by a combination of factors, which need to be examined and confronted in their complexity” is a Trojan horse for the Modernist principle that truth and morality are not absolute but are “interpreted” through historical and social contexts (Lamentabili, Props. 22, 54). The Church’s immutable teaching on the inviolability of innocent life is thus diluted into a “multidisciplinary” puzzle where medicine, politics, ethics, and management must “come together.” This is the “democratization of the Church” and the “theological novelties” the user’s framework demands we reject. The true Catholic position, as defined by the Council of Trent and repeated by Pope Pius XII, is that certain acts (direct abortion, direct killing of the innocent) are intrinsically evil (ex objecto), regardless of intention or circumstance. Leo XIV’s “complexity” framework directly contradicts this.
4. Symptomatic of the Conciliar Apostasy: The “Abomination of Desolation”
This speech is not an anomaly; it is the logical fruit of the conciliar revolution. The language of “interdependence,” “integrated approaches,” “multilateral relations,” and “common good” is the exact lexicon of the post-conciliar “Church of the New Advent.” It mirrors the naturalistic humanism of the “Second Vatican Council’s” pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, which was condemned in advance by the Syllabus (Error 40: “The teaching of the Catholic Church is hostile to the well-being and interests of society”). The focus on “sustainability,” “equity,” and “care” as primary virtues replaces the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity. The “fundamental attitude of care” he proposes is a vague, secular humanitarianism, not the theological virtue of charity which orders all things to God.
The antipope’s insistence that the Church must “strengthen our understanding and promotion of the common good” so it does not “succumb to specific individual or national interests” is a direct repudiation of the Social Kingship of Christ. The true common good (bonum commune), as taught by St. Thomas Aquinas and all pre-conciliar popes, is ordered to the supernatural end of man. It requires the public recognition of the Catholic religion and the subordination of temporal law to the eternal law. Leo XIV’s “common good” is a purely terrestrial, utilitarian concept, compatible with religious indifferentism (condemned in Syllabus, Errors 15-17) and the separation of Church and State (Error 55). His call for “international and multilateral relations” to prevent conflicts, where “no actor prevails over another with the mindset of force,” is a pacifist, internationalist stance that ignores the Catholic doctrine of a just war (which requires a right intention of peace, but also a just cause and legitimate authority—the latter being absent in a world of sovereign equals without a supreme, divinely-appointed authority). It reduces the Church to a moral cheerleader for a globalist project that, in its essence, is the “secular power” attempting to “assume this principle as the basis of its acts” (Syllabus, Error 36).
5. The Sedevacantist Conclusion: A Usurper’s Gospel
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the analysis is straightforward. The individual addressed as “Pope” Leo XIV is not the Vicar of Christ. As argued in the Defense of Sedevacantism file, a manifest heretic (and the entire conciliar and post-conciliar magisterium is a tapestry of heresies against the Faith) loses the papal office ipso facto. The Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio of Pope Paul IV is clear: anyone who “has defected from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy… his promotion… shall be null, void, and of no effect.” Therefore, the “Pope” speaking is an impostor, and the “Pontifical Academy for Life” is a conciliar body occupying a once-Catholic institution. His teachings, therefore, have no magisterial weight; they are the opinions of a private individual, and a heretical one at that.
The speech’s content confirms this diagnosis. It is a perfect synthesis of the errors condemned in the Syllabus Errorum (especially Errors 40, 55, 77-80 on the relationship of Church and State, religious liberty, and secular progress) and Lamentabili sane exitu (especially the reduction of dogma to practical function, the subordination of faith to historical-critical science, and the denial of the supernatural). It represents the final stage of the “disinformation strategy” described in the False Fatima Apparitions file: the takeover by modernists who have “concealed” the Third Secret (a metaphor for the full, traditional, supernatural mission of the Church) and promoted an “ecumenical reinterpretation” (here, a secular-humanist reinterpretation) of the Church’s role. The “miracle” of this “Pope” is that he can speak so fluently about “life” while systematically excluding the Life of the World to Come, the Sacrifice of the Mass which applies that life to us, and the Kingship of Christ which orders all temporal affairs to that end.
Conclusion: The address is a manifesto of apostasy. It replaces the Regnum Christi with the “common good” of globalist technocrats; it replaces the supernatural virtue of charity with the secular “attitude of care”; it replaces the absolute, non-negotiable value of innocent life grounded in the Imago Dei and the law of God with a relativistic calculus of “structural inequalities” and “equitable access.” It is a sermon from the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place (cf. Matt. 24:15), offering a gospel of social work that is “another gospel” (Gal. 1:8). The only adequate Catholic response is total rejection, as commanded by Pius IX: “make every effort to defend the faithful… against the insidious contagion of these sects” (Syllabus, concluding admonition). We must pray for the restoration of the true Hierarchy and the public triumph of Christ the King, whose reign, as Pius XI taught, is the only foundation for true peace, true justice, and true health for body and soul.
Source:
Pope: War is gravest attack possible against life and public health (vaticannews.va)
Date: 16.02.2026