The Pillar reports on “Pope” Leo XIV’s appointment of four new auxiliary bishops for the Diocese of Rome, framing it as a restorative act to heal rifts from the previous “pontificate” of “Pope” Francis. The article details the priests’ pastoral backgrounds, administrative contexts, and internal diocesan politics, presenting the appointments as a return to normalcy and local clerical trust. This narrative, however, is a meticulously crafted illusion. It obscures the fundamental reality that every act performed by the post-1958 hierarchy—including episcopal appointments—is *null and void* (*nulla et invalida*), executed by a line of manifest heretics who have forfeited all jurisdiction. The article’s focus on administrative “rebuilding” and “pastoral sectors” is not a sign of recovery but the final stage of a theological and jurisdictional bankruptcy that has replaced the Catholic Church with a naturalistic, Masonic-inspired “conciliar sect.”

---

The Nullity of the Appointments: A Jurisdictional Void

The entire premise of the article collapses under the weight of Catholic canonical and theological doctrine. The men appointed are not bishops, and the diocese they are appointed to is not a legitimate part of the Catholic Church. The source of this nullity is the manifest heresy of the appointing authority, “Pope” Leo XIV, and his predecessors since John XXIII.

St. Robert Bellarmine, the authoritative source on papal deposition, is unequivocal: “a Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.” (Defense of Sedevacantism). This is not a matter of disciplinary penalty but of divine law: a manifest heretic cannot be the head of the Church, for he is not a member of it. Bellarmine clarifies that this applies to *manifest* heresy, which is publicly known, not hidden heresy. The public, consistent, and magisterial profession of Modernist errors by the conciliar popes—from “Pope” John XXIII’s aggiornamento to “Pope” Francis’s synodal revolution—constitutes manifest heresy. Therefore, Leo XIV, as a manifest heretic, holds no papal office and possesses no jurisdiction to appoint bishops.

Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which remains the definitive law for the Catholic Church until a legitimate pope revokes it, confirms this: “Every office becomes vacant by the mere fact and without any declaration by reason of tacit resignation… if the cleric: … 4. Publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” (Defense of Sedevacantism). The “public defect” is not merely joining another sect but the formal, public embrace of heresy. Leo XIV, by his every act and profession, publicly defects from the Catholic faith. Consequently, his “appointments” are *ipso facto* null. The priests he “appoints” receive no sacramental character of episcopacy, for the minister lacks the required jurisdiction. They are laymen performing a theatrical simulation.

The article’s entire discussion of “vicar for the north sector” and “pastoral sectors” is therefore a description of a bureaucratic reorganization within a private association that has seized the material properties of the Catholic Church. It is akin to reporting on the cabinet appointments of a self-proclaimed government in exile with no actual sovereignty.

The Omission of Christ the King: A Naturalistic Ecclesiology

The article’s most damning symptom is its total silence on the *raison d’être* of any diocesan structure: the social reign of Jesus Christ. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, established the feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secularism that had infected even Catholic thought. He declared that Christ’s kingdom “encompasses all men” and that “the state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” Therefore, “the state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations… and let them fulfill the mission entrusted to them by God.” The Pope insists that rulers “have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him,” and that all laws and education must be ordered on “the basis of God’s commandments and Christian principles.”

The article discusses the Diocese of Rome’s “pastoral sectors,” financial leases, and clerical relationships without a single reference to this foundational principle. The “historic center” sector is restored not because the salvation of souls in that area demands the explicit preaching of Christ’s kingship over politics, economics, and culture, but because of its “specificity” and “homogeneity.” This is the language of urban planning, not of Catholic mission. It reduces the Church to a natural “humanitarian” or “cultural” agency, precisely the error Pius XI identified as the “plague” of secularism (laicism). The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX condemns this mindset exhaustively. Error 40: “The teaching of the Catholic Church is hostile to the well-being and interests of society.” The article’s implicit assumption—that the Church’s primary work is social administration rather than the explicit, public confession of Christ’s sovereignty—is a direct embrace of this condemned error. Error 55 is even more explicit: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” By discussing the diocese’s governance as a purely internal, administrative matter, disconnected from the state’s duty to recognize Christ, the article operates entirely within the framework of this anathematized separation.

The “Sound Doctrine” Charade: Modernism in Pastoral Clothing

The article attempts to assure readers of the orthodoxy of the new appointees. It quotes a Roman priest describing Fr. Sparapani as “of sound doctrine” and highlights his pastoral approach: “I enter everyone’s homes; I don’t ask for a certificate of sainthood. I condemn sin, I don’t judge the sinner.”

This phrase is a quintessential expression of Modernist relativism. It creates a false dichotomy between “condemning sin” (an abstract, impersonal act) and “judging the sinner” (a personal act of fraternal correction). Catholic doctrine, as taught by Christ and St. Paul, unites these. “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault” (Matt 18:15). The “judgment” is a necessary act of charity to bring the sinner to repentance. To refuse to “judge” the sinner is to abandon him to his sin, a pastoral negligence that is itself a sin. This language mirrors the condemned proposition in Lamentabili Sane Exitu: “The Church, in condemning errors, has no right to require any internal assent from the faithful to the pronouncements issued by the Church” (Proposition 7). It also reflects the Modernist error that truth is a “living” reality subject to personal interpretation (Proposition 54: “Dogmas… are merely modes of explanation”). Sparapani’s method, praised as innovative, is a surrender of the Church’s teaching authority to the subjective “conscience” of the individual, a core tenet of the “abomination of desolation” that is Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae.

Furthermore, the article notes that several of these priests have served in seminaries (Capranica, Roman Major Seminary). The formation in these post-conciliar institutions is saturated with the errors condemned by St. Pius X. The Lamentabili syllabus systematically rejects the notion that Scripture is to be treated like any human document (Proposition 12), that the Gospels are not historically reliable (Propositions 13-19), and that dogma evolves (Proposition 58: “Truth changes with man”). Any priest formed in such an environment, regardless of personal piety, is imbued with a hermeneutic of discontinuity that poisons his understanding of the Faith. His “sound doctrine” is, at best, a vague traditionalism stripped of its supernatural and dogmatic integrity, and at worst, a conscious or subconscious adherence to condemned Modernist principles.

Symptomatic of the Conciliar Apostasy: Administration Over Salvation

The article’s focus on the “tumultuous period” under “Pope” Francis, the “rebuilding of trust,” and the “financial difficulties” of the diocese is a perfect microcosm of the post-conciliar church’s apostasy. The true “tumult” is the doctrinal chaos and sacrilege unleashed by the council. The “trust” that needs rebuilding is the trust of clergy in a hierarchy that has systematically dismantled Catholic liturgy, discipline, and doctrine. The “financial difficulties” are a symptom of a deeper bankruptcy: the loss of the supernatural purpose of the Church’s temporal goods.

The Catholic Church, as a perfect society instituted by Christ, exists for the salvation of souls. Its temporal administration is ordered to that supernatural end. Pius IX’s Syllabus condemns the idea that the Church has no innate right to acquire property (Error 26) and that ecclesiastical immunities derive from civil law (Error 30). The article’s reporting on below-market leases and property management treats the diocese as a secular real estate holding company. This is the inevitable outcome of a hierarchy that no longer believes in the divine constitution of the Church or the supernatural efficacy of the sacraments. When the Church’s mission is reduced to “pastoral outreach” and “social service,” its assets become mere resources for worldly projects, subject to the same mismanagement and corruption as any secular NGO.

The mention of the “Synod on Synodality” is the final, tell-tale sign. The article notes that the abolition of the historic center sector came “the day before the start of the second session of the Synod on Synodality,” and a priest’s ironic comment: “it is paradoxical that the Synod on Synodality should open just at this time. I wonder where the synodality is in this situation.” This “synodality” is the modernist, collegial, and essentially democratic restructuring of the Church’s government, condemned in principle by Pius IX (Errors 19-25, 34-38) and by the entire tradition of the Church. It is a direct attack on the divinely instituted, monarchical papacy and hierarchical structure. The very concept of a “synodal church” is a heresy. The fact that the article treats it as a normal, even ironic, context for episcopal appointments demonstrates how thoroughly the conciliar sect has normalized apostasy.

Conclusion: The Theater of the Absurd

The article from The Pillar is a masterclass in presenting the illegitimate as legitimate, the administrative as pastoral, and the heretical as orthodox. It describes the rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic, pretending the ship is unsinkable. The four men appointed are not bishops. The “Pope” who appointed them is not the Vicar of Christ but the chief agent of the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place (Matt 24:15). The Diocese of Rome is not the See of Peter but a conciliar franchise operating under a false banner.

The only “long-anticipated” move that would have any meaning would be the public, canonical, and solemn recantation of all Modernist errors by a true pope and the restoration of the pre-1958 Church. Until then, every “appointment,” every “liturgical celebration,” every “pastoral initiative” within the Vatican II structures is an act of schism and apostasy, a further desecration of the Bride of Christ. The analysis of such events must never lose sight of this central, damning truth: the conciliar sect is not the Catholic Church. To treat its internal machinations as matters of genuine ecclesial concern is to be deceived by the “smooth things” (Isa 30:10) spoken by those who “have made void the law of God” (Matt 15:6) through their “traditions.”

---

Source:
Leo makes long-anticipated auxiliary bishop appointments in Rome   (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 26.02.2026