Archbishop Eugene Nugent, Apostolic Nuncio to Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar, in a Vatican News interview, presents the post-conciliar Church’s response to Middle Eastern warfare as a program of naturalistic diplomacy, interreligious solidarity, and prayer devoid of any reference to the supernatural kingship of Christ or the exclusive salvific mission of the Catholic Church. This stance is a direct repudiation of the immutable Catholic doctrine on the social reign of Christ the King and a manifestation of the Modernist apostasy condemned by St. Pius X and Pope Pius IX.
The Reign of Christ Supplanted by the Cult of Man
The nuncio’s entire framework is one of naturalistic humanism. He states, “We must try the traditional means of diplomacy and negotiation,” and hopes for “a reasonable dialogue with all parties.” This places human political effort and inter-state negotiation as the primary means to peace, directly contradicting the doctrine of Quas Primas. Pope Pius XI, in the encyclical instituting the feast of Christ the King, declared unequivocally: “the hope of lasting peace will not yet shine upon nations as long as individuals and states renounce and do not wish to recognize the reign of our Savior.” The nuncio’s appeal to “dialogue” and “negotiation” without first demanding the public recognition of Christ’s kingship is a betrayal of this fundamental truth. Pius XI further explained that when “God and Jesus Christ…were removed from laws and states…the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The conciliar diplomacy, seeking peace through “common ground” with Islamic states, actively participates in this removal.
Silence on the Exclusive salvific Role of the Church
The article highlights the nuncio’s participation in Ramadan fasting and his promotion of “devotion to Our Lady of Arabia,” noting that “Muslims, too, have great devotion to Maryam.” This syncretistic language is a grave error. The Syllabus of Errors (1864) condemned proposition #18: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church.” The same principle applies to Islam. The nuncio’s framing of a shared devotion to Mary creates a false equivalence. Catholic doctrine, defined by the Council of Florence, teaches that “no one…can be saved unless he is incorporated into the Catholic Church.” The article’s complete omission of this necessity—the urgent need for the conversion of Muslims and all non-Catholics to the one true Church—is the “gravest accusation.” It reduces the Church’s mission to a vague “prayer for peace” among equals, rather than the proclamation of the exclusive kingship of Christ and the necessity of the Church for salvation.
The False Prophecy of Interreligious “Fraternity”
The nuncio quotes Pope Francis’s description of war as “a dramatically childish scenario” and calls for seeking “fraternity.” This language is pure Modernism. Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), issued by St. Pius X, condemned proposition #79: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” The “fraternity” sought in interreligious dialogue, devoid of the requirement of Catholic conversion, is precisely this reconciliation with error. Pius IX’s Syllabus condemned #77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.” The nuncio’s work in a state that “promotes interreligious dialogue” implicitly accepts this condemned error. True Catholic fraternity is found only within the “one fold” of the Catholic Church (John 10:16), not in a generic, naturalistic “human family.”
Prayer Without Penance or Doctrine
The nuncio calls for “prayer—and, during Lent, fasting” and notes the coincidence with Ramadan. This is a desacralized, purely human appeal to a generic deity. Where is the call to satisfaction for sin? Where is the doctrine of the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass as the primary means to appease God’s justice and obtain peace? Pius XI in Quas Primas taught that Christ’s kingdom “encompasses all men” and that His judicial authority includes “the right of the judge to reward and punish men even during their lifetime.” Peace is a reward for a society ordered according to God’s laws. The nuncio’s prayer is a plea to a vague “gift of peace,” severed from the doctrinal and penitential context required by Catholic theology. It is the prayer of a “NGO of the sacred,” not of the Corpus Mysticum which must make satisfaction for sin through the sacrifice of the Mass and the penance of its members.
The Omission of the Social Kingship of Christ
The most damning silence is on the doctrine of the social reign of Christ the King. Quas Primas is explicit: “Let rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ, but let them fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness… When God and Jesus Christ…were removed from laws and states…the entire human society had to be shaken.” The nuncio never suggests that the rulers of Kuwait, Bahrain, or Qatar must publicly acknowledge Christ as King and legislate in conformity with His law. He does not call for the cessation of blasphemous Islamic law (Sharia) which openly rejects the Divinity of Christ. Instead, he operates entirely within the framework of the “two powers” as equals, a view condemned in the Syllabus (#39-42). This is the core error of Modernism: the separation of the spiritual from the temporal, making the Church a purely “spiritual” entity with no authority over public law.
The “Long War” and the Rejection of Catholic Political Doctrine
The nuncio’s statement, “A long war benefits no one,” is a platitude devoid of Catholic moral content. Catholic doctrine, as explained by Pius XI, asserts that a war fought to defend the rights of the Church and the social reign of Christ is just and may be necessary. More importantly, the analysis ignores the true cause of the region’s instability as diagnosed by the Church: the rejection of Christ’s kingship. The “strain” in the region is not merely political or economic; it is the supernatural disorder of living in open rebellion against the Incarnate God. The article’s silence on this is a capitulation to the naturalistic worldview of the Syllabus’s “secular power” which “possesses not only the right called that of ‘exsequatur,’ but also that of appeal, called ‘appellatio ab abuso’” (#41), effectively placing civil authority above the Church in temporal matters.
Conclusion: The Apostate Diplomacy of the Anti-Church
This interview is a quintessential document of the post-conciliar apostasy. It presents a Church—better, the conciliar sect—that has:
1. Abandoned the doctrine of the social kingship of Christ as taught in Quas Primas.
2. Replaced the call for the conversion of nations to the Catholic Faith with a call for generic “dialogue” and “fraternity.”
3. Reduced prayer and fasting to a naturalistic appeal for peace, disconnected from the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass and the need for doctrinal purity.
4. Accepted the Modernist principle of religious equality by equating Catholic devotion to Mary with Islamic reverence for “Maryam.”
5. Functioned as a diplomatic adjunct to secular powers, hoping for negotiations, rather than as the authoritative voice of God on earth demanding the submission of all societies to the law of Christ.
The true Catholic response, which the article completely omits, is found in the words of Pius XI: “If men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society… For what we wrote at the beginning of Our Pontificate about the diminishing authority of law and respect for power, the same can be applied to the present times: ‘When God and Jesus Christ…were removed from laws and states…the foundations of that authority were destroyed.’” The conciliar diplomats have removed Christ from the equation, and thus their peace is a false peace, the peace of the Antichrist foretold in 2 Thessalonians 2.
Source:
Nuncio to Kuwait: ‘A long war benefits no one in region already under strain’ (vaticannews.va)
Date: 02.03.2026