The Pillar Catholic news portal reports an interview with Bishop Paolo Martinelli, apostolic vicar of Southern Arabia, following U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran and Iranian retaliatory attacks in the Gulf. The bishop urges calm, prayer, and interreligious dialogue, citing the 2019 Document on Human Fraternity and Pope Leo XIV’s appeal for diplomacy. He states peace “cannot be achieved through mutual threats” and calls for “concrete good” and “peaceful coexistence,” urging Catholics to foster interfaith understanding in daily life and draw inspiration from St. Francis of Assisi.
The interview’s fundamental thesis is that the Church’s mission in a war zone is to promote naturalistic human fraternity and dialogue, explicitly rejecting any notion of Catholic exclusivity or the social reign of Christ the King. This represents a complete abandonment of Catholic doctrine and a capitulation to the modernist errors of religious indifferentism and secular humanism.
Theological Bankruptcy of a Modernist Peace Narrative
Omission of the Supernatural: The Silent Apostasy
The bishop’s entire message is framed within the natural order, devoid of the supernatural perspective that must characterize any Catholic utterance. There is not a single mention of sin, the necessity of grace, the Sacrifice of the Mass, the state of sanctifying grace, or the final judgment. This silence is not neutrality; it is a positive denial of the Church’s primary mission: the salvation of souls. Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors condemns the notion that “the civil power… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Proposition 41), yet the bishop’s entire approach cedes the public square to a secular concept of “peace and stability” divorced from God’s law. He reduces the Church to a “cultural and social contribution” (his words), a functional NGO promoting “mutual understanding,” precisely the error Pius IX condemned as “indifferentism” (Proposition 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true”).
Heresy of Religious Indifferentism and the “Human Fraternity” Document
The bishop explicitly grounds his call for dialogue in the Document on Human Fraternity, signed by “Pope Francis” and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar. This document is a public act of apostasy. It states: “The pluralism and the diversity of religions… are willed by God in His wisdom,” directly contradicting the Catholic Faith, which teaches that God wills all men to be saved through the Catholic Church alone. Pope Pius IX, in Quanto conficiamur, condemned the error that “good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ” (Syllabus, Proposition 17). The bishop’s endorsement of this document places him in formal schism and heresy. He further states the document “clearly rejects and delegitimizes any instrumental use of religion, especially the use of violence in the name of God.” This is a relativistic equivalence, implying all religions are equally valid pathways to God, a direct repudiation of the dogma Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (Outside the Church there is no salvation). St. Robert Bellarmine teaches that a heretic, by manifesting his heresy, ceases to be a member of the Church and loses all jurisdiction (De Romano Pontifice). Those who promote such indifferentism thereby separate themselves from the Body of Christ.
Denial of the Social Kingship of Christ
The bishop’s call for “peace and stability” through “dialogue” and “the concrete good of peoples” is a stark rejection of the doctrine of the Social Kingship of Christ, definitively taught by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas. The Pope writes: “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.” He continues: “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.” The bishop’s entire framework—”mutual threats,” “diplomacy,” “peaceful coexistence”—operates as if Christ has no juridical claim over nations and their laws. This is the precise secularism Pius XI identifies as the “plague that poisons human society.” The bishop cites “Pope Leo XIV’s” appeal, but the true Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei, taught: “the State… ought to profess publicly the Catholic religion… and to show it honor and reverence.” The post-conciliar “papacy” and its bishops have abandoned this teaching, substituting a naturalistic, Masonic-inspired “fraternity” for the obligatory public worship of Christ the King.
Misuse of St. Francis and the Erosion of Catholic Identity
The bishop urges Catholics to “draw inspiration from Saint Francis of Assisi,” focusing on his meeting with the Sultan and “universal brotherhood.” This is a deliberate misrepresentation of the saint’s life and mission. St. Francis did not promote indifferentism; he sought the Sultan’s conversion to the one true Faith. His “brotherhood” was founded on the shared dignity of being creatures of the one God, but his ultimate goal was the salvation of souls through Christ. The bishop’s use of Francis sanitizes the saint’s militant Catholicism to fit a modernist, ecumenical template. This aligns with the errors condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu: “Christian doctrine was initially Jewish, but through gradual development, it became first Pauline, then Johannine, and finally Greek and universal” (Proposition 60). The bishop implies a “development” where the Church’s exclusive claim is softened into a vague “fraternity,” exactly the evolution of dogma Modernism promotes.
Silence on the True Cause of Conflict: Apostasy and Sin
The bishop diagnoses the conflict as a failure of diplomacy and mutual threats, omitting the Catholic analysis that wars are ultimately punishments for sin and the neglect of God’s law. Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas identifies the root cause of societal breakdown: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The bishop’s silence on the apostasy of the modern world, the sins of blasphemy and impurity rampant in the Gulf states, and the necessity of public penance and reparation is a betrayal of the prophetic office of the Church. He offers a technical, managerial solution (“dialogue,” “diplomacy”) to a supernatural crisis, thereby participating in the “diversion from apostasy” identified in the critique of Fatima—focusing on external threats while ignoring the internal decay of faith.
Validation of a Schismatic Hierarchy
The bishop speaks of Cardinal Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, as his episcopal conference president. Cardinal Pizzaballa is a notorious modernist who has repeatedly promoted interfaith events that equate Catholicism with other religions and has never publicly defended the exclusive salvific role of the Church. By acknowledging him as a legitimate superior, Bishop Martinelli recognizes a hierarchy that has, by its public heresy and apostasy, ipso facto lost all authority according to the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine and Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code. The bishop thus places himself outside the communion of the true Catholic Church, which subsists only in those who hold the integral faith and are led by bishops who have not defected from the Catholic faith.
Conclusion: The Spirit of Antichrist
This interview is a perfect specimen of the “Church of the New Advent.” It replaces the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary with “prayer” as a generic cultural force. It replaces the dogma Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus with the Masonic principle of universal brotherhood. It replaces the Social Kingship of Christ with the secular idol of “peace and stability” achieved through human diplomacy. It is a complete abdication of the Church’s divine mandate to teach all nations and to baptize them, instructing them to observe all things Christ commanded (Matt. 28:19-20). The bishop’s words are not those of a Catholic pastor but of a functionary of the conciliar sect, promoting the “errors of Modernism” which St. Pius X declared to be “the synthesis of all heresies.” The only peace possible is the peace of Christ’s reign, which requires the public submission of all societies to His law and the exclusive propagation of His one true Faith. This bishop preaches a different gospel, and he is to be avoided as a danger to souls.
Source:
Arabia bishop: ‘Peace and stability cannot be achieved through mutual threats’ (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 05.03.2026