The “Pope’s” Good Friday: A Liturgy of Sounding Brass and Tinkling Cymbals
The cited article from EWTN News reports on the Good Friday liturgy presided over by the current occupier of the Vatican, “Pope Leo XIV,” and the homily delivered by the papal preacher, “Father” Roberto Pasolini, OFMCap. The homily centers on a naturalistic, humanitarian message: approaching the Cross with trust, learning “to reign with him by placing one’s life at the service of others,” embracing meekness over violence, and “laying down the weapons” of daily hostility. It frames salvation as a collective human endeavor of “those who are willing to embrace the Songs of the Servant of the Lord as the shape of their own lives,” breaking the “chain of evil” by personal non-retaliation. The entire presentation is a masterclass in the Modernist elimination of the supernatural, reducing the Passion of Our Lord to a moral exemplar for worldly peace and personal fulfillment, while systematically omitting the non-negotiable dogmas of the Catholic Faith.
Theological Bankrupcy: A Cross Without Calvary, A King Without a Kingdom
The homily’s fundamental error is its complete evacuation of the supernatural. The Cross is presented not as the unique, propitiatory sacrifice of the God-Man which redeems the world and reopens the gates of Heaven, but as a “throne upon which one sits and learns to reign” through service. This is a direct contradiction of Catholic doctrine. The Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary, made present on the altar, is the sole means by which sin is expiated and grace merited. The homily’s “salvation” is a vague, immanent process of social betterment through individual kindness, utterly devoid of the necessity of sacramental grace, the state of justification, and the ultimate end of eternal life or eternal death. It is the sola fide of Protestantism repackaged as “service.”
The omission of the Kingship of Christ the King is not accidental but heretical. In his encyclical Quas Primas, Pope Pius XI declared that the feast of Christ the King was instituted precisely to combat the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism,” which “denied Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.” The Pope taught that Christ’s reign “encompasses all men” and that “rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him.” The homily, by contrast, speaks of “laying down weapons” in a generic call for peace, without a single reference to the Social Reign of Christ the King or the obligation of states to recognize the Divine Law and the authority of the Church. This is the exact error condemned by the Syllabus of Errors (Error 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church”) and by Pius XI as the root cause of societal collapse: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.”
Symptomatic of the Conciliar Apostasy: The Hermeneutics of Continuity in Action
The language and tone of the homily are the very essence of the “hermeneutics of continuity” – a modernist device that preserves the vocabulary of Catholicism while emptying it of its doctrinal content. Phrases like “the greatest act of love,” “learns to reign,” and “mysterious score of the Cross” are aesthetic and emotional, not doctrinal. They appeal to sentiment, not to the intellect assenting to revealed truth. This is the “sounding brass and tinkling cymbals” of 1 Corinthians 13:1, devoid of charity (i.e., the supernatural theological virtue) and faith.
The homily’s focus on the “Servant Songs” as a “dramatic foreshadowing” is a classic Modernist historical-critical method. It treats the prophecies of Isaiah as merely poetic human insights that Jesus “lived,” not as divine revelations literally fulfilled in the Person and mission of the God-Man. This aligns perfectly with the errors condemned in Lamentabili sane exitu:
- Proposition 20: “Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God.”
- Proposition 27: “The Gospels do not prove the Divinity of Jesus Christ, but it is a dogma which Christian consciousness has derived from the concept of the Messiah.”
- Proposition 59: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him.”
The homily presents a “Christ of faith” developed from the “Servant Songs” rather than the objective, historical Truth of the Incarnation and Redemption defined by the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon.
The Grave Omission: Silence on the Sacramental Economy and the Church
The most damning accusation is the total silence on the supernatural means of salvation. In the entire report of the homily, there is no mention of:
- The Holy Mass as the re-presentation of Calvary.
- The necessity of Baptism for salvation.
- The Sacrament of Penance for the remission of sins post-baptism.
- The Eucharist as the True Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ.
- The Church as the una sancta, catholica, et apostolica society necessary for salvation (cf. Lumen Gentium 14, but more importantly, the consistent teaching of the Church before 1958, e.g., Pope Pius IX, Quanto conficiamur in the Syllabus: “The Catholic religion… is the only religion which has the right to be called ‘true'”).
- The Final Judgment and the eternal consequences of rejecting or accepting Christ.
This silence is not benign; it is the hallmark of the “Church of the New Advent.” It reduces religion to ethics and social action, precisely the “dogmaless Christianity” condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici gregis and summarized in Lamentabili (Proposition 65: “Contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism”).
The Usurper and the Illegitimate Clergy
The entire scenario rests on a fundamental lie: the legitimacy of “Pope Leo XIV” and the “papal preacher.” According to the unchanging doctrine of the Church, a manifest heretic cannot be Pope. St. Robert Bellarmine, cited in the provided Defense of Sedevacantism, states unequivocally: “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.” The line of antipopes from John XXIII through Bergoglio to the current “Leo XIV” (Robert Prevost) has consistently, publicly, and pertinaciously taught the errors of Modernism – religious liberty, collegiality, ecumenism, the evolution of doctrine – all solemnly condemned by St. Pius X. Therefore, they are manifest heretics, and their occupancy of the See of Rome is a nullity. The “cardinals” and “clergy” in attendance are, for the most part, either co-conspirators in the apostasy or victims of it, but in either case, they lack the jurisdiction and authority of the true Church. The “liturgy” celebrated, while using the ancient rite in form, is sacrilegious because it is celebrated by an invalidly ordained priest (in the case of those ordained after 1968 with the new rites) or by a priest in communion with a manifest heretic, thereby profaning the Holy Sacrifice. The homily itself, emanating from this false hierarchy, is a fruit of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matthew 24:15).
The Naturalistic “Gospel” vs. The Supernatural Gospel of Christ
Pasolini’s final exhortation – “There is only ourselves — who, by choosing not to return evil, by remaining patient in trials, by believing in good even when darkness seems to swallow everything, can become day by day those servants the Lord needs to bring salvation into the world” – is pure Pelagianism and Modernism. It places the onus of “bringing salvation” on human effort, stripping God of His sovereignty and grace. It contradicts the doctrine of sanctifying grace and the necessity of God’s prevenient and cooperative grace for every good act (Council of Trent, Session VI, Canon 1: “If anyone says that man can be justified before God by his own works… let him be anathema”).
The homily’s “voice of God” that is “just one voice among many” is the relativistic, pantheistic error condemned in the Syllabus (Error 1: “God is identical with the nature of things… and God is one and the same thing with the world”). The Catholic God is the Deus absconditus who reveals Himself definitively in Christ, whose voice is authoritative and exclusive: “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me” (Luke 10:16). The homily’s silence on the mandatory duty of the State to recognize the Catholic religion as the sole religion of the State (cf. Syllabus, Error 77 condemned) and its promotion of a generic “service” is a direct capitulation to the secularism Pius XI called “the plague that poisons human society.”
Conclusion: A Call to Repudiate and Flee
The Good Friday liturgy and homily reported in this article represent the apex of the post-conciliar apostasy: a ritualistic performance bereft of doctrine, a moralism without grace, and a “Church” without Christ. It is the “abomination of desolation” – a desecration of the sacred rites and a substitution of the Gospel of Salvation with the gospel of humanistic self-improvement. The faithful are not exhorted to adore the Crucified God, to make satisfaction for sin, or to work for the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King over all nations. They are exhorted to be “nice” and “service-oriented.”
This is not Catholicism. It is the Church of the New Advent, a paramasonic structure promoting the “synthesis of all heresies” (Modernism) condemned by St. Pius X. The only legitimate response of a Catholic is to repudiate this false hierarchy and its liturgy, to cling to the unchanging Faith of the pre-1958 Church, and to pray and work for the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the restoration of the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ over all individuals, families, and nations – a reign which the conciliar sect has systematically dismantled and denied.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV celebrates Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion in St. Peter’s Basilica (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 03.04.2026