Angelus News portal reports that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, under the direction of “Archbishop” José Gomez, has designated 15 pilgrimage sites for the 2026 “Jubilee Year of St. Francis,” proclaimed by the antipope Leo XIV. The article describes a program of pilgrimages, prayer services, and community activities tied to the 800th anniversary of St. Francis of Assisi’s death, with the promise of plenary indulgences for participants. The initiative is presented as a means to “deepen love for Jesus Christ,” “strengthen care for creation,” and “renew commitment to peace.” However, beneath the veneer of piety lies a textbook example of the post-conciliar apostasy: a naturalistic, horizontal reduction of sanctity that omits the supernatural, distorts the Church’s teaching on indulgences, and serves the agenda of a paramasonic structure that has long abandoned the integral Catholic faith.
The Indulgence Scam: Sacramental Theology Reduced to Mechanical Ritual
The article’s central promise is the plenary indulgence, described as something that “removes the time a person might have spent in purgatory due to his or her sins, which have already been forgiven by God.” This definition, while containing a kernel of truth, is presented in the breezy, cafeteria-Catholic style that characterizes all post-conciliar catechesis. The conditions for obtaining a plenary indulgence — confession, communion, prayer for the “pope’s” intentions, and detachment from all sin — are mentioned only in passing, buried beneath the excitement of pilgrimage logistics. The effect is to reduce one of the Church’s most profound doctrines to a spiritual vending machine: show up at the right church, say the right prayers, and earn a get-out-of-purgatory card.
This is a direct consequence of the conciliar revolution’s systematic dismantling of sacramental theology. The Enchiridion Indulgentiarum of 1968, promulgated by the usurper Paul VI, already represented a radical break with centuries of discipline, diluting the theology of indulgences and opening the door to the kind of casual, mechanical approach on display here. Pius VI, in Auctorem Fidei (1794), condemned the Jansenist-tinged proposition that indulgences could be obtained without true interior conversion. The Council of Trent, in Session XXV, taught that indulgences are to be sought with “sobriety and piety,” not as a substitute for the hard work of sanctification. What the conciliar sect offers is precisely the opposite: a feel-good pilgrimage with a built-in indulgence, requiring nothing more than physical presence and minimal spiritual effort.
The Omission of the Supernatural: St. Francis as Social Justice Icon
The article’s portrayal of St. Francis is revealing in its omissions. Francis is described as “a rich man who embraced poverty and had a heart for the poor.” His rebuilding of the Portiuncula is presented as a construction project. The founding of the Order of Friars Minor is mentioned as a historical footnote. Nowhere — not once — is there any mention of the stigmata, the miraculous wounds of Christ imprinted upon Francis’s body in 1224 on Mount La Verna, the only recorded instance in history of a person receiving the five wounds of Our Lord in their physical flesh. Nowhere is there mention of Francis’s profound mystical life, his ecstasies, his prophetic visions, or his role as a alter Christus. Nowhere is there mention of the radical, supernatural poverty Francis practiced — not mere social service, but a total renunciation of the world for the love of Christ.
This is not an accident. The conciar sect has spent six decades systematically stripping the saints of their supernatural dimension, reducing them to moral exemplars and social activists. St. Francis, in the hands of the neo-church, becomes a proto-environmentalist, a peace activist, a patron of interfaith dialogue — everything except what he actually was: a mystic, a stigmatite, a miracle-worker, a man so conformed to Christ that he bore the wounds of the Crucified in his own flesh. The article’s emphasis on “care for creation” and “peace” is a direct echo of the modernist agenda enshrined in the documents of Vatican II, particularly Gaudium et Spes, which reduced the Church’s mission to dialogue with the world and the promotion of earthly welfare.
The Antipope’s “Jubilee”: A Usurper’s Authority
The entire framework of the “Jubilee Year of St. Francis” rests on the authority of Leo XIV, the current usurper on the seat of Peter. The article quotes him approvingly: “I wish to join spiritually with the entire Franciscan Family and with all those who will take part in the commemorative events, hoping that the message of peace may find a profound echo in the Church and society today.” A “message of peace” — not the peace of Christ, which “surpasses all understanding” (Phil. 4:7), but the peace of the United Nations, the peace of “reconciliation and understanding among our neighbors,” the peace of naturalistic humanism.
The sedevacantist position, grounded in the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine, holds that a manifest heretic ceases to be Pope ipso facto — by that very fact, before any declaration by the Church. Bellarmine wrote in De Romano Pontifice (II, 30): “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… a non-Christian in no way can be Pope… a manifest heretic is not a Christian.” The line of usurpers beginning with John XXIII has consistently taught heresies condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterism: religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), condemned by Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos and Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (propositions 77-80); ecumenism, condemned by Pius XI in Mortalium Animos; the novel concept of “collegiality,” condemned by the First Vatican Council. Leo XIV, as a product and perpetuator of this system, possesses no authority whatsoever to proclaim jubilees, grant indulgences, or designate pilgrimage sites.
The “Franciscan Family”: A Captured Order
The article quotes Fr. Jonathan St. Andre of Franciscan University of Steubenville, who expresses surprise and delight at the jubilee: “I don’t think any of us would have anticipated that Pope Leo would have declared this… to make this a jubilee, and to offer an indulgence… is just remarkable.” This enthusiasm is characteristic of those pretending to be traditional Catholics — the pseudo-trads — who remain in communion with the conciliar sect while selectively embracing pre-conciliar practices. Franciscan University of Steubenville is a prime example: an institution that celebrates the Traditional Latin Mass while fully recognizing the authority of the antipopes and participating in the structures of the neo-church.
The genuine Franciscan order, like every religious order in the Church, was systematically dismantled after 1958. The post-conciliar “Franciscan Family” is a modernist shell, stripped of its rule, its habit, its supernatural charism, and its mission of prayer and penance. What remains is a social-service agency with a religious veneer, perfectly suited to the conciliar agenda of “care for creation” and “peace.” The fact that the antipope can summon this ghost to his jubilee is not remarkable — it is inevitable, given that both are products of the same revolution.
The Relics Charade
The article notes that “the altar at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles features a relic of Francis sealed into it.” It also mentions that the remains of St. Francis were moved from his tomb and exposed for public veneration in Assisi from Feb. 22 to March 22. The public display of relics is a venerable practice of the Church, governed by strict canonical norms. But in the context of the conciar sect, such displays serve a different function: they are spectacles, designed to generate emotional fervor and a sense of connection to the past, without any corresponding demand for doctrinal fidelity or supernatural faith.
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels itself is a monument to post-conciliar modernism — a sprawling, architecturally incoherent structure that replaced the historic Cathedral of St. Vibiana after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Its very existence is a symbol of the conciliar preference for the new over the old, for innovation over tradition, for the horizontal over the vertical. That it contains a relic of St. Francis is a cruel irony: the saint who rebuilt the Church’s physical structures in obedience to Christ’s command now lends his name to a temple of modernist architecture and modernist worship.
The Silence on Mortification and Penance
Perhaps the most telling omission in the entire article is any mention of mortification, penance, or the Cross. St. Francis, who received the stigmata, who practiced severe fasting and bodily penance, who wept bitterly for his sins and the sins of the world, is presented as a gentle figure of peace and environmental concern. The article’s vision of “holiness” is entirely horizontal: “prayer, conversion, and works of charity” — but the charity is undefined, the conversion is unspecified, and the prayer is reduced to community activities and pilgrimage logistics.
The Council of Trent taught that penance is a necessary part of the Christian life, and that “fasts, prayers, and other pious exercises of the spiritual life” are essential for the mortification of the flesh (Session XIV, Chapter VIII). St. Francis exemplified this teaching in its fullest expression. The conciliar sect, by contrast, has replaced penance with “social justice,” mortification with “self-care,” and the Cross with “peace and understanding.” The result is a St. Francis who would be unrecognizable to the saint himself — and to every Catholic who lived before the abomination of desolation.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in Los Angeles
The Los Angeles Archdiocese’s “Jubilee Year of St. Francis” is not a celebration of Catholic sanctity. It is a modernist spectacle, designed to generate emotional fervor, promote the conciar agenda of environmentalism and social peace, and reinforce the authority of an antipope who possesses no authority whatsoever. The indulgences offered are empty promises, the pilgrimages are tourist excursions, and the “holiness” promoted is naturalistic humanism dressed in religious language.
The true St. Francis — the stigmatite, the mystic, the penitent, the alter Christus — has no place in the neo-church. He belongs to the true Church, the Church of all ages, the Church that has endured in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith and are led by bishops with valid sacraments and validly ordained priests. The conciliar sect can borrow his name, but it cannot borrow his sanctity. Non est potestas super terram quae comparetur ei — “There is no power on earth that can be compared to Him” (Ecclus. 10:4). The power of Christ’s true Church does not reside in the structures occupying the Vatican, but in the immutable faith delivered once and for all to the saints.
Source:
Los Angeles Archdiocese Announces Pilgrimage Sites, Indulgences for St. Francis Jubilee (ncregister.com)
Date: 09.04.2026