EWTN News (April 14, 2026) reports that the current usurper on Peter’s throne, Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), addressed the Pontifical Biblical Commission during its plenary assembly at the Vatican, urging biblical scholars to overcome “fear of illness and death” through faith in Christ. In his letter, Leo XIV defined God’s nature as “compassion, closeness, tenderness, and solidarity,” citing Gospel passages about Christ’s healing of lepers and the blind. He invited scholars to study not only physical suffering but also “the sufferings of the poor, of migrants, and of the marginalized in society,” suggesting that pain “can make a person wiser and more mature.” This address is a textbook example of the anthropocentric revolution that has consumed the conciliar sect, reducing the infinite God of Catholic theology to a sentimental companion in human fragility while remaining utterly silent on sin, repentance, the salvific purpose of suffering, and the supernatural end of man.
The God of Leo XIV: A Deity Stripped of Holiness, Justice, and Transcendence
The most immediately striking feature of Leo XIV’s address is his characterization of the divine nature. He stated: “Through the experience of fragility and illness, we too can and must learn to walk together, in human and Christian solidarity, in accordance with the way God does, which is [through] compassion, closeness, tenderness, and solidarity.” This is not merely an imprudent formulation; it is a theological catastrophe. The God of Catholic revelation — the God whom the true Church has worshipped for two millennia — is not defined primarily by “compassion, closeness, tenderness, and solidarity.” He is defined by His holiness: “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts” (Isaiah 6:3). He is “a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29), the “Judge of all the earth” (Genesis 18:25), who is simultaneously infinite mercy and infinite justice. To reduce God to an inventory of warm human sentiments is to commit the very error that Pius XI condemned in Quas Primas: the removal of Christ and His most holy law from public and private life, leaving only a vague, naturalistic benevolence.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that God is “infinite in all perfections” and that among His attributes, “His holiness is His supreme glory.” St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica (I, q. 6, a. 2), demonstrates that God’s goodness is not a mere affective quality but the very esse of His being, the fontal principle from which all creation flows and to which it must return through the supernatural order of grace. Leo XIV’s God — a God of “closeness” and “solidarity” — is not the God of St. Thomas, not the God of the Council of Nicaea, not the God of the Quicunque Vult. He is the god of Modernism: immanent, horizontal, and indistinguishable from the sentimental humanitarianism that Pius X condemned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) as the very “synthesis of all heresies.”
The Omission of Sin: The Fatal Silence
Perhaps the most damning feature of Leo XIV’s address is what it does not say. In an entire letter devoted to suffering, illness, and death, there is not a single mention of sin as the cause of suffering, not a single call to repentance, not a single reference to the supernatural merit of uniting one’s sufferings to the Passion of Christ for the remission of sins. This silence is not accidental; it is the hallmark of the post-conciliar apostasy. The true Church has always taught what the Council of Trent solemnly defined: “If anyone says that the sins we commit after Baptism cannot be forgiven through the merits of Christ, and that we must therefore despair of God’s justice… let him be anathema” (Session VI, canon 15). Suffering, in Catholic doctrine, is a consequence of original sin (Genesis 3:16-19) and is redemptive only when accepted in a state of grace and offered in reparation.
Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Immortale Dei (1885), explained that the purpose of human society and its governance is to lead men to “the enjoyment of heaven” — not to “solidarity” on earth. The entire supernatural economy of salvation — the Incarnation, the Redemption, the sacraments, the Mass as propitiatory sacrifice — is oriented toward the remission of sins and the restoration of grace. Leo XIV’s address, by contrast, presents suffering as a pedagogical tool for personal maturation: “pain and illness can make a person wiser and more mature, helping him to discern in his own life what is not essential, in order to turn toward, or return to, the Lord.” This is not Catholic theology; it is secular self-help dressed in liturgical vestments. The “Lord” to whom one “returns” in Leo XIV’s framework is not the Christ who said “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3), but a therapeutic deity whose primary function is emotional accompaniment.
The Hermeneutic of Woke: Migrants and the Marginalized as New Sacraments
Leo XIV further revealed the ideological captivity of the conciliar structures when he invited biblical scholars to study “also the sufferings of the poor, of migrants, and of the marginalized in society, which are present in so many pages of sacred Scripture.” While Sacred Scripture indeed contains numerous passages on the duty of charity toward the poor, Leo XIV’s formulation is not a call to supernatural charity — which is a theological virtue ordered toward God — but a reduction of the Gospel to a program of social justice. This is precisely the error condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), Proposition 40: “The teaching of the Catholic Church is hostile to the well-being and interests of society,” and Proposition 58: “No other forces are to be recognized except those which reside in matter, and all the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means, and the gratification of pleasure.” While Leo XIV does not explicitly endorse materialism, his reduction of the Church’s mission to “solidarity” with categories defined by contemporary secular ideology — migrants, the marginalized — is the practical fruit of the same naturalistic philosophy.
The true Church has always taught that the primary “marginalized” person is the sinner in a state of mortal sin, cut off from sanctifying grace and destined for eternal damnation. The Church’s mission is not “solidarity” with the poor as such, but the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and the salvation of souls. As Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “The Church, established by Christ as a perfect society, demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority, and that in fulfilling the mission entrusted to it by God — to teach, govern, and lead all to eternal happiness, those who belong to the Kingdom of Christ — it cannot depend on anyone’s will.” Leo XIV’s Church, by contrast, depends entirely on the categories and priorities of the secular world.
The Pontifical Biblical Commission: A Tool of the Conciliar Revolution
The very body to which Leo XIV addressed his letter — the Pontifical Biblical Commission — is itself a product of the modernist infiltration of the Church. Originally established in 1902 by Leo XIII to defend the faith against rationalist biblical criticism, it was captured by the modernist faction in the mid-20th century and became one of the primary instruments for the destruction of orthodox biblical scholarship. The Commission’s post-conciliar work has consistently promoted the historical-critical method condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), which rejected propositions such as: “The narratives of John are not properly history, but only a mystical contemplation of the Gospel” (Proposition 16) and “Divine inspiration does not extend to the whole of Holy Scripture to such that all and individual parts of it are protected from every error” (Proposition 11).
Leo XIV’s endorsement of the Commission’s initiative to study “various biblical figures who suffered” as “a beautiful symbol of hope for every person who unites their sufferings to the crucified Christ” is revealing. The phrase “symbol of hope” is not Catholic theological language; it is the language of liberal Protestantism, which reduced the mysteries of faith to symbolic representations of human experience. The true Church teaches that the Crucifixion is not a “symbol” but a historical and supernatural reality — the propitiatory sacrifice of the God-Man for the remission of the sins of the world. To reduce it to a “symbol of hope” for those who “unite their sufferings” to it, without any mention of the necessity of faith, baptism, repentance, or the state of grace, is to evacuate the Redemption of its salvific content.
The “Two Lucias” of the Conciliar Sect: From Mystical Body to NGO
The trajectory from the true Church to the conciliar sect can be measured in the distance between Leo XIV’s address and the teaching of his predecessors. Compare his words with those of Pius IX, who in the Syllabus of Errors condemned the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80). Or consider the teaching of St. Pius X, who in Pascendi identified the fundamental error of Modernism as the reduction of religion to “sentiment” and “experience” rather than objective truth. Leo XIV’s God of “compassion, closeness, tenderness, and solidarity” is precisely the god of Modernist sentiment — a god who asks nothing, judges nothing, demands nothing, and simply “accompanies” man in his suffering.
The true Church teaches that suffering, while it can be meritorious, is an evil — a consequence of sin — and that the ultimate “solidarity” with Christ is not a feeling but a sacramental reality: the Holy Eucharist, in which the faithful receive the true Body and Blood of Christ for the remission of sins and the increase of sanctifying grace. Leo XIV’s address contains no reference to the Eucharist, no reference to the sacraments, no reference to the supernatural life of grace. His “solidarity” is purely horizontal — a human togetherness that has no vertical dimension, no connection to the Cross, no orientation toward eternity.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation Speaks
Leo XIV’s letter to the Pontifical Biblical Commission is not an isolated gaffe; it is a faithful expression of the theology that has animated the conciliar sect since the death of Pius XII. It is the theology of Gaudet Mater Ecclesia — the opening speech of the apostate John XXIII at Vatican II — which declared that the Church must now “look to the future” and “take account of the present” rather than condemn errors. It is the theology of Dignitatis Humanae, which proclaimed the right to religious freedom — a direct contradiction of the teaching of Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos (1832) and of Pius IX in the Syllabus. It is the theology of a Church that has ceased to be the Kingdom of Christ on earth and has become a non-governmental organization devoted to “solidarity” with the categories of suffering defined by the United Nations.
The faithful who still profess the integral Catholic faith must recognize in Leo XIV’s words the voice of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matthew 24:15). This is not the voice of Peter; it is the voice of the conciliar revolution, which has emptied the Church of her supernatural content and replaced the worship of the transcendent God with the worship of immanent man. The remedy is not reform but rejection — the rejection of the entire conciliar edifice and the return to the immutable Tradition of the true Church, which teaches that God is not “compassion, closeness, tenderness, and solidarity,” but “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6), and that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Source:
Pope Leo XIV reminds biblical scholars: Christ’s compassion toward all who suffer is ‘profound’ (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 14.04.2026