EWTN News reports that during his visit to Cameroon on April 15, 2026, the usurper Leo XIV delivered a speech to government authorities, the diplomatic corps, and civil society, proclaiming that “Peace, in fact, cannot be decreed: It must be embraced and lived.” The article, authored by Marco Mancini and Andrea Gagliarducci, presents the address as a message of hope for a nation scarred by the Anglophone crisis, decades of authoritarian rule under President Paul Biya, and widespread corruption. Yet beneath the veneer of pastoral concern lies a discourse entirely emptied of supernatural reality — a naturalistic sermon that reduces the Church’s mission to social engineering, interfaith sentimentality, and the idolatry of “dialogue,” while remaining obstinately silent about the only true source of peace: Our Lord Jesus Christ the King, His Holy Catholic Church, and the salvation of souls.
A Peace Stripped of Christ: The Theological Bankruptcy of Leo XIV’s Address
The article opens by framing Leo XIV’s visit as the second stop of an 11-day African journey, noting that Cameroon is often described as “Africa in miniature” due to its cultural and linguistic diversity. The country is marked by the so-called Anglophone crisis, which erupted in 2016 when the Anglophone minority sought greater autonomy from the Francophone-dominated government of Paul Biya — a ruler who has held power for nearly four decades. The conflict escalated into violence, displacement, and a unilateral declaration of independence in the territory called Ambazonia. The article notes that “mediation by the Holy See was also requested” at the height of the crisis.
From the outset, the framing is revealing. The “Holy See” is invoked as a neutral diplomatic mediator — a secular NGO with moral prestige — rather than as the one true Church of Jesus Christ, outside of which there is no salvation. The request for mediation is presented uncritically, as though the Church’s role in temporal conflicts were that of a United Nations envoy rather than the divinely instituted guardian of truth and justice. This is the conciliar Church in its purest form: a humanitarian organization with sacramental trappings, offering “dialogue” where it should proclaim dogma.
The Omission of the Supernatural: A Speech Without God
Leo XIV declared: “I come among you as a shepherd and as a servant of dialogue, fraternity, and peace.” Let us examine this statement with the rigor it demands. A shepherd of souls — if such a title were legitimately his — would come as a servant of truth, not “dialogue.” He would come to preach repentance, the necessity of baptism, the reality of sin, the existence of hell, and the absolute kingship of Jesus Christ over all nations and peoples. Instead, Leo XIV offers the language of the United Nations: “dialogue,” “fraternity,” “peace” — terms stripped of all Catholic content and filled with the spirit of the Dignitatis Humanae revolution.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), taught with unmistakable clarity: “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.” And further: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” Leo XIV’s speech does not merely fail to invoke these truths — it actively contradicts them by proposing a peace founded on human effort, civil society, and “collective effort” rather than on the submission of nations to Christ the King.
The usurper proclaimed: “Peace cannot be reduced to a slogan: It must be embodied in a way of life that renounces all forms of violence, both personally and institutionally.” This is moralism without grace. It is the language of natural virtue, of Stoic philosophy, of Kantian ethics — but it is not Catholic teaching. The Church has always taught that peace is a tranquillitas ordinis (the tranquility of order), and that order requires the submission of the human will to the divine will. Without sanctifying grace, without the sacraments, without the mortification of the flesh and the rejection of sin, no “way of life” can produce true peace. As St. Augustine taught: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee, O God.”
“A Gift from God” That Leads Nowhere
Leo XIV did utter the words: “Peace is a gift from God.” But this phrase, extracted from its proper theological context and placed within a speech devoid of any call to conversion, repentance, or faith, becomes an empty incantation. If peace is a gift from God, then it is received through the means God has established: His Church, His sacraments, His grace. Yet Leo XIV channels this “gift” through “patient and collective effort,” through “civil authorities,” through “associations, women’s and youth organizations, trade unions, humanitarian nongovernmental organizations, and traditional and religious leaders.” In other words, the “gift from God” is distributed through the apparatus of civil society — the very structures that Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus of Errors as usurping the Church’s divine mission.
This is the religion of indifferentism — condemned by Pius IX in Proposition 17: “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.” By placing “traditional and religious leaders” on the same plane as Catholic pastoral action, Leo XIV implicitly teaches that all religious traditions are equally valid paths to peace. This is not Catholicism. This is the Nostra Aetate heresy elevated to a governing principle of the Church’s social doctrine.
The Idolatry of “Integral Human Development”
Leo XIV spoke of “integral human development” — a phrase borrowed directly from the social teaching of his modernist predecessors, particularly Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio and the subsequent social encyclicals of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. The term sounds Catholic, but in practice it has been emptied of supernatural content and replaced with a materialistic vision of human flourishing that prioritizes economic development, education, and healthcare over the salvation of souls.
The usurper stated: “Investing in education, training, and entrepreneurship is a strategic path to peace and the only way to stem the loss of talent and counter the scourges of drugs, prostitution, and apathy.” Where is the mention of catechesis? Where is the call to evangelize, to baptize, to bring souls into the one true Church? Where is the recognition that the “scourges” he names are sins — mortal sins that imperil souls for eternity — and not merely social problems to be managed through investment portfolios?
Pius XI warned in Quas Primas: “The plague of our times is the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors… It began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations; the Church’s authority to teach men, to issue laws, to govern nations, which authority she received from Christ the Lord to lead men to eternal happiness, was denied.” Leo XIV’s speech is a perfect embodiment of this plague. It is laicism wearing a cassock.
The Corruption of Youth: Spirituality Without Doctrine
Perhaps the most insidious passage in the entire address is Leo XIV’s treatment of Cameroonian youth. He stated: “Young people represent the hope of the country and of the Church. Their energy and creativity are priceless treasures.” And further: “Cameroonian youth possess a ‘deep spirituality that still resists the homogenizing influence of the market.'”
This is the language of the World Youth Day movement — the conciliar Church’s most successful tool for creating a generation of Catholics who feel intensely and believe nothing. “Deep spirituality” without dogma is not Catholic spirituality; it is sentimentalism, it is the religious experience condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis as the very essence of Modernism. The Modernist, St. Pius X taught, “places the foundation of religious philosophy in that doctrine which is commonly called agnosticism” and reduces faith to “a feeling of the soul.”
St. Pius X, in the Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemned the following propositions, which are directly relevant here:
Proposition 25: “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities.” Proposition 26: “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief.” Proposition 58: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him.”
Leo XIV’s appeal to “spirituality” without content, to “energy and creativity” without doctrine, is the practical application of these condemned propositions. It is the formation of a generation that will embrace “peace” and “dialogue” while rejecting the hard truths of the Faith: the necessity of the Church, the reality of sin, the existence of hell, the obligation of nations to submit to Christ the King.
The Silence on Sin, the Absence of Repentance
Nowhere in the reported speech does Leo XIV call the people of Cameroon — or their rulers — to repentance. Nowhere does he name sin as the root cause of the nation’s suffering. Nowhere does he proclaim that the Anglophone crisis, the corruption, the violence, and the displacement are, at their root, consequences of original sin and actual sin — of a society that has turned away from God and His law.
Instead, he offers the language of “transparency,” “rule of law,” and “integrity of personal conduct.” These are not Catholic categories. They are the categories of liberal democracy, of Enlightenment philosophy, of the very rationalism condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 3): “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself.”
The Church has always taught that justice is a theological virtue — that it cannot be practiced without grace, without faith, without submission to God’s law. Leo XIV’s “justice” is a purely naturalistic concept, achievable through human effort and institutional reform. This is the naturalism condemned by Pius IX in Proposition 1 of the Syllabus: “There exists no Supreme, all-wise, all-provident Divine Being, distinct from the universe.” By omitting God from his analysis of Cameroon’s crisis, Leo XIV implicitly teaches that human affairs can be ordered without reference to the Creator — a proposition formally condemned by the Church.
The Scandal of “Dialogue” with Heretics and Schismatics
The article notes that Leo XIV recalled the visits of his predecessors — John Paul II and Benedict XVI — and invoked St. Augustine on the nature of governance. But the most telling invocation is his reference to “Pope Francis’ call to move beyond ‘the idea of social policies being a policy for the poor, but never with the poor and never of the poor, much less part of a project which can bring people together.'”i>
This is a direct quote from Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium — the apostolic exhortation that called for a “Church which is poor and for the poor” and that opened the door to the most radical decentralization of Catholic teaching since the Protestant Reformation. By invoking Francis approvingly, Leo XIV signals his continuity with the most destructive pontificate in the history of the Church — a pontificate that systematically undermined Catholic doctrine on marriage, the moral law, the salvation of souls, and the nature of the Church itself.
Moreover, the entire framework of “dialogue” — with civil authorities, with “traditional and religious leaders,” with “civil society” — is the framework of false ecumenism, condemned by every pope up to and including Pius XII. The Church has always taught, as an infallible dogma, that “outside the Church there is no salvation” (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus). This dogma does not mean that the Church should engage in “dialogue” with false religions as though they contained elements of truth sufficient for salvation. It means that the Church must preach, convert, and baptize — not “dialogue” and “collaborate.”
The Anglophone Crisis: A Missed Opportunity for Truth
The article notes that the Anglophone crisis — involving the marginalization and persecution of Cameroon’s English-speaking minority — will be addressed by Leo XIV during his visit to Bamenda. One might expect a true pope to address such a crisis by proclaiming the Church’s social teaching on the rights of minorities, the obligations of rulers, the sinfulness of oppression, and the necessity of justice founded on divine law.
But Leo XIV’s approach, as reported, is to frame the crisis in purely humanitarian terms — “lives lost, families displaced, children deprived of education” — without any reference to the spiritual dimensions of the conflict. Are the Anglophone Catholics being persecuted for their faith? Are they being denied the sacraments? Is the Church’s mission being obstructed? These questions are not raised. The crisis is treated as a political problem requiring political solutions — “dialogue,” “mediation,” “local mediation” — rather than as a spiritual crisis requiring spiritual remedies.
This is the conciliar method: reduce every problem to its naturalistic dimensions, strip away the supernatural, and offer human solutions to what are ultimately spiritual maladies. It is the method of Gaudium et Spes — the conciliar document that reimagined the Church as a servant of “the modern world” rather than as the divinely instituted ark of salvation.
The “Church” That Serves the World
Leo XIV concluded by stating: “Through its educational, health care, and charitable efforts, the Catholic Church in Cameroon wishes to continue serving all without distinction, collaborating with civil authorities and strengthening ties between Cameroonians worldwide and their communities of origin.”
This is the language of a non-governmental organization. The Church “serves all without distinction” — without distinction of faith, without distinction of religion, without distinction of truth. It “collaborates with civil authorities” — it does not instruct them, does not command them, does not remind them that they are subject to Christ the King and will answer to Him at the Last Judgment.
Pius XI taught in Quas Primas: “The state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations, both male and female, who are indeed the most valiant helpers of the Pastors of the Church and contribute most to the expansion and establishment of Christ’s Kingdom.” And further: “The annual celebration of this solemnity will also remind states that not only private individuals, but also rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him.” Leo XIV’s Cameroon address does the opposite: it reminds the Church to serve the state, to collaborate with civil authorities, to be a “vital force for national cohesion” — rather than the pillar and foundation of truth.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation Speaks Peace
Leo XIV’s address in Cameroon is a textbook example of the conciliar apostasy. It is a speech about peace that never mentions the Prince of Peace. It is a speech about justice that never mentions divine law. It is a speech about the common good that never mentions the salvation of souls. It is a speech about the Church’s mission that reduces the Church to a social service agency collaborating with the very powers that Christ came to judge and to conquer.
The true peace of Christ — the Pax Christi — is not “embraced and lived” through human effort alone. It is received through faith, through the sacraments, through submission to the authority of the one true Church. As Pius XI proclaimed: “The peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ.” Without the Kingdom of Christ, there is no peace — only the temporary cessation of violence that the world calls “peace” but which is, in reality, the calm before the storm of divine judgment.
Cameroon — and all nations — do not need the empty “peace” of Leo XIV. They need the peace that comes from submission to Christ the King, from the preaching of the Gospel, from the administration of the sacraments, and from the recognition that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Until the structures occupying the Vatican proclaim this truth — which they will never do, for they are not the Church — their “peace” will remain what it has always been: the false peace of the Antichrist.
Source:
Pope in Cameroon: Peace ‘cannot be decreed: It must be embraced and lived’ (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 15.04.2026