The Pillar podcast, hosted by JD Flynn and Ed. Condon, dedicates Episode 257 to discussing “Pope Leo XIV’s” trip to Africa and his letter to the College of Cardinals, while also featuring a segment on First Communion practices. The portal presents these topics with a tone of casual normalcy, treating the actions of the usurper on Peter’s throne as legitimate papal governance. This framing itself constitutes a profound act of complicity with the conciliar revolution, as it implicitly validates the authority of a man who occupies the Holy See without legitimate mandate, thereby perpetuating the greatest ecclesiastical crisis in two millennia.
The Usurper’s African Campaign: Evangelization or Imperial Expansion?
The discussion of Leo XIV’s African trip reveals the fundamental nature of the post-conciliar apparatus: a globalist institution masquerading as the Church of Christ. When Flynn and Condon discuss this journey, they treat it as a routine exercise of papal authority, completely ignoring the theological reality that a manifest heretic cannot be Pope. As St. Robert Bellarmine unequivocally taught: “The fifth true opinion is that a Pope who is 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” (De Romano Pontifice, II:30). The conciliar sect’s relentless pursuit of African expansion serves not the salvation of souls but the consolidation of a bureaucratic empire built on the ruins of true Catholic missionary work.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secularism that removes Jesus Christ from public life. Yet the post-conciliar structures do exactly this, reducing the Church’s mission to humanitarian aid, interfaith dialogue, and social justice activism—all hallmarks of the abomination of desolation foretold by Our Lord (Mt 24:15). The African missions of the neo-church are not about converting pagans and schismatics to the one true Faith; they are about expanding the influence of a naturalistic, modernist organization that has abandoned its supernatural mission.
The Letter to Cardinals: Consolidating the Conciliar Revolution
The mention of Leo XIV’s letter to the College of Cardinals is particularly revealing. This communication serves to reinforce the structures of the post-conciliar sect, binding its members more tightly to the errors of Vatican II and its aftermath. The Cardinals of the neo-church are not successors of the Apostles but functionaries of a revolutionary regime. Their role is not to defend the deposit of faith but to implement the agenda of modernization, ecumenism, and religious indifferentism condemned by the true Magisterium.
Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), 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). Yet this is precisely the program that Leo XIV and his cardinals pursue. The letter discussed by The Pillar is not a call to return to Tradition but a further entrenchment of the conciliar errors. It is a document of consolidation, not conversion.
First Communion ‘Yes or No’: Sacramental Theology in Ruins
The segment on First Communion practices exposes the liturgical and sacramental chaos that reigns within the post-conciliar structures. When Flynn and Condon play their “First Communion ‘Yes or No'” game, they treat the reception of the Eucharist as a matter of personal preference or disciplinary flexibility, rather than the most sacred act of communion with the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. This casual approach to the sacraments is a direct consequence of the liturgical revolution that followed Vatican II, which reduced the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass to a communal meal and stripped the Eucharist of its propitiatory and sacrificial character.
The Council of Trent anathematized anyone who says that the Mass is “a bare commemoration of the sacrifice offered on the cross” (Session XXII, Canon 3). Yet this is precisely what the Novus Ordo Missae represents—a Protestantized memorial service that denies the Real Presence in practice if not always in theory. The First Communion practices discussed by The Pillar are symptoms of a Church that has lost faith in its own sacraments, treating them as rites of passage rather than encounters with the living God.
The Pillar’s Complicity: Normalizing the Abomination
The very existence of The Pillar as a media outlet that covers the activities of the conciliar sect with journalistic detachment is itself a scandal. By treating Leo XIV’s actions as newsworthy events within a legitimate ecclesiastical framework, Flynn and Condon lend credibility to the greatest fraud in Church history. Their podcast does not question the legitimacy of the usurper’s claim to the papacy; it assumes it. This is the essence of the modernist mentality: the acceptance of the hermeneutic of discontinuity as the new normal, the treatment of the conciliar revolution as a legitimate development rather than a catastrophic rupture.
St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), identified the Modernists as the “synthesis of all heresies” because they deny the unchanging nature of divine truth. The Pillar, by its very format and content, embodies this synthesis. It presents the post-conciliar chaos as manageable, even navigable, rather than as the apostasy it truly is. The podcast’s tone—conversational, analytical, occasionally critical but never fundamentally questioning—mirrors the attitude of those who wish to reform the unreformable, to fix what is irreparably broken.
The Silence That Condemns
What The Pillar does not discuss is as revealing as what it does. There is no mention of the theological criteria for determining a legitimate pope. There is no reference to the automatic loss of office for manifest heresy. There is no discussion of the Third Secret of Fatima and its implications for the current crisis. There is no acknowledgment that the post-conciliar “popes” have taught, ratified, and spread heresies condemned by the true Magisterium. This silence is not accidental; it is the silence of complicity, the silence of those who have chosen the comfort of institutional affiliation over the demands of truth.
The faithful are called not to navigate the structures of the neo-church but to reject them entirely. As the Defense of Sedevacantism demonstrates, the evidence is overwhelming: the conciliar sect has defected from the faith, and its leaders have lost all jurisdiction. The Pillar’s coverage of Leo XIV’s activities is not journalism; it is propaganda for the Antichrist’s kingdom. The only response worthy of a Catholic is total rejection and unwavering fidelity to the immutable Tradition of the Church of Christ.
Source:
Ep. 257: Leo in Africa, and questions without answers (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 19.04.2026