National Catholic Register portal reports on May 1, 2026, that the antipope Leo XIV has appointed four new bishops to lead several dioceses in the United States. These appointments—Father John Gomez to Laredo, Texas; Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala to Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia; and Fathers Gary Studniewski and Robert Boxie III as auxiliary bishops for Washington—represent the continuation of a systematic effort by the conciliar sect to fill its hierarchical ranks with men who will perpetuate the post-conciliar revolution. Far from being a cause for hope, these appointments are yet another symptom of the abomination of desolation that has occupied the Vatican since 1958, a structure that, while simulating apostolic succession, operates in open defiance of the immutable deposit of faith and the supernatural mission of the true Church of Christ.
The Antipope and the Illegitimacy of His “Appointments”
The very premise of these appointments rests upon a foundational lie: that Robert Prevost, masquerading as “Pope Leo XIV,” possesses any authority whatsoever to appoint bishops. From the perspective of integral Catholic theology, this is an impossibility. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches in *De Romano Pontifice*, a manifest heretic ceases to be pope *ipso facto*—by that very fact—and may be judged and punished by the Church. The conciliar sect, beginning with John XXIII, has promulgated errors condemned by every pope from St. Pius X to Pius XII: religious liberty (*Dignitatis Humanae*), false ecumenism (*Unitatis Redintegratio*), the novel liturgy of the *Novus Ordo Missae*, and the entire hermeneutic of continuity designed to mask apostasy as renewal. These are not private opinions but public, notorious, and manifest heresies. The antipope Leo XIV, like his predecessors, has never retracted these errors. He is, therefore, not a pope but an usurper, and all his acts of jurisdiction—including episcopal appointments—are null and void.
Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law confirms this: every office becomes vacant by the mere fact of public defection from the Catholic faith, without any declaration required. Pope Pius IX’s bull *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio* further establishes that any promotion or elevation of one who has defected from the faith is “null, void, and of no effect.” The conciliar structure, having publicly defected from the faith through its adoption of modernist errors, has no capacity to confer valid jurisdiction. The men appointed by Leo XIV are not bishops of the Catholic Church but functionaries of a paramasonic structure.
The Profile of the Appointees: Men of the Conciliar Revolution
The biographical details provided by the National Catholic Register reveal men formed entirely within the post-conciliar system, whose careers are marked by the hallmarks of modernist infiltration.
Bishop-designate John Gomez of Laredo was ordained in 2009—decades after the conciliar revolution—and has served in roles characteristic of the neo-church: judicial vicar, diocesan review board member, and moderator of the curia. These are bureaucratic functions designed to manage the institutional apparatus of the conciliar sect, not to shepherd souls toward eternal salvation. His appointment to replace James Tamayo, himself appointed by the apostate John Paul II, is a seamless transmission of power within a structure that has never been in communion with the true Church.
Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala of Wheeling-Charleston is described as “the first Salvadoran bishop in the history of the United States.” This emphasis on ethnic identity as a qualification for episcopal office is a hallmark of the conciliar sect’s obsession with diversity and representation—concepts borrowed from secular liberalism, not from the Gospel. The true Church has never measured the fitness of bishops by their national origin but by their orthodoxy, holiness, and zeal for souls. Menjivar-Ayala’s formation at the Pontifical North American College in Rome and the Angelicum—both bastions of post-conciliar modernism—ensures his allegiance to the revolution. His promotion from auxiliary bishop in Washington to ordinary of Wheeling-Charleston is a reward for faithful service to the conciliar apparatus.
Bishop-designate Gary Studniewski served as a military chaplain for nearly a decade—a role that, in the context of the U.S. military’s commitment to pluralism and “diversity,” places him in a position of compromise with false religions and secular ideology. His current pastorate at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Washington is notable: the very title of this parish invokes the Eucharist, yet the “Mass” celebrated there is the *Novus Ordo*, a rite that the Catholic Church has never recognized as valid in the traditional sense and which, by its own admission, is a communal meal rather than the propitiatory sacrifice of Calvary.
Bishop-designate Robert Boxie III holds engineering and law degrees from Vanderbilt and Harvard—secular credentials that signal the conciliar sect’s preference for men trained in worldly disciplines rather than in sacred theology. His ordination in 2016 places him among the youngest generation of conciliar clerics, men who have known nothing but the post-conciliar system and who are, therefore, incapable of recognizing its errors. His role as chaplain at Howard University—a historically black institution steeped in progressive ideology—further aligns him with the conciar sect’s commitment to social justice activism over supernatural evangelization.
The Liturgical and Doctrinal Bankruptcy of the Conciliar Sect
The article makes no mention of the liturgical crisis that defines the conciliar sect. The “Mass” celebrated by these men is not the Traditional Latin Mass—the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary, offered *ad orientem*, in Latin, with rubrics unchanged for centuries. It is the *Novus Ordo Missae*, a rite concocted by the freemason Annibale Bugnini and promulgated by the apostate Paul VI in 1969. This rite, with its versus populum orientation, its vernacular language, its emphasis on the “table of assembly” rather than the altar of sacrifice, and its optional Eucharistic Prayers, is a Protestantized parody of the true Mass. As Pope Pius VI warned in *Auctorem Fidei* (1794), any innovation in the liturgy that departs from the received tradition is suspect of heresy.
The conciliar sect’s liturgical revolution is inseparable from its doctrinal apostasy. The Second Vatican Council’s declaration *Nostra Aetate*, which these men are bound to uphold, teaches that the Catholic Church “rejects nothing that is true and holy” in non-Christian religions and encourages “dialogue and collaboration” with adherents of false faiths. This is a direct contradiction of the perennial teaching of the Church, as expressed by Pope Pius XI in *Mortalium Animos* (1928): “The union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it.” The conciliar sect has abandoned this supernatural mission in favor of naturalistic ecumenism—a fraternal embrace of error that constitutes a betrayal of Christ the King.
The Silence on Supernatural Realities
Perhaps the most damning omission in the article is its complete silence on the supernatural mission of the Church. There is no mention of the necessity of baptism for salvation, no mention of the state of grace, no mention of the final judgment, no mention of the reality of hell, no mention of the necessity of conversion to the Catholic Church. The language is entirely naturalistic: appointments, retirements, degrees, roles, boards, councils. This is the language of a corporation, not of the Church founded by Jesus Christ.
St. Pius X, in *Pascendi Dominici Gregis* (1907), warned that the Modernists—the “synthesis of all errors”—would reduce the Church to a purely human institution, stripping it of its supernatural character. The conciliar sect has fulfilled this prophecy. Its bishops are not successors of the Apostles but managers of a global NGO. Its “sacraments” are not channels of grace but rituals of a dying institution. Its “faith” not a deposit entrusted by Christ but a set of evolving opinions subject to the “spirit of the times.”
The Duty of the Faithful
The faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith must reject these appointments and all acts of the conciar sect. As Pope Leo XIII taught in *Satis Cognitum* (1896), the Church is a visible society, hierarchically constituted, with authority derived from Christ alone—not from the consensus of a council or the decree of an antipope. The true Church endures in the faithful who profess the immutable doctrine, who receive the valid sacraments from priests ordained according to the traditional rite, and who refuse to participate in the conciliar revolution.
The appointments of Gomez, Menjivar-Ayala, Studniewski, and Boxie are not a renewal but a consolidation of apostasy. They are the fruits of the conciliar sect’s decades-long campaign to replace the supernatural Church of Christ with a human institution dedicated to the worship of man. Let us pray for the true restoration of the Church, when Christ the King will reign not only in the hearts of the faithful but in the public order of nations—*Regnet Christus Rex*.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV Appoints 4 New Bishops to Multiple U.S. Dioceses (ncregister.com)
Date: 01.05.2026