EWTN News portal reports that on April 26, 2026, the usurper Robert Prevost—styled “Pope Leo XIV”—ordained 10 men to the priesthood in the basilica desecrated by decades of modernist liturgy, delivering a homily saturated with the conciliar sect’s characteristic naturalism, horizontalism, and doctrinal void. His central exhortation—”You are a channel, not a filter”—encapsulates the entire apostate program of the post-conciliar structure: the abolition of doctrinal boundaries, the dissolution of the Church’s teaching authority into a universal welcome mat, and the reduction of the Catholic priesthood to a form of humanitarian social work stripped of its sacrificial and doctrinal substance.
The Priest as “Channel”: The Abolition of Doctrinal Boundaries
The metaphor Leo XIV chose—”You are a channel, not a filter”—is not merely imprecise; it is doctrinally ruinous. The true priesthood of Jesus Christ, as defined by the Council of Trent and the perennial Magisterium, is precisely a filter in the most sacred sense: the priest is the guardian of doctrine, the judge of what is worthy to be offered at the altar, the one who discerns the Body of Christ and excludes the profane. St. Paul commands: “Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and dispensers of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor 4:1). The Latin dispensatores implies not indiscriminate pouring-out but careful, discriminating stewardship.
The Council of Trent, Session XXIII, Chapter I, teaches that the priesthood was instituted by Christ “to offer, bless, and reserve the Eucharist, and to forgive sins”—functions that require precisely the discernment, judgment, and doctrinal rigor that Leo XIV’s metaphor explicitly repudiates. A “channel” implies passivity; a priest is called to be an active guardian. The gate of the sheepfold, which Leo XIV himself invoked from John 10, is not an open field—it is a gate, and gates exist to admit the faithful and exclude wolves. Our Lord said: “By their fruits you shall know them” (Matt 7:16), and the fruit of a priest who refuses to filter, discern, and exclude error is the wholesale apostasy that has consumed the conciliar structures since 1958.
Leo XIV’s exhortation to “keep the door open” and to “let people in” without qualification is a direct contradiction of the Church’s perennial teaching on the obligation to exclude error and those who propagate it. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that “the Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion” (Proposition 21). The true Church has always taught extra Ecclesiam nulla salus—outside the Church there is no salvation—and this dogmatic certainty requires precisely the doctrinal filtering that Leo XIV dismisses as contrary to the priestly mission.
“Life Does Not End in a Parish”: The Naturalistic Horizontalism of the Conciliar Sect
Perhaps the most revealing passage in the entire homily is Leo XIV’s instruction to the ordinands:
“The Church’s doors are open, but not to cut us off from life: Life does not end in a parish, in an association, in a movement, in a group. Whoever is saved can ‘go out and find pasture.’ Dear brothers, go out and discover culture, people, and life! Marvel at the things that God makes grow without our having sown them.”
This passage is a masterclass in modernist naturalism. The supernatural order—the sacraments, the state of grace, the necessity of the true faith for salvation, the reality of eternal damnation—is entirely absent. In its place, we find a breathless enthusiasm for “culture, people, and life” that reads less like a papal homily than a UNESCO manifesto. The priest is sent not to sanctify souls through the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments, but to “marvel” at what “God makes grow without our having sown them”—a formulation that implicitly undermines the necessity of grace, the Church, and the apostolate. If God grows things without our sowing, what is the priest for?
Pope St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), identified this exact tendency as the core of Modernism: the reduction of the religious life to a natural, immanent experience divorced from supernatural revelation. The modernist, St. Pius X teaches, “places the foundation of religious philosophy in that doctrine which is usually called agnosticism” and reduces religion to “a sentiment arising from a need of the divine”. Leo XIV’s exhortation to “discover culture, people, and life” is precisely this modernist sentiment dressed in pastoral language. There is no mention of converting souls to the Catholic faith, no mention of the necessity of baptism, no mention of the Four Last Things. The entire horizon is horizontal.
Furthermore, the dismissive reference to “a parish, in an association, in a movement, in a group” reveals the conciliar sect’s longstanding war against Catholic particularism and the organic structures of the true Church. The parish, the religious order, the confraternity—these are not limitations to be transcended but the divinely instituted means by which souls are sanctified. To tell newly ordained priests that “life does not end” in these structures is to tell them that the institutional Church itself is an insufficient vessel for God’s work—a proposition that echoes the modernist heresy condemned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), Proposition 53: “Christ did not intend to establish the Church as a community lasting for centuries on earth.”
The Eucharist Reduced to “Facilitating Encounters”
Leo XIV’s most egregious statement comes near the end of the homily:
“Facilitating encounters, helping to bring together those who would otherwise never meet, and conciliating division is one and the same as celebrating the Eucharist and reconciliation.”
This is not merely erroneous; it is blasphemous. The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary, in which the Eternal High Priest offers Himself to the Father for the remission of sins—is declared to be “one and the same” as the secular activity of “facilitating encounters” and “conciliating division.” The sacrament of reconciliation, in which Christ acts through His priest to absolve sins by virtue of the power received at ordination, is equated with the work of a community organizer.
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), taught that the Kingdom of Christ is “primarily spiritual and relates mainly to spiritual matters” and that Christ’s royal authority encompasses “a threefold authority”—legislative, judicial, and executive. The priest participates in this threefold authority precisely through the offering of the Most Holy Sacrifice and the administration of the sacraments. To reduce this sublime reality to “facilitating encounters” is to commit the very error that Pius XI identified as the plague of the age: “the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors.”
The equation of the Eucharist with social facilitation is also a direct contradiction of the Council of Trent, Session XXII, Chapter II, which teaches that the Mass is “a true and proper sacrifice” offered “to God alone” for the purposes of “praise, thanksgiving, propitiation, and satisfaction”. It is not a tool for “bringing together those who would otherwise never meet.” The true end of the Mass is the glory of God and the salvation of souls through the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ—not the creation of social harmony.
Celibacy as “Love of Spouses”: The Corruption of a Divine Institution
Leo XIV’s treatment of priestly celibacy further reveals the conciliar sect’s systematic corruption of Catholic doctrine:
“Certainly, like the love of spouses, the love that inspires celibacy for the kingdom of God must also be guarded and constantly renewed, for every true affection matures and becomes fruitful over time.”
The comparison of priestly celibacy to conjugal love is not merely inapt; it is a subtle but unmistakable erosion of the theological foundation of celibacy. Priestly celibacy is not a parallel form of “love” analogous to marriage; it is a participation in the angelic life, a renunciation of the natural good of marriage for the sake of the supernatural good of undivided service to God. The Council of Trent, Session XXIV, Canon X, anathematizes those who deny that the celibate state is superior to the married state. Pope Pius XII, in Sacra Virginitas (1954), taught that virginity is “an angelic state” that “surpasses marriage in excellence” and is practiced “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (cf. Matt 19:12).
By framing celibacy in terms of “love” analogous to marriage, Leo XIV implicitly relativizes the superiority of the celibate state and opens the door—consistent with the conciliar sect’s longstanding program—to the eventual abolition of celibacy altogether. The language of “guarding and renewing” celibacy as one would a marital relationship is foreign to the Church’s tradition and reveals a naturalistic anthropology incapable of grasping the supernatural reality of the priestly vocation.
The Regina Caeli: “Thieves” Without Doctrine, Warnings Without Truth
In his Regina Caeli address, Leo XIV continued the theme of Jesus as the Good Shepherd and warned against “thieves” who rob people of “freedom, dignity, and peace.” He enumerated these “thieves” as:
“those who ‘suppress our freedom or fail to respect our dignity,’ as well as ‘beliefs and biases,’ ‘mistaken ideas,’ and ‘superficial and consumeristic lifestyles’ that leave people empty inside. He also pointed to those who harm humanity by ‘pillaging the earth’s resources, waging bloodthirsty wars, or fueling evil in any form.'”</blockquote
This catalogue of "thieves" is a study in studied ambiguity and doctrinal evasion. The greatest thief of all—Satan, the “thief” whom Our Lord explicitly identifies in John 10:10: “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy”—is nowhere named. The greatest robbery ever committed against humanity—the loss of the true faith through heresy, apostasy, and the corruption of the sacraments—is entirely absent. In its place, we find the standard litany of secular progressive concerns: environmental destruction, war, consumerism, and the suppression of “freedom” and “dignity”—concepts drawn not from Catholic theology but from the Enlightenment and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
Pope Pius IX, 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). Leo XIV’s Regina Caeli address is precisely such a reconciliation. The “thieves” he identifies are not heretics, schismatics, or those who propagate false doctrine; they are the vague, morally neutral categories of secular humanitarianism. The true thief—the one who has occupied the Vatican since 1958 and systematically dismantled the Church’s doctrine, liturgy, and discipline—sits on the throne of Peter and speaks to the crowds in St. Peter’s Square.
The Ordinations Themselves: Validity in Question
It must be noted that the ordinations performed by Leo XIV take place within the conciliar sect, whose sacramental validity has been seriously questioned since the introduction of the new rite of ordination by the apostate Paul VI in 1968. The revised rite altered the essential form of ordination, removing the explicit language of sacrificial priesthood and replacing it with ambiguous formulations that may not validly confer the sacrament. If the ordination rite is invalid, then the 10 men “ordained” on April 26, 2026, are not priests at all—a fact that renders Leo XIV’s exhortations not merely erroneous but tragically futile.
Even setting aside the question of validity, the incardination of ordinands from India and Saudi Arabia into structures controlled by the conciliar sect reveals the globalist, anti-Catholic character of the neo-church. The true Church’s missionary activity aimed at the conversion of pagan nations to the Catholic faith; the conciar sect’s “missionary” activity aims at interreligious dialogue, the “discovery” of what “God makes grow without our having sown them,” and the facilitation of “encounters” that produce no conversions and no saints.
The Abomination of Desolation Speaks, and the Faithful Must Resist
The homily and Regina Caeli address of April 26, 2026, are not isolated incidents but the natural fruit of the conciliar revolution that began with John XXIII and has now reached its fullest expression in the reign of Leo XIV. Every element—the abolition of doctrinal boundaries, the naturalistic horizontalism, the reduction of the Eucharist to social facilitation, the corruption of celibacy, the evasion of supernatural realities, the adoption of secular humanitarian language—is consistent with the program of Modernism condemned by St. Pius X as “the synthesis of all heresies.”
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, warned that the rejection of Christ’s kingship over human society would produce “seeds of discord sown everywhere, flames of envy and hostility” and the “complete shattering” of domestic and social order. The conciliar sect, by rejecting the integral Catholic faith and replacing it with a naturalistic humanitarianism, has produced precisely these fruits—and then has the audacity to identify “thieves” as those who wage war and pillage the earth, rather than the apostates who have pillaged the Church of Christ.
The faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith must reject these ordinations, these exhortations, and this entire structure as the abomination of desolation foretold by Our Lord (Matt 24:15). The true Church endures—in the faithful who profess the unchanging Catholic faith, in the true Mass offered by validly ordained priests, and in the immutable doctrine of the pre-conciliar Magisterium. Against the “open doors” of the neo-church, the true Church proclaims with St. Peter: “Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Source:
Pope Leo XIV tells new priests: 'You are a channel, not a filter' (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 26.04.2026