The National Catholic Register (via CNA/EWTN) reports on the April 26, 2026 private audience between 97-year-old Cardinal Ernest Simoni and the usurper Leo XIV (Robert Prevost). The article recounts Simoni’s imprisonment and forced labor under Albania’s communist regime, his clandestine celebration of the Latin Mass, and his presentation of a relic of Albanian martyrs to the antipope. The piece is saturated with conciliar vocabulary — “fraternity,” “peace,” “joy of the Resurrection” — and presents Simoni’s suffering as legitimizing the post-conciliar apparatus rather than exposing its apostasy.
The Suffering of the Faithful Weaponized Against the Faith
There is no question that Ernest Simoni endured genuine hardship under the communist regime of Enver Hoxha. Eighteen years of prison, forced labor cleaning sewers, a death sentence commuted — these are facts that command a natural human sympathy. But the integral Catholic mind must ask a question that the article, and the entire conciliar establishment behind it, refuses to pose: To what end is this suffering now being put? The answer is damning.
Simoni’s testimony is not being used to condemn the modernist apostasy that has devastated the Church far more thoroughly than any communist regime ever could. It is not being used to expose the conciliar sect’s destruction of the Most Holy Sacrifice, its false ecumenism, its religious indifferentism, or its systematic dismantling of Catholic doctrine. Instead, his suffering — real, physical, exterior suffering — is being instrumentalized to legitimize the very structures that perpetuate the far greater catastrophe of internal apostasy. The article presents Simoni greeting Leo XIV, the successor of John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI (Ratzinger), and Francis (Bergoglio) — every one of whom advanced the modernist revolution — as though this man were the true Vicar of Christ.
Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secularism that removes Christ and His law from public life. The communist persecution of Albania was a temporal manifestation of this secularism. But Pius XI simultaneously warned, in language the conciliar sect has buried, that the greater danger is the internal enemy: those who, under the guise of reform, corrupt the faith from within. The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX (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). Every “pope” since John XXIII has done precisely this. Simoni’s relic is handed not to a defender of the faith, but to the current architect of its continued dissolution.
The Latin Mass: Instrument of Survival, Not Continuity
The article notes with apparent admiration that Simoni “celebrated Mass daily” in prison, and that because “he celebrated Mass in Latin, his jailers thought he had gone mad and was merely babbling incomprehensible words.” This detail, presented as a charming anecdote, conceals a theological reality the article’s authors dare not confront.
Simoni was ordained on April 7, 1956 — two years before the death of Pius XII and the beginning of the conciliar revolution. His priesthood was formed under the immutable Roman Rite, the theology of the propitiatory sacrifice, and the integral Catholic faith. The Mass he celebrated clandestinely was the true Mass — the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary, as codified by the Council of Trent and defended by every pontiff from St. Peter to Pius XII. That this Mass was the anchor of his survival is a testament to its divine efficacy.
But the article draws precisely the wrong conclusion from this fact. It implies that Simoni’s fidelity to the Latin Mass connects him to the post-conciliar “Church” — the same “Church” that, under Paul VI, fabricated a new rite of Mass that the Archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, declared was not a valid expression of Catholic theology; the same “Church” that under Francis (Bergoglio) issued Traditionis Custodes to suppress the very Mass Simoni risked his life to celebrate. The conciar sect did not continue the Mass of Simoni’s ordination. It replaced it with a protestantized assembly. The Simoni of 1963, celebrating Mass in a communist prison, was far closer to the Catholic faith than the Leo XIV of 2026, presiding over the abomination of desolation in the Vatican.
The Vocabulary of Apostasy
The linguistic texture of this article is itself a diagnosis of theological death. Simoni is quoted describing the audience as an occasion “to proclaim together, to all the peoples of the world, the peace that comes from heaven, that most sweet peace, spiritual joy, and the joy of the Resurrection.” The cardinal’s relatives gazed “upon the face of the Holy Father, who represents the face of Jesus.” The relic was offered “so that all men may contemplate the smile of heaven.”
This is not Catholic language. This is the sentimental, naturalistic, anthropocentric vocabulary of the conciliar revolution — the language of Nostra Aetate and Dignitatis Humanae, the language that replaces the supernatural order with human emotion, the Kingship of Christ with “fraternity,” the salvation of souls with “spiritual joy.” St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), identified the modernist method: the reduction of supernatural religion to subjective experience, the substitution of “vital immanence” for objective truth. The article does not mention sin, grace, the state of final perseverance, the reality of hell, or the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation. These omissions are not accidental. They are the hallmark of the apostate religion that has occupied the Vatican since 1958.
The Lamentabili sane exitu of St. Pius X (1907) condemned the proposition that “the Church is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics, because it steadfastly adheres to its views, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress” (Proposition 63). The article’s entire framework — presenting Simoni’s heroic endurance as a prelude to the conciliar “Church’s” message of “peace and love for all peoples” — is precisely this condemned proposition in narrative form.
The Albanian Martyrs and the Martyrdom That Counts
The article references “Albanian martyrs” whose relic Simoni presented to Leo XIV. The Catholic Church, before the conciliar revolution, understood martyrdom with precision: it is the sustained death for the faith — odium fidei. The martyrs of Albania died at the hands of persecutors who hated Christ and His Church. Their witness was against the external enemy of atheistic communism.
But the Catholic Church also teaches, through the unanimous testimony of the Fathers and Doctors, that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from without but from within. Our Lord Himself warned: “The time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doth God service” (John 16:2). St. Pius X, in his inaugural encyclical E Supremi Apostolatus (1903), warned of “enemies within” — the modernists who would destroy the Church from the inside. The Syllabus of Errors condemned those who deny the Church’s right to exercise authority, who subject her to civil power, who claim she must adapt to modern civilization.
The Albanian martyrs died for the true faith. The conciliar sect has betrayed that same faith. To present a relic of those martyrs to the current occupant of the Vatican — a man who presides over the systematic destruction of everything those martyrs died for — is not an act of piety. It is an act of profound theological dishonesty, whether Simoni recognizes it or not. The article makes no mention of this contradiction, because the conciar establishment cannot afford to acknowledge it.
The “Living Martyr” and the Living Heresy
The article’s description of Simoni as a “living martyr” is, in one sense, moving. But the integral Catholic must ask: what is the fruit of this martyrdom as presented in the article? The fruit is an audience with an antipope, a photo opportunity for Vatican Media, and a piece of propaganda that reinforces the legitimacy of the conciliar sect. The suffering of Simoni is not used to call the faithful back to the true Mass, the true doctrine, the true Church. It is used to validate the false Church that emerged from the Second Vatican Council.
The sedevacantist position, grounded in the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine, holds that a manifest heretic ceases to be Pope ipso facto — by that very fact, before any declaration. Bellarmine writes in De Romano Pontifice (II, 30): “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… a non-Christian in no way can be Pope… he who is not a Christian is not a member of the Church, and a manifest heretic is not a Christian, therefore a manifest heretic cannot be Pope.” The Council of Trent, the Syllabus of Errors, Lamentabili, Pascendi, and Quas Primas collectively define the Catholic faith against which the conciliar sect has defined itself. Paul VI’s promulgation of the new Mass, John Paul II’s Assisi gatherings, Francis’s Amoris Laetitia and Traditionis Custodes — each represents a formal, public, manifest departure from Catholic doctrine.
Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) is the heir of this apostasy. He did not begin it, and he perpetuates it. The private audience with Simoni is not a meeting between a martyr and a saint. It is a meeting between a man who suffered for the true faith and a man who administers the institution that abandoned it.
The Silence That Condemns
The most devastating critique of this article is what it does not say. There is no mention of the true state of the Catholic Church — the Church that endures in the faithful who profess the integral faith and are led by bishops with valid orders in communion with the pre-conciliar Magisterium. There is no mention that the Mass Simoni celebrated in prison has been suppressed by the very “Church” he now embraces. There is no mention that the “fraternity” and “peace” proclaimed by the conciliar sect are the very errors condemned by Pius IX, St. Pius X, and Pius XI.
There is no warning that receiving “Communion” in post-conciliar structures, where the Mass has been reduced to a table of assembly and the rubrics violate the theology of the propitiatory sacrifice, constitutes sacrilege. There is no reminder that the salvation of souls — not “spiritual joy” — is the supreme law of the Church (Salus animarum suprema lex). There is no acknowledgment that Christ the King demands the obedience of nations, not their “dialogue.”
The article’s silence about supernatural realities is its gravest error. It reduces the faith to a story of human endurance and emotional consolation. It transforms the witness of suffering into a tool of modernist propaganda. And it hands the relics of true martyrs to a false pope, as though the blood of the saints could sanctify the abomination of desolation.
The Catholic faith endures — not in the conciliar sect, not in the Vatican occupied by modernists, not in the “Church” of Leo XIV — but in the remnant that holds fast to the doctrine of all times, the true Mass, and the unchanging Magisterium. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus — outside the Church, there is no salvation. And the Church is not defined by the structures occupying Rome. She is defined by the faith once delivered to the saints.
Source:
Living ‘Martyr’ of Communism, Cardinal Simoni, Presents Relic of Albanian Martyrs to Leo XIV (ncregister.com)
Date: 28.04.2026