EWTN News Vatican Bureau reports on May 6, 2026, that “Pope” Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) has appointed Father Michael T. Castori, SJ, as the sixth bishop of the Diocese of Honolulu, accepting the resignation of Bishop Clarence R. Silva, 76. The article dutifully chronicles Castori’s academic pedigree — a bachelor’s in classics from Harvard (1982), a master of divinity from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley (1998), a doctorate in Near Eastern religions from UC Berkeley (2008), and a licentiate in sacred theology from Fordham (2009) — along with his pastoral assignments among Tongan Catholic communities and as chaplain to San Quentin State Prison, and his role as rector of the Arrupe Jesuit Residence in Seattle. The appointment of yet another Jesuit to the episcopal throne of a diocese is not a neutral administrative act; it is a deliberate step in the ongoing consolidation of the Society of Jesus as the command structure of the conciliar sect, further entrenching the very force that has been the primary engine of modernist subversion within the Church for over a century.
The Jesuit Question: From the Church’s Sword to the Revolution’s Vanguard
To understand the gravity of this appointment, one must recall the original purpose of the Society of Jesus and the magnitude of its betrayal. Founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola in 1540, the Jesuits were established precisely as an elite corps to defend the faith against heresy, to educate the youth in Catholic doctrine, and to carry the Gospel to the most dangerous frontiers. Pope Clement XIII, in his bull *Apostolicum pascendi* (1765), praised the Society as a bulwark of the faith. Yet the same order that once produced Saint Peter Claver, Saint Isaac Jogues, and Saint John Francis Regis became, through infiltration by Enlightenment rationalism and later by outright Freemasonry, the very instrument of the Church’s undoing.
The history of Jesuit subversion is neither secret nor disputed among those who possess the eyes to see. The suppression of the Society by Pope Clement XIV in 1773 through the brief *Dominus ac Redemptor* was a direct consequence of the order’s insubordination, political machinations, and doctrinal corruption. Its restoration in 1814 by Pius VII did not purge the rot; it merely allowed the enemy to resume operations under the cover of a legitimate Catholic institution. By the nineteenth century, the Jesuits had become the intellectual vanguard of Liberal Catholicism, the very movement condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), which anathematized the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80).
Pope Saint Pius X, in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis (1907), identified Modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies” and traced its intellectual genealogy directly to the very tendencies that had taken root in certain Jesuit educational institutions. The Decree Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), issued by the Holy Office under Saint Pius X, condemned 65 propositions that systematically denied the divinity of Christ, the historicity of the Gospels, the nature of the sacraments, and the divine foundation of the Church — propositions that found their most sophisticated defenders in the modernist academies, many of them staffed by Jesuits or Jesuit-trained theologians.
The Academic Curriculum of Apostasy
Consider the educational formation of the newly appointed “bishop” of Honolulu. Castori holds a doctorate in Near Eastern religions from the University of California, Berkeley — a secular institution with no mandate to teach Catholic theology and every incentive to inculcate the relativist premise that all religions are equally valid paths to the divine. This is precisely the error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus, Proposition 16: “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation.” It is the same error anathematized by the Council of Florence in the bull Cantate Domino (1441), which declared that “those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart ‘into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels’ (Matt. 25:41).”
The study of “Near Eastern religions” as an academic discipline, detached from the apologetic framework of the Church, inevitably produces in its practitioners the conviction that Christianity is merely one religious phenomenon among many — a position that is flatly incompatible with the dogma Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (Outside the Church there is no salvation). This dogma, defined by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), reaffirmed by Pope Boniface VIII in Unam Sanctam (1302), and taught consistently by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, is not a negotiable opinion but a truth of divine and Catholic faith.
His licentiate in sacred theology from Fordham University — a Jesuit institution — is equally revealing. Fordham, like virtually all Jesuit universities since the mid-twentieth century, has been a factory for the production of modernist clergy. The “sacred theology” taught there since the conciliar revolution bears no resemblance to the theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, whose method and doctrine were mandated by the Church for centuries. Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879), declared that “the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas is in harmony with divine revelation, and is most effective both for safeguarding the foundation of the faith and for reaping, usefully and safely, the fruits of sound progress.” The theology taught at Fordham and its sister institutions is the precise antithesis: a theology of immanence, of religious evolution, of dialogue with error — in a word, Modernism.
The Jesuit Network as Parallel Governance
The Society of Jesus operates within the conciliar structures not as one religious order among many but as a parallel hierarchy with its own chain of command, its own institutional priorities, and its own global network of universities, think tanks, and media outlets. The appointment of Jesuits to episcopal sees is not an accident of personnel management; it is a strategy of consolidation.
Castori’s assignment to chaplaincy among Tongan Catholic communities in northern California and to San Quentin State Prison follows a well-established pattern: Jesuit operatives are deployed to positions where they can exercise influence over captive or marginalized populations, shaping the faith of the vulnerable according to the conciliar program. The prison chaplaincy, in particular, has long been a venue for the introduction of therapeutic and humanitarian substitutes for the sacramental life — counseling replaces confession, social work replaces sanctifying grace, and the “dignity of the human person” replaces the doctrine of original sin and the necessity of conversion.
His role as rector of the Arrupe Jesuit Residence in Seattle is itself significant. The residence is named for Pedro Arrupe, SJ (1907–1991), the 28th Superior General of the Society of Jesus, who is widely regarded as the architect of the post-conciliar transformation of the Jesuits. Under Arrupe’s leadership (1965–1983), the Society explicitly committed itself to the “service of faith and the promotion of justice” — a formula that, in practice, meant the subordination of the supernatural mission of the Church to the pursuit of social and political objectives derived from Marxism and secular humanism. The 32nd General Congregation of the Jesuits (1974–1975) declared that “the mission of the Society of Jesus today is the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement” — a statement that inverts the proper order of the Church’s mission, which is the salvation of souls, not the restructuring of temporal society according to the principles of the French Revolution.
The Episcopal Appointment as Act of Usurpation
It must be stated with absolute clarity: the appointment of a “bishop” by the antipope Leo XIV possesses no juridical force whatsoever in the true Church of Christ. As demonstrated in the authoritative defense of sedevacantism, Saint Robert Bellarmine teaches in De Romano Pontifice (II, 30) 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.” The principle is confirmed by Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which states that “every office becomes vacant by the mere fact and without any declaration by reason of tacit resignation, recognized by the law itself, if the cleric: … 4. Publicly defects from the Catholic faith.”
The line of usurpers beginning with John XXIII — who convened the apostate assembly known as Vatican II — and continuing through Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI (Ratzinger), Francis (Bergoglio), and now Leo XIV (Prevost), has consistently and publicly defected from the Catholic faith by promoting and enforcing the modernist errors condemned by Saint Pius X, by undermining the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass through the Novus Ordo Missae, by advancing false ecumenism and religious liberty in defiance of the defined teaching of the Church, and by effectively denying the unique salvific mission of the Church through interreligious dialogue and worship.
Pope Paul IV, in the apostolic constitution Cum ex Apostolatus Officio (1559), declared that if any Roman Pontiff “has defected from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy,” his promotion or elevation shall be “null, void, and of no effect.” This is not merely a disciplinary norm; it is an expression of the divine constitution of the Church, which cannot be reformed or repealed by any human authority, including a council.
Therefore, when Leo XIV “appoints” a “bishop” of Honolulu, he exercises no authority that the true Church recognizes. The appointment is an act internal to the conciliar sect — a paramasonic structure that has occupied the physical buildings and institutional apparatus of the Church while systematically destroying the faith once delivered to the saints. Castori does not become a bishop of the Catholic Church; he becomes a functionary of the neo-church, a manager of a diocese that exists not for the salvation of souls through the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the true sacraments, and the teaching of integral Catholic doctrine, but for the perpetuation of the modernist revolution under the appearance of religion.
The Diocese of Honolulu: From Mission Territory to Conciliar Laboratory
The Diocese of Honolulu itself has a history that illustrates the trajectory of the Church in the modern era. The Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, mentioned in the EWTN article, was built in the nineteenth century by the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary — the same order that produced Saint Damien of Molokai, who gave his life serving lepers in heroic charity and in the fullness of the Catholic faith. Saint Damien’s mission was unambiguously supernatural: he went to Molokai to save souls, to administer the sacraments, to preach Christ crucified, and to die in the odor of sanctity.
What has the concilar sect done with the legacy of Saint Damien? It has transformed the Church in Hawaii from a mission territory dedicated to the conversion of souls into a bureaucratic unit of the global conciliar apparatus, concerned primarily with social justice initiatives, interfaith dialogue, and the management of institutional decline. The appointment of a Jesuit with a doctorate in Near Eastern religions — that is, a man formed in the academic study of non-Christian religions as equivalent objects of scholarly sympathy — is perfectly consistent with this trajectory. The diocese does not need a bishop who will preach Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus; it needs a “bishop” who will preside over the peaceful liquidation of Catholic identity in favor of a syncretistic, humanitarian universalism.
The Silence That Condemns
The EWTN article, for its part, is a masterpiece of conciliar journalism: it reports the appointment as though it were a normal, legitimate, and newsworthy event. There is no questioning of the appointee’s orthodoxy, no scrutiny of his published writings or public statements for traces of the modernist heresies condemned by Pascendi and Lamentabili, no mention of the Jesuit order’s documented history of subversion, and no acknowledgment that the “pope” making the appointment is himself a usurper whose authority is null and void.
This silence is not accidental; it is structural. EWTN, despite its claims of fidelity, operates within the framework of the conciliar sect and recognizes the legitimacy of the post-1958 usurpers. Its journalism therefore functions as a public relations apparatus for the neo-church, presenting each new appointment as a reason for Catholic hope when in reality it is another nail in the coffin of the true faith.
The article’s inclusion of the detail that Castori was born in Sacramento, California, on October 21, 1960, and was ordained to the priesthood on June 13, 1998, is presented as biographical color. But consider the significance: Castori was formed entirely within the post-conciliar system. His entire priestly formation — from seminary to ordination — took place after the imposition of the Novus Ordo Missae, after the systematic dismantling of the traditional seminary curriculum, after the infiltration of the priesthood by homosexuals and modernists with the full knowledge and tacit approval of the conciliar hierarchy. He is, in the most precise sense, a product of the revolution — a man whose entire understanding of the priesthood, the Church, and the faith has been shaped by the very system that Saint Pius X identified as the synthesis of all heresies.
The Duty of the Faithful
Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secularism and laicism that sought to remove Christ from public life and from the governance of nations. He wrote that “the Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men” and that “it matters not whether individuals, families, or states, for men united in societies are no less subject to the authority of Christ than individuals.” The duty of every Catholic is to resist, by all legitimate means, the pretensions of those who would exclude Christ from His rightful dominion — whether they do so in the name of secular liberalism or in the name of a counterfeit “Church” that has betrayed its divine mission.
The appointment of Michael Castori, SJ, as “bishop” of Honolulu by the antipope Leo XIV is not a cause for resignation or despair. It is a cause for clarity. It reveals, with unmistakable precision, the nature of the conciliar sect: a Jesuit-run apparatus dedicated to the final destruction of Catholic doctrine, the replacement of the Most Holy Sacrifice with a Protestantized memorial service, the substitution of social activism for the preaching of the Gospel, and the transformation of the Church from the ark of salvation into a non-governmental organization with a religious veneer.
The true Church endures — in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith, in the priests who offer the true Mass of the ages, in the bishops who hold fast to the deposit of faith against all comers. Stat crux dum volvitur orbis (The stand stands while the world turns). Let the conciliar sect appoint its Jesuits and manage its decline. The gates of hell shall not prevail.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV appoints Jesuit priest as bishop of Honolulu (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 06.05.2026