National Catholic Register (May 9, 2026) reports that Catholic Church leaders across Africa have described the first year of the pontificate of Robert Prevost, who calls himself “Pope Leo XIV,” as a period marked by “pastoral closeness, missionary renewal, peace advocacy, and renewed attention to the peripheries of the Church.” The article, sourced from ACI Africa and EWTN News, highlights the self-styled pontiff’s apostolic visit to Algeria, Cameroon, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea as a “defining moment” of his ministry. Bishops quoted in the piece praise the journey as a “powerful sign of communion,” emphasizing themes of “dialogue, reconciliation, missionary outreach, justice, and peace.” Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, president of SECAM, stated that Leo XIV’s “tireless appeals for peace, reconciliation, justice, and human fraternity have touched hearts across nations.” Bishop Christian Carlassare of South Sudan described the visit as reversing worldly perspectives: “the so-called ‘margins’ become the center.” The article further notes the emphasis on Christian-Muslim relations in Algeria and the call for believers to be “artisans of peace and fraternity.” What the article meticulously documents, yet utterly fails to interrogate, is how this entire narrative constitutes a systematic inversion of the Church’s missionary mandate, replacing the supernatural imperative of conversion with a naturalistic program of horizontal solidarity, interreligious dialogue, and socio-political activism — a program indistinguishable from the Masonic blueprint condemned by Pius IX in the *Syllabus of Errors*.
The Erasure of Conversion: From “Go Teach All Nations” to “Mutual Giving and Receiving”
The most glaring and spiritually catastrophic omission in this entire collection of episcopal reflections is the complete absence of any call to conversion to the Catholic Faith. Our Lord Jesus Christ’s final command to His Apostles was unequivocal: “Euntes ergo docete omnes gentes, baptizantes eos in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti” — “Going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19). This is the mission of the Church: not to affirm the dignity of persons in their existing religious condition, but to bring them to the one true Faith, outside of which there is no salvation — “Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.”
Yet Bishop Carlassare, quoted at length in the article, inverts this missionary imperative entirely. He declares that the people of God in Africa are “not communities ‘to be assisted’ but living subjects of mission,” and that “mission is increasingly a circular movement of mutual giving and receiving.” The theological poison in this statement is lethal. The Church does not go to Africa to receive; she goes to give — to give the Faith, the Sacrametes, the Truth. The notion that the “small ones” evangelize the “great” is a direct contradiction of the hierarchical constitution of the Church established by Christ, wherein the Apostles and their successors are sent to the nations, not as equal partners in dialogue, but as ambassadors of the King of Kings. As Pope Pius XI declared in *Quas Primas* (1925): “His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The Church’s mission is one of submission to Christ, not “mutual giving and receiving” with those who reject Him.
This “circular movement” language is not accidental. It is the conciliar ecclesiology of *Nostra Aetate* and *Evangelii Gaudium* dressed in missionary vestments. It is the heresy condemned by Pius IX in the *Syllabus of Errors*, Proposition 16: “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation,” and Proposition 17: “Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ.” When Bishop Carlassare speaks of faith as “choice, resistance, and concrete hope” rather than as assent to divinely revealed truth, he reveals that he has adopted the modernist conception of faith condemned in *Lamentabili Sane Exitu* (1907), Proposition 25: “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities,” and Proposition 26: “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief.”
The “Margins” as Center: A Revolution Against the Hierarchy of Truth
Bishop Carlassare’s assertion that the Pope’s visit to Africa meant that “the so-called ‘margins’ become the center” is perhaps the most revealing statement in the entire article. It encapsulates the conciliar revolution’s inversion of the Church’s understanding of her own nature and mission. In Catholic ecclesiology, the center is not determined by geopolitical or demographic calculations. The center is Peter — the Rock upon which Christ built His Church. The center is Rome — the See of the Vicar of Christ. The center is the altar — where the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered. To speak of the “margins” becoming the center is to deny the hierarchical, Petrine constitution of the Church and replace it with a sociological, horizontal model.
This language echoes the “preferential option for the poor” that has been the hallmark of liberation theology and its conciliar successors since Vatican II. But it goes further: it makes the “peripheries” the hermeneutical center — the place from which the Church’s mission is defined and evaluated. This is precisely the error condemned by St. Pius X in *Pascendi Dominici Gregis* (1907), where he described the modernist error that “the religious conscience must be the norm of revelation, not the external authority of the Church.” When the “margins” become the center, the lived experience of the poor replaces the deposit of Faith as the criterion of truth. The Gospel is no longer something proclaimed to the peripheries; it is something discovered in them.
Pope Pius XI, in *Quas Primas*, was unequivocal about the relationship between the Church’s center and its mission: “The Church, established by Christ as a perfect society, demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority, and that in fulfilling the mission entrusted to it by God — to teach, govern, and lead all to eternal happiness — it cannot depend on anyone’s will.” The “margins as center” theology makes the Church dependent on the will and experience of those she is sent to save, rather than on the will of the God who sent her.
Christian-Muslim “Fraternity”: The Ecumenism Condemned by the Magisterium
The article highlights Bishop Kasonde’s reflection on Leo XIV’s emphasis on “Christian-Muslim relations” during the Algeria visit, stating that it “opens up also the interaction with our brothers and sisters, the Muslims, in appreciating what religion stands for.” This language is not merely imprudent; it is heretical. Islam is a heresy — a deliberate rejection of the Divinity of Christ, the Trinity, and the Redemption. To speak of Muslims as “brothers and sisters” in a religious sense, and to suggest that interreligious interaction serves to appreciate “what religion stands for” in general, is to deny the unique salvific mission of the Catholic Church.
Pope Pius IX, in the *Syllabus of Errors*, condemned Proposition 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true,” and Proposition 18: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church.” If Protestantism — which at least acknowledges the Divinity of Christ and the authority of Scripture — is not “another form of the same true Christian religion,” then Islam, which explicitly denies the central mysteries of the Faith, cannot be placed on a continuum of religious validity.
The call for believers to be “artisans of peace and fraternity” — language borrowed directly from the Abu Dhabi Declaration of 2019 signed by Bergoglio — replaces the supernatural virtue of charity with a naturalistic humanitarianism. True fraternity is founded on the shared Faith of Baptism, not on a vague “human fraternity” that papers over fundamental theological contradictions. As Pius XI taught: “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” True peace — “the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ” — is only possible when nations and individuals submit to the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The “unarmed and disarming peace” invoked by Bishop Ponce de León is not the peace of Christ; it is the peace of the world, which is the peace of compromise with error.
The Exploitation Narrative: Replacing Sin with Systemic Injustice
Bishop Carlassare’s reflection on “exploitation, injustice, and the prophetic role of the Church” further exposes the naturalistic framework of the conciliar sect. He recalls Leo XIV speaking of “plundered natural resources, economic dependence, and dependence on humanitarian aid caused by poor governance and lack of peace,” and quotes Bergoglio’s 2023 appeal: “Hands off from Africa. Stop suffocating it: It is not a natural reservoir to be exploited or a land to be plundered.”
While the exploitation of Africa’s resources by foreign powers is a genuine injustice that the Church has a right and duty to address, the conciliar sect’s treatment of this issue is fatally flawed because it omits the primary cause of all injustice: sin. The Church’s social teaching, as articulated by Leo XIII in *Rerum Novarum* and by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*, always begins with the recognition that social disorder flows from the disorder of souls separated from God. The remedy is not merely structural reform but conversion to Christ and obedience to His law.
By reducing the prophetic mission of the Church to a denunciation of economic exploitation and a call for “integral human development,” the conciliar sect has effectively replaced the supernatural order with the natural order. The “seeing, recognizing, and giving voice” that Carlassare describes is not the prophetic ministry of the Church; it is the language of secular human rights activism. The true prophetic voice of the Church calls all men — oppressor and oppressed alike — to repentance, Faith, and the Sacraments. As Pius XI declared: “If men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society, such as due freedom, order, and tranquility, and concord and peace.”
The “First Pope from the United States” and the End of Catholic Universality
The article’s reference to Leo XIV as “the first pope from the United States” deserves scrutiny. The Catholic Church is universal — kat’holon, “according to the whole.” The nationality of the Roman Pontiff is theologically irrelevant; what matters is his communion with the unbroken Tradition of the Church and his fidelity to the deposit of Faith. By emphasizing the American origin of the usurper, the conciliar sect reveals its fundamentally modernist and secular understanding of the papacy — as a kind of global CEO whose value lies in his demographic representativeness rather than his doctrinal orthodoxy.
Bishop Kasonde’s comment that Leo XIV “connects with his root, St. Augustine of Hippo, who is the patron saint for their congregation as Augustinians” is a particularly egregious example of the conciliar habit of constructing artificial genealogies to legitimize novelty. The Order of St. Augustine, as it exists today, is a product of the post-conciliar reorganization of religious life that stripped communities of their traditional observance, liturgy, and spirit. To invoke St. Augustine — the Doctor of Grace, the scourge of Pelagianism, the defender of the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation — as patron of a congregation that promotes interreligious dialogue and the “margins as center” theology is an act of intellectual theft.
The Blessed Virgin Mary: Invoked but Silenced
The article concludes by noting that the SECAM leadership entrusted Leo XIV’s ministry “to the loving protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” This invocation is rendered hollow by the complete absence of any reference to Our Lady’s role as Mediatrix of All Graces, her Immaculate Conception, or her divine Maternity — doctrines that define her unique place in the economy of salvation. In the conciliar sect, the Blessed Virgin has been reduced to a generic figure of maternal comfort, stripped of her theological specificity and her role in the conversion of souls. The true devotion to Our Lady, as taught by St. Louis de Montfort and mandated by the authentic Magisterium, is inseparable from the call to conversion and the total consecration to Jesus Christ through her hands.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation Continues
What this article documents, beneath its veneer of ecclesiastical celebration, is the continued consolidation of the conciliar revolution. Every theme highlighted — the “margins” as center, circular mission, interreligious fraternity, socio-political prophetic ministry, the erasure of conversion — is a direct fruit of the apostasy inaugurated by John XXIII and formalized at Vatican II. The “Church” described in this article is not the Church founded by Jesus Christ; it is the “abomination of desolation standing in the holy place” (Mt 24:15) — a paramasonic structure that occupies the Vatican while systematically dismantling the Faith it was built to preserve.
The true Church endures — in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic Faith, who attend the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass according to the immemorial Roman Rite, and who reject the modernist novelties of the conciliar sect. As St. Pius X warned in *Pascendi*: “The office committed to the Church is to guard the deposit of faith… and to discern the true and the false in all doctrines.” The faithful must discern. The “margins” do not become the center. Christ is the center. And His Kingdom — not the “kingdom of this world” — shall have no end.
Source:
Catholic Church Leaders in Africa Reflect On Pope Leo XIV’s First Year (ncregister.com)
Date: 09.05.2026