[FILE: Lamentabili sane exitu – St. Pius X and the Holy Office – 1907] — Proposition 63: “The Church is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics, because it steadfastly adheres to its views, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress.”
National Catholic Register portal reports that the Diocese of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo has issued Ebola prevention measures, including mandatory handwashing before Mass, following a health emergency declaration. What should be a occasion for supernatural confidence in Divine Providence and the intercession of the saints has instead been reduced to a bureaucratic health advisory — a perfect microcosm of the conciliar sect’s total capitulation to naturalism and its abandonment of the Church’s divine mission.
The Diocese Responds to Ebola with Chlorinated Water, Not with Prayer
The communiqué from the Diocese of Goma, issued through Chancellor Father Christian Kisonia on May 18, 2026, announces that “Bishop Willy Ngumbi Ngengele had directed that all Catholic communities in the diocese observe strict preventive measures aimed at limiting the spread of the deadly virus.” The measures include avoiding physical contact with symptomatic persons, frequent handwashing with soap, use of hand sanitizers, avoiding contact with bodily fluids, and reporting suspected cases to health facilities.
“Washing before Mass is mandatory for all the faithful,” Kisonia emphasized, directing parishes to prepare washbasins with chlorinated water and soap. Communities were further directed to limit visits from outsiders.
Let us be precise: hygiene is not sinful. Prudence in the face of epidemic disease is a virtue. But the question that burns — the question that the conciliar structures will never ask, because it would expose their spiritual bankruptcy — is this: where is the supernatural response?
What a True Bishop Would Have Done
When pestilence struck Christendom in ages of faith, the Church did not merely distribute chlorinated water. She mobilized the spiritual arsenal entrusted to her by Christ. Pope Saint Gregory the Great, during the plague of 590, organized solemn processions through the streets of Rome, chanting litanies and imploring the Blessed Virgin’s intercession. The Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist was carried in triumph through the pestilential city. The faithful were called not merely to wash their hands but to wash their souls — to confession, to penance, to fervent prayer, to the reparation of sins that, as every Catholic before 1958 understood, are the ultimate cause of all temporal scourges.
The Council of Trent, Session XIV, Chapter 8, teaches that “the sacrament of Penance contributes to the restoration of grace and the salvation of the faithful” — it is the ordinary means by which souls are healed. The sacrament of Extreme Unction, as the Council affirms in Session XIV, Chapter 1, “imparts grace, remits sins, and comforts the sick.” These are the weapons of the Church’s warfare against disease — not because they are magical incantations, but because they address the root cause: sin and its consequences in a fallen world.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared that Christ’s reign “extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The reign of Christ the King is not merely spiritual in the conciar sense of “private interior disposition” — it extends to every aspect of human life, including the governance of nations and the ordering of public health according to divine and natural law.
What did the “Bishop” of Goma do? He issued a sanitation directive. He prepared washbasins. He told people to avoid contact with the sick. He behaved not as a successor of the Apostles wielding the spiritual authority of Christ, but as a district health administrator.
The Omission That Condemns
Read the communiqué again — every word of it. What is absent?
There is no call to prayer in any substantive sense. There is no call to confession. There is no call to reception of the Most Holy Eucharist as a source of supernatural strength and healing. There is no mention of the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary or the saints. There is no exhortation to penance and reparation. There is no reminder that God is the Lord of life and death, that temporal afflictions are consequences of sin, and that the supernatural remedy of grace is the Church’s primary competence.
The entire response is purely naturalistic. It operates entirely within the framework of secular public health methodology. It could have been issued by the World Health Organization, by Médecins Sans Frontières, by any non-governmental organization. There is nothing — absolutely nothing — in this communiqué that distinguishes it as a document emanating from a body claiming to be the One True Church founded by Jesus Christ.
This is the prophecy of Saint Pius X fulfilled before our eyes. In Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), he diagnosed the Modernist as one who “puts the cause of religion in the heart of man” and reduces the Church’s authority to a merely natural, sociological phenomenon. The Modernist, Saint Pius X wrote, “does not deny” the external forms of religion but empties them of supernatural content, retaining only the natural shell. The Diocese of Goma’s Ebola response is this principle incarnate: the external structure of a diocese, a bishop, a chancellor, a communiqué — but the content is indistinguishable from secular humanitarianism.
The Bundibugyo Strain and the Theology of Divine Providence
The article notes that the DRC is facing an outbreak linked to the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, and that “there is currently no licensed vaccine specifically approved for the Bundibugyo strain.” WHO declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on May 16, citing “risks associated with cross-border movement, delayed case detection, weak health systems, and insecurity in eastern Congo.”
The article further reports that the outbreak has spread to neighboring Uganda, “forcing the government to postpone the 2026 Martyrs’ Day.” Uganda’s Catholic bishops responded: “Although the national gathering at Namugongo has been postponed, dioceses and parishes are encouraged to celebrate the day with the guidance of the diocesan bishop and the relevant government authorities.”
Consider the gravity of this. The Uganda Martyrs — Saint Charles Lwanga and his companions — were burned alive in 1885-1887 rather than submit to the immoral demands of King Mwanga. They are among the greatest saints of the African Church, witnesses to the faith who shed their blood rather than deny Christ. Their feast day, June 3, draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Namugongo. And now the conciliar structures in Uganda postpone the national gathering — not because of persecution for the faith, but because of a virus — and encourage the faithful to celebrate “with the guidance of… the relevant government authorities.”
The martyrs died rather than obey an immoral civil authority. The conciliar bishops defer to civil authority in a matter of public health logistics. The contrast is not merely ironic — it is diagnostic of apostasy.
Moreover, the postponement of the Martyrs’ Day gathering reveals the conciar Church’s fundamental orientation: toward the world, not toward God. In ages of faith, plague and pestilence were occasions for increased public devotion, not decreased. The faithful flocked to churches, not away from them, because they understood that in times of mortal danger, the supernatural means of grace are more necessary, not less.
The WHO Has Replaced the Church as the Authority on Human Welfare
Observe the structure of authority implicit in the article. The Diocese of Goma responds to the WHO’s declaration of a health emergency. The measures announced are derived from — or at least entirely consistent with — WHO protocols. The “bishop” functions as a subordinate implementer of secular public health policy, not as an independent spiritual authority guiding his flock according to the demands of faith and morals.
This is precisely the error condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors, Proposition 19: “The Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free — nor is she endowed with proper and perpetual rights of her own, conferred upon her by her Divine Founder; but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church, and the limits within which she may exercise those rights.” And Proposition 20: “The ecclesiastical power ought not to exercise its authority without the permission and assent of the civil government.”
The conciar Church has internalized these condemned propositions so thoroughly that it no longer even recognizes them as errors. It operates as a de facto department of public health, distributing hand sanitizer and chlorinated water with the same bureaucratic efficiency — and the same spiritual emptiness — as any secular agency.
The Sacramental Life: Absent Without Leave
The most damning omission in the Goma communiqué is the complete absence of any sacramental reference. The Church, as defined by the Council of Trent, is the custodian and dispenser of the seven sacraments, which are “necessary for the salvation of all men, though not all are necessary for each individual” (Session VII, Canon 4). In time of epidemic, the faithful should be urgently directed to:
Confession — to purify the soul from sin, which is the ultimate cause of all temporal afflictions. Saint Pius X, in Quam Singulari (1910), emphasized the necessity of confession for those who have fallen into mortal sin, warning that “those who knowingly and deliberately place themselves in a state of mortal sin” cut themselves off from sanctifying grace.
The Holy Eucharist — the “medicine of immortality,” as Saint Ignatius of Antioch called it, the source and summit of the Christian life. The Council of Trent, Session XIII, Chapter 2, teaches that the Eucharist is “the spiritual food of souls” and “an antidote by which we are freed from daily faults and preserved from mortal sins.”
Extreme Unction — the sacrament specifically instituted for the sick, which “imparts grace, remits sins, and comforts the sick” (Trent, Session XIV, Chapter 1).
None of this appears in the communiqué. The “mandatory” handwashing is enforced with the full weight of diocesan authority. The sacraments — the actual means of salvation — are not mentioned.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in the Temple of Public Health
The Diocese of Goma’s Ebola response is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom — a perfect, crystallized symptom — of what the conciliar revolution has produced: a Church that has exchanged its divine mission for a naturalistic humanitarian program, that responds to pestilence with chlorinated water instead of with the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, that defers to the WHO instead of to the authority of Christ the King, and that has so thoroughly emptied itself of supernatural content that it is functionally indistinguishable from any secular relief organization.
The faithful in Goma — and in Uganda, and throughout the conciar structures — deserve better than washbasins and hand sanitizer. They deserve the fullness of the Catholic faith: the sacraments, the intercession of the saints, the authority of Christ the King exercised through His true Church, and the supernatural confidence that comes from knowing that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
What they receive instead is the abomination of desolation: a Church that has become its own parody, a temple that has been converted into a clinic, and a “pastoral” response that would be indistinguishable from a WHO bulletin if one merely replaced the word “Diocese” with “District Health Office.”
Source:
DR Congo Diocese Issues Ebola Prevention Measures After Health Emergency Declaration (ncregister.com)
Date: 21.05.2026