The Pillar Catholic portal reports on a new Vatican synod department document, “Towards the Assemblies 2027-2028,” issued May 20, 2026, which details preparations for a 2028 “ecclesial assembly” in Rome. The document, approved by the antipope Leo XIV, outlines a four-stage process of “Recollecting,” “Interpreting,” “Orienting,” and “Celebrating” — a continuation of the global synodal process launched by the heretic Francis in 2021. Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, presented the text following a meeting with Leo XIV. The process involves local “evaluation assemblies,” national bishops’ conference assemblies, continental assemblies, culminating in a Rome gathering that is carefully distinguished from a synod yet mirrors its structures. The document emphasizes that synodality is “a way of being” and stresses the “Holy Father’s” determinative role, with the assembly’s conclusions “offered to the Holy Father as the fruit of the process of discernment.” This entire apparatus represents nothing less than the institutionalization of permanent revolution within the conciliar sect, a mechanism designed to ensure that the apostasy initiated by John XXIII can never be reversed, questioned, or subjected to the immutable criteria of Catholic truth.
The Synod as Anti-Catholic Process: From Event to Permanent Revolution
The document’s own genealogy exposes its fundamentally anti-Catholic character. Cardinal Grech is quoted as saying that the 2018 apostolic constitution Episcopalis communio — one of the many juridical instruments forged by the heretic Francis — achieved its “greatest innovation” by transforming the synod “from an event into a process.” This seemingly innocuous administrative reform is, in reality, a revolution against the very nature of ecclesiastical authority. A synod, in Catholic understanding, is an extraordinary gathering of bishops convened to address specific doctrinal or disciplinary questions under the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It produces judgments. It defines. It condemns. It teaches with authority.
By contrast, the “process” has no terminus. It is, by design, interminable. The document itself confirms this: the global synodal process “did not end when the last round table was packed away. Instead, it entered its implementation phase.” And now, in 2026, we are told that this implementation phase will continue through 2027, 2028, and — by inevitable logic — beyond. There will always be another stage, another assembly, another report, another letter to “the other Churches.” This is not governance; it is the bureaucratization of permanent instability, the institutionalization of a revolution that can never declare itself complete because to do so would be to invite judgment upon its fruits.
Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), taught with luminous clarity that the annual celebration of sacred mysteries is “far more effective than even the most serious proofs of the teaching Church” because “these speak to men once, those annually and eternally, so to speak; the former affect primarily the mind, the latter the mind and heart.” The conciliar sect has inverted this principle entirely. Where the Church’s liturgical cycle eternally re-presents the unchanging mysteries of faith, the synodal process eternally re-presents the unfolding of human opinion. Where the liturgy forms souls in immutable truth, the synodality process forms communities in the habit of perpetual consultation — which is to say, perpetual uncertainty.
The Linguistic Camouflage of Apostasy
The document’s vocabulary is a masterclass in the kind of bureaucratic euphemism that St. Pius X identified as the hallmark of Modernism. The four stages — “Recollecting,” “Interpreting,” “Orienting,” “Celebrating” — are described with words that sound pastoral and spiritual but are, in fact, devoid of any determinate Catholic content. What is being “recollected”? Not the Faith once delivered to the saints, but the “final document” of the synod on synodality — a 28,000-word text that Francis absurdly claimed as “part of the ordinary Magisterium of the Successor of Peter.” What is being “interpreted”? Not Sacred Scripture or the Fathers according to the analogia fidei, but the “fruits” of a process that has no fixed criterion of judgment. What is being “oriented”? Not toward the eternal truths of revelation, but toward “perspective reports” that offer “an overall rereading” of a “synodal journey” — language that belongs to the therapist’s couch, not the Church’s magisterium.
The document insists that “the implementation phase does not introduce additional tasks alongside the ordinary life of communities; rather, it orients and renews that life from within.” This is the language of infiltration, not of the Church. The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass does not “orient and renew from within” — it is the unbloody re-presentation of Calvary, the source and summit of the Christian life, the act by which God is given the worship He is owed and the faithful receive the graces necessary for salvation. The sacraments do not “orient” — they confer sanctifying grace ex opere operato. The Church’s teaching does not “renew from within” — it is the deposit of faith, committed once and for all to the Apostles, to be guarded and transmitted without alteration.
Leo XIV is quoted as describing synodality as “a style of cooperation” and an exercise of “listening par excellence.” Let us be precise about what this means in practice. The “listening” celebrated by the conciar sect is not the listening of the Church to the Holy Ghost speaking through Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium. It is the listening of a corporate board to its stakeholders. It is the listening of a political party to its focus groups. It is, in the most literal sense, the replacement of divine revelation with human opinion as the governing principle of the Church’s life. When Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that “the Church listening cooperates in such a way with the Church teaching in defining truths of faith, that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening” (Proposition 6 of Lamentabili), he was condemning precisely the error that the synodal process enshrines as its operating principle.
The Erasure of Episcopal Authority and the Democratization of Heresy
The document’s procedural architecture reveals the systematic dismantling of the Catholic episcopate. In the authentic Church, the bishop is the teacher, the governor, and the sanctifier of his diocese. He receives his authority not from the consent of the governed but from Christ, through the laying on of hands and the authority of the Holy See. He teaches ex cathedra within his own jurisdiction. He judges. He commands. He binds and looses.
In the synodal process, the bishop is reduced to a facilitator. He “signs off” on a “narrative report” prepared by a “local synodal team.” He participates in assemblies that produce “letters to the other Churches” — a phrase that drips with the ecumenical sentimentalism of the conciliar sect, as though the Catholic Church were merely one community among many, exchanging fraternal correspondence with other communities in a spirit of mutual enrichment. The bishop’s role is not to teach but to listen, not to judge but to “discern,” not to command but to “journey together” with his people.
This is the democratization of the Church that the Syllabus of Errors condemned in its entirety. 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.” Proposition 6 of Lamentabili, already cited, makes the same point from the opposite direction: the “Church listening” — the laity, the “People of God” — cooperates in defining truth. The synodal process is the practical implementation of both errors simultaneously: the Church is reduced from a divinely constituted hierarchical society to a human community in which authority flows upward from the “base” rather than downward from Christ through Peter.
The Papal Cult and the Illusion of Continuity
The document’s “notably strong emphasis on the pope’s determinative role” is not a reassurance but a further symptom of the disease. The text’s final words note that the whole process will take place “under the guidance of the Holy Father.” The assembly’s conclusions will be “offered to the Holy Father as the fruit of the process of discernment.” This language is carefully calibrated to maintain the fiction of papal authority while emptying it of Catholic content.
In the authentic Church, the Roman Pontiff teaches with the authority of Christ. His definitions are irreachable. His judgments are final. He does not receive “fruits of discernment” from assemblies — he judges the discernment of assemblies. When Pius IX defined the Immaculate Conception, he did not “offer” the definition to himself as the fruit of a consultative process. He defined it ex cathedra, by his apostolic authority, as a truth revealed by God to be believed by all the faithful. When St. Pius X condemned Modernism in Pascendi Dominici Gregis and Lamentabili Sane Exitu, he did not solicit the opinions of the “listening Church” — he condemned errors, imposed silence on their defenders, and threatened excommunication for those who resisted.
The synodal process inverts this entirely. The “Holy Father” — in this case, the antipope Leo XIV, who participated in the synod on synodality as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops under the heretic Francis — receives the “fruits” of a process in which he has no teaching role whatsoever. He is the recipient, not the source. He is the validator, not the authority. This is not the papacy as Christ instituted it. It is the papacy as the conciliar sect has reimagined it: a ceremonial office that ratifies the conclusions of a bureaucratic process, a rubber stamp for the “discernment” of assemblies that have no authority to discern anything.
The Abomination of Desolation: What the Document Omits
The most damning indictment of the synodal document is not what it says but what it does not say. In 6,000 words of meticulous procedural guidance, there is not a single reference to the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the center of the Church’s life. There is not a single reference to the sacraments as the ordinary means of grace. There is not a single reference to the state of grace, to mortal sin, to the necessity of confession, to the reality of hell, to the obligation of faith, to the duty of nations to submit to the social reign of Christ the King.
The document speaks of “communion, participation, and mission” — the three words that Francis made the motto of his pontificate. But communion with what? Participation in what? Mission toward what? In the Catholic understanding, communion is communion with God through the Church and her sacraments. Participation is participation in the divine life through grace. Mission is the mission of teaching all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded (Matt. 28:19-20).
In the conciliar understanding, communion is a feeling of togetherness. Participation is having a voice in the process. Mission is “journeying together” toward an undefined horizon. The document’s silence about supernatural realities is not an oversight — it is the very essence of the project. As St. Pius X wrote in Pascendi, the Modernist “makes the faith evolve, not by changing its essence, but by stripping it of what he considers accidental, so that in the end only the practical and moral element remains.” The synodal process is the practical and moral element of Catholicism stripped of its dogmatic content — a Church without a Creed, a liturgy without a Sacrifice, a mission without a Message.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, warned that “the plague which poisons human society” is “the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors.” He identified its fruits: “seeds of discord sown everywhere, flames of envy and hostility,” “unbridled desires,” “domestic peace completely shattered,” “family ties loosened,” “the whole society profoundly shaken and heading towards destruction.” The synodal process is not the remedy for this plague — it is the plague’s triumph within the structures that once belonged to the Church. It is laicism wearing a clerical collar, secularism speaking in the language of “discernment” and “journeying together.”
The Continuity of Apostasy: From Francis to Leo XIV
The document makes clear that the synodal process will continue uninterrupted from the pontificate of the heretic Francis to that of the antipope Leo XIV. Leo visited the synod department in June 2025 and declared that Francis’ legacy “could be summed up as the notion ‘that synodality is a way of being, an attitude that helps us to be Church.'” This is not a change of direction — it is a confirmation that the conciliar revolution will proceed under new management exactly as it proceeded under the old.
The heretic Francis launched the process. The antipope Leo XIV continues it. The structures remain the same. The vocabulary remains the same. The omissions remain the same. The “ecclesial assembly” of 2028 will gather in Rome under the presidency of a man who has never taught, never defined, never condemned, never exercised any of the prerogatives of the papacy as the Church understands them. He will preside over a process that has no doctrinal content, no sacramental life, no supernatural horizon. He will receive “fruits of discernment” from assemblies that have no authority to discern. And the whole edifice will be presented to the world as “the Church.”
It is not the Church. It is the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matt. 24:15). It is the paramasonic structure that has occupied the Vatican since 1958, pursuing its program of systematic apostasy under the guise of “renewal” and “reform.” The synodal process is its most perfect expression: a permanent revolution that never defines, never judges, never teaches, never condemns — that simply “journeys” toward an horizon that recedes with every step.
The true Church endures. She endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith, who worship at the Traditional Latin Mass — the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary, not the table of assembly — and who reject the conciliar sect with all its works and all its pomps. She endures because she is founded upon the Rock of Peter, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her (Matt. 16:18). The synod on synodality, the ecclesial assembly of 2028, the “fruits of discernment” offered to the antipope — none of these things belong to her. They belong to the synagogue of Satan, which Pius IX described in the Syllabus as the force behind “the frauds and machinations” that assail the Church of God.
Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Outside the Church, there is no salvation. And outside the truth, there is no synodality — only the endless, aimless wandering of those who have rejected the Shepherd and lost the Way.
Source:
Synodality, but not a synod: Inside the new timetable for the 2028 'ecclesial assembly' (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 20.05.2026