EWTN News portal reports that on June 7, 2026, the sixth World Apostolic Congress on Mercy opened in Vilnius, Lithuania, drawing approximately 7,000 pilgrims from over 50 countries. The event, held at sites associated with St. Faustina Kowalska—a figure whose revelations were condemned by the Holy Office and placed on the Index of Forbidden Books—featured a Eucharistic procession, addresses by Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda, and a video message from the current usurper of Peter’s throne, Leo XIV. The congress culminated in an ecumenical gesture: Leo XIV extended greetings to Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, spiritual leader of the schismatic Eastern Orthodox Church, while Archbishop Gintaras Grušas framed the event as a call to “build a city of mercy” through forgiveness, solidarity, and unity of truth with charity. This entire spectacle, draped in the language of compassion and renewal, is not a revival of Catholic life but a carefully orchestrated performance by the conciliar sect to advance its agenda of religious indifferentism, naturalistic humanism, and the systematic erasure of the supernatural mission of the Church.
The Cult of Faustina: A Condemned Mystic Elevated to Global Stage
At the heart of this congress lies the figure of St. Faustina Kowalska, a pseudo-mystic whose visions and writings were explicitly condemned under Pope Pius X’s anti-modernist campaign. Her Diary, compiled and promoted by Father Michał Sopoćko—a known associate of the Charismatic movement with ties to Freemasonry—was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. The content of her revelations bears striking resemblance to those of Maria Franciszka Kozłowska, founder of the Mariavite sect, which Pius X condemned as heretical in Tribus circiter (1906). Both emphasized private revelation over public dogma, promoted a sentimentalized notion of divine mercy detached from the necessity of repentance and satisfaction, and undermined the authority of the Magisterium by suggesting that God’s mercy operates independently of the sacramental economy of the true Church.
Yet the neo-church has not only rehabilitated Faustina but canonized her—a act performed by John Paul II, himself a manifest heretic and apostate whose entire pontificate was dedicated to dismantling Catholic doctrine. To elevate such a figure is not merely an error; it is a deliberate inversion of sanctity, replacing the heroic virtue of the saints with the emotional subjectivism of modernist piety. As St. Pius X warned in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), proposition 20: “Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God.” Faustina’s visions, far from being divine communications, are textbook examples of this modernist heresy—interior experiences mistaken for revelation, elevated above the objective deposit of faith.
Ecumenism as Apostasy: Greeting the Schismatic Patriarch
Perhaps the most damning moment of the congress was Leo XIV’s decision to extend special greetings to Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople. This is not a minor diplomatic courtesy; it is a public act of communion with a schismatic body that rejects the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, denies the Filioque, and has not been in union with the Catholic Church since 1054. By greeting Bartholomew as a “spiritual leader,” Leo XIV implicitly recognizes his authority—a direct violation of the Church’s constant teaching that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus) and that schismatics cannot hold legitimate ecclesiastical office.
This gesture aligns perfectly with the modernist project outlined in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), where Pius IX condemned the proposition that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion” (Proposition 18) and that “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” (Proposition 17). The ecumenism practiced by the conciliar sect is not dialogue but capitulation—a denial of the Church’s exclusive claim to truth in favor of a relativistic pluralism that treats all religions as equally valid paths to God. As Pius XI declared in Mortalium Animos (1928), such efforts are “founded on the false opinion that all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy,” and they lead not to unity but to the dissolution of faith.
Naturalistic Humanism: Mercy Without the Cross
The language employed throughout the congress—“building a city of mercy,” “solidarity with the vulnerable,” “care for those who suffer”—is deliberately stripped of supernatural content. There is no mention of the necessity of baptism, the reality of mortal sin, the obligation of penance, or the final judgment. Instead, mercy is reduced to a secular ethic of compassion, indistinguishable from the humanitarianism of any non-religious organization. This is precisely the error condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici gregis (1907), where he identified the modernist tendency to reduce religion to “sentiment” and “experience,” divorcing it from dogma and authority.
Leo IV’s statement that “the peace we so deeply desire cannot be attained without mercy” sounds pious, but it omits the only source of true peace: the Kingship of Christ. As Pius XI taught in Quas Primas (1925), “the hope of lasting peace will not yet shine upon nations as long as individuals and states renounce and do not wish to recognize the reign of our Savior.” Mercy, in the Catholic sense, is not a vague benevolence but the fruit of redemption through the Precious Blood of Christ, applied through the sacraments—especially Confession and the Holy Eucharist. To speak of mercy without reference to these realities is to preach a gospel of man, not of God.
The Liturgical Abomination: “Eucharistic Procession” in the Spirit of the New Advent
The article describes a “Eucharistic procession through the streets of Vilnius,” yet one must ask: what is being processed? If the so-called “Eucharist” is consecrated according to the reformed rite of Paul VI—a rite widely regarded as invalid due to its ambiguous formula of consecration and its communal, meal-oriented theology—then this procession is not an act of adoration but an act of idolatry. The faithful are being led to worship a bread idol, not the true Body and Blood of Christ.
Moreover, the location of the congress—near the former convent where Faustina received her visions—transforms a site of suspected private revelation into a shrine of neo-church devotion, replacing the authentic cult of the saints with the cult of modernist mysticism. The inclusion of “traditional Lithuanian music and dance” further underscores the syncretistic nature of the event, blending folk culture with pseudo-liturgy in a manner reminiscent of the worst excesses of the conciar revolution.
Political Collaboration: The State as Partner in Apostasy
The presence of Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda at the opening Mass, and his endorsement of the congress as a “source of hope and spiritual renewal,” reveals the deep entanglement of the conciar sect with secular power. This is not the Catholic understanding of the relationship between Church and State, in which the former guides the latter toward eternal salvation. Rather, it is the liberal model condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus, where the state is seen as autonomous in its own sphere and religion is reduced to a private sentiment with no public claims.
Nausėda’s speech, emphasizing “global uncertainty, conflict, and anxiety,” frames the Church’s mission in purely temporal terms—as a provider of comfort and social cohesion, not as the ark of salvation. This is the religion of man, not of God. As the Syllabus condemns in Proposition 58: “No other forces are to be recognized except those which reside in matter, and all the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means, and the gratification of pleasure.” The congress, far from being a spiritual event, is a political rally for the religion of humanitarianism.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in the Holy Place
The sixth World Apostolic Congress on Mercy is not a gathering of the faithful but a celebration of apostasy. It elevates a condemned mystic, embraces schismatics, reduces mercy to naturalism, simulates Catholic worship, and collaborates with secular powers—all under the banner of “divine mercy.” This is the abomination of desolation foretold by Our Lord (Matthew 24:15): a counterfeit religion occupying the structures of the true Church, leading souls to perdition with a smile.
Let the faithful reject this spectacle. Let them return to the unchanging doctrine of the Church: that mercy is found only in the sacraments of the true Church, that peace comes only through the Kingship of Christ, and that unity is possible only through submission to the Roman Pontiff and the Catholic faith. As St. Pius X wrote in Lamentabili, proposition 65: “Contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.” The Vilnius congress is the living proof of that prophecy fulfilled.
Source:
7,000 pilgrims open divine mercy congress in Vilnius, Lithuania (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 09.06.2026