The National Catholic Register portal, the flagship propaganda organ of the EWTN media empire — itself a flagship of the conciliar sect occupying the Vatican — reports on July 24, 2026, under the byline of Bénédicte Cedergren, an associate producer for EWTN News Nightly, a feature article glorifying the Camino de Santiago as a venue for “life-changing encounters with God” experienced by a Croatian-Australian Olympian, a Canadian Protestant, and an Australian agnostic. The article celebrates the influx of “atheists, agnostics and spiritual seekers” onto the ancient route, framing their psychotherapeutic epiphanies, emotional breakdowns, and subjective “surrenders” as authentic movements of grace, while conspicuously omitting the necessity of the Catholic Faith, the Sacraments, the unity of the Church, and the Social Kingship of Christ the King. This reportage stands as a quintessential manifesto of the conciliar sect’s apostasy: the reduction of the supernatural pilgrimage — a work of penance and prayer for the remission of sin and the salvation of souls — into a commodity of the therapeutic tourism industry, peddling religious indifferentism and Protestant subjectivism under the veneer of Catholic tradition.
The Conciliar Sect’s Tourist Product: Naturalistic Piety Replaces Supernatural Pilgrimage
The cited article reads not as a chronicle of Catholic piety but as a travel brochure for the Church of the New Advent. The author, Bénédicte Cedergren, an employee of the paramasonic structure headquartered in the Vatican gardens, describes the Camino Francés as a “485-mile journey” undertaken by “tens of thousands of people” for reasons ranging from “adventure, healing, grief, curiosity, or simply the challenge.” Nowhere does the text mention the indulgentiae attached to the pilgrimage, the remission of temporal punishment due to sin, the obligation of the Confiteor and the reception of the True Sacraments of Penance and the Most Holy Eucharist — the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary — as the sine qua non of the pilgrim’s journey. Instead, we read of Goran Tomašević, a water polo Olympian, who “left behind a decade-long career” and engaged in “psychiatry to psychedelic experiences in South America” before finding “self-acceptance, self-love and peace” on the Way. This is not the language of the Via Crucis; it is the vocabulary of the New Age, of Carl Rogers and Timothy Leary, baptized by the conciliar sect’s “pastoral” novelties. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, thundered that “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” (Quas Primas, 1925). The Camino presented here offers not the Pax Christi in Regno Christi, but the pax psychologica of the therapeutic state.
Religious Indifferentism Elevated to Pastoral Method: Atheists and Agnostics as “Pilgrims”
The article explicitly boasts: “But what was once a distinctly Christian pilgrimage is today drawing not only Catholics, but also atheists, agnostics and spiritual seekers from around the world.” This sentence alone constitutes a formal adhesion to the condemned proposition of the Syllabus Errorum (1864), Error 16: “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation,” and Error 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.” The conciliar sect, having abandoned the dogma Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus (Outside the Church there is no salvation) — defined by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), Pope Boniface VIII in Unam Sanctam (1302), and the Council of Florence (1442) — now invites the enemies of the Cross to walk the path of the Apostle James as “pilgrims” on equal footing with the faithful. Desrae Presdee, an Australian who “didn’t consider myself a religious person or someone open to the idea of religion,” is celebrated for “attending Masses” (read: the Novus Ordo Missae, the Protestantized “table of assembly” fabricated by the Freemason Bugnini under the antipope Paul VI) and “popping my head into churches to pay my respects.” This is not the lex orandi, lex credendi of the Catholic Church; it is the lex turistica of the abomination of desolation.
Psychologism and Therapeutic Deism: The Gospel of Self-Love Replaces the Cross
The testimonials curated by the Register reveal the anthropocentric core of the conciliar religion. Tomašević admits he “would rather spend time with [his] enemy than by [him]self,” fleeing solitude into work and sport. On the Meseta, he experiences “just me and God” — a subjective, gnostic illumination devoid of the sensus Ecclesiae, the mediation of the Priesthood, or the yoke of the Commandments. He finds churches “approachable… very loving, like ‘we are here if you want.’ Nothing felt forced. It felt very gentle.” This is the hermeneutic of continuity with the world, the “gentle” accompaniment of the antipope Francis (Jorge Bergoglio) and his successor, the antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), which replaces the timor Domini (fear of the Lord) with the amor sui (love of self). Chad Lawrence, a Canadian Protestant, describes a “thunderbolt” calling at a pub, leading him to articulate “a prayer directed toward God: ‘Thank you for bringing me here.'” He develops “a habit of praying for everyone he had spoken with… simply thanking God for bringing them into [his] journey.” This is therapeutic deism — God as a cosmic life-coach facilitating self-actualization and emotional regulation. The article admits Lawrence explored “theological questions about the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism… the Harrowing of Hell, the problem of evil” via “friends made along the way or the internet,” culminating in the Protestant evangelical formula: “On the Camino, I gave my life to Christ.” This “decisionism” is the hallmark of the secta protestantium, condemned by the Council of Trent (Session VI, Canon 9) which anathematizes the notion that justifying faith is merely “confidence in the divine mercy pardoning sins for Christ’s sake” to the exclusion of the Sacramental economy. The conciliar sect validates this heresy by presenting it as a “journey closer to the Catholic faith” without the necessitas præcepti of abjuration, conditional baptism (if validly baptized), and submission to the Roman Pontiff (the true one, not the usurper in the Vatican).
False Ecumenism and Subjective Conversion: Protestant “Decisionism” Masquerades as Catholic Faith
The article’s treatment of Chad Lawrence’s trajectory is a textbook case of the “false ecumenism” condemned by Pius XI in Mortalium Animos (1928) and rooted in the Syllabus Error 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.” Lawrence, a Protestant, is depicted as “exploring theological questions” and finding “answers” that “lead him closer to the Catholic faith,” yet his conversion experience is framed entirely in the subjective register: “It felt like God called me to himself,” “giving him the freedom to choose him.” The Register presents this private judgment as a valid path. This is the hermeneutic of rupture with Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus. The true Church teaches, with St. Cyprian, “Habere non potest Deum patrem qui ecclesiam non habet matrem” (He cannot have God for his Father who has not the Church for his Mother). The conciliar sect, by celebrating the “spiritual journey” of a heretic who remains externally separated from the visible unity of the Church (the true Church, not the structures occupying the Vatican), confirms its nature as a paramasonic structure dedicated to the cult of man denounced by Paul VI himself in his allocution of 1976 (though he was the architect of the ruin). The “Masses” Lawrence and Presdee attend are the Novus Ordo Missae, a fabrication invalid in form and intention where the “priest” (invalidly ordained under the 1968 rite of the antipope Paul VI) presides over a commemorative meal, not the Propitiatory Sacrifice. To receive “Communion” there is not merely sacrilege; it is participation in a Protestant service, an act of idolatry.
The “Masses” and “Priests” of the Conciliar Sect: Simulated Sacraments for Simulated Faith
The article mentions Tomašević encountering “amounts of churches and crosses and priests… all felt very approachable.” It notes Presdee “found myself attending Masses, which I had never done before.” The author, Cedergren, holds a degree from the “Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas” (the Angelicum), a stronghold of the neo-Thomistic modernism that paved the way for Vatican II. None of these “priests” possess valid Orders. The rite of Episcopal Consecration and Priestly Ordination was invalidated by the antipope Paul VI in 1968, removing the essential form specifying the power to offer the Sacrifice and forgive sins. As the Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio of Pope Paul IV (1559) teaches, a heretic cannot receive or confer jurisdiction. The “bishops” and “priests” of the conciliar sect are manifest heretics (professing religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality, the new ecclesiology of subsistit in), and therefore, by the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine (De Romano Pontifice, Lib. 2, Cap. 30) and Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code, they have lost all jurisdiction and orders ipso facto. The “churches” on the Camino are often mere museums or Protestantized meeting halls where the Tabernacle is relegated to a side chapel, if present at all. The “gentle” welcome Tomašević felt is the welcome of the synagogue of Satan (Apoc. 2:9; 3:9), offering the bread of deceit instead of the Bread of Angels.
The Legend of Compostela Instrumentalized for the Church of the New Advent
The article treats the translation of St. James’s relics to Compostela as “legend” and “tradition,” framing the pilgrimage’s origin in historical ambiguity: “According to tradition… According to legend…” This skepticism towards the hagiographical certainty of the Church’s tradition is typical of the modernist method condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907): the divorce of faith from history, the reduction of the sacred to the “religious experience.” The conciliar sect exploits the Camino as a cash cow and a PR asset. The Register article functions as an advertisement for the EWTN brand, showcasing the “Associate Producer” Cedergren’s photography and storytelling. The “Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela” is the stage for Tomašević’s emotional climax: “The sun was breaking through the clouds, right in between the two towers, shining straight into my eyes, and it just felt like I was being acknowledged, like God was telling me, ‘I see you. From now on, we are together.'” This is enthusiasm in the theological sense — a private illusion substituting for the objective reality of grace conferred ex opere operato by the valid Sacraments. It is the “Miracle of the Sun” of Fatima (itself a Masonic psychological operation, as documented in the False Fatima Apparitions file) replayed on a minor scale: natural phenomena interpreted superstitiously by emotionally primed subjects.
Symptomatic of the Great Apostasy: The Cult of Man Replaces the Social Kingship of Christ
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, instituted the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the “plague of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors” which “began with the denial of the reign of Christ the Lord over all nations.” The Camino as portrayed by the Register is the paradeigma of this plague. The pilgrimage, once a public act of the Ecclesia militans confessing the Social Kingship of Christ (Quas Primas: “His reign encompasses not only Catholic nations… but also all non-Christians… the whole human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ”), has been privatized, psychologized, and democratized. It is now a “journey of encounters,” a “journey of self-discovery,” a “start of a new walk” for the “self.” The State (Spain, EU) manages the infrastructure; the conciliar sect manages the “spiritual” franchise; the pilgrim consumes the experience. “The more the sweetest Name of our Redeemer is omitted with unworthy silence in international gatherings and parliaments, the more loudly it must be confessed,” wrote Pius XI. On the Camino today, His Name is not confessed as King; it is invoked as a therapist. The “pilgrims” — atheists, Protestants, agnostics, Catholics — walk side by side, a perfect icon of the civitas terrena envisioned by the Masonic lodges: a fraternity without paternity, a unity without truth, a peace without the King of Peace. The article concludes with Lawrence’s words: “For the rest of my life, the Camino is going to be symbolic with finding a new life in Christ… Now, I have a journey inside of me to make. It is the start of a new walk.” This is the Gnostic journey inward, the autosoterios (self-salvation) of the Modernist. The true pilgrimage ends at the Altar of the True Mass, at the feet of the True Priest, in the bosom of the True Church, outside of which there is no salvation. The National Catholic Register and its masters in the Vatican gardens offer a broad road leading to destruction (Matt. 7:13), paved with good feelings and paved over the bones of the martyrs of Compostela.
Source:
‘On the Camino, I Gave My Life to Christ’: Amid the Crowds, the Way of St. James Still Offers Unexpected Encounters (ncregister.com)
Date: 24.07.2026