The EWTN News portal, via its ACI Africa service, reports that the Diocese of Ho in Ghana, under its “bishop” Emmanuel Kofi Fianu, has lifted the remaining COVID-19 liturgical restrictions as of August 17, 2026. The directive restores the use of holy water fonts, handshakes during the sign of peace, and reception of “Communion” on the tongue, while simultaneously encouraging reception in the hand and mandating extra chalices for concelebration by intinction. This capitulation to secular health dictates, followed by a selective “restoration” that preserves the most egregious liturgical novelties of the conciliar revolution, exposes the entirely naturalistic and anti-supernatural orientation of the neo-church hierarchy.
Subservience to the Secular State as the Supreme Law
The very premise of the “bishop’s” announcement reveals the de facto disestablishment of the Church’s divine autonomy. He states explicitly: “Since the onset of COVID-19, the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference (GCBC) issued guidelines for public worship indicating some liturgical restrictions… As at now, we do not have any new cautions from the health authorities, so I believe it is time to lift the remaining restrictions.” The liturgical life of the Church, the very worship due to the Triune God, is here made contingent upon the permission of civil “health authorities.” This is a practical denial of the Kingship of Christ over society, condemned by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The “bishop” does not appeal to the restoration of the sacred liturgy as a right of the Church (ius divinum), but to the absence of secular prohibition. This is the essence of laicism: the Church reduced to a department of the state, awaiting bureaucratic clearance to administer the sacraments.
The “Sign of Peace”: A Masonic Fraternité Replacing the Pax Christi
The restoration of handshakes during the “sign of peace” is not a return to Tradition but the reinforcement of a Novus Ordo innovation that displaces the sacred Pax Domini. In the True Mass, the peace is communicated from the Altar, from Christ the Victim, through the priest to the faithful; it is not a horizontal exchange of greetings. The “bishop’s” instruction—“As a symbolic act, it is enough to shake hands with those around us”—reduces the liturgical kiss of peace to a banal social gesture. This mirrors the Masonic fraternité condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Error 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church”), for it builds a horizontal community of man without reference to the vertical mediation of the Priesthood. The directive to avoid “moving around the church to exchange greetings” is a mere logistical refinement of an inherently Protestantized rite.
Communion in the Hand: The Persistent Idolatry of the Laity
Most damning is the “bishop’s” explicit exhortation: “We should encourage the faithful to receive holy Communion in the hand.” Even while permitting reception on the tongue, the hierarchy of the conciliar sect privileges the profane handling of the Most Holy Eucharist by unconsecrated fingers. This practice, unknown in the Latin Church for a millennium and introduced by the Modernists in the wake of Vatican II, embodies the heresy of the “priesthood of all believers” and the denial of the sacrificial priesthood. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches (Summa Theologiae, III, q. 82, a. 3): “Out of reverence towards this sacrament, nothing touches it but what is consecrated; hence the corporal and the chalice are consecrated, and likewise the priest’s hands.” To encourage the laity to touch the Sacred Host is to encourage sacrilege and to undermine the sensus mysterii. The “bishop” thus acts as a guardian of the abuse, not a restorer of the sacred.
Concelebration and Intinction: The Dismantling of the Priesthood
The directive regarding concelebration—“extra chalices must be provided so that concelebrating priests can communicate by intinction. The main chalice should be used only by the main/principal celebrant”—exposes the theological bankruptcy of the Novus Ordo priesthood. Concelebration itself is an innovation foreign to the Roman Rite, reducing the unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary to a communal meal presided over by a “principal celebrant” who functions as first among equals. The use of intinction for concelebrants (dipping the Host into the Precious Blood) is a pragmatic adaptation that further obscures the distinct consecrations of the Body and the Blood, signifying the separation of Christ’s Body and Blood in death. The rubric that “Priests who arrive after the entrance procession are not allowed to concelebrate” treats the Holy Sacrifice as a scheduled ceremony requiring punctuality for participation, rather than the infinite act of Redemption. This is clericalism of the worst sort: the priesthood reduced to a functionary role in a liturgical assembly.
Naturalism Masquerading as Pastoral Prudence
The concluding admonition—“I urge all priests and faithful to remain vigilant and use their sanitizers whenever they are in doubt. We should all put our health first”—is the credo of the conciliar sect. Salus populi suprema lex esto (The safety of the people is the supreme law) has replaced Salus animarum suprema lex (The salvation of souls is the supreme law). The “bishop” reveals that the ultimate horizon of his ministry is biological survival, not eternal life. This is the cult of man denounced by Pope St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis and the Lamentabili Sane Exitu syllabus, where the supernatural order is silently evacuated in favor of temporal welfare. The holy water font, restored not as a reminder of Baptism and a weapon against demons, but as a hygienic station potentially requiring sanitizer, becomes a perfect symbol of this inverted theology.
The “Pope Leo XIV” Reference: Unity in Apostasy
The article’s sidebar references “Pope Leo XIV: The liturgy is an experience of…” and “Pope Leo XIV on liturgy: Priests must remain…” This antipope, Robert Prevost, the latest usurper of the Chair of Peter since John XXIII, provides the false canonical framework within which “Bishop” Fianu operates. The Ghanaian “bishop” exercises no true jurisdiction; he is a functionary of the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican. His “directives” have no binding force in conscience, for they proceed from a schismatic hierarchy that has severed itself from the perennial Magisterium by embracing religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the New Mass. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches (De Romano Pontifice), a manifest heretic cannot be Pope, and those who adhere to him are separated from the Church.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in Ghana
What is presented as a “restoration” is merely the consolidation of the Novus Ordo disorder. The True Mass—the Missale Romanum of St. Pius V, the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary—remains banned, suppressed, or marginalized in the Diocese of Ho as throughout the conciliar sect. The restoration of holy water and Communion on the tongue within the Novus Ordo Missae is like polishing the brass on a sinking ship; the vessel itself—the New Mass, the new priesthood, the new ecclesiology—is the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matt. 24:15). The faithful in Ghana, as everywhere, are called not to “vigilance” regarding sanitizers, but to fuga mundi—flight from the neo-church—to the catacombs where the True Mass is offered by validly ordained priests holding the integral Catholic Faith without admixture of Modernist error. Non praevalebunt (They shall not prevail).
Source:
Diocese in Ghana restores remaining liturgical practices restricted during COVID-19 pandemic (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 20.08.2026