EWTN portal reports on a new biography of the conciliar “cardinal” Sigitas Tamkevičius, SJ, portraying his KGB imprisonment and underground publishing activities in Soviet Lithuania as a model of Catholic resistance. The article, authored by Bryan Lawrence Gonsalves and dated August 29, 2026, details Tamkevičius’ founding of the Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, his arrest in 1983, labor camp sufferings, and subsequent rise to the conciliar episcopate and cardinalate, culminating in a meeting with the apostate John Paul II. The foreword by the conciliar “archbishop” Petar Rajič, prefect of the antipope’s household, explicitly endorses the Chronicle as a testimony to “spiritual strength” rooted in the “victory of the cross.” This hagiography of a conciliar hierarch exposes the fatal substitution of naturalistic “human rights” advocacy for the integral Catholic duty of establishing the Social Kingship of Christ over nations.
The Naturalistic Framework of the Chronicle: Rights of Man vs. Rights of God
The article admits the Chronicle was “a strictly factual catalog of human rights violations, not a literary magazine or a platform for theological commentary.” This admission is the condemnation of the entire enterprise. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil” (Error 3) and that “The Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion” (Error 21). By framing Soviet persecution solely as a violation of “human rights” and “religious freedom” — concepts condemned by Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos (1832) as “that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone” — the Chronicle operated entirely within the Masonic, liberal paradigm. It did not denounce the Soviet regime for its deicide, for its rebellion against the Rex Gentium, but for its failure to respect the secularist idols of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is not Catholic resistance; it is liberal resistance wearing a cassock.
Silence on the Social Kingship of Christ: The Gravest Omission
Nowhere in the article, nor apparently in the biography, is there any mention of the Quas Primas encyclical of Pius XI (1925), which teaches 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” and that “His reign encompasses not only Catholic nations… but also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” Tamkevičius’ reported reflection — “The affairs of the Church? Yes. Concern for people’s moral lives? Yes. Living according to my conscience? Yes” — centers on subjective conscience and ecclesiastical institutional concerns, not on the objective, public, juridical rights of Christ the King over the Lithuanian state and the Soviet empire. A resistance that does not explicitly proclaim Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat over the temporal order is a resistance that has already surrendered to the spirit of the world. As Leo XIII taught in Immortale Dei (1885), “The State must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations… who contribute most to the expansion and establishment of Christ’s Kingdom.” The conciliar “resistance” sought not the establishment of Christ’s Kingdom, but the liberty to function within the Masonic secular order.
The Jesuit Connection: Instrument of the Conciliar Revolution
Tamkevičius was a Jesuit, an order that by the 1970s had become the vanguard of Modernism and the conciliar revolution. The article notes his ordination in 1962, on the eve of the Second Vatican Council. The Society of Jesus, once the bulwark of orthodoxy against Protestantism and Jansenism, had by then embraced the “aggiornamento” that Pius X condemned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) as “the synthesis of all heresies.” The Chronicle itself, founded in 1972, emerged from the post-conciliar chaos, adopting the language of “dialogue,” “human dignity,” and “religious liberty” — the very errors condemned by the Syllabus and by Pius XI in Quas Primas where he laments that “the Christian religion began to be equated with other false religions and shamelessly placed in the same category.” A true Catholic underground in Lithuania would have distributed the Catechism of the Council of Trent, the Syllabus, and Quas Primas, not a “factual catalog” for Western diplomats and Radio Free Europe.
Legitimacy of the Conciliar Hierarchy: The “Cardinal” Created by an Antipope
The article traces Tamkevičius’ trajectory from prisoner to “bishop” (consecrated 1991) to “cardinal” (created 2019 by the antipope Bergoglio, and now under “Leo XIV” Robert Prevost). According to the immutable doctrine of Cum ex Apostolatus Officio (Paul IV, 1559) and the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine (De Romano Pontifice), a manifest heretic cannot hold the papacy, and all acts of jurisdiction flowing from a usurper are null and void. The line of usurpers beginning with John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli) has produced a “paramasonic structure” occupying the Vatican. Tamkevičius’ acceptance of episcopal consecration and the cardinalate from these antipopes constitutes formal adherence to the conciliar sect. His meeting with John Paul II in 1993 — a man who kissed the Koran, prayed with pagans at Assisi, and taught that the Old Covenant remains salvific — is not a moment of glory but a seal of apostasy. As the Syllabus condemns (Error 55): “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” The conciliar “Church” has embraced this separation; Tamkevičius’ resistance was precisely to secure this separation for his sect in Lithuania.
The KGB Interrogation Narrative: Suffering Without Supernatural Finality
The article dramatizes the KGB drugging attempt and the harsh labor camp conditions. While the physical sufferings are undeniable, their spiritual value is nullified by the absence of a supernatural finality explicitly ordered to the Kingship of Christ. St. Cyprian teaches: “He cannot have the ordinance of God who does not hold the unity of the Church.” Tamkevičius’ unity was with the conciliar sect, not the Catholic Church of the immemorial Tradition. His reflection — “Thank you, Lord, that the answer was ‘yes'” — reeks of a subjective, Protestantized piety focused on personal integrity (“living according to my conscience”) rather than the objective glory of God and the exaltation of the Church. The true martyrs of the Soviet era, if any existed in the catacombs, would have died pro fide Catholica, not for “human rights” or the autonomy of a conciliar hierarchy.
Archbishop Rajič and the Conciliar Seal of Approval
The foreword by “Archbishop” Petar Rajič, identified as “prefect of the Papal Household and former apostolic nuncio to Lithuania,” is the definitive proof that this biography serves the propaganda of the conciliar sect. Rajič calls the Chronicle a testimony to “the victory of the cross of Christ” — but a cross divorced from the Social Kingship is the cross of the revolutionaries, not of the Church. Pius XI warned: “When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The conciliar hierarchy, by promoting “religious freedom” and “human rights” as the highest goods, has completed this removal. Rajič’s endorsement confirms that Tamkevičius is a hero of the neo-church, not of the Church of Christ.
EWTN as Propagandist for the Paramasonic Structure
The source, EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network), founded by the conciliar “Mother Angelica,” has long served as a mouthpiece for the “Church of the New Advent.” Its publication of this piece, replete with quotations from conciliar “prefects” and “nuncios,” demonstrates its role in canonizing the heroes of the conciliar resistance — a resistance that never questioned the legitimacy of the conciliar popes, never denounced the New Mass as a bastardized rite, never condemned the false ecumenism of Assisi. This article is not news; it is the myth-making of a counterfeit church.
Conclusion: The Only True Resistance is the Integral Faith
The Lithuanian Catholics who preserved the Faith under Soviet terror did so not by publishing “human rights” chronicles for Radio Free Europe, but by keeping the Traditional Latin Mass, the Baltimore Catechism, the Rosary, and the doctrine of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus alive in secret. They resisted the Soviet state as Catholics, not as “human rights activists.” The biography of Tamkevičius, as presented by EWTN, is a monument to the great deception of the 20th century: the substitution of the Civitas Dei with the Civitas Hominis. Non est alia salus. There is no salvation in the conciliar sect, no matter how many of its “cardinals” suffer in labor camps. The true Church remains where She has always been: in the catacombs of Tradition, under bishops of valid Orders and unbroken doctrine, awaiting the Restoration of All Things in Christ.
Source:
How one Lithuanian cardinal resisted Soviet persecution from a KGB prison cell (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 29.08.2026