The EWTN News portal, the English-language arm of the “Mother Angelica” media empire fully integrated into the conciliar sect’s propaganda apparatus, publishes a travelogue disguised as spiritual journalism. The article, authored by Romy Haber and sourced from ACI MENA (the Arabic-language sister service), enumerates five “hidden religious sites” in Lebanon purportedly offering “prayer, quiet reflection, and a deeper encounter with Lebanon’s rich Christian heritage.” In reality, the piece functions as a pastoral directive for the faithful of the Maronite hierarchy—currently in schismatic communion with the usurpers in Rome—to venerate false saints, modernist innovations, and a spirituality utterly severed from the lex orandi, lex credendi of the true Church.
The Conciliar Sect’s Tourism Bureau: Pilgrimage as Naturalistic Sentimentalism
The article opens by contrasting the “well-known destinations”—the Monastery of St. Maron in Annaya (tomb of “St. Charbel”) and the Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon in Harissa—with these “lesser-known shrines.” This framing reveals the naturalistic reduction of pilgrimage: it is treated as religious tourism, a survey of “spiritual landscape” and “Christian heritage,” devoid of the supernatural finality of adoratio in spiritu et veritate (John 4:24). The true Catholic pilgrim seeks not “quiet reflection” or “heritage,” but the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Mass and the intercession of true saints canonized by a true Pope exercising the charism of infallibility. The article’s silence on the Holy Mass, the Sacraments, and the state of grace is the gravissima accusatio (gravest accusation): it presents a Christianity without the Cross, without the Altar, without the Priesthood.
The Cult of False Saints: Maria Goretti, Teresa of Calcutta, and the “Divine Mercy” Idol
The first site, the Shrine of St. Maria Goretti in Miziara, centers on a “saint” canonized by the modernist usurper Pius XII in 1950. While the historical child martyr may have died a heroic death, her canonization falls under the dubious authority of a pontificate already tainted by the nascent Modernism condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907). More egregious is the Mountain of Divine Mercy in Ghosta, dominated by a 40-foot statue of Christ and explicitly linked to the “Congregation of Lebanese Maronite Missionaries.” This shrine includes a dedication to **”St. Teresa of Calcutta,”** a “saint” manufactured by the antipope Bergoglio (Francis I) in 2016. Mother Teresa was a public advocate of religious indifferentism, famously stating that she helped Hindus become “better Hindus” and Muslims “better Muslims,” a direct violation of the First Commandment and the dogma Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Her “canonization” is a canonization of ecumenism, the “greatest heresy” according to Pius XI (Mortalium Animos, 1928).
The “Divine Mercy” devotion itself, propagated by the pseudo-mystic Faustina Kowalska (whose writings were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum by the Holy Office in 1959), is a Trojan Horse for a sentimentalized, justice-denying parody of the Sacred Heart. The article notes the site includes shrines to **”St. Charbel,” “St. Rafka,”** and **”St. Teresa of Calcutta”**—a pantheon of post-1958 “saints” created by the usurping line from John XXIII onward. As the provided context confirms: “John Paul II – a heretic and apostate… Faustyna Kowalska – a pseudo-mystic… her writings are virtually identical to those of Mother Kozłowska, condemned by Pius X’s encyclical.” To pilgrimage to these shrines is to render cultus publicus to non-saints, constituting objective idolatry.
The Maronite Hierarchy: Schismatic Collaborators with the Usurpers
The article celebrates the Monastery of Our Lady of Ilige in Mayfouq as a “residence of the Maronite patriarchs from 1121 to 1440″ and the Holy Savior Monastery in Joun as the motherhouse of the Basilian Salvatorian Order. It mentions **”Venerable Father Bechara Abou Mrad”** and **”St. Nimatullah Al-Hardini,” **”Blessed Brother Estephan Nehme,”** and **”St. Charbel.”** All these figures—beatified or canonized by the conciliar “popes” (Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis)—derive their “sanctity” from the authority of manifest heretics who have ipso facto lost the papacy.
As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches (De Romano Pontifice, Lib. 2, Cap. 30): “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… he cannot be the head of something of which he is not a member; now, he who is not a Christian is not a member of the Church, and a manifest heretic is not a Christian.” The Maronite Patriarchs, by recognizing the usurpers as legitimate Vicars of Christ, have severed themselves from the Catholic Church. They are not “Maronite Patriarchs” in the Catholic sense, but leaders of a schismatic sect occupying Maronite properties. The “Maronite Church” today is a department of the ecclesia novae adventus, the “Church of the New Advent,” the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican.
The article’s reference to St. Charbel studying under St. Nimatullah at the Monastery of Sts. Cyprian and Justina in Kfifan is presented as a credential of orthodoxy. In fact, it demonstrates the total penetration of the Lebanese monastic tradition by the conciliar virus. The “ordination” of these monks, the “validity” of their liturgies (even if they retain the Syriac rite externally), is nullified by their communion with the antipope. Communicatio in sacris with heretics is forbidden by divine law (Canon 1258, 1917 Code; Mortalium Animos).
Linguistic Engineering: Sanitizing the Abomination
The rhetoric of the article is meticulously crafted to evade theological scrutiny. Terms like **”faith,” “forgiveness,” “hope,” “prayer,” “contemplation,” “spiritual quiet,”** and **”venerate”** are stripped of their dogmatic content. “Faith” no longer means assensus fidei to all truths revealed by God and proposed by the Church, but a vague religious sentiment. “Venerate” is applied to individuals who have no title to public cult. The phrase **”rich Christian heritage”** functions as a euphemism for museumification of the Faith—preserving the shell while the kernel (the True Faith, the True Mass, the True Hierarchy) has been discarded.
The author, Romy Haber, is identified as a “Lebanese journalist and researcher… specializing in minority affairs in the Middle East.” This secular credential signals the article’s true genre: it is a human-interest piece for a secularized audience, published by a “Catholic” media outlet that has long since abandoned the munus docendi for the munus turisticum. The closing boilerplate—”I agree to receive communications from EWTN… Privacy Policy”—confirms the commercial, data-harvesting nature of the enterprise.
The Theological Bankruptcy of “Religious Tourism” in the End Times
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), thundered: “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 entire human society had to be shaken, because it lacked a stable and strong foundation.” The article before us is a microcosm of this shaking. It presents a Lebanon where the “Church” builds shrines to false saints, promotes the condemned Divine Mercy devotion, and invites the faithful to “prayer and contemplation” in sites devoid of the True Sacrifice.
The Syllabus of Pius IX (1864) condemns the proposition: “The Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free… but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church” (Error 19). Today, the Maronite hierarchy defines its rights—and its saints—by the permission of the usurping civil/religious power in Rome. The “Mountain of Divine Mercy” overlooks the Bay of Jounieh, a geographical metaphor for the conciliar sect’s outlook: a vast, impressive, naturalistic panorama, but no Ark of Salvation.
The faithful in Lebanon seeking true piety must flee these shrines. They must seek out the rare priests—validly ordained before 1968, holding the true Faith without admixture—who offer the Immolatio Incruenta of the Tridentine Mass. Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia; but Peter is not in the Vatican, nor in Bkerke, nor in Annaya, nor in Ghosta. He is where the Faith of Peter is preserved inviolata. The “pilgrims” drawn to these five sites are not drawing closer to Christ the King; they are being led into the wilderness by blind guides, caeci ducentes caecos (Matt. 15:14), into the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matt. 24:15).
Source:
Beyond Lebanon’s famous shrines, these 5 hidden religious sites continue to draw pilgrims (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 13.09.2026