The EWTN News portal (via its Arabic service ACI MENA) reports that on September 13, 2026, the “Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem,” “Cardinal” Pierbattista Pizzaballa, presided over a Novus Ordo service on the eve of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Taybeh, West Bank. The “patriarch” declared the Cross a “victory of love” and a “way of life,” urging the faithful to live the “logic of the cross” amid temporal sufferings inflicted by Israeli settlers and political restrictions. The event featured a candlelight procession to the historic St. George Church (Al-Khader), the blessing of pomegranates, and the lighting of a traditional flame. This report manifests the total substitution of the Social Kingship of Christ the King for a horizontal, naturalistic humanitarianism, enacted by a usurper of episcopal dignity within the abomination of desolation occupying the Holy Places.
The Usurpation of the Episcopal Office and the Nullity of the Rite
The very subject of this report—”Cardinal” Pizzaballa, “Latin Patriarch”—is a canonical fiction. Since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, the See of Peter has been vacant (Sede Vacante). The line of claimants beginning with John XXIII are manifest heretics who, by the very fact of their public adhesion to the errors of Vatican II (religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, new ecclesiology), have ipso facto severed themselves from the Mystical Body of Christ and lost all jurisdiction. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches in De Romano Pontifice: “A Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.” This principle applies a fortiori to “cardinals” and “bishops” created by these antipopes. They receive their “mandate” from a non-authority; they are ordained in the invalid Paul VI rite (1968), which stripped the sacramental form of its sacrificial intent. Consequently, Pizzaballa is a layman—perhaps a baptized one, perhaps not—exercising a simulated ministry. His “Mass” is not the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary; it is a Protestantized commemorative meal. The “concelebration” with “Bishop” Shomali and “Fathers” Meli and Fawadleh compounds the sacrilege, for the Novus Ordo rite lacks the forma substantialis of the Priesthood and the Victim. The Council of Trent anathematizes those who deny the propitiatory nature of the Mass (Sess. XXII, can. 3); the conciliar sect has made this denial its liturgical norm.
Reduction of the Cross to Naturalistic Humanitarianism
Pizzaballa’s homily, as reported, is a masterclass in Modernist evaporation of dogma. He states: “The cross is not a sign of defeat or death but an expression of God’s love and the victory of life… We are called to live according to the logic of the cross.” Notice the total absence of the language of satisfactio, propitiation, redemption from sin, or the Kingship of Christ. The Cross is stripped of its theandric reality—the God-Man offering Himself to the Father to appease divine justice—and reduced to a vague symbol of “love” and “self-giving.” This is the heresy of immanentism condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (Prop. 22, 26, 59): “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” and “Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples, but rather initiated a certain religious movement.” Pizzaballa preaches a “movement,” a “logic,” a “way of life”—the very essence of the evolution of dogma condemned by the Holy Office. The Cross becomes a psychological crutch for the oppressed, not the signum contradictionis (Luke 2:34) by which the world is judged.
Silence on the Social Kingship of Christ: Betrayal of Quas Primas
The article notes the context: Taybeh suffers from “attacks by Israeli settlers, restrictions on movement… declining employment… continued emigration.” Pizzaballa’s response? “Christians do not need to seek out suffering, because they are already surrounded by suffering… such experiences can become an opening for God’s presence.” This is a criminal omission. Pope 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 remedy for the Holy Land is not “consolation” but the public proclamation that Christus Regnat—that the Muslim authorities, the Israeli state, and the international community are subject to the King of Kings, and that their laws must conform to His. Pius XI commanded: “Let rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ… if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate.” Pizzaballa, a “patriarch” of the neo-church, is an agent of the very laicism Pius XI condemned (Syllabus, Error 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church”). He negotiates “permits” from Caesar instead of demanding the Crown Rights of Christ. He offers pomegranates and flames instead of the Exaltatio Sanctae Crucis as the standard of divine conquest.
Religious Syncretism and the “Al-Khader” Cult
The procession to “St. George Church, locally known as Al-Khader” reveals the depth of the apostasy. “Al-Khader” (The Green One) is a figure venerated in Islamic folk religion and Druze tradition, often identified with Elijah or St. George, serving as a locus of interreligious syncretism. The “blessing of pomegranates” and the “lighting of the traditional feast day flame” are folk customs elevated to liturgical acts, devoid of Roman ritual sanction, smacking of the ritus antiquus corrupted by local superstition. This is the ecumenism of the blood so beloved by the conciliar sect: a Christianity stripped of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, comfortable sharing “holy sites” with the enemies of the Cross. The Syllabus of Pius IX condemns: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion… Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (Errors 16, 18). By participating in the “Al-Khader” cult, the conciliar clergy legitimize the Quranic denial of the Crucifixion (Surah 4:157) and the Islamic claim to the Holy Places. They are cooperators in the profanation of the Holy Land.
The “Logic of the Cross” vs. The Logic of Antichrist
Pizzaballa speaks of a “logic of the cross” rooted in “love and self-giving.” But Caritas sine fide non est caritas. The love of Christ is crucified love—love for the Father’s will, love for truth, love that judges the world (John 12:31). The “love” of the neo-church is philanthropy, the “love” of the Synagogue of Satan (Apoc. 2:9; 3:9) which builds a city of man without God. The article mentions Pizzaballa receiving an “award from Macron”—the Masonic president of a Masonic republic. This is the modus operandi of the conciliar hierarchy: decoration by the enemies of Christ, silence on abortion, “gender theory,” and the Noahide laws advancing in the Knesset, while whispering “courage” to a dwindling flock. The “flame” lit in Taybeh is not the Lumen Christi of the Paschal Vigil; it is the fire of strange worship (Lev. 10:1), a signal of the paramasonic structure’s total capitulation to the spirit of the world.
Conclusion: The Cross Stands While the Neo-Church Falls
The faithful of Taybeh—and all Catholics in the Holy Land—are being led by a blind guide (Matt. 15:14) into a spiritual desert. The true Cross is the vexillum regis, the standard of the King who will return to judge the living and the dead. The conciliar sect offers a cross without a Corpus, a sacrifice without a Victim, a priesthood without Orders, a Church without the Papacy. As the Defense of Sedevacantism demonstrates via Canon 188.4 and Cum ex Apostolatus Officio: “Every office becomes vacant by the mere fact… if the cleric publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” Pizzaballa and his “concelebrants” have publicly defected. Their “Mass” is idolatry; their “blessing” is a curse; their “hope” is despair. Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat—despite the usurpers in Jerusalem and Rome. The true faithful must withdraw from these sacrilegious assemblies, keep the Traditional Mass and the True Faith, and await the restoration of the Social Kingship of Christ over the Holy Land and all nations.
Source:
Cardinal Pizzaballa calls Christians in the Holy Land to make the cross a way of life (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 15.09.2026