The EWTN News portal reports (September 23, 2026) that “Bishop” John O. Barres of Rockville Centre has issued a pastoral letter heralding the imminent “beatification” of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen by “Pope” Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) in St. Louis. Barres, baptized by Sheen in 1960, frames the event as a summons to “missionary conversion”—a neologism coined by the current usurper—urging the faithful to exploit artificial intelligence and modern media for a “global mission” stripped of the Social Kingship of Christ. This spectacle consummates the conciliar sect’s replacement of the missio ad gentes with a naturalistic communications strategy, legitimized by a manifest heretic occupying the See of Peter.
The Usurper’s “Beatification”: A Null Act by a Manifest Heretic
The very premise of this celebration—a “beatification” conferred by “Pope” Leo XIV—is canonically null and theologically impossible. Since the death of Pius XII in 1958, the See of Peter has been occupied by a line of manifest heretics who, by the very fact of their public defection from the Catholic Faith (ipso facto), have 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.” Wernz and Vidal confirm this deprivation occurs ipso facto, “even before any declaratory sentence by the Church.”
Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code—binding perennial ecclesiastical law—stipulates that an office becomes vacant “by the mere fact and without any declaration… if the cleric publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” Pope Paul IV’s Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio dogmatizes that the promotion of a heretic “shall be null, void, and of no effect,” requiring no declaratory sentence. The “beatification” by Robert Prevost—a public adherent of the conciliar errors of religious liberty, false ecumenism, and collegiality condemned by the Syllabus of Pius IX and Quas Primas—is therefore a simulated act of a private person, devoid of any juridical or spiritual efficacy. It is a theatrical production of the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican, designed to canonize the architects of the revolution.
Fulton Sheen: The Media Prototype of the Conciliar Revolution
Archbishop Sheen is presented as the patron of “Catholic media,” yet his career epitomizes the reduction of the supernatural apostolate to a naturalistic broadcasting enterprise. The article boasts of his “pioneering use of radio and television” and “burning zeal for mission” expressed through technology. This is the hermeneutic of the world, not the missio Dei. Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches that Christ’s Kingdom “is primarily spiritual and relates mainly to spiritual matters” and that “the state must leave… freedom to the members of Orders… who contribute most to the expansion and establishment of Christ’s Kingdom, either by combating the triple concupiscence of the world through religious vows.”
Sheen’s “mission” lacked this combativeness against the world; it sought accommodation with it. His “Life is Worth Living” program presented a Catholicism sanitized for the American bourgeoisie, silent on the Social Kingship of Christ over civil legislation—a silence the Syllabus condemns (Error 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church”; Error 77: “It is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State”). Sheen was the harbinger of the “Church of the New Advent”, preparing the faithful to accept a Church that dialogues with error rather than condemning it.
“Missionary Conversion”: The Neologism of Apostasy
The centerpiece of Barres’ letter is the term “missionary conversion,” attributed to the antipope Leo XIV. This phrase is a semiotic trap. In Catholic theology, conversio denotes a turning from sin to God, effected by grace through the sacraments of the true Church. In the conciliar lexicon, it signifies an ongoing adaptation to the “signs of the times”—a Modernist evolution of doctrine condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (Prop. 58: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him”; Prop. 59: “Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples”).
Barres writes: “The Holy Father has called Catholics to be missionaries that are constantly open to ‘missionary conversion’ — bringing the Gospel into their families, parishes, workplaces, institutions, and the wider secular world.” Note the absence of the necessity of the Catholic Church as the exclusive ark of salvation (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus), the silence on the duty of states to profess the Catholic Faith (Quas Primas: “Rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ”), and the replacement of consecratio with “communication.” This is the laicism Pius XI denounced: “the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations… the Christian religion began to be equated with other false religions.”
Artificial Intelligence and the “Table of Assembly”
Barres suggests Sheen would embrace “emerging technologies of that world, including artificial intelligence, ethically and wherever they can serve the Church’s global mission.” This reveals the technocratic Pelagianism of the sect. The missio ad gentes requires valid priests offering the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary and administering valid sacraments. The conciliar sect possesses neither: its “ordinations” post-1968 are doubtful at best, its “Mass” a Protestantized memorial supper (“table of assembly”), its hierarchy ipso facto vacant.
To propose AI as a tool for “mission” while the Sacrifice of the Mass is eclipsed is to build a tower of Babel. The article admits: “He would never allow the means to eclipse the person.” Yet the entire conciliar edifice has eclipsed the Divine Person of Christ the King, substituting the “human person” as the new idol. This is the culmination of the “cult of man” condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
The “Priest as Victim” in a Counterfeit Priesthood
Barres cites Sheen’s The Priest Is Not His Own and the theology of the priest as victim. This is a cruel irony. A true priest is configured to Christ the High Priest and Victim ex opere operato through valid ordination in the Apostolic rite. The “priests” of the conciliar sect, ordained by “bishops” like Barres (himself consecrated in the invalid Paul VI rite by men of dubious orders), lack the character of the priesthood. They cannot offer the Propitiatory Sacrifice; they cannot be victims united to the Victim because they stand outside the True Vine.
Barres writes: “Only a priest who understands how an existential embrace of the Cross… is critical to the living out of the ontological change that occurred in his being at his priestly ordination…” This “ontological change” is presumed, not demonstrated. The Defense of Sedevacantism file demonstrates that “a manifest heretic cannot be Pope… a non-Christian in no way can be Pope… he cannot be the head of something of which he is not a member.” The same principle applies to the episcopate and priesthood: one who adheres to the conciliar heresies (religious liberty, ecumenism, new mass) has defected from the Faith. As Bellarmine states: “Manifest heretics immediately lose all jurisdiction… NOT AFTER WARNINGS OR DECLARATION, BECAUSE heretics are already outside the Church before excommunication.” Barres and his “priests” are functionaries of a false religion, simulating the priesthood while denying its ex opere operato reality.
The Baptism of 1960: A Valid Sacrament in a Doomed Context
Barres’ personal anecdote—“When Archbishop Sheen baptized me at St. Augustine’s Church… sending me out as a future Successor of the Apostles”—highlights the tragedy. The baptism was likely valid (matter, form, intention), grafting the infant into the Mystical Body. But the subsequent formation in the conciliar sect—the “Catholic” schools, the “seminary,” the “episcopal consecration” in the new rite—constituted a systematic corruption of that grace. Barres became a “Successor of the Apostles” only in the counterfeit hierarchy of the abomination of desolation.
The article notes Sheen was National Director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith (1950–1966). This institution, under Pius XII, still bore the marks of the true apostolate. But Sheen’s tenure bridges the chasm: he became the face of the transition from the Church Militant to the “Church of Dialogue.” His “beatification” seals this rupture, presenting the revolutionary as a saint.
EWTN: The Propaganda Arm of the Neo-Church
The source, EWTN News, is the media flagship of the conciliar sect, founded by the charismatic “Mother Angelica” under the aegis of the usurpers. Its coverage—“extensive live coverage and special programming”—serves to manufacture consent for the antipope’s agenda. The related articles promote Jonathan Roumie (actor in the Protestantized “The Chosen”) and “Bishop” Robert Barron (apostle of “seeds of the Word” theology). This is a closed ecosystem of error, reinforcing the illusion of legitimacy for a structure that has no mission, no mandate, and no Christ save the one they have refashioned in the image of the world.
Conclusion: The Kingship Denied, the Apostasy Confirmed
This “beatification” is not a cause for joy but a sign of the times (signa temporum in the true sense): the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matt. 24:15), canonizing its own architects. The faithful are called not to “missionary conversion” via AI, but to Conversio ad Dominum—a return to the integral Catholic Faith, the Traditional Latin Mass, the Social Kingship of Christ (Quas Primas), and the Sedevacantist position which alone preserves the visibilitas and indefectibilitas of the Church by refusing communion with manifest heretics. “He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters” (Matt. 12:30). The conciliar sect scatters; the true Church, though hidden in the catacombs of Tradition, gathers.
Source:
Bishop baptized by Fulton Sheen reflects on his legacy ahead of beatification (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 23.09.2026