The EWTN News portal reports that the structures occupying the Vatican will bestow the 2026 Ratzinger Prize upon John Cavadini, professor of patristic theology at the University of Notre Dame, with the antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) scheduled to present the award on December 19 at the Apostolic Palace. The announcement was made by “Father” Roberto Regoli, president of the Vatican Foundation Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI, who lauded Cavadini’s “rigor of his theological publications” and the “unique contributions of American theologians” to the cultural debates that allegedly “do not concern only America.” This ceremony of mutual admiration within the conciliar sect constitutes a public ratification of the Modernist project to substitute the immutable deposit of faith with an evolving “theology” subordinated to the spirit of the world.
The Ratzinger Prize: An Idol of the New Religion
The very institution of the “Ratzinger Prize” manifests the cult of man that has replaced the worship of the Triune God in the neo-church. Established in 2011 under the usurper Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), this prize functions as a novus ordo canonization of living Modernists, bypassing the Church’s perennial safeguards: the devil’s advocate, the scrutiny of miracles, and the infallible judgment of a true Pope. As Pius XI teaches in Quas Primas, “Christ reigns in the minds of men… because He Himself is Truth, and men must draw truth from Him and accept it obediently.” The conciliar sect, by contrast, draws its “truth” from the academic fashions of the “Anglo-Saxon world” and rewards those who facilitate the democratization of doctrine.
The selection of Cavadini — a theologian formed in the post-conciliar wasteland, teaching at a university that has long since abandoned Ex Corde Ecclesiae for the secularist agenda — confirms that the prize honors not fidelity to Tradition but fidelity to the revolution. Regoli’s explicit invocation of “cultural debates in the United States” and the “leadership role” of the “Anglo-Saxon world” in “different fields of science” reveals the naturalistic criterion: worldly relevance supersedes supernatural orthodoxy. Non est haec sapientia descendens de sursum, sed terrena, animalica, daemoniaca (This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish — James 3:15).
Joseph Ratzinger: Architect of the Hermeneutic of Ruin
The article’s celebration of the “renewed academic interest worldwide in Ratzinger’s life and theological legacy” ahead of his 2027 centenary exposes the personality cult at the heart of the conciliar religion. Joseph Ratzinger, as “peritus” at Vatican II and later as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was the principal architect of the hermeneutic of continuity — the sophistical device by which the conciliar sect claims that its radical ruptures (religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality, liturgical novelty) are in “continuity” with Tradition. This is the lie of the century.
St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, condemned the Modernist method: “They lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must change.” Ratzinger’s entire corpus — from Introduction to Christianity to the “Jesus of Nazareth” trilogy — exemplifies this evolutionism: the dogmas of the Faith are reduced to “symbolic expressions” of religious experience, the Resurrection becomes a “confessional event” rather than a historical fact, and the Church’s mission is transformed from the salvation of souls to “dialogue” with the world. The “Ratzinger chairs” sprouting globally, the doctoral theses, the edited volumes — these are the bad fruits of a corrupted tree. Ab fructibus eorum cognoscetis eos (By their fruits you shall know them — Matt. 7:20).
Notre Dame: A Fortress of the New Theology
The University of Notre Dame, boasting the most Ratzinger Prize winners of any institution (Cyril O’Regan in 2024, Jesuit “Father” Brian E. Daley in 2012, now Cavadini), stands as a citadel of the neo-Modernism that St. Pius X anathematized in Lamentabili Sane Exitu. The condemned propositions therein — “The dogmas which the Church proposes as revealed are not truths of divine origin but are a certain interpretation of religious facts” (Prop. 22); “Christian doctrine was initially Jewish, but through gradual development, it became first Pauline, then Johannine, and finally Greek and universal” (Prop. 60) — find their living embodiment in the “theology” taught at Notre Dame.
Cavadini’s specialization in St. Augustine is particularly insidious. The Modernist method, as Pius X exposed, “under the guise of more serious criticism and in the name of historical method, they aim at such a development of dogmas as appears to be their corruption.” By subjecting the Doctor of Grace to the “historical-critical method,” Cavadini and his ilk strip the Bishop of Hippo of his authority as a witness to Tradition, making him a mere “product of his time” — precisely the error condemned in Lamentabili, Prop. 12: “An exegete who wishes to fruitfully engage in biblical studies should especially reject any preconceived opinion about the supernatural origin of Holy Scripture.” The same poison is applied to the Fathers.
The “Anglo-Saxon World” as Magisterium
Regoli’s declaration — “Our cultural traditions have been more influenced by the thought of the United States of America… it is important to look toward the Anglo-Saxon world, because in the different fields of science it has taken on a leadership role for several decades” — is a formal apostasy from the Catholic principle that the Church teaches all nations, not the nations the Church. Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors condemned: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil” (Error 3). The conciliar sect has inverted the order: the “cultural debates” of a Masonic republic (the USA, founded on Enlightenment principles condemned by Quanta Cura and the Syllabus) now dictate the theological agenda to the “Holy See.”
This is the laicism denounced by Pius XI in Quas Primas: “It began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations; the Church’s authority to teach men, to issue laws, to govern nations… was denied. And then, slowly, the Christian religion began to be equated with other false religions and shamelessly placed in the same category; then it was subordinated to secular power.” The “Ratzinger Prize” awarded to an American academic by a “pope” who is himself a product of the German Modernist establishment is the ritual celebration of this subversion.
Leo XIV: The Usurper Confirming the Usurpation
That the antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) will personally present the award completes the theater of the absurd. A “pope” elected by a conclave of Modernist cardinals, himself a promoter of the conciliar errors (synodality, religious liberty, ecumenism), bestows a prize named after a Modernist “pope” upon a Modernist theologian. Circulus vitiosus — a vicious circle of invalid acts. As the Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio of Pope Paul IV declares: “if at any time it shall appear that any… Roman Pontiff… has defected from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy: (i) his promotion or elevation… shall be null, void, and of no effect.” The entire post-1958 hierarchy, having defected by the public profession of the heresies of Vatican II, possesses no jurisdiction, no authority, no magisterium.
The “Vatican Foundation Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI” is a private association of heretics masquerading as an ecclesiastical institution. Its “president,” Regoli, and “secretary,” Azzaro, are laymen or invalidly ordained “clerics” exercising a simulated authority. Their press conference at the “Holy See Press Office” — a bureau of the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican — is a propaganda operation, not an act of the Church.
Silence on the Supernatural: The Gravest Accusation
Nowhere in the article — nor in the cited statements of Regoli, Cavadini, or the foundation — is there mention of: the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; the salvation of souls; the state of grace; the Four Last Things (death, judgment, heaven, hell); the Social Kingship of Christ; the duty of nations to profess the Catholic Faith; the conversion of infidels; the condemnation of error; the Immaculate Heart of Mary (the true one, not the Fatima fabrication); the reparation for sin. This total silence on the supernatural order is the signum contradictionis proving that the conciliar sect is a purely human, naturalistic, Masonic construct — the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place (Matt. 24:15).
The African Diversion
Regoli’s mention of a focus on “Ratzinger’s legacy in Africa” and the claim that Ratzinger “strongly believed that Africa had the spiritual reserves necessary for the West to flourish again” is a cynical instrumentalization of the suffering Church in Africa. The conciliar sect uses African bishops as stage props for its “synodal” theater while imposing upon them the Novus Ordo liturgy, religious liberty, and the destruction of missionary zeal. The true “spiritual reserves” of Africa are the Traditional Latin Mass communities, the catechumens dying for the Faith, the bishops who resist the neo-colonialism of the “Anglo-Saxon” theological imperialism — all of whom are marginalized by the very structures bestowing this prize.
Conclusion: Return to the Immutable Tradition
The 2026 Ratzinger Prize ceremony is not an ecclesial act but a Masonic ritual of self-congratulation by the architects of the Great Apostasy. It honors a theologian (Cavadini) formed in error, by a foundation named after a heretic (Ratzinger), presented by an antipope (Leo XIV), reported by a Modernist media outlet (EWTN), all under the gaze of a “Anglo-Saxon world” that has rejected the Kingship of Christ. As Pius XI proclaimed 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 conciliar sect is the living proof of this destruction.
Ergo, qui non est cum me, contra me est (He that is not with me, is against me — Matt. 12:30). The only remedy is the total rejection of the conciliar sect, its prizes, its “theologians,” its “popes,” and its false religion — and the unconditional adherence to the Catholic Church of all time, preserved in the bishops and priests who maintain the Tradition without admixture, the Mass of all time, and the Social Reign of Christ the King. Instaurare omnia in Christo (To restore all things in Christ — St. Pius X).
Source:
Notre Dame theologian John Cavadini to receive 2026 Ratzinger Prize (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 22.09.2026