Tolton Film: Naturalistic Humanism Masquerades as Catholic Hagiography

The National Catholic Register — flagship organ of the conciliar sect’s propaganda apparatus — publishes an interview with Leonardo Defilippis, founder of St. Luke Productions, regarding the film Tolton: From Slave to Priest. The piece celebrates a theatrical adaptation touring the United States since 2017, now captured on film, depicting the life of Augustus Tolton, declared “Venerable” by the usurper Bergoglio in 2019. Defilippis recounts the genesis of the project at the behest of the modernist hierarchy — specifically “Cardinal” Francis George and “Bishop” Joseph Perry — and explicitly states his hope that the film will attract the attention of the current antipope, Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), to secure a miracle for canonization. The article functions as a hagiographic press release for a production that reduces the Catholic priesthood to a vehicle for racial reconciliation and social healing, entirely devoid of the supernatural dimensions of the Mass, the Sacrifice of Calvary, and the salvation of souls. This film is not a work of Catholic apologetics but a manifesto of the conciliar sect’s replacement of the Kingship of Christ with the religion of man.

The Fabrication of Sanctity by Usurped Authority

The entire premise rests on the “canonization process” initiated by “Cardinal” Francis George — a manifest modernist who implemented the novelties of Vatican II with zeal — and advanced by “Bishop” Joseph Perry, postulator of the cause. Since the See of Peter has been vacant since the death of Pius XII in 1958, there exists no legitimate authority to declare any servant of God “Venerable,” “Blessed,” or “Saint.” The 1917 Code of Canon Law, binding until a true Pope restores it, reserves the judgment of sanctity exclusively to the Roman Pontiff (Canon 1999 §1). The conciliar sect’s “canonizations” — including the farcical elevation of the Freemason-ecumenist John Paul II, the evolutionist Newman, and the pseudo-mystic Faustina Kowalska (whose writings were condemned by the Holy Office under St. Pius X) — are null, void, and of no effect (irritae et inanes). They are exercises in auto-demolition of the Church’s infallibility, designed to sanctify the architects of the New Advent. To present Tolton’s “Venerable” status as a fact is to legitimize the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican. Defilippis admits the goal is to “get the attention of Pope Leo, who is from Chicago” — an explicit appeal to Robert Prevost, a public adherent of the heresies of religious liberty and false ecumenism, as the arbiter of holiness. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who shall judge the judges? A heretic cannot bind the faithful in matters of faith (Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, Paul IV).

Reduction of the Priesthood to Social Activism

Defilippis articulates the film’s core message: “Father Tolton’s life and message of forgiveness, healing and unity is so needed right now… Hate does not solve problems… Christianity is a religion of forgiveness and love.” This is the Gospel according to the World, not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The priesthood of the New Law is defined by the Council of Trent as a participation in the one Priesthood of Christ, ordered primarily to the offering of the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary (Session XXIII, Canon 1). The priest is alter Christus, a victim with Christ, not a social worker managing ethnic harmony. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, teaches that Christ’s Kingdom is “primarily spiritual” and that “men who wish to belong to it prepare themselves through repentance, but cannot enter except through faith and baptism.” The film’s synopsis — “He is not a shepherd for himself but for the one Shepherd, Jesus Christ, and thus is a servant of all races and peoples from the eyes of Christ” — inverts the hierarchy of ends. The priest serves Christ by offering the Holy Sacrifice for the remission of sins and the glory of the Father; the “unity of races” is a temporal consequence of supernatural charity, not its essence. The Syllabus of Pius IX condemns the error that “The teaching of the Catholic Church is hostile to the well-being and interests of society” (Error 40), but the conciliar sect inverts this: it makes temporal well-being the criterion of the Church’s mission. Where is the mention of the Holy Mass? Of the Real Presence? Of Confession? Of the Last Things? Nowhere. The silence about the supernatural is the loudest heresy.

The Myth of “Institutionalized Racism” in the True Church

Defilippis claims: “No diocese, bishop, priest or religious order would accept a black man to be in any seminary or be ordained. This was a great wound in the American Church because of the institutionalized racism in our country.” This is a calumny against the pre-conciliar Church, weaponized by modernists to delegitimize the Tradition. The Catholic Church, as Quas Primas affirms, “encompasses all men… the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The Church has always ordained men of every race — St. Augustine, St. Benedict the Moor, St. Martin de Porres — because gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit (grace does not destroy nature but perfects it). The obstacles Tolton faced in 19th-century America were largely the fruit of liberal and Masonic principles infecting the civil order and, tragically, some weak churchmen — not the doctrine or discipline of the Church. The Syllabus condemns the proposition that “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). The modernist narrative projects the sins of the Masonic State onto the Bride of Christ to justify the conciliar revolution’s “aggiornamento” to the world. Defilippis praises the “Irish missionary priest, Father Peter McGirr” who sent Tolton to Rome — where priests from every race have been ordained since Christ started the Church — inadvertently proving that the Roman (i.e., Catholic) solution existed, while the Americanist deviation failed. The film celebrates the exception that proves the rule of the Church’s universality, yet frames it as an indictment of the Church herself.

False Ecumenism and the “Seamless Garment” of Indifferentism

Defilippis prays the film will “expand to audiences around our country, secular and religious, Catholic and Protestant, and touch the hearts of all to become one in unity and peace.” This is the heresy of indifferentism condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus, Errors 15-18) and Gregory XVI (Mirari Vos). “Unity and peace” among false religions is not the peace of Christ (Pax Christi in regno Christi), but the pax Romana of the Masonic lodges. The film is explicitly marketed as “evangelizing through entertainment” — a Protestantized, sentimental methodology foreign to the Lex orandi, lex credendi of the Roman Rite. The mention of other St. Luke Productions titles — Maximilian: Saint of Auschwitz (celebrating a man who died a substitute, not a martyr in odium fidei, “canonized” by an antipope), Thérèse (the Little Flower stripped of her doctrinal rigor by modernist sentimentality) — confirms the sect’s project: to replace the Militant Church with a therapeutic theater troupe. The appeal to “Protestant” audiences without a call to conversion (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus) and the desire for “secular” acclaim reveal the naturalistic telos: human fraternity without divine paternity.

The Theatrical Substitution of Liturgy

Defilippis boasts of the “Off-Broadway production” quality, the actors “looking directly at the camera,” and the “power of capturing the live performance.” The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is not a performance; it is the Actio Christi. The conciliar sect, having dismantled the True Mass (the Novus Ordo Missae being a fabrication of the Freemason Bugnini), now substitutes it with religious theater. This is the logical terminus of the hermeneutic of rupture: if the liturgy is a “celebration of the community,” then a well-staged play is its equivalent. St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu, condemned the Modernist proposition that “The sacraments merely serve to remind man of the presence of the ever-benevolent Creator” (Prop. 41). Defilippis’s film serves exactly this Protestantized function: a reminder, a sentiment, a story — not a channel of grace. The faithful are fed drama instead of the Bread of Angels. Ichabod — the glory has departed.

Symptomatic Diagnosis: The Religion of the Antichrist

This article is a microcosm of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matt 24:15). It exhibits all the marks of the conciliar apostasy:

False Authority: Reliance on the “canonization” by antipopes (George, Francis, Leo XIV) in violation of Cum ex Apostolatus Officio and Bellarmine’s teaching on the automatic loss of office for manifest heresy (De Romano Pontifice, Bk II, Ch. 30).
False Sanctity: Promotion of a “servant of God” whose cause is processed by the neo-church, alongside false saints (Kolbe, JPII), confusing the faithful about the nota sanctitatis.
False Priesthood: Definition of the priest as “servant of all races” rather than Sacerdos et Hostia, echoing the Protestantized Presbyterorum Ordinis of Vatican II.
False Peace: “Forgiveness, healing, unity” detached from truth, justice, and the conversion of souls to the Unam Sanctam.
False Worship: “Evangelization through entertainment” replacing the Sacrificium Laudis of the Traditional Latin Mass.

The film Tolton is not a beacon of light in the darkness; it is a will-o’-the-wisp luring souls into the swamp of the Church of the New Advent. As St. Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, the Modernist “makes the religious sentiment the foundation of faith” and “transforms the Church into a mere human society.” Defilippis’s “American hero” is the icon of this transformation: a priest stripped of his sacrificial character, canonized by the world for serving the world’s agenda. Non est hic Christus, neque ibi. Christ is not in this cinema; He remains on the altars of the true Church, offered by valid priests in the Traditional Latin Mass, waiting for the restoration of His Kingship over nations — a Kingship this film implicitly denies by bowing before the idols of “unity” and “dialogue.”

Source:
‘Tolton’ Film Director Speaks About America’s First Black Priest (ncregister.com)
Date: 01.10.2026