National Catholic Register Whitewashes Apostasy with Franciscan Sentimentalism
National Catholic Register portal (October 2, 2026) publishes a hagiographic travelogue by Teresa Tomeo celebrating the alleged “Jubilee Year of St. Francis of Assisi proclaimed by Pope Leo XIV” and the 800th anniversary of the saint’s death. The article strings together a series of Franciscan figures—from Christopher Columbus to Mother Angelica—to construct a narrative of American Catholic identity wholly detached from the social reign of Christ the King (Quas Primas). It functions as a pastoral anesthetic, substituting supernatural mission with naturalistic philanthropy and legitimizing the paramasonic occupation of the Holy See by treating the usurper Robert Prevost (“Leo XIV”) as a true Vicar of Christ. This is not Catholic journalism; it is the liturgy of the neo-church, canonizing its own revolution under the guise of Franciscan poverty.
The Antipope’s “Jubilee” as Seal of the Great Apostasy
The article opens by situating the reader “in the midst of the special Jubilee Year of St. Francis of Assisi proclaimed by Pope Leo XIV.” There is no “Pope Leo XIV.” There is only Robert Prevost, a manifest modernist elevated by the conciliar sect’s pseudo-conclave, who occupies the Vatican as the latest in the line of usurpers beginning with Angelo Roncalli (“John XXIII”). To acknowledge his “proclamation” is to acknowledge his jurisdiction. It is to deny the dogmatic reality that a manifest heretic ipso facto loses all office and membership in the Church (Canon 188.4; Cum ex Apostolatus Officio; Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice).
St. Robert Bellarmine teaches: “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… he ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church” (De Romano Pontifice, Bk. 2, Ch. 30). The “Jubilee Year” is therefore a juridical nullity, a theatrical prop of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matt. 24:15). Tomeo’s casual acceptance of this “Jubilee” exposes her as a subject of the neo-church, not a daughter of the Catholic Church. She celebrates the annus horribilis of the Great Apostasy as a time of grace.
Reduction of the Seraphic Order to Humanitarian NGO
The article presents St. Francis as a “spiritual billionaire” whose “zeal for God, the Catholic faith and nature” reaches across centuries. Note the trinity: God, faith, nature. The order is telling. The Canticle of the Sun is cited not as a hymn of creatural participation in the Divine Esse but as “honoring God through his creation”—a subtle shift toward the panentheistic nature-worship endemic to post-conciliar spirituality (cf. Laudato Si’).
The piece describes the early Franciscans as those who “begged for food while preaching” and worked “to aid the poor and spread the Gospel.” But the Gospel here is emptied of its doctrinal content: Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, the necessity of baptism, the condemnation of false religions, the regnum Christi over temporal powers. The article speaks of “serving the poor and ignorant in the peoples they found there” in the New World. This is the language of the United Nations, not the Propaganda Fide. The “ignorant” are not souls in danger of eternal damnation for lack of baptism; they are beneficiaries of social services. The missio ad gentes is reduced to missio ad pauperes—corporal works of mercy severed from the spiritualia that give them supernatural merit.
Christopher Columbus: Third-Order Franciscan or Agent of the Regnum Christi?
The article claims Columbus “took his faith very seriously and lived a life of deep devotion, frequently requesting missionaries from the Church to travel across the ocean to spread the Gospel.” It quotes the Jesuit Fr. John Hardon (a conciliar figure) saying Columbus “opened the door to the most phenomenal spread of Christianity since the time of St. Paul.”
This is historical revisionism serving the neo-church’s narrative. Columbus was a man of his time, with grave moral faults, but his primary motive was the gloria Dei and the extension of Christendom. The article sanitizes him into a “Third-Order Franciscan” devotee of the Immaculate Conception, stripping the Crusading dimension of his enterprise. The flagship Santa Maria de la Inmaculada Concepción is mentioned, but not the Requiremento read to the natives, not the papal bulls Inter Caetera and Dudum Siquidem dividing the world for evangelization under the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns. The article presents a domesticated Columbus acceptable to the “religious freedom” paradigm of Dignitatis Humanae—a heresy condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (Error 77, 78, 79).
The “Apostle of California” and the Myth of the “Founding Fathers”
Junípero Serra is hailed as “Apostle of California” and “one of the ‘Founding Fathers of the United States.'” He was canonized by the antipope Jorge Bergoglio (“Francis I”) in 2015—a “canonization” devoid of canonical validity, performed by a non-pope using a novel rite. The article glosses over the fierce contemporary debate regarding Serra’s treatment of natives, but more importantly, it adopts the secular category “Founding Fathers of the United States.”
The United States was founded on Masonic principles: separation of Church and State, religious indifference, popular sovereignty (Syllabus, Errors 55, 77, 80). To call a Franciscan friar a “Founding Father” of a Masonic republic is a category error of demonic proportions. Serra founded missions for the Regnum Christi; the United States founded a novus ordo seclorum without Christ. The article’s conflation reveals the neo-church’s desperate desire for legitimacy in the eyes of the world—a complexio of the hérésie de l’action condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi.
The Georgia Martyrs: Beatified by a Usurper
The article notes the “Georgia Martyrs (Beatified October 2026).” Beatified by whom? By Robert Prevost (“Leo XIV”), a manifest heretic who denies the Social Kingship of Christ, promotes religious liberty, and participates in pagan rituals. A beatification by a non-pope is a nullity. It confers no cult, no certainty of sanctity. The article treats this pseudo-beatification as a fait accompli, listing them as “witnesses to the Church’s teaching on marriage today.”
But the neo-church’s “teaching on marriage” is adulterated by Amoris Laetitia (Bergoglio), which admits the divorced and “remarried” to “Communion.” The martyrdom of Pedro de Corpa and companions for defending the indissolubility of marriage is exploited to lend credibility to a sect that has effectively abolished that indissolubility in practice. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The martyrs cry out against the very structure that claims to honor them.
Mother Angelica and EWTN: The Media Arm of the Great Apostasy
The article devotes significant space to Mother Angelica (Rita Rizzo), founder of EWTN. It praises her “bargaining with God,” her founding of a Poor Clare community in Alabama, and the creation of “the largest religious media network in the world.” EWTN is the primary propaganda organ of the conciliar sect. It legitimizes the usurpers, promotes the Novus Ordo Missae (the “table of assembly”), defends the “canonizations” of modernists, and silences sedevacantist truth.
Mother Angelica’s “bargaining with God” (“if she walked again she would open a monastery in the South”) reeks of Pelagian transactional piety, not the fiat voluntas tua of the saints. Her network transmits the “Mass” of the neo-church—a Protestantized memorial meal—into 440 million homes, spreading the spirit of Vatican II (the spirit of Antichrist) globally. The article presents her as a Franciscan heroine; she is the falsa prophetissa of the end times, clothing the whore of Babylon in the habit of St. Clare.
Solanus Casey: The “Simplex” Priest of the New Religion
Blessed Solanus Casey is presented as a wonder-worker, a humble doorkeeper. He was “beatified” by Bergoglio in 2017. His “simplex” priesthood (unable to preach or hear confessions) is held up as a model of humility. But the true scandal is the invalidity of his ordination in the new rite of Paul VI (1968), which defects in form and intention for the sacerdotal priesthood (Sacramentum Ordinis vs. Pontificalis Romani). Even if the rite were valid, his jurisdiction derives from the conciliar hierarchy—schismatic and heretical. His “miracles” (if real) are signa magna et prodigia that can be performed by those outside the Church (Matt. 7:22-23; 2 Thess. 2:9). The article’s credulity toward these “miracles continue to be reported today” is the credulity of the credulus in omnia condemned by the Fathers.
Silence on the Supernatural: The Gravest Accusation
Nowhere does the article mention: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary), the Real Presence, the necessity of the state of grace, the Four Last Things (Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell), the Virgin Mary as Mediatrix and Co-Redemptrix, the Rosary, the Brown Scapular, the duty of the State to profess the Catholic Faith.
It speaks of “spiritual assistance,” “salvation of souls” (vaguely), “prayer,” “miracle worker.” But the sacramental economy is absent. The Franciscan charism is presented as social work, exploration, hospital management, media empire. This is naturalism pure and simple—the summa haeresis of Modernism identified by St. Pius X in Pascendi: “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Lamentabili, Prop. 26). The article is a textbook illustration of Prop. 59: “Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples, but rather initiated a certain religious movement, applied or applicable to different times and places.”
The Linguistic Tell: “Jubilee,” “Celebrate,” “Connections”
The vocabulary betrays the modernist mentality. “Jubilee Year” (a juridical act of a true Pope, here usurped). “Celebrate” (the 800th anniversary, the 250th of the USA). “Connections” (the title: “8 Other Franciscan Connections”). The Faith is not a network of “connections.” It is the una fides, the unicum corpus, the regnum Christi. The tone is breezy, journalistic, touristic (“Assisi, Italy, in early October. (Photo: Teresa Tomeo / EWTN)”). It is the tone of the homo novus of Gaudium et Spes, at home in the world, unburdened by the timor Domini.
The article ends with a plug for Tomeo’s travel business (“T’s Italy”) and her books published by EWTN. Mercimony in the temple. The Franciscan poverty is marketed by a media millionaire on the platform of a pseudo-Catholic network, under the “patronage” of an antipope. Non est hic Spiritus Domini.
Conclusion: The Neo-Church’s Franciscan Myth
This article is a fabula constructed by the conciliar sect to anchor its American identity in a simulacrum of tradition. It takes the giants of the Seraphic Order—Francis, Clare, the martyrs, the missionaries—and shrinks them to fit the procrustean bed of Americanism, religious liberty, and humanitarianism. It legitimizes the usurpers in Rome by treating their acts (jubilees, beatifications, canonizations) as valid. It replaces the Civitas Dei with the Civitas Americana.
True sons of St. Francis today are not those who celebrate “Jubilees” of antipopes or appear on EWTN. They are the pauperes Christi who keep the Regula Bullata without gloss, who offer the True Mass, who reject the novus ordo and the nova theologia, who proclaim Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat against the gates of hell—even when those gates wear mitres and white cassocks in the Vatican. The article is not merely erroneous; it is spiritually toxic. It feeds the faithful the panis angelicus of tradition laced with the arsenicum of the Great Apostasy. Caveat lector.
Source:
How St. Francis of Assisi Shaped America — and 8 Other Franciscan Connections (ncregister.com)
Date: 03.10.2026