Vatican News portal reports on an interview with “Bishop” Krzysztof Nykiel, Regent of the so-called Apostolic Penitentiary, promoting a fifth annual seminar on the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the laity, featuring “Cardinal” Angelo De Donatis, a Salesian professor, a Roman “priest”, and a Jesuit “theologian”, all under the explicit patronage of antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost). The event epitomizes the conciliar sect’s reduction of the tribunal of penance to a psychotherapeutic workshop, stripping the sacrament of its juridical, propitiatory, and supernatural essence.
The Usurper’s Penitentiary: A Simulacrum of Jurisdiction
The very entity sponsoring this spectacle — the “Apostolic Penitentiary” of the conciliar sect — possesses no jurisdiction whatsoever. As Pope Paul IV defined in Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, any prelate who has defected from the Catholic Faith loses his office ipso facto, and his promotion is “null, void, and of no effect.” The line of usurpers beginning with John XXIII has publicly professed the heresies of Modernism condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu and Pascendi Dominici Gregis — religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality, the new mass. Consequently, the “Major Penitentiary” De Donatis and his “Regent” Nykiel are laymen masquerading as ecclesiastics, exercising a simulated authority over a simulated sacrament. St. Robert Bellarmine teaches that a manifest heretic “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 same principle applies to all offices of jurisdiction. The “seminar” is therefore a gathering of the faithful under the auspices of impostors, a falsa demonstratio of pastoral care that leads souls not to the tribunal of Christ but to the couch of the psychologist.
Psychologizing Contrition: Anthropological Substitution for Supernatural Grace
The central theme — “contritio cordis” — is dissected not through the lens of the Council of Trent, which defines contrition as “sorrow of soul and hatred of sin committed, with the resolve not to sin again” (Sess. 14, Ch. 4), but through “anthropological reflection” and the distinction between “guilt, regret, repentance and contrition” offered by a professor from the Salesian University. This is the quintessential Modernist error condemned in Lamentabili, proposition 26: “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief.” The supernatural virtue of contrition, infused by God and moved by grace, is reduced to a psychological process, a “journey” of “understanding that sin wounds our relationship.” The “Bishop” Nykiel explicitly contrasts contrition with “fear of being rejected,” promoting a “mercy” that “does not arise from the fear of being rejected, but from the awareness that we are loved.” This is a direct inversion of the Catholic doctrine of timor servilis (servile fear) as a valid motive for attrition leading to sacramental confession, and timor filialis (filial fear) as the perfection of contrition. The Council of Trent anathematizes those who say “attrition… is not a true and profitable sorrow” (Sess. 14, Can. 4). The conciliar sect replaces the horror for sin born of faith with a therapeutic “self-awareness” born of sentiment.
The Democratization of the Sacred: Lay Formation as Clerical Usurpation
The seminar is “aimed first and foremost at the lay faithful,” including “catechists, educators, formators,” to help them “prepare for confession and experience it with greater awareness, serenity and trust.” This inversion of the hierarchical order — where the laity are formed to “experience” the sacrament rather than humbly submit to the priest’s judicial power — manifests the democratizing heresy of the conciliar revolution. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, teaches that Christ’s Kingdom demands obedience: “men… owe obedience” to Christ the Lawgiver, and the Church “cannot depend on anyone’s will.” The Syllabus of Pius IX condemns the error that “the obligation by which Catholic teachers and authors are strictly bound is confined to those things only which are proposed to universal belief as dogmas of faith” (Error 22), and that “the Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion” (Error 21). Here, the laity are empowered to “share with their respective communities what they have heard,” effectively turning penitents into pseudo-confessors. The “personal testimonies” — “particularly valuable” to “help us understand how God’s grace can enter everyday life” — substitute Protestant Erlebnis (religious experience) for the objective efficacy of the sacrament ex opere operato. This is the “cult of man” denounced by Pius XI, where the subjective replaces the objective, the horizontal replaces the vertical.
False Ecumenism in the Confessional: East/West Syncretism
The program includes a talk by “Fr.” Giuseppe Forlai on “a comparison of the spiritual perspectives of East and West.” This reveals the conciliar sect’s false ecumenism, treating the schismatic Orthodox “sacraments” as parallel valid paths. Pius XI, in Mortalium Animos (1928), condemned the “pan-Christian” movement that “would have the Church… become a federation of Churches,” stating that “the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ.” The Syllabus condemns the proposition that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion” (Error 18) and that “National churches, withdrawn from the authority of the Roman pontiff and altogether separated, can be established” (Error 37). By placing Eastern “spiritual perspectives” on par with Catholic sacramental theology, the seminar implies that the schismatic priesthood confects valid absolution — a practical denial of the necessity of union with the Roman Pontiff for jurisdiction. The Jesuit “Fr.” González Magaña’s topic — “reparation, understood as the possibility of rebuilding what sin has wounded within the sacramental and pastoral life” — further dilutes the rigorous theology of satisfaction (penance, prayer, almsgiving, fasting) into a vague “rebuilding” within a “pastoral life” that knows no distinction between the true Church and the sect.
The Jesuit Factor: Modernism’s Vanguard in the Tribunals of Mercy
The presence of a Jesuit as “Theologian of the Apostolic Penitentiary” is the signature of the Modernist occupation. The Society of Jesus, once the bulwark of orthodoxy, became after 1958 the primary vector of the nouvelle théologie, liberation theology, and the liturgical revolution. St. Pius X identified Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies” (Pascendi). The Jesuit’s role here is to provide intellectual cover for the psychologization of penance, framing “reparation” in language palatable to the world. The Salesian professor represents the religious orders corrupted by the “charismatic movement” and personalist anthropology. Together, they embody the “clerico-liberal societies” condemned in the Syllabus (Section IV), which Pius IX identified as “pests… frequently reprobated in the severest terms.”
Mercy Without Justice: The Antichrist’s Counterfeit Gospel
The “Bishop” Nykiel’s closing appeal — “do not let fear overcome you, and do not doubt that you can be forgiven. The Lord does not ask us to be flawless before we draw near to him” — while superficially consoling, omits the sine qua non of sacramental validity: firm purpose of amendment, the obligation to avoid the proximate occasion of sin, and the necessity of sacramental confession for mortal sin. The phrase “especially when they seem to keep falling into the same mistakes” subtly normalizes habitual sin without the rigor of conversion. This is the “mercy” of the antichurch: a broad road that “leads to destruction” (Matt 7:13), devoid of the justice of God who “will render to every man according to his works” (Rom 2:6). Pius XI warned in Quas Primas that “when God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” Here, the divine law of the sacrament is removed from the tribunal of penance, replaced by a therapeutic encounter. The “seminar” is not a formation in Catholic doctrine but an indoctrination into the religion of humanity, where the “joy of being loved, welcomed and forgiven” is detached from the Cross, the Blood, and the Keys.
The Abomination of Desolation in the Tribunal of Penance
This entire enterprise — sponsored by an antipope, directed by a false cardinal, executed by invalid clergy and modernist academics — is a diabolical mockery of the Sacrament of Penance instituted by Christ: “Receive the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them” (Jn 20:22-23). The conciliar sect has transformed the tribunal of mercy into a clinic of self-esteem. The faithful who attend this seminar, seeking formation from those who have no mission, no jurisdiction, and no faith, are like sheep approaching wolves in shepherds’ clothing. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. There is no valid absolution outside the true Church, no true contrition formed by false teachers, no mercy that denies justice. The only remedy is to flee the conciliar structures, seek out validly ordained priests of the traditional rite who retain the Catholic faith entire, and confess there with the contrition the Council of Trent defines — sorrow for sin because it offends God, not because it “wounds our relationship.” The “seminar” is a snare; the true “Course on the Internal Forum” is the study of Denzinger, the Roman Catechism, and the Summa, under the guidance of a true priest. Quas Primas declares: “He shall rule from sea to sea: and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” The conciliar sect rules only over the ruins it has made.
Source:
Apostolic Penitentiary Regent: No one is too great a sinner to return to God (vaticannews.va)
Date: 23.10.2026