USCCB Bishops Invoke Antipope Leo XIV to Enshrine Religious Liberty as Idol of the Digital Age
The EWTN News portal reports that on October 23, 2026, two prelates of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Bishop A. Elias Zaidan of the Maronite Eparchy of Los Angeles and Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, issued a joint statement for International Religious Freedom Day (October 27). They warned that artificial intelligence threatens to expand surveillance and persecution of religious groups, appealing to “human dignity” as the criterion for defending religious liberty. They cited the alleged encyclical Magnifica Humanitas of the usurper “Pope” Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), praised collaboration with the secular U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and invoked the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the context of the 250th anniversary of American independence. This statement is a quintessential manifesto of the conciliar sect’s apostasy: it substitutes the Social Kingship of Christ the King with the Masonic idol of religious liberty, legitimizes the antipope as a doctrinal authority, and enlists the Church in the service of the secular state’s technological panopticon.
The Theological Bankruptcy of “Religious Freedom” as a “Basic Human Right”
The bishops declare that “millions of people continue to suffer violations of the basic human right to religious freedom.” This proposition is formally condemned by the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX. Error 15 condemns the proposition: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.” Error 16 condemns: “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation.” Error 77 condemns: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.” Error 79 condemns the notion that civil liberty of every form of worship does not corrupt morals and propagate indifferentism. By calling religious freedom a “basic human right,” Zaidan and Sample proclaim the very indifferentism and latitudinarianism anathematized by the infallible Magisterium. They elevate a naturalistic liberty of conscience above the jus divinum of the Catholic Church to be the sole ark of salvation (extra Ecclesiam nulla salus).
Pius XI’s Quas Primas: The Antidote to the Conciliar Sect’s Secularism
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), diagnosed the precise plague afflicting the bishops’ statement: “This plague is the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors… 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.” The bishops’ appeal to “religious freedom” is the explicit realization of this satanic program: the equating of the True Religion with false sects under the aegis of the secular state. Pius XI teaches that “His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The USCCB bishops, by contrast, petition the secular power for “space” to practice religion, implicitly acknowledging the state’s supremacy over the Church — a direct violation of Error 19 of the Syllabus (“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”) and Error 55 (“The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church”).
The Antipope Leo XIV and the Fabricated Encyclical Magnifica Humanitas
The bishops cite “Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas” as teaching that “the right to religious freedom is rooted in human dignity.” Robert Prevost, elected in 2025, is a manifest heretic who adheres to the Second Vatican Council’s heretical declaration Dignitatis Humanae. According to the theological principles expounded by St. Robert Bellarmine (De Romano Pontifice), Wernz and Vidal (Ius Canonicum), and confirmed by Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code, a manifest heretic ipso facto loses all jurisdiction and membership in the Church. Bellarmine states: “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… he cannot be the head of something of which he is not a member.” The example of Nestorius, condemned by Pope Celestine I, proves that a heretical prelate loses the power to bind before any declaratory sentence. Therefore, “Leo XIV” is an antipope, a usurper of the See of Peter. His “encyclical” is a private theological opinion of a layman (having lost the clerical state by heresy), devoid of any magisterial authority. To cite him as “Pope” and his writings as “encyclicals” is to participate in the great apostasy foretold by St. Paul (2 Thess 2:3-4) and to recognize the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Mt 24:15).
“Human Dignity”: The False God of Personalism Replacing the Rights of God
The bishops’ refrain — “human dignity remains at the heart of defending religious freedom” — reveals the neo-Modernist anthropocentrism condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu and Pascendi Dominici Gregis. Proposition 58 of Lamentabili condemns: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him.” Proposition 59: “Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples, but rather initiated a certain religious movement.” The concept of “human dignity” as the fons et origo of rights is a Masonic inversion of the Catholic order: “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” (Pius XI, Quas Primas, citing Ubi Arcano). The bishops do not speak of the rights of God (jura Dei), the Social Kingship of Christ, or the duty of states to profess the Catholic Faith and suppress public idolatry. They speak the language of the United Nations, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Masonic lodges — the language of the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), condemned by Pius VI and Pius IX.
Collaboration with the Secular Power: The Exsequatur and the Appellatio ab Abusu in Digital Guise
The bishops boast of their “partnership” with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), calling it a “testament to the power of joint efforts by government and faith leaders.” This is the practical application of the condemned Errors 41 and 42 of the Syllabus: “The civil government… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs… In the case of conflicting laws enacted by the two powers, the civil law prevails.” By inviting the secular state to “ensure that technological tools are not used to facilitate new and intensified forms of religious discrimination,” the bishops concede to Caesar the competence to define, regulate, and police the Church’s mission. They accept the exsequatur (state approval for ecclesiastical acts) in the digital realm. They transform the Church from a perfect society (Pius IX, Syllabus Error 19) into a subcontractor for the secular state’s “human rights” agenda. This is not the libertas Ecclesiae; it is ecclesiastical vassalage.
The Sacred Heart Profaned: Sentimentalism in Service of the Masonic Republic
The statement concludes: “In this 250th year commemorating American independence, may the Sacred Heart of Jesus, burning with love for all of humanity, make us beacons of hope… by defending religious freedom in the digital age.” This is a blasphemous instrumentalization of the Sacred Heart. The American Revolution (1776) was a Masonic revolt against the Social Kingship of Christ, establishing a novus ordo seclorum founded on naturalism and religious indifference. Pius XI in Quas Primas explicitly links the feast of Christ the King to the reparation for such revolts: “The more the sweetest Name of our Redeemer is omitted with unworthy silence in international gatherings and parliaments, the more loudly it must be confessed.” The bishops do the opposite: they invoke the Sacred Heart to bless the 250th anniversary of the Masonic experiment, asking the King of Kings to be a “beacon of hope” for the very principle (religious liberty) that dethrones Him. This is the cult of man masquerading as devotion.
Artificial Intelligence: The New Tower of Babel for the Panopticon of the Antichrist
The bishops’ focus on AI as a tool for “surveillance and persecution” is a limited hangout. They do not condemn the intrinsic nature of the digital ID, biometric surveillance, and algorithmic governance being erected by the globalist elite (the “synagogue of Satan” per Pius IX, Syllabus context) as the infrastructure of the Antichrist’s reign (Apoc 13:16-17). They seek only “ethical AI” — i.e., a baptized panopticon. They ignore that the post-conciliar sect itself uses digital surveillance to monitor, silence, and expel traditional clergy and faithful (e.g., the Traditionis Custodes apparatus, the financial deplatforming of traditional communities). Their concern is not for the libertas Ecclesiae but for the preservation of the conciliar sect’s legal status and funding within the New World Order.
Symptomatic Diagnosis: The Conciliar Sect as the Whore of Babylon’s Handmaid
This statement is not an anomaly; it is the modus operandi of the post-conciliar structure since 1958. The Second Vatican Council’s Dignitatis Humanae declared religious freedom a right based on human dignity — a doctrinal novelty condemned by the entire prior Magisterium (Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos; Pius IX, Quanta Cura and Syllabus; Leo XIII, Immortale Dei; Pius XI, Quas Primas; Pius XII, Ci Riesce). The USCCB, as the administrative organ of the conciliar sect in the USA, functions as a pressure group within the Masonic democratic system, trading spiritual authority for political relevance. The bishops Zaidan and Sample are functionaries of this structure. Their “Maronite” and “Latin” rites are incidental; their true rite is the Novus Ordo of religious liberty. They are the clerici saeculares of the neo-church, building the city of man while using the vocabulary of the City of God.
Conclusion: No Salvation in the Conciliar Sect’s “Digital Age” Apostolate
The faithful must reject this statement in its entirety. It proceeds from a false hierarchy (antipope, invalid bishops), teaches a condemned heresy (religious liberty), serves a Masonic state, and prostitutes the Sacred Heart to the idol of “human dignity.” The only remedy for the persecution of the Church — whether by AI, by Islam, by Communism, or by the secular state — is the integral profession of the Catholic Faith, the recognition of the Social Kingship of Christ the King over all nations and laws, and the rejection of the conciliar sect as the abomination of desolation. “You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men” (1 Cor 7:23, cited in Quas Primas). The bishops invite slavery to men and their algorithms; Christ the King commands liberty in truth. Non possumus.
Source:
Ahead of Religious Freedom Day, U.S. bishops call for ethical AI (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 23.10.2026