Conciliar Sect’s Belgian Pilgrimage: Ethnic Sentimentality Masquerades as Piety at False Apparition Shrine

The National Catholic Register (via CNA/EWTN News) reports that “bishop” David Ricken of the Diocese of Green Bay led fifty pilgrims from Wisconsin to Belgium from October 10–20, 2026, to “explore roots” of Adele Brice, the visionary behind the so-called “National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion,” the only Marian apparition site “approved” in the United States by the conciliar hierarchy. The itinerary included the Michelangelo Madonna in Bruges, the Basilica of Scherpenheuvel, the tomb of the false “saint” Damien of Molokai (canonized by the antipope Benedict XVI in 2009), the modernist Catholic University of Leuven, and Brice’s hometown of Dion-le-Val, where a Novus Ordo concelebration took place in her home parish. “Bishop” Ricken described the event as a “discovering of roots,” emphasizing Belgian heritage, cultural pride, family connections, and “answered prayers” through Brice’s intercession, while an icon depicting the apparition message — “Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation… Teach them their catechism, how to sign themselves with the sign of the cross, and how to approach the sacraments” — was gifted to the parish. The entire enterprise reveals a naturalistic, anthropocentric religiosity utterly devoid of the supernatural Catholic Faith, validating a dubious private revelation under a usurper hierarchy that has abandoned the Social Kingship of Christ.

The “Approval” of Champion: A Novelty of the Conciliar Sect

The article trumpets Champion as “the only approved Marian apparition site in the United States.” This “approval” was granted in 2010 by the very “bishop” Ricken leading this pilgrimage. Private revelations, even those approved by legitimate authority, do not possess the guarantee of the Church’s infallibility and cannot add to the Deposit of Faith. As the theological objections to false apparitions demonstrate, such phenomena often “undermine the centralized role of the Church and the sacraments by the demand for ‘hyper-acts’ of worship” and promote “national conversion without evangelization,” contradicting Catholic ecclesiology (False Fatima Apparitions file). The “approval” by a manifest heretic participating in the conciliar apostasy carries zero canonical or theological weight. It is an act of the neo-church validating its own sentimental piety. The message attributed to Brice — focusing on catechesis and sacramental approach in a “wild country” — reduces the Queen of Heaven to a pedagogue for frontier Catholicism, omitting the essential call to conversion, penance, and the recognition of Christ’s Kingship over nations demanded by the Gospel and the Magisterium (Pius XI, Quas Primas).

Linguistic Decay: The Vocabulary of Sociology Replaces Theology

The rhetoric of “bishop” Ricken and the CNA report is saturated with the language of cultural anthropology, not Catholic theology. We hear of “discovering of roots,” “Belgian heritage,” “deep connections,” “pride in their own history,” “culture and language as something still alive,” and “reconnect with their Belgian roots.” This is the hermeneutic of immanence condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (Prop. 59: “Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples, but rather initiated a certain religious movement…“). The pilgrimage is framed as an ethnic reunion — “many of the local Belgians recognized the family last names… one of his priests… found a relative he never knew existed” — rather than a supernatural act of adoration, reparation, and petition for the conversion of souls. Where is the language of salus animarum, of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, of the Social Kingship of Christ? It is entirely absent, replaced by a naturalistic humanism that Pius XI identified as the “plague of our times, so-called laicism” (Quas Primas). The “renewal” experienced by the Belgian parishioners was a renewal of ethnic pride, not of the Faith.

Theological Bankruptcy: Invalid Rites, False Saints, Modernist Haunts

The “high points” of the pilgrimage constitute a litany of conciliar errors:

Novus Ordo Concelebration: The Mass at St. Martin’s in Dion-le-Val was a “Mass celebrated… concelebrated by Bishop Ricken, several other priests… and local Belgian priests.” Concelebration in the Novus Ordo rite is a fabrication of the 1960s revolution, destroying the theology of the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary and the priest’s alter Christus role. It is not the Most Holy Sacrifice; it is a Protestantized memorial meal.
False “Saint” Damien: Veneration at the tomb of Damien of Molokai, “canonized” by the antipope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) in 2009. Post-1958 “canonizations” are null and void, issued by men who have ipso facto lost the papacy by manifest heresy (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice; Wernz & Vidal, Ius Canonicum; Canon 188.4, 1917 Code; Cum ex Apostolatus Officio). To venerate them as saints is idolatry.

Catholic University of Leuven: “Bishop” Ricken received his “graduate degree in sacred theology” here in 1980. This institution has been a citadel of Modernism for decades, the very “synthesis of all heresies” condemned by St. Pius X (Pascendi Dominici Gregis). The “anointing service” held in the former seminary chapel — likely the Novus Ordo “Anointing of the Sick” which suppresses the sacramental form for the remission of sins and preparation for death — is a sacrilegious simulation of Extreme Unction.

The Icon and the Message: The icon depicts the Blessed Virgin saying: “Teach them their catechism, how to sign themselves with the sign of the cross, and how to approach the sacraments.” While superficially pious, this message omits the necessity of faith preceding the sacraments, the reality of mortal sin, the duty of public worship of Christ the King, and the reality of Hell. It is a reduction of the Gospel to mere sacramental mechanics, typical of the neo-church’s functionalist view of grace.

Symptomatic of the Great Apostasy: The Abomination of Desolation in Action

This pilgrimage is a microcosm of the conciliar sect’s entire operation. It takes a dubious private revelation (Champion), validated by a jurisdictionless “bishop” (Ricken), processed through invalid sacraments (Novus Ordo), centered on a false “saint” (Damien), hosted by a Modernist university (Leuven), and marketed as cultural heritage tourism (“roots,” “heritage,” “family connections”).

“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 entire human society had to be shaken, because it lacked a stable and strong foundation.” (Pius XI, Quas Primas, citing Ubi Arcano)

The article notes Catholicism in Belgium is “at a low point” (20 attendees normally). The conciliar “bishop” brings 250 people for a cultural festival, not the Faith. This is the “democratization of the Church,” the “cult of man,” the “false ecumenism” and “religious liberty” condemned by the Syllabus of Errors (Props. 15, 55, 77, 80) and Quas Primas made manifest. The silence on the rights of God, the Kingship of Christ, the necessity of the True Church, and the reality of the Apostasy since 1958 is the loudest condemnation. The pilgrims return to Wisconsin confirmed in their sentimental attachment to a false shrine served by a hierarchy that has defected from the Faith (Cum ex Apostolatus Officio; Canon 188.4). Non est in eo veritas (There is no truth in him/it). They have not found the roots of the Faith; they have only deepened their entanglement in the roots of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place.

Source:
Wisconsin Pilgrims Visit Belgium to Explore Roots of Our Lady of Champion Visionary (ncregister.com)
Date: 01.11.2026