EWTN portal reports that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, headed by “Archbishop” Nelson Pérez, is considering opening a “canonization cause” for Maria Middleton, an 18-year-old who died of brain cancer in 2020. The article details her pious upbringing, Eucharistic devotion, and peaceful acceptance of suffering, framing these as evidence of heroic virtue warranting the conciliar sect’s novel “sainthood” process. Hundreds gathered at the “National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa” for a “Mass” marking her death anniversary, where Pérez praised her “ripple” of faith. This spectacle exposes the conciliar sect’s desperate fabrication of “holiness” to mask its theological vacuum and usurped authority.
Usurped Jurisdiction and the Nullity of Conciliar “Canonizations”
The very premise of this “cause” is a juridical and theological impossibility. The “Archdiocese of Philadelphia” is not a particular Church of Christ but an administrative unit of the conciliar sect occupying the visible structures of the Church. Its “archbishop,” Nelson Pérez, derives his “mandate” from the manifest heretic Jorge Bergoglio and his predecessor usurpers, beginning with Angelo Roncalli (John XXIII). As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches, “a Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact 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). The line of “popes” since 1958 has publicly professed the condemned errors of religious liberty, false ecumenism, and collegiality—heresies anathematized by the Syllabus of Pius IX and Pascendi Dominici Gregis of St. Pius X. Consequently, they ipso facto lost all jurisdiction before any declaratory sentence (Wernz-Vidal, Ius Canonicum). A “bishop” appointed by an antipope receives no mission (Canon 188.4, 1917 Code: public defection from the faith vacates office ipso facto). Therefore, Pérez possesses zero authority to initiate, conduct, or approve any process of canonization. The entire procedure is a null, void, and of no effect simulation of ecclesiastical judgment, devoid of the potestas iurisdictionis required for such an act (Pope Paul IV, Cum ex Apostolatus Officio).
The Theological Bankruptcy of “Heroic Virtue” in the Neo-Church
The article’s portrayal of Maria Middleton’s piety—attendance at “Eucharistic adoration,” recitation of the Divine Mercy Chaplet, consecration to the Blessed Mother—serves as a smokescreen for the radical discontinuity between the faith she practiced and the counterfeit religion of the sect now exploiting her memory. The “Mass” celebrated by Pérez is the Novus Ordo Missae, a fabrication of the Freemason Bugnini that reduces the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary to a “table of assembly” and a “memorial” of the Last Supper, stripping the propitiatory character defined by the Council of Trent (Sess. XXII, can. 1-3). The “Eucharist” she desired to receive in 2020 was confected by “priests” ordained in the invalid 1968 rite of Paul VI, which omits the essential form for the sacerdotium (“ut offerre possis sacrificium Deo“). Her “Communion,” therefore, was at best a spiritual communion; at worst, participation in a Protestantized rite that the Syllabus condemns as equating the true religion with false ones (Error 18). The article’s silence on the nature of the sacraments she received is not an omission but a complicit cover-up of the sacramental void characterizing the conciliar sect.
Modernist “Sanctity”: Sentimentalism Substituting for Supernatural Charity
The linguistic level of the article reveals the anthropocentric inversion of conciliar “hagiography.” Phrases like “You don’t have to be weird to be holy,” “joyless to be holy,” “full, attractive life,” and “North Star” betray a therapeutic, self-actualization framework alien to Catholic asceticism. St. Pius X condemned the Modernist error that “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities” and that dogmas are “binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Lamentabili Sane, props. 25-26). Here, “holiness” is reduced to psychological resilience and social activism—starting a coat drive, co-chairing a “Hope-A-Thon,” traveling to Uganda via Make-A-Wish. The article explicitly states: “Her holiness wasn’t exposed when she was diagnosed… Her holiness came and grew throughout her lifetime in her pursuit of virtues and offering up her talents to God.” This Pelagian language—pursuit of virtues, offering up talents—omits sanctifying grace, the theological virtues infused at Baptism, the necessity of the Sacraments, and the Cross as participation in Christ’s Redemption. It is the cult of man condemned by Pius XI in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The “ripple” metaphor—Pérez’s “Faith is like a ripple“—replaces the Communio Sanctorum with a horizontal, sociological “impact.”
The “Divine Mercy” Deception and the Fatima Connection
The article notes Maria learned the “Divine Mercy Chaplet” at the shrine. This devotion, propagated from the private revelations of Faustina Kowalska, was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books by the Holy Office under Pius XII (1959) for theological deviations (e.g., the claim that the Chaplet appeases divine justice independently of the Mass). Its “rehabilitation” by the usurper Karol Wojtyła (John Paul II) is part of the same Masonic operation that fabricated the Fatima apparitions to divert attention from the modernist apostasy within the Church (Context: False Fatima Apparitions: “The message focuses on external threats (communism), omitting the main danger: modernist apostasy within the Church since the beginning of the 20th century“). The shrine itself—Czestochowa—is exploited by the conciliar sect as a stage for their counterfeit liturgies and “canonization” theater. The article’s mention of “consecration to the Blessed Mother at her baptism” in this context is a mockery of true Marian slavery (St. Louis de Montfort), performed within a sect that has enthroned the abomination of desolation in the holy place (Matt. 24:15).
Symptomatic Level: The Neo-Church’s “Saint Factory” as Legitimacy Theater
This “cause” is not an isolated pastoral gesture but a systemic necessity for the conciliar sect. Having abandoned the Social Kingship of Christ (Quas Primas: “His reign encompasses also all non-Christians… the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ“), having embraced religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae, condemned by Quanta Cura and the Syllabus, Error 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church“), and having replaced the Missale Romanum with a Protestantized service, the sect must manufacture “saints” to simulate continuity and vitality. The “canonizations” of Wojtyła, Roncalli, Montini (Paul VI), and now the push for “lay saints” like Maria Middleton, the Ulma family (unbaptized infant “martyr”), or the “farmer” Tom Vander Woude (mentioned in the article’s related links) serve one purpose: to create a pantheon of “holiness” that validates the Vatican II revolution. As the Defense of Sedevacantism demonstrates, a heretic cannot be head of the Church; therefore, the “canonizations” performed by antipopes are acts of a private individual, devoid of infallibility and juridical force. They are ipso facto null (Cum ex Apostolatus Officio: “his promotion or elevation… shall be null, void, and of no effect“).
The Parents’ Complicity and the Danger of False Hope
The Middletons’ book, “Think Hope: Maria Middleton’s Life of Unyielding Trust in God,” published by Ascension Press (a conciliar publisher), and their cooperation with the “cause” indicate a tragic ignorance of the sede vacante reality. They entrust their daughter’s memory to a structure that denies the Catholic Faith in its official documents (e.g., the 1983 “Code,” the “Catechism” of 1992, Amoris Laetitia, Fratelli Tutti, Dignitas Infinita). By seeking “canonization” from Pérez, they implicitly recognize his jurisdiction and, by extension, the legitimacy of the usurpers in Rome. This is spiritual suicide. True Catholic parents in the catacombs would entrust their daughter to the Communio Sanctorum through the Traditional Mass, the Rosary, and prayers for the dead, knowing that the Church’s infallible judgment on sanctity resides solely with a true Pope—which has not existed since 1958. The article’s final quote from Pérez—”You too can be holy. You too could have hope… a love for the Lord and for his Church“—is the ultimate blasphemy: it identifies the conciliar sect with the Church of Christ, inviting souls into the abomination of desolation.
Conclusion: No Salvation in the Counterfeit Church
The “witness of faith and hope” attributed to Maria Middleton is, in the article’s presentation, a weaponized sentimentality deployed to obscure the theological void of the conciliar sect. There is no “canonization cause” because there is no authority to institute one. There is no “Archbishop Pérez” but a layman in episcopal vestments. There is no “Mass” but a Protestantized meal. There is no “Church in Philadelphia” but a branch of the paramasonic structure headquartered in the Vatican. The faithful are warned: Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. The true Church endures in the remnant adhering to the Tradition of the Fathers, the Mass of All Time, and the Sedevacantist profession of faith. Maria Middleton’s soul is in God’s hands; her memory must not be profaned by the counterfeit sanctity of the Antichurch.
Source:
Pennsylvania teen’s witness of faith and hope inspires calls for her canonization (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 03.11.2026