The EWTN News portal reports that the retired conciliar “archbishop” of Abuja, John Onaiyekan — a “cardinal” of the Bergoglian antipapacy — led a delegation of the Nigerian “bishops’ conference” to the presidential villa in Abuja on July 28, 2026, to present a catalogue of temporal grievances to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a Muslim politician. The “president” rejected the bishops’ diagnosis of economic failure, insecurity, and democratic backsliding. Onaiyekan frames this confrontation as a prophetic “duty to tell the truth,” yet the entire spectacle reveals the total inversion of the Church’s mission: the successors of the Apostles, instituted by Christ ad salutem animarum (for the salvation of souls), have been reduced to functionaries of a secular NGO lobbying a Muslim head of state for better “governance” and “electoral integrity.”
The Conciliar “Episcopate” as Political Pressure Group
The article boasts that the document presented to Tinubu was “not the opinion of a handful of bishops but the outcome of extensive consultation within CBCN members.” This bureaucratic language — “written, reviewed, and corrected” — exposes the democratic, conciliar mentality that has replaced the sensus fidei and the munus docendi of true bishops. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), teaches that Christ’s Kingship is primarily spiritual and that His Kingdom “is opposed only to the kingdom of Satan and the powers of darkness — and requires its followers not only to renounce earthly riches and possessions… but also to deny themselves and carry their cross.” The Nigerian “bishops” instead present a manifesto of laicism: economic metrics, electoral procedures, “independence of INEC,” “one-party dominance.” Not a word of the Kingship of Christ, the Social Reign of the Sacred Heart, the duty of the State to profess the Catholic Faith, or the eternal damnation awaiting those who die outside the Church.
Onaiyekan explicitly states: “We feel we have a duty — not just to preach our religious doctrines, but also to address the lives of our people, both those who are our members and those who are not.” This is the heresy of religious indifferentism condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), propositions 15–18: the falsehood that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which… he shall consider true” and that “man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation.” By placing “religious doctrines” on the same level as temporal “lives of our people,” and by extending their “pastoral care” to non-Catholics as such without the goal of conversion, the Nigerian hierarchy apostatizes from the missio ad gentes. They function as chaplains to the Civitas Terrena, not as ambassadors of the Civitas Dei.
Dialogue with Islam as Capitulation to the “Synagogue of Satan”
The meeting itself — a “cardinal” of the conciliar sect petitioning a Muslim president — is a ritual of submission to the enemies of Christ. Pope Pius IX, in the allocution Quibus quantisque (1849) and the encyclical Qui pluribus (1846), identifies the “sects, whether they be called masonic or bear another name” as the “synagogue of Satan, which gathers its troops against the Church of Christ.” The Nigerian “bishops” do not call Tinubu to convert and recognize Christ the King; they ask him to manage the economy better and appoint “impartial” electoral commissioners. This is the laicism Pius XI condemns in Quas Primas: “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.”
Onaiyekan’s involvement in the “National Peace Committee” — an interreligious body where Catholic “bishops” sit as equals with Muslim imams and Protestant heretics — is the practical application of the false ecumenism of Unitatis Redintegratio and Nostra Aetate. The Syllabus condemns the proposition that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion” (Error 18). By what right does a “cardinal” of the Church collaborate with ministers of false religions to “guarantee credible elections”? Peace is only possible in the Kingdom of Christ (Pius XI, Quas Primas). The “peace” of the National Peace Committee is the pax satanae, a Masonic counterfeit that silences the vox Ecclesiae.
The Theological Bankruptcy of “Democratic” Concerns
The “bishops” warn against the “creeping danger of a one-party dominant state” and demand “free, fair, and credible elections.” This is the language of liberalism and modernism, condemned by Pope Pius IX (Syllabus, Error 80: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself… with progress, liberalism and modern civilization”) and by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) and Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907). The latter condemns the proposition that “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” (Prop. 59). The Nigerian hierarchy acts as if the Civitas Dei can be built on the shifting sands of democratic procedure rather than on the Rock of Peter and the Social Kingship of Christ.
Onaiyekan challenges Tinubu: “You have a reputation to be a democrat, and you can’t under your watch watch our democratic structures disintegrate.” Since when is “being a democrat” a Catholic virtue? Pope Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei (1885), teaches that the State must “publicly honor Christ and obey Him” and that “the civil power must not be set up as the supreme arbiter of truth and justice.” The “bishops” have inverted the order: they beg the State for “institutional integrity” while ignoring the divine constitution of the Church and the droit divin of Christ over nations.
Silence on the Supernatural: The Gravest Accusation
Read the article again. There is not a single mention of: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacraments, the state of grace, mortal sin, Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the conversion of Nigeria to the Catholic Faith, the persecution of Christians by Boko Haram and Fulani militants in odium fidei, the duty of the faithful to resist unjust laws, or the Final Judgment. The “bishops” speak of “economic well-being,” “security,” “governance,” “electoral reform.” This is practical atheism. St. Pius X, in Lamentabili, condemns the Modernist error that “the dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Prop. 26). The Nigerian hierarchy has made this error their entire program.
When Onaiyekan says, “When the nation is bleeding, you cannot expect a polite meeting with the head of state,” he unwittingly condemns himself. The nation bleeds because it has rejected Christ the King. The remedy is not a “candid assessment” to a Muslim president, but the public consecration of Nigeria to the Sacred Heart, the restoration of the Traditional Latin Mass, the denunciation of Islam as a false religion, and the call to conversion. As Pius XI writes in Quas Primas: “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.” The Nigerian “bishops” are shaking the foundations further by legitimizing the Godless order.
The “Cardinal” Himself: A Product of the Conciliar Revolution
John Onaiyekan, ordained a “priest” in 1969 and “consecrated” a “bishop” in 1983 under the invalid new rites of Paul VI, is a creature of the novus ordo sect. He participated in the “conclaves” that elected the antipopes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and now Leo XIV (Prevost). He is a manifest heretic by his adherence to the conciliar errors (religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality) and his communion with the antipapacy. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches (De Romano Pontifice, lib. 2, cap. 30), a manifest heretic ceases to be a member of the Church ipso facto, and therefore cannot hold any office in the Church. The “Cardinal” title is a costume; the “Archbishop emeritus” title is a nullity. His “duty to tell the truth” is a theatrical performance within the theatrum mundi of the conciliar sect.
The article notes he “retired from his episcopal ministry as archbishop of Abuja in November 2019.” In the true Church, a bishop does not “retire” from his munus; he dies in it. The very concept of “emeritus” is a modernist innovation introduced by the antipope Benedict XVI, reflecting the functionalist, bureaucratic view of the episcopate as a job rather than a sacramentum ordinis configuring the bishop to Christ the High Priest in perpetuum.
EWTN and ACI Africa: Propaganda Arms of the Neo-Church
The source, EWTN News (via ACI Africa), is the media arm of the conciliar sect, founded by the “Mother Angelica” of the Franciscan “Order” of the Eternal Word — a “religious” of the new rite, canonized by the antipope Francis. This portal exists to normalize the conciliar revolution, presenting the “bishops’ conference” as a legitimate moral authority and the “cardinal” as a heroic truth-teller. It is agitprop for the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matt. 24:15). The journalist, Jude Atemanke, a “Cameroonian journalist with a passion for Catholic Church communication,” is a functionary of this machine, trained in the naturalistic categories of secular journalism (“economic, security, and political challenges”) rather than in the scientia salutis.
Conclusion: The Only True “Duty” Is the Restoration of All Things in Christ
The Nigerian “bishops” have delivered their message — a message of laicism, indifferentism, and democratic idolatry. It will “not go for nothing”; it will accelerate the chastisement by confirming the Nigerian hierarchy in its apostasy from the Social Kingship of Christ. The true bishops of Nigeria — if any remain in the catacombs, celebrating the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary according to the Missale Romanum of St. Pius V, without communion with the “cardinal” or the “conference” — know that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The duty of the Church is not to audit INEC, but to preach the Gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15), to baptize the nations (Matt. 28:19), and to reign with Christ the King in aeternum. Regnavit a ligno Deus.
Source:
Cardinal says Nigeria’s president has rejected bishops’ concerns about state of country (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 04.08.2026