The EWTN News portal, mouthpiece of the conciliar sect’s Spanish-language arm ACI Prensa, publishes a piece dated August 24, 2026, by Diego López Marina, trumpeting the “expert” analysis of Adrián Lomello, director for the Americas of the so-called “World Religious Tourism Network.” The article argues that the “Church” — meaning the post-conciliar structures occupying the Vatican — must aggressively promote “religious tourism” to harness its “full potential,” measured in hundreds of millions of pilgrims and billions of dollars. Lomello advocates for “market analysis,” “tourism products,” “social media presence,” “signage,” “good cuisine,” and coordination with civil authorities and businessmen to monetize shrines like Guadalupe, Aparecida, and Luján. He even invokes the antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) with the slogan “Lift up your gaze” to sanctify this mercantile vision. This is not pastoral strategy; it is the definitive exposure of the conciliar sect’s apostasy: the reduction of the supernatural economy of salvation to a branch of the hospitality industry, the prostitution of the sacred for thirty pieces of silver, and the enthronement of Mammon in the very sanctuary.
The Category Error: Pilgrimage Is Not Tourism
The article’s fundamental heresy lies in its terminology and its anthropology. It speaks of “religious tourism,” “faith-based destinations,” “visitors,” “economic activity,” and “tourism products.” This vocabulary betrays a purely naturalistic worldview. A pilgrim is not a tourist. A tourist seeks diversion, consumption, and aesthetic experience; a pilgrim seeks salutem animarum (the salvation of souls), doing penance, gaining indulgences, and venerating the sacred mysteries. The Council of Trent teaches that pilgrimages are works of penance (opera poenitentiae), not leisure activities. The conciliar “expert” Lomello inverts this: “creating the conditions so that visitors can get around, find food, rest, explore the site, and understand its history.” Rest? Food? Exploration? The true pilgrim fasts, walks barefoot, sleeps on the ground, and seeks the Cross, not comfort. The article’s focus on “extending the experience” with “museums, tourist routes, local cuisine, heritage sites, cultural activities” reveals the conciliar sect’s religion: a cultural theme park where the Sacred is a backdrop for consumption.
The Simony of the Sanctuary: Selling Grace for Gold
Lomello declares: “Religious tourism is not going to take away the Church’s leading role, it is going to give it resources.” This is the voice of Judas Iscariot: “What will you give me, and I will deliver him unto you?” (Matt. 26:15). The Church’s “resources” are the thesaurus Ecclesiae — the infinite merits of Christ, the prayers of the Saints, the Sacraments. To treat shrines as revenue generators for “hotels, restaurants, merchants, artisans, transportation providers” is simony in its most brazen form. The Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX, 1864) condemns the proposition: “The Church has not the power of using force, nor has she any temporal power, direct or indirect” (Error 24), but equally condemns the subjection of the Church to civil and commercial interests (Errors 39-44). Here, the “Church” voluntarily prostitutes its spiritual authority to become a stakeholder in the tourism GDP. The “economic impact” of the Camino de Santiago ($580 million) is cited as a “model.” This is the civitas terrena masquerading as the civitas Dei. St. Augustine warns: “Two loves have made two cities: love of self, even to the contempt of God, made the earthly city; love of God, even to the contempt of self, made the heavenly city” (De Civitate Dei, XIV.28). The conciliar sect has chosen the former.
False Shrines, False Unity: The Ecumenism of the Marketplace
The article lists the “Top 10 destinations in Latin America”: Guadalupe, Aparecida, Luján, Lord of Miracles, Chiquinquirá, etc. From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, several of these are deeply suspect. The “False Fatima Apparitions” document demonstrates that the Fatima phenomenon — the template for modern “Marian” spectacle — is a “Masonic psychological operation” involving “mass optical manipulation,” “disinformation strategy,” and “ecumenical reinterpretation.” The same critique applies to Guadalupe (with its implausible tilma narrative serving Mexican nationalism) and Aparecida (a statue found by fishermen, elevated to national patroness by the Masonic Brazilian empire). These shrines function as engines of national conversion without evangelization, contradicting Catholic ecclesiology, as the Fatima critique notes. They foster a sentimental, miraculous religiosity that bypasses the necessitas medii — the necessity of the Church, the Sacraments, and the true Mass. The article’s celebration of “La Tirana” in Chile, where “a town of 1,500 receives 150,000 pilgrims” for a festival blending Catholic and Andean pagan elements, is a textbook example of the “Christian-Islamic syncretism” (or Catholic-pagan syncretism) condemned by the Fatima analysis. The conciliar sect promotes these sites not for the glory of God, but because they draw crowds and currency.
The Antipope’s Blessing: “Lift Up Your Gaze” to Mammon
The article cites the antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost): “As the pope said in Spain: ‘Lift up your gaze.’ Lift up your gaze. Look at the religious tourism sector: an opportunity for development.” This is the “pope” of the “Church of the New Advent,” the usurper occupying the See of Peter since 1958. The Defense of Sedevacantism establishes that a manifest heretic loses the papacy ipso facto (Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice; Canon 188.4; Cum ex Apostolatus Officio). The line of usurpers — John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, Leo XIV — has promulgated the conciliar revolution: religious liberty, false ecumenism, the New Mass, the demolition of the Kingship of Christ. Pius XI’s Quas Primas (1925) declares: “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 antipope’s exhortation to “lift up your gaze” to the “religious tourism sector” is the antithesis of Quas Primas. It is the gaze of the worldling, not the gaze of the King. “His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ” (Quas Primas, citing Leo XIII). The conciliar sect substitutes the Kingship of Christ with the kingship of the market.
Modernist Anthropology: Man as Consumer, Not as Viator
The article’s anthropology is pure Modernism, condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907) and Pascendi Dominici Gregis. Proposition 59: “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.” Proposition 65: “Contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.” Lomello’s “religious tourism” is exactly this: a dogma-less, market-adapted “religious movement” where the “spiritual narrative” is a product feature (“The impact of a good spiritual narrative is conversion. It’s when someone… asks for confession. That’s conversion”). Conversion reduced to a metric, a “spiritual benefit” quantified alongside “economic benefit.” The supernatural is psychologized; grace is commodified. The “World Religious Tourism Network” is a Masonic-style NGO (note the “World” prefix, the “Network” structure) infiltrating the sacred to secularize it. The Syllabus condemns: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Error 80). The conciliar sect has done precisely this.
The Silence of the Sacraments: The Gravest Accusation
Read the article closely. Where is the Holy Mass? Where is the Confessional? Where is the Blessed Sacrament? Where is the Rosary? Where is the preaching of the Gospel? They appear only as “services” to be “offered” to the “pilgrim” who “may want to pray, go to confession, attend a Mass.” The Mass is not the Sacrificium Propitiatorium of Calvary made present; it is an “activity.” Confession is not the tribunal of mercy; it is a “service.” The article says: “The pilgrim arrives, spends money locally, buys handicrafts, stays overnight — perhaps an extra day — and visits a museum.” This is the totality of the conciliar sect’s vision. The silence about the state of grace, the four last things (death, judgment, heaven, hell), the Social Kingship of Christ, the rights of God over nations — this silence is the crimen laesae majestatis Divinae. Pius XI in Quas Primas instituted the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat “the secularism of our times, so-called laicism.” The conciliar sect, by promoting “religious tourism,” capitulates to laicism, handing the public square to Caesar and the market, keeping only a “spiritual narrative” as a branding tool.
The Structural Apostasy: EWTN as Propaganda Organ
The source — EWTN News / ACI Prensa — is the media arm of the conciliar sect, founded by the “Mother Angelica” of the New Order, fully integrated into the Novus Ordo establishment. It promotes the “canonizations” of the antipopes (John Paul II, John XXIII, Paul VI), the “saints” of the neo-church (Kolbe, Faustina, Newman, the Ulmas), and the false apparitions (Fatima, Medjugorje, Guadalupe). The article’s related links — “Peru seeks to turn Pope Leo’s legacy into an international pilgrimage destination” — confirm the agenda: the manufacture of a personality cult around the usurper Prevost to drive tourism revenue. This is the “abomination of desolation standing in the holy place” (Matt. 24:15): the simulation of Catholicism for worldly profit. The true Church, the Ecclesia militans, exists in the catacombs of Tradition, served by bishops and priests of valid orders and uncorrupted faith, celebrating the True Mass, rejecting the conciliar sect’s “religious tourism” as the prostitution of the Spouse of Christ.
Conclusion: The Only Remedy Is the Restoration of All Things in Christ
The article is a manifesto of the conciliar sect’s spiritual bankruptcy. It reveals that the “Church” of Vatican II has no supernatural mission left; it has become a religious tourism agency, a heritage management NGO, a partner of the Masonic world order. The “expert” Lomello, the “network,” the “data,” the “market analysis” — these are the instruments of the synagoga Satanae (Apoc. 2:9) infiltrating the sanctuary. The true remedy is not “lifting the gaze” to the tourism sector, but lifting the gaze to the Cross. Instaurare omnia in Christo (Eph. 1:10) — to restore all things in Christ. This means the rejection of the conciliar sect, its antipopes, its New Mass, its false shrines, its ecumenism, its religious liberty, and its “religious tourism.” It means the restoration of the Traditional Latin Mass, the Social Kingship of Christ over nations, the integrity of the Faith, and the salvation of souls — the only “resource” that matters. Non est aliud nomen sub caelo datum hominibus, in quo oporteat nos salvos fieri (Acts 4:12). Not tourism. Not economics. Not “spiritual narratives.” Only Christ the King.
Source:
Why the Church should promote religious tourism: An expert explains (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 24.08.2026