The ACI Prensa/EWTN News portal reports that the Colombian government, under President Abelardo de la Espriella, has pledged 1.2 billion pesos (approximately $320,000) toward the restoration of the Minor Basilica of the Lord of Miracles in Buga, damaged by the August 10 earthquake, with plans to secure an additional 5 billion pesos from the private sector. The President framed the state funding as a duty to “protect the spiritual symbols of the Colombian people” and to “honor our beloved Black Christ.” The restoration will be supervised by the Ministry of Culture, as the building holds the legal designation of an “asset of cultural interest.” “Masses” are currently held in the town square. The rector, Fr. Alcides de Jesús Orozco, confirmed the image of Christ was undamaged. This sordid transaction epitomizes the Erastian subjugation of the conciliar sect to the secular power, reducing the Kingship of Christ to a matter of cultural heritage management and validating the neo-church’s false worship as a mere instrument of national identity.
The Erastian Trap: Civil Power Defining Ecclesiastical Rights
The Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX condemns as error the proposition that “it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church, and the limits within which she may exercise those rights” (Error 19) and that “the ecclesiastical power ought not to exercise its authority without the permission and assent of the civil government” (Error 20). Here, the Colombian State, through its Ministry of Culture, assumes the role of supreme arbiter over the restoration of a building the neo-church claims as a “basilica.” The civil authority dictates the modus operandi of the repair, effectively holding the potestas regia over what purports to be a sacred edifice. This is not libertas Ecclesiae; it is the servitus Ecclesiae. The President’s declaration that the government is committed to “protecting the spiritual symbols of the Colombian people” reveals the naturalistic anthropology driving the State: religion is reduced to a cultural asset, a symbol of collective identity, stripped of its supernatural finality. As Pius XI teaches in Quas Primas, “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The Colombian State, by funding this restoration, is not rendering to God what is God’s; it is investing in a national totem.
The Neo-Church’s Complicity in Its Own Subjugation
The conciliar hierarchy in Colombia does not resist this usurpation; it celebrates it. The rector, Fr. Orozco, uses the platform of Facebook—a tool of the panopticon—to inform the faithful that they may enter the portion housing the image. There is no protest against the Ministry of Culture’s supervision, no assertion of the Church’s innate and legitimate right (denied by Syllabus Error 26) to govern her own temples. This silence is the inevitable fruit of the Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae, which surrendered the Social Kingship of Christ to the secular city. The neo-church has internalized the Masonic axiom of “separation of Church and State” (Syllabus Error 55), interpreting it as the Church’s withdrawal from the public order and her submission to the State’s cultural bureaucracy. The “Masses” celebrated in the town square are not the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary offered for the propitiation of the Divine Majesty, but the Novus Ordo assembly-meal, celebrated coram populo under the open sky, a liturgical manifestation of the horizontalism that has replaced the vertical dimension of worship.
Idolatry of the “Black Christ” and the Denial of Catholic Universality
President De la Espriella’s explicit reference to the “Black Christ”—“honor our beloved Black Christ… defend that symbol of faith and spirituality that means so much to us Colombians”—exposes the ethnocentric, naturalistic core of this devotion as promoted by the neo-church. The Lord of Miracles of Buga is presented not as the King of Kings (Apoc. 19:16) whose reign extends over all nations (Ps. 2:8), but as a national palladium, a symbol of Colombian identity. This is the laicism Pius XI condemned: “the Christian religion began to be equated with other false religions and shamelessly placed in the same category; then it was subordinated to secular power.” The image’s dark skin is elevated to a theological principle, fostering a cult of man and ethnic religion antithetical to the Catholicity of the Church, which knows neither Jew nor Greek (Gal. 3:28). The feast of September 14 drawing “thousands of pilgrims” is not a gathering of the Church Militant rendering latria to the Redeemer, but a festival of popular piety—that ambiguous category beloved by Modernists—devoid of the sensus fidei and orchestrated by a hierarchy that has abandoned the regnum Christi for the civitas terrena.
The Invalidity of the Neo-Church’s Hierarchy and Sacraments
It must be stated with unyielding clarity: the “basilica” in Buga is a building occupied by the conciliar sect. Its “rector”, Fr. Orozco, is a functionary of the Church of the New Advent, ordained—if ordained at all—within the novus ordo rite of Paul VI (1968), which is doubtfully valid in form and certainly invalid in intention, as it expresses a Protestantized theology of the priesthood. The “bishop” of the diocese is a usurper of the episcopal office, having received canonical mission from the line of antipopes beginning with John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli), continuing through the current antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost). As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches (De Romano Pontifice), a manifest heretic ipso facto loses all jurisdiction; the conciliar hierarchy, by adhering to the heresies of religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality, has ipso facto vacated their offices (Canon 188.4, 1917 Code). Therefore, the “Masses” said in the town square are not the Holy Sacrifice; they are a simulacrum, a table of assembly that constitutes, at best, sacrilege, and at worst, idolatry. The faithful entering the portion housing the image are not venerating a sacred image in a Catholic church; they are participating in a para-liturgical spectacle within a structure that has become a den of thieves (Matt. 21:13), occupied by those who have made the house of prayer a house of merchandise (John 2:16)—merchandising the faith for state subsidies.
EWTN/ACI Prensa: Propaganda Arm of the Abomination
The source of this report, ACI Prensa/EWTN News, functions as the Pravda of the neo-church. The journalist, Eduardo Berdejo, boasts of covering the visits of the apostate Jorge Bergoglio (Francis) and holds a diploma from the University of Piura, an Opus Dei institution—Opus Dei being the avant-garde of the conciliar revolution in the Spanish-speaking world. The article’s tone is purely bureaucratic and human-interest: disbursement, cultural heritage, pilgrimage site, private sector, supervision. Not a word on the rights of Christ the King, the indemnity of the Church, or the scandal of Erastianism. The “related articles” link to a “Priest takes Blessed Sacrament and flees church… during earthquake”—a narrative crafted to portray the Novus Ordo presbyter as a hero of the “Blessed Sacrament” (which, in the new rite, is often not confected due to defective form/intent), fleeing the very building the State now pays to repair. This is the theater of the absurd that passes for Catholic journalism in the structures occupying the Vatican.
Conclusion: Non Possumus to the Conciliar Compromise
The Colombian government’s funding of the Buga basilica restoration is a textbook illustration of the paramasonic strategy: the State finances the controlled opposition (the neo-church) to ensure it remains a harmless cultural NGO, a custodian of heritage rather than the Ark of Salvation. The conciliar hierarchy accepts the thirty pieces of silver, surrendering the libertas Ecclesiae bought with the Blood of the Martyrs. True Catholics—those adhering to the integral Faith, the immutable Magisterium, and the valid Sacraments preserved outside the conciliar structures—must reject this spectacle. “The State must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations… who are indeed the most valiant helpers of the Pastors of the Church” (Pius XI, Quas Primas), not subject them to the Ministry of Culture. The Lord of Miracles of Buga, as venerated in this context, is an idol of nationalism and naturalism. Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat—but not in the basilicas of the neo-church, nor by the leave of Masonic presidents.
Source:
Colombian government to help finance restoration of earthquake-damaged basilica (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 08.09.2026