The National Catholic Register portal reports on the second annual “Saints on Their Way” gathering held September 12-13, 2026, at the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, Maryland. The event assembled representatives of over thirty active American canonization causes under the auspices of the conciliar sect’s “Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.” The article frames this bureaucratic assembly as a celebration of holiness, citing Msgr. Robert Sarno — a thirty-eight-year veteran of the Roman dicastery — and canon lawyer Jeannine Marino as authorities. It notes the “first American elected to the papacy,” antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), now in his “second year,” and recalls “Pope Francis” canonizing Junípero Serra in 2015. The piece concludes with Msgr. Sarno’s banal analogy of saints as “road posts” for the faithful still “on the road.” This spectacle of institutionalized sanctity-production exposes the conciliar sect’s total substitution of the supernatural order with a naturalistic, administrative parody of the Church’s sacred mission.
The Usurpation of Papal Authority and the Nullity of Conciliar Canonizations
The article’s foundational premise — that the men occupying the Vatican since 1958 possess the potestas iurisdictionis to canonize — is a manifest heresy against the Catholic doctrine of the papacy. The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX condemns the proposition that “Roman pontiffs and ecumenical councils have wandered outside the limits of their powers, have usurped the rights of princes, and have even erred in defining matters of faith and morals” (Error 23). Yet the conciliar sect’s very existence rests on this usurpation. St. Robert Bellarmine, cited in the Defense of Sedevacantism, teaches unequivocally: “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.” The line of claimants from John XXIII to Leo XIV has publicly professed the heresies of Vatican II — religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, the new ecclesiology — thereby severing themselves from the Church ipso facto, without need of declaratory sentence (ipso facto, non declaratorio).
Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code, still binding in its perennial principle, declares vacant any office by “tacit resignation… if the cleric publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” Pope Paul IV’s Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio confirms that promotion of a heretic “shall be null, void, and of no effect.” The article’s casual reference to “Pope Francis” and “Pope Leo XIV” as legitimate vicars of Christ is not merely journalistic error; it is participation in the great apostasy foretold by St. Paul (2 Thess 2:3). The “canonizations” produced by these antipopes — including the 2015 ceremony for Junípero Serra — possess zero canonical or theological weight. They are theatrical productions of a paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican, no more valid than the “ordinations” of the Anglican rite condemned by Apostolicae Curae.
The Demolition of the Supernatural Order: “Holiness” Reduced to Humanitarianism
The article’s portrayal of sanctity reveals the conciliar sect’s anthropocentric inversion. Jeannine Marino’s definition — “profess the doctrine of the faith, practice the works of mercy, live out the cardinal and theological virtues” — while verbally orthodox, functions in this context as a naturalistic reduction of heroism to social activism. The candidates highlighted — Julia Greeley (“Angel of Charity” for “secretly delivering food”), Rhoda Wise (mystic and “mentor to Mother Angelica”), Maria Middleton (teenager with brain tumor) — are presented primarily as inspiring human-interest stories. The fama sanctitatis is explicitly described as arising “from the bottom up, not the top,” “from the people of God,” “not from a manufactured AI platform.” This is the vox populi, vox Dei heresy condemned by Pius XII, elevating popular sentiment above the Church’s infallible judgment.
Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches that Christ’s Kingdom is “primarily spiritual and relates mainly to spiritual matters,” and that “the state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders… who are indeed the most valiant helpers of the Pastors of the Church and contribute most to the expansion and establishment of Christ’s Kingdom, either by combating the triple concupiscence of the world through religious vows, or by striving for perfection.” The article’s “saints” are activists, not victimae; philanthropists, not hostiae. The Syllabus condemns the error that “the teaching of the Catholic Church is hostile to the well-being and interests of society” (Error 40); the conciliar sect inverts this, making social utility the criterium of sanctity. True sanctity is the heroic practice of virtue for the love of God, crowned by the donum perseverantiae and verified by miracles stricte sensu — not by “inspiring people around the world.”
The Alchemy of the New “Canonization Process”: Bureaucracy Replaces Miracles
The article details the modern “process”: historical research, examination of writings, interviews, “detailed canonical review,” fundraising, “public education,” “keeping a candidate’s story alive.” Msgr. Sarno calls witness testimony “literally an interrogation.” Father Daniel Mode describes advocates as “cheerleaders.” This is not the processus canonizationis of the Church, which demands heroic virtue proven by miracles wrought by God alone as the signum divinum of the candidate’s glory. The 1917 Code (Canons 1999-2141) and the immutable tradition require virtutes heroicae and miracula — not “sustained public interest and financial support.” The conciliar sect’s 1983 “code” and its 1983 Divinus Perfectionis Magister abolished the Promotor Fidei (Devil’s Advocate), reduced miracles to two (one for beatification, one for canonization), and introduced the novel category of oblatio vitae — a theological novelty unknown to Tradition.
St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu condemned the Modernist proposition that “the Church is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics, because it steadfastly adheres to its views, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress” (Error 63). The conciliar “process” is precisely this capitulation: a bureaucratic assembly line producing “saints” tailored to contemporary sensibilities — social workers, victims of illness, “inclusive” figures. The article’s mention of “more than 100 Americans with active or open causes” reveals the industrial scale of this simulacrum of sanctity. Each “cause” is a marketing campaign; each “guild” a fundraising apparatus. The “Saints on Their Way” festival — with “music, food and tours,” cardboard cutouts, and tables for “visitors to connect with Americans whose lives they might otherwise never encounter” — is a carnival of idolatry, worshipping the creature rather than the Creator (Rom 1:25).
The Theological Nullity of “Servant of God,” “Venerable,” “Blessed” in the Conciliar Rite
The article outlines the stages: “Servant of God,” “Venerable,” “Blessed,” “saint.” In the true Church, these declarations participate in the Pope’s infallible magisterium when he defines that a soul is in heaven (definitoria sententia). The Defense of Sedevacantism establishes that a manifest heretic “cannot be Pope… a non-Christian in no way can be Pope… he who is not a Christian is not a member of the Church, and a manifest heretic is not a Christian.” Therefore, the conciliar claimants lack the charisma veritatis and potestas iudicandi to bind the faithful in matters of faith. Their “decrees” are irritae et inanes — void and empty. The faithful who venerate these “blesseds” and “saints” commit objective idolatry, rendering cultus publicus to persons not infallibly proposed by the Church.
Pius XI in Quas Primas warns: “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 conciliar sect’s “canonizations” derive from human authority — the “Dicastery,” the “postulators,” the “guilds,” the “donors.” They are acts of the “synagogue of Satan” (Apoc 2:9) masquerading as acts of the Church. The article’s closing quote from Msgr. Sarno — “Saints don’t care whether they’re canonized… It’s for us… Saints are kind of like road posts on a road” — reduces the cultus sanctorum to a psychological crutch for pilgrims on a “road” that leads not to the Civitas Dei but to the civitas terrena of the Masonic “universal brotherhood.”
The Specific Abominations: False Mystics and Masonic Operatives
The article promotes Rhoda Wise, a “mystic, stigmatist and housewife” who “received visions of Christ and St. Thérèse” and “became a mentor to EWTN foundress Mother Angelica.” The False Fatima Apparitions file exposes the pattern: “The mortifications of the children (fasting, self-harm) bear the marks of Jansenist rigorism, not Catholic asceticism.” Private revelations after the death of the last Apostle are revelationes privatae without the guarantee of infallibility; the conciliar sect’s promotion of visionaries like Wise, Faustina Kowalska (whose writings were on the Index), and the Fatima seers serves the ecumenist and Masonic agenda — diverting attention from the “modernist apostasy within the Church” by focusing on “external threats” and spectacular phenomena. The “Miracle of the Sun” at Fatima is exposed as “mass optical manipulation… and mass panic and autosuggestion.” The conciliar “saints” are the signa contra of the true Church: they validate the new religion of man.
The mention of Junípero Serra, canonized by “Pope Francis” in 2015, recalls the conciliar sect’s pattern of canonizing controversial figures to serve ideological narratives. The “Ulma Family” (correctly Ulman) — not mentioned here but canonized by the same sect — died not in odium fidei but as war victims; the unborn child was unbaptized, rendering “canonization” a sacrilegious mockery of the baptismus sanguinis. Maximilian Kolbe, “canonized” by John Paul II, died substituting for a fellow prisoner — an act of natural heroism, not martyrdom propter fidem. The article’s “Maria Middleton,” a teenager with brain tumor, is proposed for “offering of one’s life” — the novel category invented to manufacture saints without miracles or heroic virtue in the traditional sense.
The “Church” of the New Advent: A Counter-Church Erecting Its Own Pantheon
The gathering at the Seton Shrine — itself a monument to the first American “saint” of the conciliar calendar (canonized 1975 by Paul VI) — is a synod of the anti-church. The “Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus Roy Campbell of the Archdiocese of Washington” celebrates “Mass” (the Novus Ordo Missae, a Protestantized meal invalid in form and intention). “Religious sisters” attend the “saint-themed festival.” Educators Ehren and Rosie Johnston bring their granddaughter “to show her that she can be a saint, too” — the Pelagian illusion that sanctity is achievable by human effort within the novus ordo framework, without the sacramenta of the true Church, without the Sacrificium of the true Mass, without the sacerdotium of validly ordained priests.
Pius IX in the Syllabus condemns: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55). The conciliar sect has not separated from the world; it has become the world. Its “saints” are citizens of the civitas terrena, honored by the “kings of the earth” (Apoc 17:2) who “commit fornication” with the Great Harlot. The article’s final image — Msgr. Sarno’s “road” with “turns,” “nooks,” “crannies,” “bumps,” “boulders,” “rocks” — is the perfect metaphor for the via lata leading to destruction (Mt 7:13). The true via regia is the via crucis of the traditional Mass, the unchanging doctrine, the sede vacans fidelity to the depositum fidei.
Conclusion: The Only Remedy Is Rejection of the Entire Conciliar Edifice
The “Saints on Their Way” gathering is not a celebration of holiness but a ritual of the anti-church’s self-legitimation. Every “cause,” every “guild,” every “postulator,” every “canon lawyer” operating within the conciliar structures cooperates in the mysterium iniquitatis (2 Thess 2:7). The true Church, ecclesia militans, endures in the catacombs of Tradition — in the chapels where the Missale Romanum of 1962 is offered by bishops and priests of unbroken apostolic succession, where the Syllabus, Pascendi, Quas Primas, Cum ex Apostolatus Officio are believed and taught. There, and only there, are the true saints interceded to: those canonized by true popes before 1958, whose cultus is guaranteed by the Church’s infallibility.
Non praevalebunt (Mt 16:18). The gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church of Christ — but they have prevailed against the conciliar sect occupying her visible patrimony. The faithful must flee the whore of Babylon (Apoc 18:4), reject her false saints, her false sacraments, her false popes, and cleave to the Traditio entire. Instaurare omnia in Christo (Eph 1:10) — not in the “road posts” of the neo-church, but in the Rock who is Christ, the King who reigns from the Cross, the High Priest who offers the one Sacrifice in the true Mass.
Source:
Gathering Offers Pro Tips on What It Takes to Make a Saint (ncregister.com)
Date: 17.09.2026