The National Catholic Register portal reports that the conciliar “archbishop” of Santa Fe, John Wester, has issued a pastoral letter titled “Uniting for Our Sacred Waters,” urging the faithful to develop an “appreciation for the gift of water” amid historic drought conditions in New Mexico, citing NASA data showing Elephant Butte Reservoir at 1.4% capacity. The letter invokes the antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) and his prayer intention for water care, leans heavily on the modernist encyclical Laudato Si’ of the apostate Jorge Bergoglio, and frames water stewardship as a matter of “moral choices” that “equitably protect people, waters, lands, and wildlife.” Wester laments groundwater depletion and contamination from military and nuclear facilities, calling for accountability from authorities and personal prayer and political action from Catholics. This “archbishop” has a history of anti-nuclear activism, having warned the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration against plutonium pit production and joined a “Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons” with other conciliar prelates from Seattle, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima. This document is not a pastoral letter but a manifesto of apostasy: it reduces the Church’s supernatural mission to naturalistic resource management, replaces the Social Kingship of Christ with the pantheistic idolatry of creation, and exposes the conciliar sect as a mere NGO for ecological and political causes.
The Theological Bankruptcy of ‘Sacred Waters’: Pantheism Masquerading as Sacramental Theology
The conciliar “archbishop” writes:
“We bless ourselves with water when entering and leaving our churches. Just as we share and celebrate the word of Christ, we share and celebrate the sacredness of water.”
This is a diabolical equivocation. The holy water font signifies purification from sin and remembrance of Baptism — the sacramental gateway to supernatural life, not a celebration of H2O as a natural resource. By placing “the word of Christ” and “the sacredness of water” on the same plane, Wester commits the error of naturalism condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Prop. 3: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil”). The “sacredness” of water in Catholic theology is entirely ex opere operato — derived from its institution by Christ as matter for the Sacrament of Baptism — not from its chemical properties or ecological utility. To speak of “kinship with our waters” is the language of pagan animism, not the regnum Christi. As Pius XI teaches in Quas Primas: “Christ reigns in the minds of men… because He Himself is Truth, and men must draw truth from Him and accept it obediently.” There is no “kinship” with inanimate matter; there is only the Creator-creature distinction, and the duty of dominion (Gen 1:28) ordered to the glory of God.
Reduction of the Moral Law to Environmental Utilitarianism
Wester demands “moral choices” that “equitably protect people, waters, lands, and wildlife.” This phrase — “equitably protect” — is the vocabulary of the United Nations’ “Sustainable Development Goals,” not the Decalogue or the Summa Theologiae. Catholic morality is not about “equitable protection” of ecosystems but about justice rendered to God (worship, obedience) and justice rendered to neighbor (as an image of God, not as a biological unit). The Syllabus condemns the proposition that “Moral laws do not stand in need of the divine sanction” (Prop. 56). By making the “moral choice” consist in water conservation and nuclear disarmament, Wester severs morality from its supernatural end — the beatific vision — and anchors it in temporal, material outcomes. This is the very definition of laicism denounced by Pius XI: “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 “moral choices” Wester proposes are those of a secular park ranger, not a successor of the Apostles.
The Antipope Leo XIV and the ‘Prayer Intention’ Charade
The article notes that the letter “comes shortly after Pope Leo XIV issued a prayer intention for the care of water.” Robert Prevost, the current usurper of the See of Peter, is not the Vicar of Christ but a manifest heretic who, by the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine and Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code, ipso facto lost any claim to the papacy upon his public adhesion to the Modernist Vatican II sect. His “prayer intentions” are no more authoritative than the press releases of the World Wildlife Fund. The Defense of Sedevacantism file establishes conclusively: “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.” To cite Leo XIV as a spiritual authority is to participate in the great delusion of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matt 24:15). The “prayer intention” mechanism itself is a modernist innovation, reducing the Petrine ministry to a monthly thematic campaign, utterly foreign to the Depositum Fidei.
Laudato Si’: The Modernist Gospel of Ecology
Wester cites “Pope Francis’ warnings in Laudato Si’ about water scarcity and a potential ‘acute water shortage’ across the world.” Bergoglio’s encyclical is a tissue of Modernist errors condemned in advance by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu and Pascendi Dominici Gregis. Proposition 59 of Lamentabili condemns the idea 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.” Laudato Si’ does precisely this: it replaces the immutable doctrine of the Faith with a “movement” for “integral ecology,” making the Gospel a platform for contemporary political anxieties. Proposition 58 condemns: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him.” The conciliar sect’s “ecological conversion” is a new dogma invented ex nihilo, unknown to the Fathers, the Councils, and the pre-1958 Magisterium. Pius XI in Quas Primas instituted the Feast of Christ the King precisely as a remedy against “the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors.” Wester’s letter is the fruit of that secularism: it acknowledges no King but “Mother Earth.”
Nuclear Disarmament as a Substitute for the Conversion of Nations
The article details Wester’s activism against nuclear weapons: warnings to the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Arms Control Association, and membership in the “Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons.” This is the opus operatum of the conciliar “bishop”: political lobbying. The Church’s mission is docere, sanctificare, regere — to teach, sanctify, and govern souls for eternity. The Syllabus condemns the error that “The Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free… but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church” (Prop. 19). By devoting his “episcopal” energy to geopolitical disarmament treaties, Wester implicitly accepts the secularist premise that the Church’s relevance lies in her utility to the temporal order. He ignores the Kingship of Christ over nations, which Pius XI declares extends “not only to Catholic nations… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” Nuclear weapons are a symptom of a world that has rejected Christ the King; the remedy is not “partnerships” with other conciliar prelates but the consecratio of nations to the Sacred Heart and the restoration of the Confessional State. As Pius XI writes: “Let rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ… if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.”
The Symptomatic Level: The Conciliar Sect as an Ecological NGO
This pastoral letter is a perfect microcosm of the post-conciliar apostasy. It contains not a single reference to sin, grace, the Sacraments, the Mass, the Last Things (Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell), the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the necessity of the Catholic Faith for salvation. Its “theology” is entirely horizontal: water, reservoirs, aquifers, nuclear labs, “equitable protection,” “political action.” This is the fulfillment of the Modernist program condemned by St. Pius X: the transposition of the supernatural into the natural, the eternal into the temporal, the City of God into the City of Man. The “archbishop” of Santa Fe functions as a regional director for “Creation Care,” indistinguishable from a Sierra Club chapter president. The “Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons” — uniting prelates from the Manhattan Project site, the largest nuclear stockpile (Seattle), and the only wartime nuclear targets (Hiroshima, Nagasaki) — is a theatrical tableau of the conciliar sect’s true religion: humanitarianism. They have “a form of godliness but deny its power” (2 Tim 3:5).
Canonical Nullity of the Conciliar Hierarchy
It must be reiterated: John Wester is not a valid Archbishop. He was “ordained” and “consecrated” in the new rites of Paul VI (1968/1969), which are dubious at best, invalid at worst due to defect of form and intention, and he publicly professes the heresies of Vatican II (religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality). By Cum ex Apostolatus Officio of Pope Paul IV, any promotion of a heretic to ecclesiastical office is “null, void, and of no effect.” By Canon 188.4 (1917), he vacated any office by “publicly defecting from the Catholic faith.” The Defense of Sedevacantism file demonstrates that a manifest heretic loses jurisdiction ipso facto, without need of declaration. Wester’s “pastoral letter” has the canonical weight of a private opinion — less, in fact, because it propagates error. The faithful in Santa Fe have no obligation to obey him; indeed, they have a grave duty to avoid him as a wolf in sheep’s clothing (Matt 7:15), lest they participate in his apostasy.
Conclusion: The Waters of Baptism vs. The Waters of the World
The only “sacred waters” that concern the Church are the waters of Baptism, which “signify and bring about an internal rebirth” (Quas Primas, citing John 3:5), and the water mingled with wine in the Chalice, which becomes the Blood of Christ in the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary. The Elephant Butte Reservoir at 1.4% capacity is a chastisement from God for a nation that has legalized abortion, sodomy, and the expulsion of Christ from public life — not a call for “equitable protection” policies. The drought will end when New Mexico, and the United States, acknowledge Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat. Until then, every “pastoral letter” from the conciliar hierarchy on “sacred waters” is a blasphemous distraction, a ludibrium of the devil to keep souls from the one thing necessary: the Kingdom of God and His justice (Matt 6:33). Non est in aliis salus (Acts 4:12) — neither in water conservation, nor nuclear treaties, nor the “prayer intentions” of antipopes.
Source:
Santa Fe Archbishop Urges ‘Moral Choices’ on Water as Reservoir Levels Shrink to Historic Lows (ncregister.com)
Date: 18.09.2026