The National Catholic Register portal (October 23, 2026) publishes a hagiographic profile of “Father” John Riccardo, founder of the ACTS XXIX apostolate, presenting his “revival-style worship rallies” and “leadership retreats” as the solution to the crisis of the post-conciliar clergy. The article celebrates a bureaucratic, emotion-driven methodology that replaces the Missio Dei with corporate management techniques and sentimental “encounters.” This puff piece exposes the neo-church’s total capitulation to naturalism: it offers therapeutic deism instead of the Social Reign of Christ the King, proving that the conciliar sect has no supernatural mission left to proclaim.
The Theft of the Apostolic Mandate: “Evangelization” Without the King
The cited article relates that Riccardo’s ACTS XXIX aims to “rescue, renew and transform the human family into the family of God” through “weeklong retreats for spiritual renewal, fellowship and guidance on how to be better oriented for mission.” This language is a deliberate corruption of the Great Commission. Quas Primas teaches that Christ’s Kingdom is “not only spiritual” but extends to “all men” and “all non-Christians,” for “the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ” (Pius XI, Quas Primas, citing Leo XIII). The King commands: “Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Mt 28:19-20). Riccardo substitutes this divine mandate with a “method of the Master” reduced to “pouring into eight or ten people” — a Protestant cell-group model that ignores the necessitas medii of the sacramental Church. The Syllabus of Errors condemns the proposition that “the Church is not a true and perfect society… but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church” (Pius IX, Syllabus, Error 19). Here, the “civil power” is the corporate logic of the neo-church bureaucracy, which defines “evangelization” as leadership training and “discipleship” as mentorship, excising the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacraments, and the Catholic State.
Sentimental Gnosis: The “Encounter” as Substitute for Faith
The article centers on Riccardo’s “powerful conversion experience” at age 22: “He basically said, ‘John, here’s all your dreams… I’m going to give you mine.'” This subjectivist narrative — a private revelation trumping the public deposit of faith — is the hallmark of Modernism condemned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu: “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities” (Prop. 25, condemned); “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, condemned). Riccardo’s “encounter” is not the fides quae creditur but a religious experience à la Schleiermacher. The article admits he “would go to church… vaguely knowing something was happening here, but I didn’t understand it.” This ignorance is the fruit of the conciliar deformation: the lex orandi of the Novus Ordo Missae, stripped of the propitiatory Sacrifice and the Real Presence as taught by Trent, produces not saints but “survivors.” The “scar tissue on his heart” attributed to the “encounter” is a pious fable replacing the stigmata of the Cross borne by true saints. Lamentabili condemns: “The Resurrection of the Savior is not properly a historical fact, but belongs to the purely supernatural order… it is not proven, cannot be proven, and was slowly inferred by Christian consciousness” (Prop. 36). Riccardo’s “Jesus” is the Modernist “Christ of faith,” divorced from the Jesus of history and the Catholic Dogma.
The “Priesthood” of the Neo-Church: Functionaries of a False Sacrifice
The article reveals the catastrophic state of the conciliar “priesthood”: “40% are merely surviving… He just kind of begins to check out. It all becomes routine. He’s not awakened anymore to the drama of discipleship.” This is the inevitable consequence of Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code: “Every office becomes vacant by the mere fact and without any declaration… if the cleric: 4. Publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” The “priests” of the neo-church, ordained in the invalid Paul VI Rite (1968) by “bishops” consecrated in the same rite, lack the character indelebilis of the Priesthood of Christ. They are functionaries of a “table of assembly,” not alter Christus offering the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary. The Defense of Sedevacantism demonstrates that a manifest heretic “cannot be Pope… a non-Christian in no way can be Pope… a manifest heretic is not a Christian… therefore, a manifest heretic cannot be Pope” (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice 2:30). The line of usurpers from John XXIII to Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) are manifest heretics by their adhesion to Vatican II’s heresies: religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), false ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio), collegiality (Lumen Gentium). Consequently, the entire hierarchy of the conciliar sect lacks jurisdiction. Riccardo’s “Archbishop Allen Vigneron” is a layman in vestments; his “permission” to start ACTS XXIX is null. The “7,000 priests on retreat” are 7,000 men deprived of the priesthood, leading souls to perdition.
Corporate “Mission”: The Neo-Church as NGO
Riccardo laments that the Church resembles “a secular, bureaucratic corporation that seems ‘overly functional and transactional.'” He diagnoses the symptom but not the disease. The disease is the abomination of desolation (Mt 24:15) sitting in the Vatican: the conciliar sect is a Masonic NGO. The Syllabus condemns: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55); “The civil government… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Error 41). The neo-church has internalized this separation: it functions as a spiritual NGO seeking “impact” and “engagement.” ACTS XXIX’s “immersive leadership retreats” with “five to six leadership teams at a time” are corporate offsites. The “method of the Master” is plagiarized from Protestant “church growth” strategists (Warren, Hybels). 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.” Riccardo’s “transformation of the Church and the world” is the Masonic Novus Ordo Seclorum — the building of the City of Man under the guise of the Kingdom of God.
The “Rescue Project”: Pelagianism Repackaged for the Laity
The article mentions “The Rescue Project, a video-based program for parish faith formation.” This is the coup de grâce: the reduction of the Depositum Fidei to a “video-based program.” Lamentabili condemns: “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 “Rescue Project” implies man can be “rescued” by a program, by “encounter,” by “discipleship groups” — without the Baptism of Water, the Confession to a valid priest, the Holy Mass, the Catholic State. It is the heresy of action (Modernism’s “practical function” of dogma). The article quotes “Father” Thomas Haan: “We came away convinced that if we expect others to follow us as leaders, we must first be models of deep prayer and sincere care for one another.” Sola caritas without veritas is the religion of the Antichrist. St. Paul anathematizes: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema” (Gal 1:8). The “gospel” of ACTS XXIX is a false gospel.
Symptomatic Diagnosis: The Conciliar Sect’s Death Rattle
The article is a symptom of the mysterium iniquitatis (2 Thess 2:7) operating in the “structures occupying the Vatican.” The conciliar sect, having abandoned the Social Kingship of Christ (condemned by the Syllabus, Error 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State”), having embraced religious liberty (condemned by Quanta Cura and the Syllabus), having replaced the Mass of the Ages with a Protestantized meal, having canonized heretics (John Paul II, John XXIII, Paul VI) and pseudo-mystics (Faustina Kowalska, whose writings were on the Index), now markets “evangelization franchises” like ACTS XXIX to stem the hemorrhage of souls. It will not work. “Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it” (Ps 126:1). The true Church, the Ecclesia Militans, subsists in the bishops and priests who retain the Tradition, the Mass of Pius V, the Catechism of Trent, and the Sedevacantist profession of faith. They alone possess the potestas ordinis and potestas jurisdictionis (supplied by Ecclesia supplet for the common good). Riccardo’s “barnstorming rallies” are the strange fire of Nadab and Abihu (Lev 10:1). The “fire” he seeks to ignite is not the Holy Ghost but the spirit of the world. “Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain… wandering stars, to whom the storm of darkness is reserved for ever” (Jude 1:13).
Source:
Meet the Priest on a Mission to Transform the Church and the World (ncregister.com)
Date: 23.10.2026