VaticanNews portal (December 10, 2025) reports on Antipope Leo XIV’s General Audience, wherein he meditated on death as a “constitutive part” of life leading to “happy eternity” through Christ’s Resurrection. The article emphasizes his claim that reflecting on mortality helps discover “what truly brings the Kingdom of Heaven,” while condemning technological attempts to prolong life as futile. This catechesis, framed within the series “Jesus Christ Our Hope,” reduces the supernatural reality of death to psychological self-help, omitting the necessity of sacramental grace and the Four Last Things.
Naturalization of Death as “Constitutive Part of Life” Contradicts Catholic Eschatology
The conciliar sect’s leader declares death a “constitutive part” of life, framing it as a mere “passage to eternal life” rather than the stipendium peccati (Romans 6:23). This naturalistic distortion contradicts Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis (1950), which reaffirmed death as the “wages of sin” inherited through Adam’s transgression. By obscuring Original Sin’s consequences, Leo XIV echoes Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionary heresies, wherein death becomes an evolutionary mechanism rather than a divine chastisement requiring redemption through Christ’s Sacrifice.
“The Risen One has gone before us in the great trial of death, emerging victorious… preparing for us the place of eternal rest.”
This statement reduces Christ’s victory to a mere psychological comfort, omitting that His Resurrection “destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10). The Church teaches that death remains an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26) until the General Resurrection—a truth Leo XIV suppresses to accommodate modernist equivocation.
Omission of Particular Judgment and Hell Reveals Apostate Universalism
Nowhere does the antipope mention the Particular Judgment, where souls face immediate retribution for their deeds (Hebrews 9:27), nor the eternal reality of Hell. His vague promise of a “happy eternity” for all who “reflect on death” implies the condemned heresy of apocatastasis, explicitly anathematized by Pope Benedict XII in Benedictus Deus (1336): “The souls of those who die in mortal sin… immediately descend into Hell.” This omission aligns with the conciliar sect’s pattern of denying eternal punishment, as seen in the 2018 change to the Catechism’s death penalty section—a doctrinal corruption condemned by pre-1958 theology.
Technological Immortality Critique Masks Gnostic Anthropology
While correctly criticizing transhumanism’s “immanent immortality” project, Leo XIV’s framework remains trapped in naturalism. He asks whether science can make a deathless life “happy,” reducing the debate to utilitarian calculus rather than affirming the soul’s immortal destiny as defined by Lateran IV (1215): “Man is of a rational and intellectual soul and mortal flesh.” True Catholic hope resides not in avoiding death’s contemplation (as the article claims moderns do), but in sanctifying grace through the Sacraments—a means Leo XIV never mentions, thereby denying “outside the Church there is no salvation” (Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam, 1302).
St. Francis Misquoted to Promote Sentimentalist Heresy
The reference to St. Francis calling death “sister” is ripped from its theological context. The Little Flowers of St. Francis (Chapter XXVI) depicts his greeting death while in state of grace, having received Last Rites—not as a generic “passage” for all. By universalizing this intimacy with death, Leo XIV implies all share Francis’ sanctity, negating the necessity of penance and conversion. This aligns with the conciliar sect’s abolition of the sacramental discipline exemplified by Pope Pius V’s Quo Primum (1570), which ensured the Mass’s integrity as propitiatory sacrifice.
The Resurrection as Mere “Foretaste” Denies Its Eschatological Finality
Leo XIV’s claim that the Resurrection gives a “foretaste… of what will happen after death” inverts Catholic doctrine. The Council of Florence (Laetentur Caeli, 1439) dogmatized that Christ’s Resurrection is the cause of our resurrection, not a symbolic preview. By reducing it to psychological comfort, the antipope denies St. Paul’s teaching: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). This demotion of the Resurrection to therapeutic metaphor exposes the conciliar sect’s abandonment of dogmatic authority.
Conclusion: A Gospel of Despair Dressed as Hope
Antipope Leo XIV’s catechesis exemplifies the conciliar revolution’s essence: replacing supernatural faith with anthropocentric platitudes. By divorcing death from judgment, sin, and grace, he offers not the hope of Christ the King (Pius XI, Quas Primas), but a Gnostic fable where salvation requires mere reflection rather than repentance. As St. Alphonsus Liguori warns in Preparation for Death: “The greatest deception is to put off conversion until the hour of death.” This audience, by silencing the need for sacraments and fear of Hell, becomes a spiritual poison for souls navigating modernity’s wasteland.
Source:
Pope at Audience: Reflect on death, our time on earth prepares us for eternity (vaticannews.va)
Date: 10.12.2025