Assisi’s “Economy of Fraternity” Prize: Naturalism Displacing Supernatural Charity
EWTN News reports that the Italian Diocese of Assisi will award €50,000 ($58,000) to winners of its “Francis of Assisi and Carlo Acutis for an Economy of Fraternity” prize, instituted in 2020 by former “archbishop” Domenico Sorrentino on the day of Carlo Acutis’ beatification. The award claims inspiration from antipope Bergoglio’s Laudato Si’, promoting “grassroots projects” that allegedly restore dignity to the poor through “generative” economic models.
Substitution of Naturalism for Supernatural Charity
The award’s rhetoric of “fraternity” and “dignity” exposes the conciliar sect’s abandonment of caritas—the theological virtue by which we love God above all things—replacing it with a naturalistic social program. Pius XI condemned this inversion in Quas Primas, declaring: “When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony.” (1925).
The article’s celebration of economic initiatives as solutions to poverty omits the primary duty of the Church: the salvation of souls through the Blood of Christ. Nowhere does it mention sacramental grace, conversion, or the Kingship of Christ as prerequisites for true human flourishing. This reflects the modernist heresy condemned in Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors: “The Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (Error 57)—here perverted to mean the Church must subordinate her mission to socioeconomic activism.
Ecumenical Syncretism in “Fraternity”
Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo’s claim that antipope Bergoglio “emphasiz[es] an economy of fraternity” reveals the prize’s foundation in religious indifferentism. The term “fraternity” derives not from Catholic theology but from Masonic ideology, as Pius VIII warned in Lamentabili Sane: “The pursuit of novelty in the investigation of the foundations of things leads in our times to deplorable consequences.” (1907).
By venerating Carlo Acutis—a figure “beatified” under the counterfeit rites of the neo-Church—as a co-patron alongside St. Francis, the award further demonstrates the conciliar sect’s corruption of hagiography. True saints like Francis of Assisi preached penance and submission to Christ the King; Acutis’ cult centers on technological mundanity and ecumenical “dialogue,” reflecting Paul VI’s Ecclesiam Suam heresies.
Omission of the Social Reign of Christ the King
Notably absent is any reference to the Regnum Christi—the divine mandate that nations formally recognize Christ’s sovereignty. Pius XI’s Quas Primas anathematized the very notion that economic systems could be divorced from this truth: “Rulers of nations… if they wish to maintain their authority intact and promote the welfare of their people, ought themselves to publicly respect and obey the reign of Christ.”
The award’s globalist scope (“160 projects from Africa, Asia…”) echoes the anti-Catholic universalism of the United Nations, not the Unam Sanctam doctrine. As St. Pius X warned in Notre Charge Apostolique (1910): “All Catholics must make themselves a single soul and a single heart to resist with energy these projects of a democracy which borders on apostasy.”
Conclusion: Works Without Grace
This “Economy of Fraternity” epitomizes the conciliar sect’s apostasy—reducing the Church’s mission to humanitarianism while obscuring the necessity of grace, the Mass, and the Kingship of Christ. As the Council of Trent decreed: “If anyone says that the justice received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works, but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, let him be anathema” (Session VI, Canon 24). The Assisi award inverts this dogma, treating works as ends in themselves.
Until economic initiatives flow from the Sacrifice of Calvary and submission to Christ’s reign, they remain—as Pius XI declared—“a hollow mimicry of justice which stimulates in the jealous hearts of the multitude an ardent thirst for revenge” (Divini Redemptoris, 1937).
Source:
Italian diocese to award $58K to international ‘economy of fraternity’ prize winners (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 16.01.2026