Missionary’s Humanitarian Facade Obscures Catholic Truth in Bangladesh
The EWTN News portal (February 5, 2026) reports on Italian Xaverian missionary Fr. Luigi Paggi’s five-decade work among Bangladesh’s Munda tribe, focusing on preventing child marriage through education and promoting the slogan “disobedience is life.”
Naturalism Masquerading as Charity
The article celebrates Paggi’s social activism while conspicuously omitting any reference to the primary mission of the Church: the salvation of souls through the propagation of the Catholic faith (Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus). Nowhere does EWTN mention whether Paggi administered sacraments, catechized children in Catholic doctrine, or worked to eradicate the Munda’s pagan superstitions through conversion. This reduction of missionary work to mere social service constitutes pure naturalism condemned by Pius IX in Syllabus Errorum (1864): “The Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (Proposition 57).
Fr. Paggi’s boast about teaching tribal girls that “disobedience is life” directly contradicts Scripture’s command: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right” (Ephesians 6:1). While opposing child marriage aligns with Catholic morality, the radical individualism promoted undermines the Fourth Commandment and natural family hierarchy. Pius XI’s encyclical Divini Illius Magistri (1929) explicitly warned against such false emancipation: “False and harmful is the so-called method of ‘coeducation’… founded upon naturalism and the denial of original sin.”
Interreligious Syncretism Over Conversion
The report reveals Paggi’s decades-long work among Hindu Rishi communities where he encouraged study of Bhim Rao Ambedkar—a Marxist-influenced Dalit leader—rather than Catholic saints. This exemplifies the religious indifferentism condemned in Lamentabili Sane (1907): “Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (Proposition 20). That Minati Munda, a pagan convert to Christianity, became “the first Christian from that area” after decades of Paggi’s presence demonstrates catastrophic evangelization failure.
St. Pius X’s Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) diagnosed such failures: “The Modernist apologist… sets himself to adaptation efforts… but in reality, he distorts and eliminates Catholicism.” By prioritizing “empowerment” over conversion, Paggi embodies the conciliar church’s false ecumenism rejected by the Syllabus: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion” (Proposition 18).
Abandonment of Spiritual Warfare
The missionary’s exclusive focus on temporal problems ignores the Church’s militant nature against principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12). Not one mention appears of Paggi combating the Munda’s demonic superstitions through exorcisms, sacramentals, or public recitation of the Rosary—methods that converted millions in the missions of St. Francis Xavier or St. Peter Claver.
Pius XI’s Quas Primas (1925) reminds us: “When men have publicly honored Christ the King, unheard-of blessings flowed upon society.” Yet Paggi’s legacy yields scant Catholic converts, no Catholic institutions, and no indigenous clergy—only NGO workers and teachers formed in secular humanism. The missionary’s stated desire to “return to Italy to die” betrays a disturbing lack of apostolic zeal. True missionaries like St. Théophane Vénard sought martyrdom, declaring: “The whole of Tonkin is my parish, and all its pagans are my children.”
The Silent Apostasy of Modern Missions
This report symptomatically reveals the conciliar church’s complete abandonment of its divine mandate: “Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). The Vatican II-inspired shift from conversion to “dialogue” has produced missionaries who build hostels instead of churches, create NGO workers instead of saints, and distribute textbooks instead of catechisms.
As St. Pius X warned in Pascendi: “Modernists substitute for faith a movement of sentiment.” Fr. Paggi’s sentimental humanitarianism—praised by the Bergoglian antipapacy—stands condemned by the perennial Magisterium: “All these alms… are of no avail for the remission of sins if those who practice them neglect the Catholic Faith” (Council of Florence, Cantate Domino, 1441). Until missionaries rediscover the sine qua non of Catholic missions—extra Ecclesiam nulla salus—their secularized “charity” remains mere whitewashed paganism.
Source:
Priest’s 50-year mission: Saving girls from child marriage in Bangladesh (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 05.02.2026