The Desacralization of Sanctity in the Post-Conciliar Sect
The cited article from Vatican News (February 17, 2026) reports on the public exposition of the bodily relics of St. Francis of Assisi in the Basilica of St. Francis, marking the 800th anniversary of his death. It presents an interview with Fr. Giulio Cesareo, director of the Communications Office of the Sacred Convent of Assisi, who frames the event primarily in terms of humanistic self-giving, tangible encounter, and universal moral example. The article estimates 370,000 visitors and emphasizes the economic impact on the local community. The underlying thesis promoted is that St. Francis’s enduring relevance lies in his model of love and simplicity, which speaks to all people of “good will” regardless of creed, and that this physical encounter with his remains strengthens communal bonds through shared experience.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this presentation is a profound betrayal of Catholic doctrine on the nature of sanctity, the purpose of relics, and the exclusive role of the Church. It systematically omits the supernatural foundations of the Faith, reduces grace to human effort, and promotes the Modernist, naturalistic humanism condemned by St. Pius X and Pope Pius IX. The event, conducted under the authority of the post-conciliar “pope” Leo XIV and his “conciliar sect,” is an act of religious theater that diverts souls from the absolute necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation and the terrifying realities of sin, judgment, and hell.
1. Factual Distortion: The Nature of Relics and the Purpose of Veneration
The article treats relics as a matter of “biological matter” and a “shell” that “tells us about” the saint, reducing them to a mere mnemonic device for moral inspiration. Fr. Cesareo states: “Our body is the place where relationships happen. In the same way, St. Francis’ relics are also the shell of this seed of Francis that has sprouted…” This is a crude, almost materialistic interpretation that contradicts Catholic theology.
Catholic doctrine, defined by the Council of Trent and taught by the Church Fathers, holds that the relics of saints are to be venerated because they were the temporal members of the Holy Spirit, temples of the living God, and will be glorified at the general resurrection. The veneration (dulia) paid to them is ultimately referred to God (latria), who sanctified those members. It is an act of faith in the resurrection of the body and the communion of saints. The purpose is not to “strengthen bonds of unity” through vague love, but to honor God’s grace in the saint, to seek his intercession, and to be moved to imitate his virtues within the one true Church. By stripping this of its supernatural object—the salvation of souls—the article transforms a Catholic practice into a generic, humanistic ritual compatible with any religion or none.
2. Theological Bankruptcy: The Omission of the Supernatural and the Primacy of Christ
The entire interview is a masterpiece of theological silence. There is no mention of original sin, the necessity of sanctifying grace, the redemptive sacrifice of Calvary, the sacraments as the sole ordinary means of grace, or the final judgment. St. Francis is presented not as a soldier of Christ who fought against the Albigensian heresies of his time, but as a generic advocate of “peace” and “fraternity” for a “world” in crisis. This is the quintessential Modernist error: reducing religion to a subjective, interior feeling of love and a social program.
Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secularism and laicism that remove God from public life. He wrote: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed… the entire human society had to be shaken.” The article’s focus on Francis’s “message for today’s world” without anchoring it in the social reign of Christ the King is a direct capitulation to the secularism condemned in the Syllabus of Errors. It implies that Francis’s example is sufficient for societal renewal without the public recognition of Christ’s sovereignty and the subjection of all human laws to divine law.
Furthermore, the article’s language of “people of good will” is a direct echo of the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, which Pius IX’s Syllabus explicitly condemned (Error #16: “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation…”). The article states: “I am convinced that people seek St. Francis because he is truly the Gospel… That is what attracts people.” This suggests the Gospel’s truth can be apprehended and lived apart from the Church, a heresy condemned by the Council of Trent and Pope Pius IX.
3. Linguistic and Rhetorical Analysis: The Tone of Naturalistic Humanism
The language employed is soft, therapeutic, and experience-centered. Phrases like “tangible encounter,” “living memory,” “search for meaning,” “social tensions,” “opportunity of grace,” and “deeply beneficial” are the vocabulary of modern psychology and self-help, not of Catholic asceticism and dogma. The repeated emphasis on “love” and “self-giving” is stripped of its theological content: it is not the supernatural charity (infused by the Holy Spirit through the sacraments) that motivates the Christian, but a vague, universal human potential.
Fr. Cesareo’s interpretation of John 12:24 is telling: “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. St. Francis is truly this seed…” This is a purely naturalistic reading. In Catholic exegesis, the grain of wheat is Christ, and its dying is His redemptive sacrifice. The fruit is the salvation of souls and the founding of the Church. To apply this to Francis as a mere moral exemplar of “daily self-consumption” is to rob the passage of its Christological and soteriological meaning. It turns a dogma of faith into a proverb about personal growth.
4. Symptomatic of the Conciliar Apostasy: The “Ecclesial” Act of a False Church
The article asks whether the exposition is “merely a moment of popular devotion” or “an ecclesial act with strong theological and cultural significance.” Fr. Cesareo affirms the latter, citing information on the basilica’s website and social media. This is a fatal admission. An “ecclesial act” presupposes a valid, teaching, and sanctifying Church. The body that sponsors this event is the “Sacred Convent of Assisi,” a structure of the post-conciliar sect headed by the antipope Leo XIV. According to the unchanging doctrine of the Church, a manifest heretic cannot hold ecclesiastical office (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice; Canon 188.4, 1917 Code of Canon Law). The current occupiers of the Vatican have promulgated heresies (as listed in the Syllabus of Errors and Lamentabili sane exitu), notably on religious liberty, ecumenism, and the evolution of dogma. Therefore, any act they perform that purports to be “ecclesial” is intrinsically invalid and sacrilegious.
The display of relics, while the physical object itself is not evil, is here presented as an instrument for promoting the “theology” of the conciliar sect—a theology of immanentism, religious indifferentism, and the “cult of man.” As the file on the False Fatima Apparitions notes regarding similar phenomena, such events serve as “disinformation strategy” to “legitimize dialogue with schismatic Orthodoxy” and promote a relativistic “conversion” without evangelization. Here, the “conversion” is to a vague, humanistic Francis, not to the Catholic Faith as defined before 1958.
5. The Omission of the True Message of St. Francis
St. Francis of Assisi, a pre-1958 saint, was a faithful son of the Church. He lived in radical poverty to imitate Christ, sought the Pope’s approval for his Rule, labored for the conversion of the Muslims, and received the stigmata as a sign of his total conformation to the crucified Christ. His message was not generic peace but the peace of Christ that comes through repentance, faith, and submission to the Church. He taught absolute obedience to the Pope and the clergy. The article’s Francis is a 21st-century progressive activist, stripped of his Catholic identity. There is no mention of his devotion to the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, his reverence for the priesthood, his zeal for the conversion of souls, or his acceptance of suffering as participation in Christ’s Passion. This is a calculated omission to make him palatable to the “world” and to non-Catholics, in direct violation of the Church’s mission to teach all nations and baptize them.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, explained the kingdom of Christ is “primarily spiritual” and entered “through faith and baptism.” He condemned the idea that the Church’s authority could be denied or that secular power could be independent of Christ. The article’s Francis, who speaks to “non-believers” through “concrete signs,” promotes the error that grace and truth can be found outside the Catholic Church, a direct contradiction of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus.
Conclusion: An Act of Apostate Propaganda
The exposition of St. Francis’s relics, as framed by Vatican News and Fr. Cesareo, is not a Catholic event. It is a carefully staged spectacle of the conciliar sect designed to:
- Promote a naturalistic, humanistic religion devoid of supernatural grace and dogma.
- Undermine the exclusive salvific role of the Catholic Church by suggesting saints like Francis speak to all “people of good will” irrespective of faith.
- Divert the faithful from the true crisis: the apostasy of the post-conciliar hierarchy and the loss of the Faith.
- Legitimize the invalid structures of the “neo-church” by associating them with a beloved pre-Conciliar saint, committing a sacrilegious theft of his legacy.
The true message of St. Francis, consistent with integral Catholic doctrine, is a call to penance, to absolute fidelity to the Pope and the Church, to the rejection of all heresy and schism, and to the pursuit of holiness through the sacraments. That message is utterly absent here. Instead, we are offered a “Francis” who is a mirror of the Modernist, ecumenical, and relativistic “church” of Vatican II—a church that has, as Pope Pius IX warned, “removed Jesus Christ and His most holy law from… public life.” The faithful are not being called to convert and enter the Catholic Church; they are being invited to feel good about a universal, meaningless “love.” This is the spiritual bankruptcy of the post-conciliar apostasy, exposed.
TAGS: St. Francis of Assisi, Vatican News, relic veneration, Modernism, naturalism, Pius XI Quas Primas, Pius IX Syllabus of Errors, sedevacantism, conciliar sect, Leo XIV
Source:
Remains of St. Francis to be visible for veneration in Assisi (vaticannews.va)
Date: 17.02.2026