The “Unwritten Signs” of a Post-Conciliar Apostate
The cited article from VaticanNews reports on a pastoral visit by “Pope” Leo XIV to the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Rome, where he met with the Salesian community and parish council. The event is framed as a celebration of charitable service to the poor, migrants, and youth in a marginalized Roman neighborhood. The antipope praised the Salesians’ “service in many parts of the world, where there is war, where there is conflict, where there is poverty, where Jesus wants to be present,” and highlighted the parish as the “heart” of the city merging with the “Heart of Jesus.” He described the pastoral council’s “synodal” nature as “walking together.” This performance is a quintessential manifestation of the post-conciliar Church’s reduction of the Catholic Faith to a naturalistic humanitarian project, utterly devoid of supernatural purpose and in direct opposition to the integral Catholic doctrine on the Kingship of Christ and the primary end of the Church: the salvation of souls.
1. Theological Contradiction: The “Heart of Jesus” vs. the Sacred Heart of Dogma
The antipope’s conflation of the “heart of the city” with the “Heart of Jesus” is a grave modernist distortion. In the true Catholic sense, the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the physical Heart of the Incarnate Word, hypostatically united to the Divine Person, the seat of His infinite love for humanity and the source of all graces. It is a object of latria, to be honored with the solemnity of a feast, as established by Pope Pius IX. The article’s language, however, reduces the “Heart of Jesus” to a vague metaphor for “love and mercy” expressed through social services. This aligns perfectly with the errors condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu, which attacks the Modernist tendency to demythologize supernatural realities into mere “pious opinions” or symbols of human solidarity (cf. Propositions 20, 22, 26). Pius XI in Quas Primas explicitly teaches that the Kingdom of Christ is “primarily spiritual and relates mainly to spiritual matters,” and that it “is opposed only to the kingdom of Satan and the powers of darkness—and requires its followers not only to renounce earthly riches and possessions, to be distinguished by modesty of conduct, and to hunger and thirst for justice, but also to deny themselves and carry their cross.” The “service” praised by Leo XIV, while perhaps materially good, is presented as an end in itself, a “sign” that replaces the supernatural mission of the Church. It omits the non-negotiable Catholic doctrines of original sin, the necessity of sanctifying grace, the redemptive sacrifice of Calvary, and the eternal consequences of rejecting Christ. This is the “synthesis of all heresies” (Pius X, Pascendi Dominici gregis) in action: a religion of human works that silences the dogma of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.
2. The “Synodal” Heresy: “Walking Together” as Rejection of Divine Authority
The antipope’s celebration of the “synodal” nature of the pastoral council—defined as “walking together”—is a direct embrace of the conciliar error of collegiality and the democratization of the Church. This phrase, now a mantra of the post-conciliar sect, implies a horizontal, consultative model of governance that fundamentally contradicts the Catholic Church’s divinely constituted, hierarchical, and monarchical structure. The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX condemns in no uncertain terms the errors of those who claim the Church is not a true and perfect society with its own innate rights (Error 19), that ecclesiastical power ought not to be exercised without the assent of civil government (Error 20), and that the Church has no temporal power (Error 24). More specifically, it condemns the idea that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55) as an error. The “walking together” model, applied internally to the Church’s governance, is a Trojan horse for the exact errors Pius IX anathematized: it subjects the divine authority of the hierarchical priesthood (bishops and true pope) to the “common opinion” of the “Church listening,” a notion Pius X condemned in Lamentabili (Proposition 6: “The Church listening cooperates… that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening”). This inverts the true order: the teaching Church (Ecclesia docens) must guide and form the listening Church (Ecclesia discens), not the other way around. The pastoral council, a post-conciliar innovation, is a structure of shared governance that erodes the authority of the parish priest (who, in the true Church, holds his office by divine right and canonical provision, not by democratic consent) and ultimately the authority of the bishop and the Roman Pontiff. It is a miniature version of the conciliar “collegiality” that makes the pope a “first among equals” instead of the Vicar of Christ with supreme, ordinary, and immediate jurisdiction over the universal Church.
3. The Omission of the Supernatural: Silence on Sin, Grace, and Salvation
The most damning aspect of the article is its complete silence on the core supernatural truths of the Catholic Faith. There is no mention of:
- Sin: The article speaks of “poverty” and “conflict” as social ills but never mentions mortal sin, the offense against God, or the state of damnation.
- Sanctifying Grace: The “service” is presented as an end. There is no reference to the sacraments as the ordinary means of grace, especially the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the primary act of worship and the source of all spiritual good.
- Salvation: The goal is framed as material betterment and social inclusion (“Italian language classes,” “welcome”). The article does not contain a single word about the necessity of faith, baptism, membership in the Catholic Church, or the danger of eternal hell. This is the precise error of Modernism, which Pius X defined as the “synthesis of all heresies” because it “reduces the supernatural to the natural.” The “Jesus” in whose “Heart” the city’s heart supposedly merges is a purely immanent, social-justice figure, not the God-Man who redeemed us on the Cross and established the Church as the sole ark of salvation.
This omission is not accidental; it is the very essence of the conciliar and post-conciliar religion. Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches that the Kingdom of Christ “is such that men who wish to belong to it prepare themselves through repentance, but cannot enter except through faith and baptism.” Leo XIV’s speech contains no call to repentance, no mention of baptism, no proclamation of the necessity of the Catholic Faith. His “Jesus” wants to be “present” in war zones to provide charity, not to offer the one sacrifice that atones for sin and to command all men to “do penance and believe the Gospel” (Mark 1:15).
4. The False “Service” of the Salesians in the Post-Conciliar Paradigm
The Salesians, founded by St. John Bosco, were historically a great Catholic educational order. However, since the Second Vatican Council, they, like nearly all religious orders, have been infiltrated and subverted. Their “service” today, as described, operates entirely within the parameters of the “conciliar sect’s” humanistic agenda. The article notes their work with “foreigners” (migrants) and “young people,” but provides no indication that this service is ordered to the primary goal: the salvation of these souls through instruction in the Catholic Faith, the administration of the sacraments, and formation in a life of penance and virtue. Instead, it is a social work that could be performed by any secular NGO. This is the fruit of the “new evangelization” of the conciliar popes, which replaces the old, dogmatic, missionary mandate (“praedicare Evangelium omni creaturae” – Mark 16:15) with a vague call to “accompany” and “walk together.” The Salesian charism, once focused on the sanctification of youth through the sacraments and strict Catholic formation, has been gutted. The antipope’s praise is praise for their compliance with the new, man-centered, synodal paradigm. Their work, as presented, is a “sign” not of Christ’s Kingdom, but of the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place (Matthew 24:15)—the replacement of the true sacrifice and true doctrine with a caricature of Christian charity.
5. The Usurper’s Legitimacy: A Fundamental Error
The entire article treats “Pope Leo XIV” as a legitimate pontiff. From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this is the foundational error. The thesis of the Defense of Sedevacantism file, based on St. Robert Bellarmine, St. John of St. Thomas, Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code, and Pope Paul IV’s bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, is unequivocal: a manifest heretic cannot be pope. The line of usurpers beginning with Angelo Roncalli (“John XXIII”) and continuing through “Francis” to the current “Leo XIV” (Robert Prevost) have all publicly, pertinaciously, and manifestly embraced the errors of Modernism, religious liberty, ecumenism, and the collegial, synodal Church—all doctrines condemned by Pius IX, Pius X, and the Syllabus. They have therefore, by divine law, lost all jurisdiction ipso facto. Bellarmine states: “a manifest heretic is not a Christian… therefore, a manifest heretic cannot be Pope.” The “mass” celebrated by this “pope” is, in the vast majority of cases, the invalid Novus Ordo Missae, a Lutheran-inspired banquet that denies the propitiatory nature of the Sacrifice of Calvary. The “pastoral council” he addresses is a conciliar innovation with no basis in pre-1958 canon law or theology. To recognize such a man as pope is to commit formal schism against the true, hidden Church of Christ, which endures in those who hold the integral Faith and are pastored by bishops and priests who have not defected.
Conclusion: The Apostasy of Charity Without Faith
The event reported is a masterclass in modernist apostasy. It takes the language of Catholic piety (“Heart of Jesus,” “service,” “charity”) and empties it of all supernatural content, redirecting it toward a naturalistic, immanentist goal of social amelioration. It replaces the Kingship of Christ, who demands the submission of all human laws and societies to His divine law and the salvation of souls through the one true Church, with a “kingdom” of humanitarian service. It replaces hierarchical, monarchical governance with “synodal” “walking together.” It replaces the necessity of grace and the sacraments with the sufficiency of “unwritten signs” of human compassion. This is precisely the “secularism” and “laicism” that Pius XI, in Quas Primas, identified as the plague poisoning society and the Church—the removal of Christ from public and private life. The article, therefore, does not report a pastoral visit of a Catholic pope. It documents a liturgical-theatrical performance of the “conciliar sect,” designed to make the world believe that the Church has finally become a “service organization” in the image of man, utterly divorced from its divine Founder and His immutable law. The only appropriate response for a Catholic is total rejection and a return to the immutable Tradition, outside of which there is no salvation.
Source:
Pope to Salesians: Continue your service in areas of poverty and war (vaticannews.va)
Date: 22.02.2026