The Pillar reports the brutal murder of 82-year-old Sister Nadia Gavanski, a member of the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate within the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), in Ivaí, Brazil. The suspect, allegedly under the influence of drugs, broke into the convent. The UGCC’s Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk was in Brazil for a synod meeting at the time, having described the UGCC in Brazil as “an image of the Catholic Church today” that lives in “perfect communion” and represents “unity in diversity.” The article notes the rarity of such murders of nuns and provides context on Ukrainian migration to Brazil.
This tragic event is not merely a crime; it is a stark symptom of the theological and spiritual bankruptcy of the post-conciliar ecclesial structures, which have abandoned the supernatural mission of the Church for a naturalistic, cultural preservation project. The focus on “unity in diversity” and cultural maintenance, while omitting the non-negotiable reign of Christ the King over all nations, reveals a church that has been reduced to a mere human association, powerless against the consequences of its own apostasy.
The Naturalistic Idol: “Unity in Diversity” Over Christ the King
The central, horrifying omission of the article is any reference to the supranatural cause of such evils. Major Archbishop Shevchuk’s statement that the UGCC in Brazil is “an image of the Catholic Church today” because it lives in “perfect communion” and “unity in diversity” is a mantra of modernism. It replaces the Catholic doctrine of extra ecclesiam nulla salus—that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church—with a relativistic celebration of institutional communion devoid of doctrinal integrity. This echoes the condemned errors of the Syllabus of Errors, which Pius IX anathematized: “It is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship… conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism” (Error 79). The “unity” celebrated is not the unity of faith in the one true God, but the unity of institutional structures that have apostatized from the Faith.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, established the feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secularism that removes God from public life: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The article’s complete silence on Christ’s reign, on the need for states to publicly obey His law, and on the final judgment where “Christ… will very severely avenge these insults” (Quas Primas) exposes the conciliar church’s descent into the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism.” Sister Nadia’s life of “service and faith” is presented as a noble natural virtue, but without the context of the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary and the salvation of souls as the supreme law, it is a mere humanitarian effort within a godless world. The article’s tone is one of tragic naturalism, as if the evil was merely a social pathology, not a consequence of the collective sin of a church that has denied Christ’s kingship.
The Omission of the Supernatural: Sacraments, Grace, and Final Judgment
The article meticulously details the ethnic, cultural, and institutional context—Ukrainian migration, the archeparchy, the synod visit—but is utterly devoid of supernatural terminology. There is no mention of Sister Nadia being a spouse of Christ in the religious life, no reference to the Mass she would have offered (or participated in), no invocation of the Communion of Saints, and no hope expressed in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. This is the gravest accusation. The “faith” she dedicated her life to is presented as an ethical commitment, not the theological virtue by which we believe in God and all He has revealed.
This silence is doctrinally catastrophic. It reflects the modernist error condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu: “The principal articles of the Apostles’ Creed did not have the same meaning for the first Christians as they do for contemporary Christians” (Proposition 62). The article implicitly assumes a meaning of “faith” and “service” that is evolutionarily developed, stripped of its supernatural object. Where is the teaching on the state of grace, the necessity of sacramental confession before death, the treasury of merit? Their absence is not neutrality; it is the active suppression of the Catholic Faith, replaced by a Pelagian humanism. The “prayers for the eternal rest” requested by the order are a hollow formula if the underlying theology of purgatory and satisfaction has been evacuated by post-conciliar ambiguity.
The Conciliar Church’s Failure: A “Pastoral” Structure Powerless Against Chaos
The fact that a murder occurred on convent grounds during the visit of the major archbishop is laden with symbolic irony. The UGCC, in full communion with the “conciliar sect” occupying the Vatican, presents itself as a vibrant, culturally-preserving “image of the Catholic Church.” Yet, it cannot guarantee the physical safety, let alone the spiritual security, of its own elderly religious in their cloister. This exposes the failure of the post-conciliar church’s “pastoral” and “dialogue” model. Pius IX, in the Syllabus, condemned the idea that “the ecclesiastical power ought not to exercise its authority without the permission and assent of the civil government” (Error 20). Today, the conciliar church has inverted this: it has surrendered its spiritual authority to the state and public opinion, becoming a chaplain to worldly powers and a curator of ethnic museums. Its “synodality” and “communion” are empty of the coercive, juridical power Christ gave to His Church to teach, sanctify, and govern.
The article notes that murders of nuns are rare, citing data from a pontifical charity. This statistic is irrelevant. One murder is one too many when the Church, as a perfect society, has the right and duty to demand that the state protect the innocent and punish the wicked according to the natural law inscribed in every human heart. The conciliar church’s embrace of the “principle of non-intervention” (Syllabus, Error 62) and its subservience to secular human rights ideology have stripped it of any moral authority to confront such evil. It can issue statements of “unjustifiable violence,” but it cannot, as the Catholic Church once did, call for the just execution of criminals as a legitimate defense of society, because it has accepted the modern, liberal dogma that “the civil authority may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government” (Syllabus, Error 44)—meaning the state dictates the terms, and the church is silenced.
The Cultural Preservation Trap: Ukrainian Identity Over Catholic Identity
The article proudly states that the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Brazil plays “a key role in maintaining the Ukrainian language and culture.” This is the trap. The primary mission of the Church is the salvation of souls, not the preservation of ethnic heritage. While legitimate, cultural maintenance becomes idolatrous when it supersedes the supernatural end. The UGCC’s existence as a “sui iuris Eastern Catholic Church” is canonical within a valid hierarchical structure, but within the conciliar system, it functions as a cultural branch office of the universalist apostasy. The focus on “Ukrainian heritage” (45% of Ivaí’s population) and the archeparchy’s administrative structure highlights an institution invested in earthly, temporal things—the very error Pius XI condemned in Quas Primas: “unbridled desires, often cloaked in the guise of public good and love of country, from which arises division among citizens and blind and immeasurable egoism.”
Sister Nadia’s life, in this reading, was spent serving a cultural entity that calls itself “Catholic” while operating under the jurisdiction of men who have, by manifest heresy (as proven in the Defense of Sedevacantism file), lost the right to the papacy and thus to govern the Church. Her “service” was, tragically, channeled into a structure that is part of the “abomination of desolation” (Matt. 24:15), the paramasonic, neo-church that has supplanted the true Catholic hierarchy. The murder, therefore, is a physical metaphor for the spiritual violence done to souls by this false system: a brutal, external act reflecting the internal corruption of a church that has exchanged the “sweet yoke” of Christ for the heavy, naturalistic yoke of human institutions and cultural pride.
Conclusion: A Call to Abandon the Conciliar Sect
This article is a perfect case study in the modernist strategy: present a tragic, human-interest story filled with institutional details and cultural significance, while systematically excluding the supernatural framework that alone gives meaning to suffering, death, and martyrdom. The “faith” and “service” mentioned are vapid without the doctrines of the Real Presence, the propitiatory sacrifice, and the social reign of Christ the King. The “unity in diversity” praised is the unity of apostates, the “peace” of the world that “is enmity with God” (James 4:4).
The only response from an integral Catholic perspective is to reject utterly this conciliar apparatus, with its false “sui iuris” churches, its synods, and its naturalistic humanism. We must pray for Sister Nadia’s soul, that she died in state of grace, but we must also expose the system that made her life and death a mere statistic in a cultural preservation project. The true Church, the Catholic Church, teaches that “all power in heaven and on earth is given to Christ the Lord” (Quas Primas), and that “there is no power in us that is exempt from this reign.” The article’s authors, the UGCC hierarchy, and the entire conciliar network have denied this reign. Their “church” is a synagogue of Satan, and its tragedies are the fruits of its apostasy.
Source:
Ukrainian Catholic sister killed in Brazil (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 22.02.2026