The EWTN News portal reports that the antipope known as “Leo XIV” (Robert Prevost) sent a message to the 70th Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, urging “true spiritual renewal” and deeper discipleship rooted in Jesus “who is the Truth.” The message, delivered by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, emphasized the “authentic teacher” who arouses desire for truth, encouraged young people to remain open to God’s love, and prayed the event would help them discover the Lord’s Eucharistic presence as “an unfailing source of comfort and strength.” The congress theme for adults is “Wrapped in Mercy, Hope Renewed,” and for youth, “Real Love Carries the Cross.” Sister Rosalia Meza described this mercy as “tender, deeply personal, and transformative,” meeting us “in our brokenness.” This language, devoid of supernatural context and rooted in subjective experience, epitomizes the post-conciliar Church’s complete abandonment of Catholic doctrine for a naturalistic, humanistic religion.
The “Truth” of Modernism vs. the Truth of Christ
The message’s core, that “the authentic teacher arouses the desire for truth,” is a direct echo of Modernist hermeneutics condemned by St. Pius X. Lamentabili sane exitu and the encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis systematically dismantle the notion that truth is something to be “aroused” as a subjective desire rather than objectively received from divine revelation. Proposition 25 of Lamentabili states: “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities.” This is precisely the epistemology underlying the congress’s approach: truth is not a deposit to be believed but an experience to be sought. The antipope’s citation of his own apostolic letter Drawing New Maps of Hope—a title dripping with evolutionary, immanentist jargon—places him squarely in the camp of those who, as the Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX) condemns, believe “human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood” (Error 3). The “Jesus who is the Truth” of the message is not the Incarnate Word, consubstantial with the Father, who revealed divine truths definitively; it is a vague “truth” aligned with personal “authenticity” and “encounter,” concepts utterly foreign to the pre-1958 Magisterium.
The Eucharist: From Propitiatory Sacrifice to “Comfort and Strength”
The message’s reference to the Eucharist as an “unfailing source of comfort and strength” is a deliberate, heretical reduction of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The 1917 Code of Canon Law (Can. 1254) and the perennial teaching of the Church, defined by the Council of Trent, hold that the Mass is the true, propitiatory sacrifice of Calvary made present. Quas Primas (Pius XI) teaches that Christ’s royal authority includes “judicial authority, which Jesus received from the Father,” and “executive power,” whereby “all must obey His commands, and this under the threat of announced punishments.” The Eucharist is the supreme act of this authority—the re-presentation of the sacrifice for sin. To reduce it to a “source of comfort and strength” is to strip it of its sacrificial, sin-atoning nature and transform it into a mere devotional experience, a hallmark of the Lutheran and Modernist errors condemned in Lamentabili (Props. 45-48) and the Syllabus (Errors on the Sacraments). This aligns perfectly with the file on False Fatima Apparitions, which notes the “efficacy of Holy Mass is diminished in favor of spectacular acts.” The congress’s focus on “experience” and “encounter” is that spectacular act, replacing the transcendent reality of sacrifice with immanent feeling.
“Mercy” divorced from Justice and the State of Grace
The theme “Wrapped in Mercy, Hope Renewed” and Sister Meza’s description of mercy as meeting us “in our brokenness” present a mercy utterly detached from the divine justice that demands satisfaction for sin and the state of grace required to receive it. Pius XI in Quas Primas links Christ’s kingship directly to His judicial role: “He possesses… the right of the judge to reward and punish men even during their lifetime.” True Catholic mercy operates within the framework of God’s law and the Sacrament of Penance. The congress’s language, however, suggests a mercy that accepts sin and “brokenness” without call to repentance, a “mercy” that is, in fact, a condoning of sin. This is the mercy of Modernism, which, as the Syllabus condemns (Error 58), places “all the rectitude and excellence of morality… in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means, and the gratification of pleasure.” The “hope” offered is not the hope of eternal salvation attained through obedience to God’s law and the sacraments, but a vague, this-worldly optimism “in a world often weighed down by fear, division, and uncertainty.” This is the “natural religion” and “inner impulse” Pius IX anathematized (Error 5), replacing the supernatural hope of heaven with a worldly comfort.
The “Youth Day” Theme: Inverting the Cross
The youth theme “Real Love Carries the Cross” is a profound inversion of Catholic ascetical theology. In Catholic doctrine, we carry the cross *after* Christ, in penance for sin and in reparation, as a participation in His sacrifice. The phrase “Real Love Carries the Cross” suggests the cross is a burden borne by love itself, rather than the just punishment for sin borne by the God-Man. It sentimentalizes the cross, removing its character as a divine curse (Gal. 3:13) and a means of expiation. This aligns with the Jansenist rigorism noted in the Fatima file as a mark of false piety, but here it is transmuted into its opposite: a soft, accepting “carrying” devoid of the spirit of mortification and hatred of sin. It prepares youth for a “cross” of social justice activism or personal struggle, not for the cross of Calvary which demands the mortification of the flesh and the renunciation of the world. St. Pius X, in Pascendi, condemned the Modernist who “regards as the true and genuine form of the Christian life the life which is led in common with those who are not of the fold,” a life of vague “love” and “encounter” rather than distinct, sacrificial Catholicism.
The “Authentic Teacher” and the Demise of Authority
The call for an “authentic teacher” who “arouses the desire for truth” is a direct attack on the hierarchical, authoritative teaching Church. The Syllabus of Errors (Error 8) condemns the notion that “theological must be treated in the same manner as philosophical sciences,” subject to the “natural force” of human reason. The “authentic teacher” here is not one who, with the authority of Christ, declares: “He who hears you hears me” (Luke 10:16). It is one who “arouses desire,” a facilitator, not a master. This is the pedagogy of the post-conciliar “service” Church, which Pius IX condemned (Error 19): “The Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free… but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church.” The congress, sponsored by a diocesan “Office of Religious Education,” operates on the presupposition that the “Church” is a department of the state-like archdiocesan structure, not the sovereign, perfect society founded by Christ. The “authenticity” sought is personal and psychological, not doctrinal and obedient.
The Omission: The Reign of Christ the King
The most damning evidence of the apostasy is the total silence on the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Pius XI’s Quas Primas, instituted precisely to combat the secularism that “denied Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations,” is utterly absent from this “Catholic” gathering. There is no mention that Christ’s reign extends to “individuals, families, and states” (Quas Primas), that rulers must “publicly honor Christ and obey Him,” or that the final judgment will avenge the insult of casting Christ out of the state. Instead, we have a “culture” to be built up (a purely naturalistic concept) and “hope” to be renewed. The Syllabus (Error 40) condemns the teaching that “The teaching of the Catholic Church is hostile to the well-being and interests of society.” The congress implicitly affirms this error by presenting a “Church” concerned with “renewal” and “culture” in terms compatible with secular humanism, not with the exclusive, absolute sovereignty of Christ the King. The Fatima file correctly identifies the diversion: the message “focuses on external threats (communism), omitting the main danger: modernist apostasy within the Church.” Here, the diversion is complete: the “renewal” is the modernist apostasy itself, presented as the solution.
The “Mercy” of the Conciliar Sect vs. Catholic Doctrine
The language of “mercy” is the key Trojan horse. The true Catholic mercy is rooted in the Sacrament of Penance, which requires contrition, confession, and satisfaction. It is administered by the Church with the power of binding and loosing (John 20:23). The congress’s “mercy” is an affective, undogmatic sentiment. This is the mercy of the “Church of the New Advent,” which, as the Sedevacantism file demonstrates through Bellarmine, has no legitimate authority because it is led by heretics. A manifest heretic, as Bellarmine states, “by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.” The antipope “Leo XIV” and the “Archbishop” Gómez are thus outside the Church. Their “mercy” is a false mercy, a satanic imitation (2 Cor. 11:14), because it flows from a false church. The true Church, as Pius XI teaches in Quas Primas, must demand “full freedom and independence from secular authority” to teach, govern, and lead to eternal happiness. The conciliar sect, however, collaborates with secular powers (as seen in this state-sponsored archdiocesan event) and preaches a “mercy” that negates the need for conversion, penance, and the exclusive reign of Christ.
Conclusion: The Bankruptcy of the “Renewal”
The Los Angeles Religious Education Congress is not an event of Catholic renewal but a symptom of the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place (Matt. 24:15). It represents the final stage of the “disinformation strategy” outlined in the Fatima file: the takeover of the narrative by modernists, where “renewal” means the complete evisceration of supernatural doctrine. The “truth” aroused is the truth of naturalism; the “Eucharist” is a symbol of community; the “mercy” is a license for sin; the “cross” is a sentimental burden. All of this is the antithesis of the unchanging Catholic faith, which demands:
* The objective, revealed truth, guarded by the hierarchical Magisterium (Trent, Vatican I).
* The Mass as the propitiatory sacrifice, not a “meal of comfort.”
* The cross as a means of expiation and mortification, not a vague “real love.”
* The Kingship of Christ over all human societies, demanding the subordination of all law and culture to His divine law.
* The necessity of the state of grace, obtained through the sacraments administered by the true Church, for any “renewal.”
The only “renewal” possible is the return to the immutable Tradition of the pre-1958 Church, the repudiation of the conciliar revolution, and the recognition that the current occupiers of the Vatican are not popes but usurpers, as proven by their continuous propagation of the errors condemned by Pius IX, Pius X, and the Syllabus. The congress is a gathering of the “prophets of Baal” (1 Kings 18), offering a false worship to a false god, while the true Church—the faithful remnant—suffers in exile, awaiting the triumph of Christ the King, which will not come through “renewal” but through divine judgment on this apostate generation.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV sends message urging renewal at Los Angeles Religious Education Congress (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 20.02.2026