The cited article reports that “Pope” Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), addressing Italian journalists on March 16, 2026, exhorted them to guard against propaganda, verify news, and report the human face of war “through the eyes of the victims, so as not to transform it into a video game.” He further emphasized that “no technological innovation can replace creativity, critical discernment, and freedom of thought,” praised “laicity” as “a rejection of ideological preconceptions and as an open-minded view of reality,” and urged the promotion of diversity “in an age dominated by polarization.” This address is a quintessential manifestation of the post-conciliar apostasy, reducing the supernatural mission of the Church and the duty of the state to a mere naturalistic humanism that is fundamentally hostile to the integral reign of Christ the King.
The Nullity of the Speaker: A Manifest Heretic on the Throne
The entire premise of the article rests on the false assumption that Leo XIV holds the Petrine office. From the unchangeable doctrine of the Church, a manifest heretic ceases to be pope ipso facto. St. Robert Bellarmine teaches: “A manifest heretic, 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.” Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law confirms: “Every office becomes vacant by the mere fact… if the cleric: … 4. Publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” Leo XIV, by his consistent promotion of religious liberty, ecumenism, and the separation of Church and state—all condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Props. 77, 78, 79, 55)—is a public and pertinacious heretic. Therefore, his “exhortations” possess no magisterial authority and are merely the opinions of a private individual, or worse, the ravings of an apostate. The article’s uncritical presentation of him as “Pope” is a fundamental lie that poisons its entire content.
Reduction of the Church’s Mission to Naturalistic Humanism
The speech completely omits the supernatural purpose of journalism from a Catholic perspective. There is no mention of the journalist’s duty to form consciences according to the sensus catholicus, to defend the Faith against its enemies, or to proclaim the Social Kingship of Christ. Instead, the focus is entirely on naturalistic virtues: “creativity, critical discernment, and freedom of thought,” “laicity,” “pluralism,” and “open-mindedness.” This is a direct repudiation of the doctrine of Quas Primas. Pope Pius XI unequivocally stated that the Kingdom of Christ encompasses all men and all societies, and that rulers have the duty to publicly honor and obey Christ: “Let rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ… For what we wrote at the beginning of Our Pontificate about the diminishing authority of law and respect for power, the same can be applied to the present times: ‘When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.'” Leo XIV’s vision of journalism, by its studied silence on this absolute primacy, promotes the very “secularism” or “laicism” that Pius XI identified as the plague poisoning society.
The Heresy of “Laicity” and “Pluralism”
The article quotes Leo XIV praising “laicity” as “a rejection of ideological preconceptions and as an open-minded view of reality.” This is a radical embrace of the errors condemned by Pius IX. The Syllabus explicitly rejects the idea that the State should be separated from the Church (Prop. 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church”) and that all forms of worship should enjoy public liberty (Prop. 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship”). Furthermore, his call for “pluralism” in an age of “polarization” implicitly endorses the indifferentism condemned in Props. 15-17 of the Syllabus. The true Catholic stance, as reaffirmed by Pius XI, is that the state must recognize the Catholic religion as the sole true religion and order all its laws and institutions to the worship and service of God. Any “open-mindedness” that treats error as having equal rights is a betrayal of the First Commandment.
The Omission of the Supernatural: The Gravest Sin
The most damning aspect of the speech is its total silence on the supernatural order. There is no mention of sin, grace, the Sacraments, the Passion and Death of Our Lord, the final judgment, the salvation of souls, or the duty of the state to protect the Catholic faith as the sole path to eternal life. This silence is not neutrality; it is a positive denial of the hierarchy of being. It reduces human suffering in war to a mere terrestrial tragedy to be “reported,” stripping it of its redemptive potential and its connection to the Cross. This is the essence of Modernism, which Lamentabili sane exitu condemns in Proposition 58: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him.” By presenting a world without a transcendent reference point, Leo XIV preaches a “gospel” of pure immanence, where the only “paradigm” is the “human” one, as he states regarding AI. This is a direct assault on the teaching of Quas Primas that Christ’s reign is “primarily spiritual and relates mainly to spiritual matters” and that His authority extends to the ordering of all human acts, including those of the state, to the supernatural end of man.
The Symptomatic Embrace of the Conciliar Revolution
The language used—”laicity,” “pluralism,” “freedom of thought,” “human paradigm”—is the precise lexicon of the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath, which Lamentabili sane exitu had already condemned as the “synthesis of all heresies.” His warning against “propaganda” and call for “verifying the news” is hypocritical, coming from the master of the conciliar sect’s own global propaganda machine that has for decades disseminated the errors of ecumenism, religious liberty, and collegiality. The call to show the “human face” of war, while superficially appealing, is a Trojan horse for a naturalistic, sentimental humanism that excludes the only true solution to war and all social ills: the public and official recognition of the reign of Christ the King, as Pius XI demanded. The article demonstrates that the conciliar revolution is not merely a disciplinary reform but a total inversion of Catholic doctrine, where the Church’s mission is recast as a worldly quest for “dialogue” and “understanding” among equals, rather than the proclamation of the exclusive sovereignty of Jesus Christ.
Conclusion: A Call to Rejection and Return
The speech of “Pope” Leo XIV, as reported, is a fresh and potent expression of the apostasy that has occupied the Vatican since the death of Pius XII. It is a sermon of naturalism, indifferentism, and implicit atheism, which must be utterly rejected by all who hold the Catholic faith integral and immutable. The true Catholic response is not to engage with this false prophet’s advice on journalism, but to heed the unchangeable doctrine of Quas Primas: “If men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society.” The path forward is not “pluralism” but the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King, and the rejection of the conciliar sect and its antipopes, beginning with John XXIII and culminating in the current occupant, Leo XIV. There is no “dialogue” with error; there is only the duty to confess the Faith, as Pius IX thundered in the Syllabus and Pius X in Lamentabili.
Source:
Leo XIV to journalists: War is not a video game; guard against propaganda, verify the news (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 16.03.2026