“Pope” Leo XIV’s Naturalist Approach to Addiction Omits Supernatural Remedies
Vatican News portal (November 7, 2025) reports that antipope Robert Prevost (“Leo XIV”) addressed Italy’s National Conference on Addictions via video message. He identified internet overuse, gambling, and pornography as modern addictions stemming from “mental distress” and societal “decline in values,” urging “concerted prevention” through education, employment, and “culture of solidarity.” The message frames addiction as a psychosocial issue requiring community intervention while omitting any reference to sin, sacraments, or the Kingship of Christ.
Reduction of the Church’s Mission to Therapeutic Humanism
The antipope’s analysis reduces addiction to a naturalistic phenomenon, attributing it to emotional instability and “social pressures.” His proposed solutions—”self-esteem building,” job creation, and “healthy living”—echo secular social work manuals rather than Catholic doctrine. Nowhere does he mention the primary causes of addiction: Original Sin, concupiscence, and rejection of grace. This reflects the conciliar sect’s abandonment of ex opere operato (the objective efficacy of the sacraments), condemned by the Council of Trent (Session VII, Canon 6).
Contrast this with Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas (1925): “When once men recognize… that Christ has been given all power in heaven and on earth… it will be easy to perfect among nations the unity of brotherhood.” True prevention requires submission to Christ the King through penance and the sacraments—not sociological programs.
Linguistic Subversion: “Solidarity” Over Salvation
The message employs modernist code words:
– “Prevention” replaces metanoia (conversion of heart).
– “Mental distress” medicalizes the spiritual crisis of souls severed from sanctifying grace.
– “Culture of solidarity” inverts Pius IX’s condemnation of “indifferent equality among all forms of religion” (Syllabus of Errors, Proposition 77).
This vocabulary exposes the conciliar sect’s embrace of evolutionary humanism, condemned by St. Pius X: “Modernists place the foundation of religious philosophy in that doctrine… called vital immanence“ (Lamentabili Sane, Proposition 3).
Theological Apostasy: Omission of Sin and Redemption
The antipope identifies “excessive smartphone use” as addictive but never names the mortal sins of lust or sloth that fuel it. This silence betrays the Church’s mission to “teach all nations… to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).
“Young people think all behaviors are equivalent… [we must] instill spiritual and moral values.”
Yet Prevost refuses to define these values, echoing the relativistic poison of Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae. Compare this to Pius IX: “The Church regards as reckless and false the opinion that freedom of conscience and worship is the right of every man” (Quanta Cura, 1864).
Symptomatic of Conciliar Revolution’s Ruin
This message exemplifies three heresies of the neo-church:
1. Religious Indifferentism: By equating “parishes” with secular “youth centers,” it denies the Church’s unique role as the arc of salvation (Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus).
2. Horizontalism: Emphasis on “listening” and “dialogue” replaces the Church’s divine authority to bind and loose (Matthew 16:19).
3. Naturalism: Reducing addiction to psychological/social factors denies the reality of demonic influence and the need for exorcism—practices affirmed by Leo XIII in Exorcismus in Satanam (1890).
St. Pius X warned that Modernists “pervert the eternal concept of truth” by subjecting dogma to human experience (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 1907). Prevost’s therapeutic gospel fulfills this prophecy.
Source:
Pope Leo: 'We must commit to preventing addiction' (vaticannews.va)
Article date: 07.11.2025