The cited EWTN News article from March 23, 2026, reports on a meeting between the current occupant of the Vatican, “Pope” Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), and ten of his eighth-grade classmates from Chicago in St. Peter’s Square. The event, centered on nostalgic personal reminiscence, gift exchanges, and a group photograph—including a selfie—is framed as a heartwarming human interest story. The article also details the dilapidated state of Prevost’s childhood parish, St. Mary of the Assumption, and local preservation efforts. The thesis is clear: this incident is not a benign personal reunion but a profound symptom of the apostate “Church of the New Advent,” where sentimental naturalism, the cult of personality, and the complete omission of supernatural duty replace the immutable doctrine and mission of the Catholic Church.
The Naturalistic Cult of Personality Replaces the Supernatural Kingship of Christ
The entire event is orchestrated around the human figure of “Pope” Leo XIV, not the Divine Person of Jesus Christ. The language is saturated with naturalistic humanism: “exchanging laughs, gifts, and warm handshakes,” “nervous,” “crying tears of joy,” “super nice guy.” This is the precise error condemned by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Quas Primas, which instituted the feast of Christ the King to combat the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism.” Pius XI warned that when “God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states,” the foundations of authority are destroyed. Here, the authority of the “papacy” is celebrated not through the public confession of Christ’s royal dignity and the obligation of states to recognize it, but through a private, sentimental reunion that treats the “pontiff” as a celebrity alumnus. The Syllabus of Errors (Error #77) condemns the notion that “it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State.” The silent implication of this humanist gathering is that the “pope’s” identity as a Chicagoan is a neutral or positive cultural fact, not a matter of supreme Catholic significance requiring the public submission of all nations to the Social Reign of Christ the King. The article’s focus on the physical decay of a church building, while lamentable, is treated as a historical preservation issue, not as a visible sign of the spiritual desolation wrought by the apostasy of the conciliar hierarchy. There is zero mention of the Sacraments, the state of grace, the Final Judgment, or the necessity of Catholic faith for salvation—the “gravest accusation” of Modernist silence.
The “Selfie” as Symbol of Modernist Novelty and Profanation
The detail of the “selfie” on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica is not trivial. It is the perfect icon of the post-conciliar spirit: a profane, self-referential act of vanity in the most sacred space of Christendom. St. Pius X, in his constitution Lamentabili sane exitu, condemned the “pursuit of novelty” that leads to “deplorable consequences, abandoning all restraint” (Prop. 1). The selfie embodies this unrestrained novelty, reducing the Apostolic See to a backdrop for personal aggrandizement. It visually declares that the “Church” is now about human connection and self-expression, not about the unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary and the worship due to the Most High. The ancient Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ, is presented as “Bob,” signing autographs, his “new one” alongside his childhood one. This is the ultimate democratization and banalization of the Papacy, a direct fruit of the conciliar revolution’s “hermeneutics of continuity” which falsely pretends the pre- and post-conciliar offices are the same. The Syllabus (Error #34) teaches that comparing the Sovereign Pontiff to a mere prince is a medieval error; what then of comparing him to a nostalgic schoolmate? The article’s tone of casual familiarity (“our friend, the pope”) is a calculated tool to dismantle the supernatural awe and hierarchical distance that must attend the office of the Papacy, thereby eroding the necessary principle of authority.
Omission of Doctrine and the “Indifferentist” Spirit
The article is a masterclass in what it does not say. There is no mention of any doctrinal instruction, no call to repentance, no reminder of the necessity of Catholic faith, no reference to the errors of the modern world. The reunion occurs in the shadow of St. Peter’s, yet the Petrine mission—to “strengthen his brethren” (Luke 22:32) in the faith—is utterly absent. This silence is doctrinally damning. It reflects the “indifferentism” condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (Errors 15-18), which holds that “every man is free to embrace… whatever religion he considers true” and that “good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ.” The narrative implicitly promotes the idea that shared human history and sentiment (a Chicago childhood) are sufficient bonds, rendering the supernatural unity of Catholic faith and hierarchical communion secondary or irrelevant. The classmates represent a pluralistic “community” of memory, not the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church. The preservation campaign for the old church building, while aesthetically commendable, is framed in purely naturalistic terms of “historic site,” “visitor site,” “landmark designation”—terms that appeal to civic pride and tourism, not to the sanctification of souls through the valid Mass and Sacraments. It is a “church” as museum, not as tabernacle.
The Dilapidated Parish: A Metaphor for the Conciliar Church’s Self-Inflicted Collapse
The description of St. Mary of the Assumption—”a hole in the roof,” “broken windows, graffiti,” “water damage”—is a stark metaphor for the state of the post-conciliar “Church.” This physical decay is the direct result of the apostasy of the hierarchy, which has abandoned the Faith. The “pope’s” own formation occurred during the heady days of the post-Vatican II revolution; his path from St. Mary’s to the Augustinians, Villanova, and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas coincides with the systematic dismantling of Catholic doctrine, liturgy, and discipline. The fact that his childhood parish now lies in ruins while he occupies the Vatican is a divine irony. Pius XI in Quas Primas linked the “misfortunes” oppressing the world to the removal of “Jesus Christ and His most holy law from… public life.” What greater public removal can there be than a “pope” who, in his first public reunion with his roots, demonstrates no consciousness of this duty? The preservationists’ desire to make it a “shrine” to the “first American pope” is the ultimate idolatry: a shrine to a man, not to God. It would transform a place of supernatural worship into a monument to naturalistic pride, perfectly encapsulating the “cult of man” that defines the Antichurch.
Analysis of the Source: EWTN as a Pillar of the Neo-Church
The article originates from EWTN News, a flagship organ of the conciliar establishment. Its very choice to cover such a trivial, personality-driven event as major news reveals its priorities. It functions as a propaganda arm for the “papacy” of Leo XIV, seeking to humanize and popularize the figure of the antipope, thereby cementing his acceptance among the “conservative” and “traditionalist” factions within the abomination of desolation. By presenting this event without a single critical word or doctrinal reference, EWTN actively participates in the “disinformation strategy” described in the analysis of the Fatima apparitions: normalizing the revolutionary novelties by embedding them in familiar, sentimental contexts. The article’s author, Amira Abuzeid, with her interest in “bioethics, technology, theology, and religion in public life,” represents the typical conciliar intellectual who operates entirely within the naturalistic and sociological framework condemned by St. Pius X and Pius IX. Her reporting is devoid of the “supernatural outlook” required of a Catholic journalist.
Symptomatic of the Great Apostasy: The “Two Cities” Inverted
St. Augustine’s distinction between the City of God and the City of Man is inverted. Here, the “City of Man”—with its bonds of nostalgia, geography, and shared history—is celebrated in the heart of the supposed “City of God.” The gathering has no reference to the “pilgrim Church” (peregrinans) on its way to the heavenly Jerusalem. It is a celebration of the earthly, temporal, and sentimental. This is the logical outcome of the “ecumenism project” and “religious freedom” of Vatican II, which, as the Syllabus predicted (Error #79), leads to the corruption of morals and minds through indifferentism. The “pope” meets his classmates; there is no distinction between Catholic and non-Catholic among them in the narrative. The implicit message is that all are fellow travelers in the human journey, a direct denial of the Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus doctrine defined by the Council of Florence and Pope Pius IX. The event is a liturgical action of the new religion: the “Mass” of the self, where the community gathers to affirm its shared past and present, with the “president” as the focal point of unity.
Conclusion
This article is not news; it is a ritual performance of the Modernist apostasy. It uses the language of human warmth and nostalgia to obscure the catastrophic reality: the See of Peter is occupied by an antipope, the conciliar sect has abandoned the Faith, and the public witness of the “Catholic” hierarchy is now a ministry of naturalistic humanism. The meeting on the steps of St. Peter’s, with its selfies and autographs, is the antithesis of the feast of Christ the King as defined by Pius XI, which was meant to remind “states that not only private individuals, but also rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him.” Instead, we witness the “pope” publicly honoring his former classmates, thereby demonstrating that his reign, and that of the entire conciliar structure, belongs to the “kingdom of Satan and the powers of darkness” (Quas Primas), not to the Kingdom of Christ. The faithful are called to reject this spectacle with utter contempt and to cling solely to the immutable Faith, as professed by the true Church before the eclipse of 1958.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV reunites with his eighth grade classmates (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 23.03.2026