National Catholic Register portal reports on April 9, 2026, that Leo XIV — the current usurper of Peter’s throne — addressed athletes from the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Games, praising sport as a “space for encounter” in a world of “polarization, rivalry, and conflicts that escalate into devastating wars.” The speech, delivered in the Clementine Hall, reveals the utter spiritual bankruptcy of the conciliar sect: while the world burns in the flames of apostasy, revolution, and the systematic destruction of Christendom, the occupant of the Vatican reduces the Church’s mission to a saccharine endorsement of secular athletic competition, stripping the Faith of its supernatural substance and replacing the call to holiness with the cult of human performance and “relationships.”
The “Space for Encounter”: A Masonic Slogan in Papal Vestments
The very phrase chosen by Leo XIV — that sport “can and must truly become a **space for encounter**” — is not accidentally Catholic. It is the language of the conciliar revolution, the same language that has gutted the Church of her supernatural mission for over six decades. “Encounter” is the hallmark of the post-conciliar ecumenical project: encounter with the world, encounter with other religions, encounter with secular culture — always at the expense of the Church’s divine mandate to **teach, govern, and sanctify all nations** (Mt 28:19-20).
Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism,” which “began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.” The pontiff declared that “the state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men,” and that rulers who refuse “public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ” undermine the very foundations of their authority. What does Leo XIV offer instead? Not the restoration of Christ’s social kingship, but the transformation of the Olympic Games into a **prophecy of peace** — “breaking the logic of violence to promote that of encounter.”
This is not Catholic teaching. This is the lingua franca of the United Nations, of Masonic lodges, of every naturalistic humanism that the Church has consistently condemned. The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX (1864), in proposition 80, condemned the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” Yet here we see the occupant of the Vatican not merely reconciling himself with the world, but **celebrating** the world’s institutions as vehicles of peace — while remaining conspicuously silent about the only true source of peace: Jesus Christ, His Church, and His Most Holy Sacrifice.
Silence About the Supernatural: The Gravest Accusation
What is most striking about Leo XIV’s address is not what he says, but what he **omits entirely**. The Holy Father speaks of sport as “a form of language,” “a school of life and talent,” a means of “maturing character” and fostering “humility” and “right relationships.” He quotes Psalm 18 — “Thou didst give a wide place for my steps under me, and my feet did not slip” — but this reference to God is generic, stripped of any specifically Catholic theological content. Nowhere in this address does Leo XIV mention:
– **Jesus Christ as the sole Redeemer** of mankind and the only source of salvation (Acts 4:12: “There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved”).
– **The necessity of sanctifying grace**, the sacraments, and the state of grace for eternal salvation.
– **The reality of sin**, the devil, and the eternal consequences of dying outside the state of grace.
– **The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass** as the propitiatory sacrifice of Calvary, the center of Christian life.
– **The social kingship of Christ** over nations, states, and all human institutions — including sport.
– **The duty of Catholic athletes** to sanctify their sport through prayer, mortification, and the pursuit of eternal, not temporal, glory.
This silence is not accidental. It is **systematic**. It is the silence of a system that has replaced the supernatural order with naturalism, the Gospel with humanism, and the Church of Christ with a humanitarian NGO. St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemned the modernist proposition (no. 20) that “revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God.” Leo XIV’s address reduces the entire Christian vision to precisely this: human effort, human relationships, human “encounter” — with God as a distant, unnamed presence invoked only to lend a veneer of piety to what is essentially a secular celebration of human achievement.
“No One Wins Alone”: The Communal Dimension Without the Mystical Body
Leo XIV declares: “**No one wins alone.** Your team spirit reminds us that no one wins alone, because behind every victory there are many people involved — from family to teams — as well as many days of training, pressure, and solitude.”
This is true in a purely natural sense, but the statement is **theologically vacuous**. The Catholic understanding of human community is rooted not in “team spirit” but in the **Mystical Body of Christ**. St. Paul teaches that “we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another” (Rom 12:5). The communion of the faithful is not a metaphor for athletic camaraderie; it is a supernatural reality effected by Baptism, nourished by the Eucharist, and governed by the hierarchy established by Christ.
By reducing the communal dimension of human life to the level of sports teams, Leo XIV commits the same error condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (proposition 19): treating the Church as a merely human society, devoid of the “proper and perpetual rights” conferred by her Divine Founder. The “many people involved” behind every victory — family, trainers, teammates — are not the Mystical Body. They are, at best, natural communities. To equate them with the Church is to **demolish the supernatural order**.
The Paralympic Propaganda: “Limitation” Transfigured Without the Cross
Perhaps the most revealing passage in Leo XIV’s address is his treatment of Paralympic athletes: “In particular, in Paralympic competitions we have seen how **a limitation can become a source of revelation: not something that holds a person back but something that can be transformed, even transfigured into newfound qualities.**”
This language is **pure modernism**. The Catholic understanding of suffering, limitation, and disability is rooted in the mystery of the Cross. St. Paul writes: “I fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of his body, which is the Church” (Col 1:24). Suffering is not “transfigured into newfound qualities” by human effort; it is **redeemed** by union with the Passion of Christ, through grace, through the sacraments, through the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Leo XIV’s formulation — limitation as “revelation,” disability as a source of “newfound qualities” — is the language of the self-help industry, not of the Gospel. It is the language of a Church that has abandoned the theology of the Cross in favor of the **cult of man**. St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, condemned the modernist tendency to reduce Christianity to “religious experience” and to see in human development the unfolding of an immanent divine principle. Leo XIV’s Paralympic commentary is a textbook example of this error: the “revelation” is not the revelation of God in Christ, but the revelation of **human potential** — a thoroughly naturalistic, thoroughly modernist, thoroughly **anti-Catholic** concept.
The athlete Nikko Landeros, who lost both legs in 2007 and told EWTN News, “If it weren’t for God, I wouldn’t be alive,” at least retains a rudimentary sense of gratitude to the Creator. But Leo XIV’s address does nothing to elevate this natural gratitude to the supernatural order. There is no mention of the redemptive value of suffering, no exhortation to unite one’s trials with the Cross of Christ, no call to receive the sacraments for strength and perseverance. Instead, we get the bland affirmation that limitation can be “transfigured” — a word that, in Catholic theology, refers exclusively to **Christ’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor**, the revelation of His divine glory. To apply this term to Paralympic athletes is not merely imprecise; it is **sacrilegious**.
The Olympic Truce: “Prophecy of Peace” Without Christ the King
Leo XIV thanks the athletes for making visible “this possibility of peace as a prophecy that is by no means rhetorical: breaking the logic of violence to promote that of encounter.”
Let us be clear: **peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ**. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” He further stated that “the hope of lasting peace will not yet shine upon nations as long as individuals and states renounce and do not wish to recognize the reign of our Savior.”
The Olympic truce is an ancient pagan custom revived by the modern Olympic movement — itself a creation of the Freemason Pierre de Coubertin. To present this pagan institution as a “prophecy of peace” is to commit the error condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (proposition 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.” The conciliar sect has not merely tolerated other forms of worship; it has embraced **pagan customs** and presented them as vehicles of divine peace.
The true “prophecy of peace” is the proclamation of Christ the King — not the Olympic truce. Leo XIV’s silence on this point is deafening and damning.
The Temptations of Sport: A Superficial Diagnosis
Leo XIV warns against “doping, commercialism, and the reduction of athletes to mere spectacle.” He says: “We are well aware that sport also brings with it certain temptations: that of performance at any cost, which can lead to doping; that of profit, which transforms the game into a market and the athlete into a star; that of spectacle, which reduces the athlete to an image or a number.”
This is a **superficial** diagnosis. The true temptation of sport — and of all human activity — is **pride**, the inordinate love of one’s own excellence, the desire for glory apart from God. St. Augustine warns: “Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self” (De Civitate Dei, XIV, 28). The doping, commercialism, and spectacle that Leo XIV deplores are merely **symptoms** of the deeper disease: the loss of the supernatural orientation of human life.
A true pope — a true successor of St. Peter — would diagnose the root cause and prescribe the **supernatural remedy**: prayer, penance, the sacraments, the cultivation of humility, the practice of mortification, the pursuit of eternal rather than temporal glory. Leo XIV offers none of this. His critique of the excesses of sport is the critique of a **social reformer**, not of a **Vicar of Christ**.
The Testimony of the Athletes: Natural Piety in a Spiritual Vacuum
The article reports that speed skater Francesca Lollobrigida told EWTN News: “My goal was just to show that in my sport; I was able to combine, you know, being a mother and a top athlete. I’m just doing this for the other women, you know, that maybe at some points during their career they want to stop to focus on the family and then to come back.”
This is a laudable natural sentiment, but it reveals the **spiritual vacuum** at the heart of the conciliar sect’s engagement with the world. The Church’s teaching on motherhood is not that it is something to be “combined” with a career in athletics, as though the two were merely competing demands on a woman’s time. The Church teaches that **motherhood is a vocation**, a participation in the creative work of God, and that the family is the **domestic church**, the primary cell of Christian society. Leo XIV’s address does nothing to elevate this natural piety to the supernatural level. There is no mention of the vocation of motherhood, no exhortation to consecrate one’s family to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, no call to place the education of children in the Faith above all earthly ambitions.
Similarly, Nikko Landeros’s statement — “I still pray every day, and I’m thankful to be here. You know, if it weren’t for God, I wouldn’t be alive” — is a natural expression of gratitude that falls far short of the Catholic understanding of the relationship between God and man. The Catholic does not merely thank God for being alive; the Catholic **offers** his life to God, seeks to know and do God’s will, and strives for sanctification through the means established by Christ in His Church. Leo XIV’s address does nothing to bridge the gap between natural gratitude and supernatural faith.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation Speaks
Leo XIV’s address to the athletes of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Games is a **microcosm** of everything that is wrong with the conciliar sect. It is naturalistic where it should be supernatural. It is horizontal where it should be vertical. It celebrates human achievement where it should proclaim divine grace. It speaks of “encounter” where it should speak of **conversion**. It invokes peace without Christ the King. It praises “team spirit” without the Mystical Body. It speaks of “transfiguration” without the Cross.
This is not the voice of the Church. This is the voice of the **abomination of desolation** standing in the holy place (Mt 24:15). The faithful who cling to the integral Catholic Faith — the Faith of all time, the Faith of the Fathers, the Faith of the Councils, the Faith of St. Pius X and Pius XI and Pius XII — must reject this counterfeit and hold fast to the immutable Tradition. Sta cum ecclesia — stand with the true Church, which endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic Faith and are led by bishops with valid sacraments and validly ordained priests. The structures occupying the Vatican are not the Church. They are the **synagogue of Satan**, and their words, however sweet, are the words of the serpent in the garden: “You will be as gods” (Gen 3:5) — transfigured by your own effort, perfected by your own encounter, saved by your own human potential.
God is not mocked. The true “space for encounter” is the confessional, the altar, the tabernacle — where the soul meets its Creator in the sacraments of grace. Let the conciliar sect have its Olympic Games. The faithful have the **Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary**, and that is enough.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV: Sport Must Be a ‘Space for Encounter’ (ncregister.com)
Date: 09.04.2026