National Catholic Register reports that Bishop A. Elias Zaidan, a native of Lebanon and chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, issued an appeal to President Donald Trump on April 9, 2026, urging humanitarian aid and a negotiated peace for Lebanon following Israeli strikes that killed over 300 people. The article describes the displacement of more than one million people, the killing of Father Pierre al-Rahi, and the destruction of Catholic communities in southern Lebanon. Bishop Zaidan expressed gratitude for the U.S.-Iran ceasefire while lamenting that Lebanon was excluded from the agreement. He called for the disarmament of Hezbollah, the implementation of U.N. resolutions, and quoted the antipope Leo XIV’s Easter message. The article presents the bishop’s appeal as a reasonable, pastoral response to a humanitarian catastrophe. This is precisely the problem: the entire framework of the appeal — its reliance on secular diplomacy, United Nations resolutions, and the authority of an antipope — reveals the total theological and spiritual bankruptcy of the conciliar sect’s approach to war, peace, and the governance of nations.
The Appeal to Caesar: A Bishop’s Abdication of Supernatural Authority
The most immediately striking feature of Bishop Zaidan’s statement is its complete orientation toward secular power as the instrument of relief and peace. He appeals to President Donald Trump, to the international community, and to U.N. resolutions. Nowhere in his statement is there any call for the one remedy that the Church, in her true magisterial voice, has always prescribed in times of war and catastrophe: penance, prayer, and the social reign of Christ the King. The bishop does not call the faithful to Mass, to the Sacraments, to reparation, or to the recognition that all calamities are the just chastisements of God upon a world that has rejected His laws. Instead, he behaves as a functionary of a humanitarian NGO, petitioning the princes of this world for crumbs of temporal relief.
This is not accidental. It is the inevitable fruit of the conciliar revolution, which systematically dismantled the Church’s supernatural self-understanding and reduced her mission to that of a global humanitarian agency. Pope Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), taught with absolute clarity: “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The Kingdom of Christ is not of this world, but it most certainly governs this world. Pius XI further declared: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed.”
Bishop Zaidan’s appeal contains not a single word about the social kingship of Christ, not a single reminder that states and rulers are bound by divine law, not a single call for the conversion of nations to the Catholic Faith as the necessary precondition for lasting peace. His framework is entirely that of liberal naturalism — the very error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), which rejected the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80). The bishop has reconciled himself thoroughly. He has come to terms completely. He operates within the categories of secular diplomacy as though the Church had nothing higher to offer.
The United Nations: A Masonic Altar Replacing the Altar of God
Perhaps the most damning element of Bishop Zaidan’s statement is his call for “the implementation of the U.N. resolutions concerning Lebanon.” This is not a neutral appeal to international law. The United Nations is a Masonic creation, founded upon the principles of religious indifferentism, the equality of all religions, and the exclusion of Christ the King from the governance of nations. It is the institutional embodiment of the errors condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei and by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas. To invoke U.N. resolutions as the framework for peace is to implicitly acknowledge the legitimacy of a world order built on the rejection of Christ’s social reign.
Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus, condemned the proposition that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Proposition 55). The United Nations operates on precisely this principle. It is a body that claims authority over nations while explicitly excluding supernatural religion from its deliberations. For a bishop of the Church — even a bishop of the conciliar sect — to appeal to such a body as the guarantor of peace is to commit an act of practical apostasy, regardless of his subjective intentions.
Moreover, the U.N. resolutions concerning Lebanon are themselves products of a geopolitical order that has consistently failed the Catholic communities of the Middle East. The Maronite and other Catholic populations of Lebanon have been abandoned repeatedly by the very international community that claims to protect them. The bishop’s appeal to this framework demonstrates not prudence but naïveté or worse — a deliberate choice to operate within the enemy’s system rather than to proclaim the only true solution: the establishment of the social reign of Christ the King.
The Quotation of an Antipope: A Scandal of Authority
Bishop Zaidan concludes his statement by quoting the antipope Leo XIV’s Easter message: “May you, in the midst of feelings of pain, anxiety, and mourning, come to know in your hearts a deeper joy: Jesus has gloriously triumphed over death. It is a joy that comes from heaven and that nothing can take away.” This quotation is presented in the article as though it carries spiritual authority. It does not.
According to the principles laid out by St. Robert Bellarmine in De Romano Pontifice, 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.” The conciliar sect, beginning with John XXIII, has promulgated doctrines that are manifestly heretical — religious liberty, ecumenism, the collegiality of bishops as a governing principle, the reduction of the Most Holy Sacrifice to a mere meal — all of which have been condemned by the authentic Magisterium. Pope Paul IV’s bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio (1559) declared that if any Roman Pontiff “has defected from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy,” his elevation is “null, void, and of no effect.”
Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) is a product of the conciar sect. His Easter message, however superficially pious in its language, is issued from the chair of an usurper who occupies the See of Peter without legitimate authority. To quote him as “Holy Father” and to present his words as a source of spiritual consolation is to legitimize the abomination of desolation that currently occupies the Vatican. Bishop Zaidan does this without hesitation, without qualification, without any indication that he recognizes the crisis of authority that has plagued the Church since 1958. This alone is sufficient to disqualify his statement as a genuinely Catholic pastoral intervention.
The Disarmament of Hezbollah: A Prudential Judgment Masking Theological Cowardice
Bishop Zaidan states that “it is imperative that all parties work toward the full and immediate disarming of Hezbollah.” As a purely prudential judgment about the security of Lebanese civilians, this is unobjectionable on its face. However, the context in which it is made reveals the theological poverty of the conciliar approach.
The bishop calls for the disarmament of Hezbollah but does not call for the conversion of its members to the Catholic Faith. He does not call for the evangelization of the Shia Muslim population of southern Lebanon. He does not remind the faithful that the only true peace is the peace of Christ, which comes through the Sacraments and the profession of the true Faith. His framework is entirely secular and political: disarm the militants, implement U.N. resolutions, negotiate a treaty between governments. This is the language of the United States Department of State, not the language of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Pope Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “The Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men… He is indeed the source of salvation for individuals and for the whole: ‘And there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12).” The bishop’s omission of any reference to the necessity of conversion and evangelization is not merely an oversight. It is a symptomatic silence that reveals the depth of the conciliar sect’s commitment to religious indifferentism — the very error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus (Proposition 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true”) and by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos.
The Suffering of Lebanese Catholics: Abandoned by Their Shepherds
The article reports that over one million people have been displaced, that 370,000 children are among them, that Father Pierre al-Rahi was killed in Israeli strikes, and that Catholic communities in southern Lebanon face evacuation and the permanent loss of their homes and land. These are real sufferings, and the faithful who endure them deserve genuine pastoral care — not the empty humanitarian platitudes of a conciliar bishop.
What do these suffering Catholics need? They need the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, offered according to the immemorial Roman Rite, in which the true Body and Blood of Christ are offered to the Father in propitiation for sin. They need the Sacraments — Confession, the Eucharist, the Last Rites — administered by priests who possess valid orders and who believe what the Church has always believed. They need to be told the truth: that their sufferings, however unjustly inflicted by their persecutors, are permitted by God for the purification of souls and the expiation of sin, and that their only true refuge is in the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Instead, they receive from Bishop Zaidan an appeal to Donald Trump and the United Nations. They receive a quotation from an antipope. They receive a call for the disarmament of a militant group without any call for the conversion of souls. They receive, in short, the world’s answer to the world’s problems, dressed in the vestments of a Church that has forgotten her divine mission.
St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemned the modernist proposition that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (Proposition 57) and that “contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism” (Proposition 65). The conciliar sect has accomplished precisely this transformation. Bishop Zaidan’s statement is a perfect specimen of dogmaless Catholicism — a Catholicism that has no supernatural content, no doctrinal backbone, no eschatological vision, and no authority to bind or loose.
The Silence About the True Causes of War
The article, and Bishop Zaidan’s statement within it, treat the war in Lebanon as a purely political and military conflict between Israel, Iran, and Hezbollah. There is no mention of the supernatural dimension of the conflict. There is no recognition that wars are, in the divine economy, punishments for sin — both the sins of individuals and the sins of nations. There is no call for public penance, no exhortation to the faithful to examine their consciences, no reminder that the only lasting peace is the Pax Christi that comes through submission to the social reign of Christ the King.
Pope Pius XI, in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, identified the cause of modern wars and social upheaval with precision: “The cause of the present evils is the defection from Christ and His law, both in private and public life.” Bishop Zaidan does not identify this cause because he does not believe it — or, if he does believe it, he lacks the courage to proclaim it. Either way, his silence is complicit. It leaves the faithful without the only explanation that matters and without the only remedy that works.
The true Catholic response to the suffering of Lebanese Catholics would begin with the recognition that the Church herself is in a state of crisis — that the conciliar revolution has produced a neo-church incapable of providing genuine spiritual leadership. The true Catholic response would call the faithful to prayer, penance, and the Sacraments — not to U.N. resolutions and presidential appeals. The true Catholic response would proclaim, with Pius XI, that “the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ” is the only peace worth seeking, and that this peace is available only to those who submit to the authority of the true Church and the true Faith.
Conclusion: The Bankruptcy of Conciliar Pastoral Care
Bishop Zaidan’s appeal to Trump, his invocation of U.N. resolutions, his quotation of an antipope, his silence about the supernatural causes and remedies of war, and his reduction of the Church’s mission to humanitarian advocacy — all of these elements reveal the total bankruptcy of the conciar sect’s approach to the world’s crises. The bishop is not a shepherd. He is a diplomat. He is not a successor of the Apostles. He is a functionary of a paramasonic structure that has replaced the Gospel with humanitarianism, the Sacraments with social programs, and the social reign of Christ the King with the authority of the United Nations.
The suffering Catholics of Lebanon deserve better. They deserve the true Mass, the true Sacraments, the true doctrine, and the true Faith. They deserve shepherds who will proclaim the whole counsel of God — not bishops who petition Caesar for aid while quoting an antipope and invoking the resolutions of a Masonic world order. Until the faithful recognize the depth of the crisis — until they understand that the conciliar sect is not the Church but the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place — they will continue to receive stones when they ask for bread, and serpents when they ask for fish.
Our Lady of Lebanon, Queen of Peace, pray for your children — not through the intercession of conciliar bishops, but through the merits of your Divine Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
Source:
Bishop Zaidan Appeals to Trump for Aid and Peace in Lebanon After Deadly Israeli Attack (ncregister.com)
Date: 10.04.2026