EWTN News reports that on April 14, 2026, the usurper Robert Prevost, styling himself “Pope Leo XIV,” traveled to Annaba, Algeria—ancient Hippo—ostensibly to honor St. Augustine, the city’s most illustrious bishop. The article describes the visit as a “return to the roots of his faith and vocation,” noting that Prevost, as a member of the Augustinian order, sought to connect himself with the Doctor of Grace. He walked through the ruins of the Basilica Pacis, laid a wreath, and listened to songs in Latin, Berber, and Arabic based on Augustinian texts about “peace and fraternity.” The entire spectacle, however, is a grotesque parody of authentic Catholic pilgrimage—a modernist antipope, heir to the apostasy inaugurated by John XXIII, drapes himself in the mantle of one of the Church’s greatest Fathers while systematically dismantling everything Augustine defended. This is not a homecoming; it is a desecration.
The Idol of “Fraternity” Replaces the One True Faith
The most revealing detail of this carefully staged event is the choice of Augustinian texts set to music: songs dedicated to “peace and fraternity.” This is not accidental. The word fraternitas has been weaponized by the conciliar sect since Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate and Dignitatis Humanae to signify a horizontal, naturalistic brotherhood of all men—including pagans, heretics, and infidels—without reference to the necessity of conversion to the Catholic Faith. St. Augustine, by contrast, taught with crystalline clarity that true peace is found only in the unity of the Catholic Church. In his De Civitate Dei, he wrote: “Non est pax nisi ad bonum”—there is no peace except in the good, and the supreme good is God Himself, known and worshipped through His one true Church. The “fraternity” celebrated at Hippo under the auspices of Leo XIV is the same false fraternity condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (proposition 15): “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.” This is indifferentism—the poison that St. Augustine spent his entire episcopal career combating against the Donatists, Pelagians, and Manicheans.
The inclusion of Berber and Arabic songs alongside Latin is not a gesture of cultural respect; it is a liturgical abomination. It places the language of the Koran—a book that denies the Divinity of Christ, the Trinity, and the Redemption—on the same level as the sacred language of the Roman Church. This is syncretism, pure and simple. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared that Christ’s kingdom “encompasses all men” and that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). To sing of “fraternity” in Arabic at the very site where Augustine shepherded souls is to spit on his tomb. Augustine himself wrote in his treatise Contra Faustum: “Qui extra Ecclesiam est, non habet Spiritum Sanctum”—he who is outside the Church does not have the Holy Spirit. The conciliar sect has replaced this Augustinian clarity with the religion of man, condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili (proposition 65): “Contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.”
The “Son of St. Augustine” Who Rejects Augustine’s Doctrine on the Papacy
The article repeatedly emphasizes that Leo XIV is “a son of St. Augustine” and that the visit was a “homecoming of sorts.” This claim deserves the most ruthless scrutiny. St. Augustine’s teaching on the authority of the Roman Pontiff is unequivocal. In his epistle to Pope Boniface, he wrote: “Non iam res est cum hominibus disputandi, sed cum Deo vivit qui Romanae Ecclesiae praeest”—the matter is no longer to be disputed with men, but he who presides over the Roman Church lives with God. Augustine recognized the Supreme Pontiff as the final arbiter of doctrinal controversies, writing in Contra Epistulam Parmeniani: “Romana Ecclesia numquam erravit”—the Roman Church has never erred.
Yet the man who claims Augustine’s patrimony occupies the See of Peter while professing heresies that Augustine would have recognized as the work of Antichrist. The doctrine of religious liberty proclaimed at Vatican II—which Leo XIV has never retracted, let alone condemned—is a direct repudiation of Augustine’s teaching on the duty of the state to suppress false worship. In Epistola 93, Augustine wrote to Emeritus, the Donatist bishop: “Quid enim domui Dei cum parte diaboli?”—what has the house of God to do with the party of the devil? He argued that the state has a duty to compel heretics to return to the Catholic Church: “Compelle intrare” (Luke 14:23). This is the Augustine that Leo XIV claims as father—and this is the Augustine whose teaching Leo XIV’s entire pontificate contradicts.
According to the principles articulated by St. Robert Bellarmine in De Romano Pontifice (II, 30), “a Pope who is 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.” Bellarmine’s position is confirmed by Wernz and Vidal in Ius Canonicum: “By notorious and publicly manifested heresy, the Roman Pontiff, should he fall into it, is deprived ipso facto of his personal jurisdiction even before any declaratory sentence by the Church.” The heresies of the conciliar sect—religious liberty, ecumenism, the democratization of the Church, the evolution of dogma—are not private opinions; they are public, notorious, and repeated in official documents. By the immutable law of the Church, Robert Prevost is not Pope. He is an antipope, and his “pilgrimage” to Hippo is the act of a usurper seeking legitimacy from a Father whose doctrine he repudiates.
The Silence That Condemns: What the Article Dares Not Mention
The EWTN News article is a masterpiece of modernist omission. It describes the ruins of Hippo, the wreath-laying, the multilingual songs—but it is utterly silent about the state of the Catholic Faith in Algeria, in Africa, and in the world. There is no mention of the persecution of Christians by Islam. There is no mention of the fact that the city of Hippo was destroyed by Arab invaders in the seventh century—the very civilization whose language was sung at this event. There is no mention of the fact that St. Augustine died during a siege by the Vandals, who were Arians—heretics who denied the Divinity of Christ. The parallel is devastating: Augustine died defending the Faith against those who denied Christ’s divinity, while Leo XIV sings “fraternity” with those who deny it still.
Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (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.” This is precisely what Leo XIV’s visit represents: a reconciliation with the spirit of the age, a coming to terms with the world that Augustine called the civitas terrena—the earthly city, opposed to the civitas Dei. The article’s description of the event as a “return to the roots of his vocation” is a lie. The roots of the Augustinian vocation are the pursuit of truth, the defense of the Faith, and the salvation of souls. Leo XIV’s vocation, insofar as it is exercised within the conciliar sect, is the pursuit of dialogue, the dissolution of dogma, and the worship of man.
The Cult of Relics Without the Faith That Gives Them Meaning
The article notes that St. Augustine’s remains were moved from Hippo to Cagliari and then to Pavia, where they are venerated in the Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro. It mentions that Leo XIV is scheduled to visit this basilica on June 20. This is the conciarist cult of relics stripped of its supernatural content. In the true Catholic tradition, the veneration of relics is an act of faith in the communion of saints, the resurrection of the body, and the intercession of the blessed. But the conciarist “veneration” of relics is a form of religious tourism—a sentimental gesture devoid of doctrinal content. Pope Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, warned that the modernists “propose such a development of dogmas as appears to be their corruption”—and the reduction of the cult of relics to a tourist attraction is precisely such a corruption.
The true veneration of St. Augustine requires the profession of his doctrine. It requires the affirmation that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, that the state has a duty to uphold the true religion, that heresy is a crime against God and man, and that the Roman Pontiff is the Vicar of Christ with full authority to teach, govern, and sanctify. Leo XIV professes none of these things. His “veneration” of Augustine is an act of religious syncretism—the same syncretism that the conciliar sect practices when it places the Koran on the same level as the Gospel, or when it celebrates “fraternity” with those who worship a god who is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jesus Christ.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in the Holy Place
The visit of Leo XIV to Hippo is not a homecoming. It is an occupation. It is the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matthew 24:15). The conciarist antipope walks through the ruins of a city that once housed one of the greatest bishops in the history of the Church, and he uses it as a stage for the propagation of the very errors that Augustine spent his life combating. He sings of “fraternity” with the enemies of Christ. He lays wreaths on the ruins of a basilica where the true Faith was once preached, while he himself preaches a different gospel. He claims the patrimony of Augustine while rejecting Augustine’s doctrine on the Papacy, on heresy, on the duty of the state, and on the necessity of the Catholic Faith for salvation.
The true sons of St. Augustine are not those who wear the habit of his order while professing the heresies of Vatican II. They are those who, like Augustine himself, “contra mundum”—against the world—proclaim the truth of the Catholic Faith without compromise. They are those who recognize that the See of Peter is vacant, that the conciliar sect is not the Church of Christ, and that the only hope for the restoration of the Faith lies in the return to the immutable Tradition that Augustine defended with his life and his blood. “Ecclesia catholica sola est vera”—the Catholic Church alone is true. This is the legacy of Hippo. This is the legacy that Leo XIV betrays.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV visits ancient Hippo in return to the roots of his vocation (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 14.04.2026