EWTN News reports on a homily delivered by exiled Nicaraguan Bishop Silvio Báez at St. Agatha Church in Miami on April 12, 2026. Speaking amid the persecution of the Catholic Church by the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, Báez denounced the regime’s “false peace” imposed through fear and weapons. He reflected on the risen Christ’s wounds, stating that the wounds of the Nicaraguan people “will be scars healed by the love of God — wounds glorious forever, wounds of love destined for eternity.” The bishop called the faithful to be “builders of true peace” that “springs from justice, is lived out in freedom, and bears the fruit of reconciliation,” expressing hope that mercy would make believers “mature” and capable of healing others’ wounds. While the suffering of Nicaraguan Catholics under a tyrannical regime is real and deserving of authentic Catholic solidarity, Báez’s homily exemplifies the theological bankruptcy of post-conciliar pastoral discourse: it reduces the Church’s message to naturalistic humanism, omits the supernatural order entirely, and substitutes the language of secular peacebuilding for the uncompromising demands of Christ the King.
The Risen Christ Reduced to a Metaphor for Humanitarian Aid
Bishop Báez’s central image — the wounds of the risen Christ shown to Thomas — is drawn from the Gospel of John (20:24-29), one of the most profound testimonies to the Resurrection and the divinity of Our Lord. Yet in Báez’s homily, this sacred mystery is stripped of its supernatural content and repurposed as a mere analogy for social healing. The wounds of Christ become “historical scars reminding us of a painful past of injustice and oppression, so that we may never repeat it.” The Resurrection — the foundational dogma of Christianity, the very proof of Christ’s divinity and the promise of our own bodily resurrection — is reduced to a motivational poster for conflict resolution.
This is not accidental. It is the direct fruit of the modernist heresy condemned by Saint Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), which rejected the proposition that “the Resurrection of the Savior is not properly a historical fact, but belongs to the purely supernatural order” (Proposition 36). The modernist method, as exposed in Pascendi Dominici gregis, treats dogmas not as revealed truths but as “a certain interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind has worked out with great effort” (Proposition 22, Lamentabili). Báez does not preach the Resurrection as a historical and supernatural fact demanding faith; he preaches it as a symbol of human resilience. The wounds of Christ are not glorious because they prove He is God and that death has been conquered; they are “glorious” because they inspire Nicaraguans to be “artisans of peace.” This is the very inversion of the Catholic faith: the supernatural is made to serve the natural, eternity is subordinated to history, and the King of Kings is reduced to a social worker.
The Omission of the Supernatural Order: A Homily Without God
The most damning feature of Báez’s homily is not what it says, but what it does not say. There is no mention of the state of grace, no mention of sin as the true cause of all disorder, no mention of the sacraments as the means of salvation, no mention of final judgment, no mention of repentance, no mention of the conversion of sinners, and no mention of the reign of Christ the King over Nicaragua or any nation. The homily is, in its entirety, a discourse on horizontal relations — between the Nicaraguan people and their oppressors — with no vertical dimension whatsoever.
This silence is not a minor oversight. It is the gravest possible accusation against a bishop’s teaching. As Pope Pius XI taught in Quas primas (1925), “the Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men” and “men united in societies are no less subject to the authority of Christ than individuals.” The reign of Christ is not merely spiritual in the modernist sense of an interior feeling; it demands that “all relations in the state be ordered on the basis of God’s commandments and Christian principles, both in the issuing of laws and in the administration of justice, as well as in the education and formation of youth in sound doctrine and purity of morals” (Quas primas). Báez says nothing of this. His “peace” is a peace without Christ the King, a reconciliation without the sacrament of Penance, a healing without the grace of the Holy Spirit. It is, in short, a purely naturalistic and humanitarian construct dressed in the language of Scripture.
Saint Pius X, in Lamentabili, condemned the proposition that “the dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Proposition 26). Báez’s homily operates entirely on this modernist plane: the Gospel is not a deposit of revealed truth to be believed with divine faith, but a source of practical inspiration for social action. The wounds of Christ are not the price of our redemption, offered in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the remission of sins; they are a metaphor for community organizing.
“Builders of Peace”: The Conciliar Substitution of the Church’s Mission
Báez’s exhortation that the faithful be “builders of true peace” who act as “artisans of peace, ready to foster processes of healing and reconciliation with ingenuity and boldness” is drawn directly from the post-conciliar lexicon of the conciliar sect. This language — “builders of peace,” “processes of reconciliation,” “healing” — is the stock-in-trade of the Church of the New Advent, which has replaced the supernatural mission of the Church (the salvation of souls through preaching, the sacraments, and the submission of all nations to Christ the King) with a naturalistic program of human development, dialogue, and social justice.
The true mission of the Church was defined with precision by Pope Pius XI: “the mission entrusted to it by God — to teach, govern, and lead all to eternal happiness, those who belong to the Kingdom of Christ” (Quas primas). The Church does not exist to “foster processes of reconciliation” between political factions; she exists to teach all nations, baptize them, and command them to observe all that Christ has commanded (Mt 28:19-20). The Church’s peace is not a “balance of forces” or a political arrangement; it is the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ, which requires the submission of individuals and states to the laws of God. As Pius XI declared: “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” (Quas primas).
Báez’s “peace” is explicitly defined in purely natural terms: “a peace that springs from justice, is lived out in freedom, and bears the fruit of reconciliation.” But what justice? What freedom? What reconciliation? Without the Catholic faith, “justice” is merely the opinion of the powerful; “freedom” is the liberal heresy condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 79: “it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship… conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people”); and “reconciliation” is the false ecumenism that refuses to demand the conversion of all men to the one true Church. The Catholic understanding of peace was articulated with clarity by Saint Augustine: Pax omnium rerum tranquillitas ordinis — “Peace is the tranquility of order.” And order, in the Catholic sense, means the right ordering of all things under God, through His Church, to eternal life. Báez’s peace is the peace of the world, which Christ Himself warned is not His peace: Non sicut mundus ego do vobis — “Not as the world gives, do I give to you” (Jn 14:27).
The “False Peace” of Dictators and the False Peace of the Conciliar Sect
Báez is correct to denounce the “false peace” of the Ortega-Murillo regime. A political system that “imposes itself upon people through terror, stripping them of their freedom” is indeed an enemy of peace. But Báez fails — whether by ignorance or by design — to identify the other false peace: the false peace of the conciliar sect itself, which has stripped the Church of her freedom, imprisoned her faithful in a new modernist dogma, and forced into exile not only bishops like Báez but the Catholic faith itself.
The conciliar sect, from John XXIII onward, has imposed a “false peace” of its own: a peace with the world, with liberalism, with modern civilization, with false religions, and with the principles of the French Revolution. This is the “peace” condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 80: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization”). It is the peace of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Mt 24:15), where the true Mass has been suppressed, the true faith has been obscured, and the true mission of the Church has been abandoned in favor of dialogue with the enemies of God.
Báez laments the persecution of the Church in Nicaragua while remaining fully integrated into the conciliar structures that are the primary instrument of the Church’s destruction worldwide. He speaks of “309 religious including bishops, priests, and nuns” forced to leave Nicaragua, but he does not identify the root cause of the crisis: the modernist apostasy that has emptied the Church of her supernatural strength and left her vulnerable to every enemy, both external and internal. As Saint Pius X warned in Pascendi, the “enemies within” are far more dangerous than the enemies without. The Ortega regime persecutes the Church; the conciliar sect destroys her from within.
The Language of the Homily: A Linguistic Analysis of Modernist Decay
The vocabulary of Báez’s homily is revealing. Words like “healing,” “reconciliation,” “mercy,” “builders of peace,” “ingenuity and boldness,” “mature believers,” and “fuller, more vibrant” lives are the characteristic language of post-conciliar pastoral discourse. They are deliberately vague, emotionally manipulative, and theologically empty. They could be uttered at any United Nations conference, any secular peace summit, or any corporate team-building retreat without alteration.
Contrast this with the language of the true Catholic Magisterium. Pope Pius IX, addressing the persecution of the Church in Prussia, declared with apostolic authority: “these laws are null and void because they are absolutely contrary to the divine constitution of the Church” (The Syllabus of Errors, Appendix). He did not call for “processes of healing and reconciliation”; he condemned the laws, vindicated the Church’s freedom, and protested with the “sacred authority of divine law.” Pope Pius XI did not speak of “building peace” in the abstract; he instituted the Feast of Christ the King and demanded that “rulers of states… refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ” (Quas primas). Saint Pius X did not call for “mature believers”; he demanded the integral profession of the Catholic faith and condemned modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies.”
Báez’s language is the language of a Church that has lost her identity. It is the language of a bishop who no longer believes that the Church possesses the fullness of truth, that the sacraments are the ordinary means of salvation, or that the reign of Christ is a present and urgent demand upon all nations. It is, in short, the language of indifferentism — the heresy 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 Wounds That Matter: The Persecution of the True Church
The suffering of Nicaraguan Catholics under the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship is real and should not be minimized. But the true wounds of the Church are not inflicted solely by communist dictators; they are inflicted primarily by the modernist apostates who have occupied the Vatican and transformed the House of God into a “house of trade” (Jn 2:16). The confiscation of 39 Church properties in Nicaragua is a grave injustice; but the confiscation of the Traditional Latin Mass, the suppression of the true sacraments, and the destruction of the Catholic faith worldwide by the conciliar sect is an infinitely greater crime.
Bishop Báez, by remaining in communion with the conciliar structures and by preaching a homily devoid of supernatural content, demonstrates that he is part of the problem, not the solution. His “wounds healed by the love of God” are not the wounds of martyrdom suffered for the faith; they are the wounds of exile suffered for political opposition to a communist regime — a noble cause, perhaps, but one that is not identical to the Catholic faith. The true wounds of the Church are the wounds inflicted by the antipopes from John XXIII to Leo XIV, by the “bishops” who have betrayed their oaths, by the “priests” who offer a counterfeit sacrifice, and by the “theologians” who have corrupted the deposit of faith.
The only true healing for the wounds of the Church is the return to immutable Tradition: the restoration of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the integral preaching of Catholic dogma, the submission of all nations to the reign of Christ the King, and the uncompromising condemnation of modernism in all its forms. Until Bishop Báez and those like him recognize this, their homilies will remain what they are: well-intentioned but spiritually bankrupt speeches that offer the world what it already has, while withholding the only thing that can truly heal — the fullness of the Catholic faith.
Conclusion: A Homily That Preaches Everything Except Christ
Bishop Silvio Báez’s homily in Miami is a textbook example of post-conciliar pastoral discourse: it addresses a real injustice (the persecution of the Church in Nicaragua), employs scriptural imagery (the wounds of the risen Christ), and offers a message of hope (healing and reconciliation). But it does so while completely omitting the supernatural order, the sacramental life, the reign of Christ the King, the necessity of conversion, the reality of sin and final judgment, and the true mission of the Church. It is a homily that preaches everything except the Catholic faith.
The wounds of the Nicaraguan people are real. But the only wounds that are “glorious forever” are the wounds of Christ — not as a metaphor for social healing, but as the actual, historical, supernatural price of our redemption, offered daily in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the salvation of souls. Until Báez and the conciliar sect return to this truth, their “peace” will remain what it is: the false peace of a Church that has betrayed her divine mission and left her children defenseless before the enemies of God.
Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.
Source:
Bishop Báez on Nicaragua: ‘The people’s wounds will be scars healed by the love of God’ (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 15.04.2026