EWTN News reports that on April 17, 2026, the antipope Leo XIV addressed students at the Catholic Academic Institution of Central Africa (UCAC) in Yaoundé, Cameroon, encouraging them in a “common search for truth” and inviting them to pioneer “a new humanism in the context of the digital revolution.” The event, attended by 8,000 people, also featured the inauguration of a square named after St. Augustine and plans for a “Leo XIV Catholic University Center.” The antipope quoted the heretic John Henry Newman and Francis’ encyclical Lumen Fidei, warning about artificial intelligence and calling for “humanistic formation.” This address perfectly encapsulates the post-conciliar apostasy: a “search for truth” deliberately severed from the social reign of Christ the King, the unchanging Magisterium, and the supernatural order, reducing the Faith to a vague humanism compatible with any ideology.
The “Search for Truth” Without the King of Truth
The central theme of Leo XIV’s address is the “common search for truth.” He quoted the condemned heretic John Henry Newman: “All true principles run over with God, all phenomena converge to him.” This is a pantheistic sentiment, condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864): “There exists no Supreme, all-wise, all-provident Divine Being, distinct from the universe, and God is identical with the nature of things” (Proposition 1). Newman, “canonized” by the apostate Bergoglio, was a proponent of the evolution of dogma — the very heresy that St. Pius X condemned as “the synthesis of all errors” in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907). To invoke Newman as an authority is to plant the flag of Modernism at the heart of Catholic education.
But what is this “truth” that the antipope proposes? It is not the truth of the Catholic Faith, which is immutable, objective, and supremely embodied in the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Pius XI, in 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 entire purpose of a Catholic university, according to the true Popes, is to form minds in submission to this revealed truth — not to “search” for it as though it were an unknown quantity.
Leo XIV’s “search for truth” is the language of indifferentism, condemned by Pius IX: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (Syllabus, Proposition 15). It is the language of the conciliar sect, which replaced the certitude of Faith with the uncertainty of “dialogue.” The true Church has never needed to “search” for truth — she possesses it, fully and completely, through the infallible Magisterium guided by the Holy Ghost. The very premise of this address — that truth is something to be sought rather than something possessed and transmitted — is a denial of the Catholic Church’s divine constitution.
The Cult of Newman: A Heretic Held Up as a Model
The invocation of John Henry Newman is not incidental — it is a deliberate theological statement. Newman was an Anglican convert whose intellectual trajectory was marked by a rejection of dogmatic certainty in favor of a subjective, evolving religious consciousness. St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemned the following propositions, which Newman’s thought exemplifies:
“The dogmas which the Church proposes as revealed are not truths of divine origin but are a certain interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind has worked out with great effort” (Proposition 22).
“Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (Proposition 58).
“Christian doctrine was initially Jewish, but through gradual development, it became first Pauline, then Johannine, and finally Greek and universal” (Proposition 60).
Newman’s theory of the development of dogma is precisely the “evolution of doctrine” that the Syllabus condemns: “Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the advancement of human reason” (Proposition 5). That Leo XIV holds up this man as a model for Catholic university students reveals the true doctrinal orientation of the conciar sect: not the immutable truth of the Catholic Faith, but the subjective, evolving, modernist “truth” that dissolves all dogma in the acid of historical criticism.
Furthermore, Newman scandalously requested to be buried in the same grave as his “friend” Fr. Ambrose St. John — a fact that the conciar structures have never addressed with the moral seriousness it demands. That such a figure is proposed as a guide for the youth of Africa is a spiritual crime of the highest order.
“New Humanism” — The Religion of Man Replacing the Religion of God
Perhaps the most revealing phrase in the entire address is Leo XIV’s invitation to African youth to become “pioneers of a new humanism in the context of the digital revolution.” This is the language of the conciliar religion — the cult of man, the “integral humanism” that Jacques Maritain (a known modernist and ecumenist) developed as a philosophical framework for the post-conciliar apostasy. Pius XI warned against this very error in Quas Primas: “The plague of our times is secularism, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors… It began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.”
The “new humanism” is nothing other than the practical atheism condemned by the Syllabus: “The civil power may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government… it has the right to make enactments regarding the administration of the divine sacraments” (Proposition 44). It is the religion of Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, which placed the Church at the service of “the modern world” rather than demanding that the world submit to Christ the King. There is no “new humanism” — there is only the eternal humanism of the Gospel, which recognizes that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Leo XIV’s reference to Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum is a cynical appropriation. Leo XIII wrote that encyclical to defend the rights of workers within the framework of Catholic social teaching — that is, under the social reign of Christ the King. The “new humanism” invoked by Leo XIV detaches social concerns from their supernatural foundation and reduces them to naturalistic philanthropy. This is precisely the error condemned by Pius IX: “No other forces are to be recognized except those which reside in matter, and all the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means, and the gratification of pleasure” (Syllabus, Proposition 58).
Artificial Intelligence: A Distraction from the Real Crisis
Leo XIV’s warnings about artificial intelligence are revealing in their superficiality. He spoke of AI creating “bubbles, impermeable to one another,” weakening “the human capacity for discernment,” and spreading “polarization, conflict, fear, and violence.” These are the concerns of a secular moralist, not of the Vicar of Christ — because Leo XIV is not the Vicar of Christ. The true crisis facing the Church and humanity is not artificial intelligence but the apostasy of the Church’s own hierarchy, the destruction of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the corruption of the sacraments, and the systematic demolition of the Faith by the very men who claim to represent Christ on earth.
St. Pius X, in Pascendi, identified the true enemy: “the enemies within” — the modernists who occupy the Church’s own institutions. Leo XIV’s address is a perfect illustration of this diversion. While the conciar sect has destroyed the Faith, corrupted the liturgy, and led countless souls to perdition, the antipope warns university students about the dangers of artificial intelligence. This is the tactic of every revolutionary regime: focus the people’s attention on external threats while the real enemy dismantles their civilization from within.
The “transformation in our very relationship with truth” that Leo XIV laments is not caused by AI — it was caused by the conciliar revolution, which replaced the objective truth of Catholic dogma with the subjective “truth” of religious experience, ecumenism, and interfaith dialogue. The antipope laments a disease that he and his predecessors created.
The Omission That Condemns: Silence About Christ the King, the Sacraments, and the Supernatural
What is entirely absent from this address is far more significant than what is present. There is no mention of:
1. The Social Kingship of Christ. Not a single reference to the duty of nations to recognize Our Lord Jesus Christ as their King and Lawgiver. Pius XI established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the laicism that Leo XIV’s “new humanism” embodies. The silence is deafening and damning.
2. The necessity of the sacraments for salvation. No mention of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, of confession, of baptism as the sole means of regeneration. The “truth” that Leo XIV proposes is entirely naturalistic — a truth accessible to reason without grace, to pagans without baptism, to the unregenerate without conversion.
3. The reality of sin, hell, and eternal judgment. The address is entirely horizontal — concerned with social justice, digital ethics, and humanistic formation. There is no mention of the four last things, no call to repentance, no warning about the eternal consequences of sin. This is the religion of man without the religion of God.
4. The missionary mandate. While Leo XIV mentions the African continent and its challenges, there is no call to evangelize, to convert, to baptize. The “Catholic” university is presented as a center of “humanistic formation” rather than as an instrument of the Church’s missionary mandate to “teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. 28:19).
5. The true nature of the Church. There is no mention of the Church as the one true ark of salvation, outside which there is no salvation. Instead, the “Catholic” university is presented as a forum for “dialogue” and “fraternity in knowledge” — the language of the conciliar sect, not of the Catholic Church.
The Name of Augustine Weaponized
The inauguration of a square named after St. Augustine “in honor of Leo” is a characteristic gesture of the conciar cult of personality. St. Augustine — the Doctor of Grace, the hammer of the Pelagians, the bishop who taught that “the City of God is built on the foundation of faith in Christ and the sacraments of salvation” — is reduced to a decorative figure for the glorification of an antipope. This is the same spirit that names hospitals, squares, and university centers after the usurpers in the Vatican — a personality cult that would have been unthinkable in the true Church, where all glory is given to God alone.
St. Augustine himself taught: “The truth that God promised from the beginning of the world has been fulfilled in Christ.” There is no “search” for truth in Augustine — there is the possession of truth, the defense of truth, and the condemnation of error. To invoke Augustine while promoting Newman’s evolution of doctrine is to use the Fathers as a cloak for heresy — precisely the tactic that St. Pius X condemned in Pascendi: “Under the guise of more serious criticism and in the name of historical method, they aim at such a development of dogmas as appears to be their corruption.”
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in the Holy Place
Leo XIV’s address to the students of UCAC is a microcosm of the entire conciliar apostasy. It presents a “Catholic” education stripped of all supernatural content — a “search for truth” without the Truth Incarnate, a “new humanism” without the God-Man, a “fraternity in knowledge” without the communion of saints, and a “service to humanity” without the service of God. It invokes a heretic (Newman) as its patron, quotes a modernist encyclical (Lumen Fidei) as its authority, and proposes artificial intelligence as the great threat while ignoring the real enemy: the apostasy of the Church’s own hierarchy.
The true Catholic response to this address is not dialogue but condemnation. The truth does not need to be “searched for” — it has been revealed, once and for all, in the Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ and transmitted infallibly by His Church. The duty of every Catholic is not to pioneer a “new humanism” but to restore the old — the social reign of Christ the King over every nation, every university, every human heart. “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men” (St. Augustine, quoted by Pius XI in Quas Primas). Without Christ the King, there is no truth, no humanism, no progress — only the “transformation in our very relationship with truth” that is, in reality, the total loss of truth.
Let the faithful reject this address and all it represents. Let them return to the unchanging teaching of the true Popes — from Pius IX’s Syllabus to Pius XII’s Mediator Dei — and let them pray for the restoration of the Church and the social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the only King and the only Truth. Adveniat regnum tuum.
Source:
Pope tells Catholic university students in Cameroon to ‘search for truth’ (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 17.04.2026