National Catholic Register reports that on April 16, 2026, the structures occupying the Vatican released a message from the antipope Leo XIV to Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, on the occasion of the Second National Meeting of Local Representatives for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Adults, held in Rome under the theme “Forming Authentic Relationships.” The message, signed by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, speaks of “safeguarding,” “accompanying,” “forming authentic relationships,” and a “culture of prevention” that is “above all, a culture of evangelical care.” The entire discourse is a masterclass in modernist bureaucratic language that systematically omits every supernatural reality — sin, grace, the sacraments, repentance, the Last Judgment — replacing the Catholic doctrine of the salvation of souls with a therapeutic, naturalistic program indistinguishable from secular human rights advocacy. This is not the voice of the Church founded by Christ; it is the voice of a paramasonic structure managing its public relations crisis.
The Complete Absence of Supernatural Reality
The most devastating critique of this message is not what it says, but what it refuses to say. The word “sin” does not appear once. The word “grace” is absent. The word “sacrament” is never mentioned. “Confession,” “penance,” “absolution,” “repentance,” “conversion” in its theological sense — all are conspicuously missing. The “evangelical conversion” Leo XIV references is emptied of its supernatural content and reduced to a vague organizational attitude: “when it does not shield itself from the pain of those who have suffered but allows itself to be questioned by it.” This is not the conversion preached by Our Lord — “Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17) — but a psychologized, horizontal “openness to the pain of others” that could be lifted verbatim from any secular NGO’s mission statement.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, taught with luminous clarity that Christ’s kingdom is not merely spiritual in the modernist sense of “interior and private,” but encompasses the full ordering of human society according to divine law: “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 antipope’s message, by contrast, operates entirely within the framework of secular humanitarianism. There is no mention of Christ the King, no mention of the Church’s divine mandate to teach, govern, and sanctify, no mention of the eternal destiny of souls. The “care” spoken of is purely naturalistic — a “culture of prevention” modeled on corporate risk management.
“Forming Authentic Relationships”: The Language of the New Advent
The theme chosen for this meeting — “Forming Authentic Relationships” — is itself revelatory. This is the therapeutic, relational language that has infected the conciliar sect since the 1960s, replacing the Catholic vocabulary of virtue, obedience, sacrifice, and holiness. The Church before 1958 spoke of the formation of souls in the image of Christ, of the practice of the theological virtues, of the mortification of the flesh and its concupiscences. The conciliar sect speaks of “authentic relationships” — a phrase that, in its studied vagueness, means everything and nothing, and which serves precisely to avoid any concrete reference to the moral law.
Leo XIV’s message defines respect as “a demanding form of charity, expressed in safeguarding others without possessing them, accompanying them without dominating them, and serving them without humiliating them.” This tripartite formulation — “safeguarding without possessing, accompanying without dominating, serving without humiliating” — is pure bureaucratic abstraction. Where is the definition of charity from St. Thomas Aquinas: “to will the good of the other” (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 23, a. 1)? Where is the recognition that the true good of the minor or vulnerable adult is their salvation, not merely their psychological comfort? Where is the acknowledgment that authority in the Church is not “domination” but the sacred deposit entrusted by Christ to Peter and his successors — “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep” (John 21:15-17) — and that this authority is exercised not for the benefit of the shepherd but for the eternal good of the flock?
The antipope’s language systematically evacuates authority of its supernatural character. “Accompanying without dominating” is a phrase that, in practice, means the abdication of the Church’s duty to command, to forbid, to judge, and to punish — all in the name of a false “respect” for human autonomy that Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus of Errors as the error that “the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism” (Proposition 79).
The Omission of the Sacramental Remedy
The gravest silence in this entire message concerns the only true remedy for the scourge of sexual abuse and all sin: the sacramental life of the Church. The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the sacrament of Confession, the grace of the Holy Spirit received in Confirmation, the sanctification of family life through the sacrament of Matrimony — none of these are mentioned. The “culture of prevention” Leo XIV advocates is a purely human culture, built on “vigilance over contexts” and “transparency of behavior” — that is, on surveillance, reporting procedures, and institutional accountability mechanisms borrowed directly from secular corporate governance.
This is the abomination of desolation speaking through the chair of Peter. The true Church has always taught that the prevention of sin and the protection of the innocent flow primarily from the supernatural life of grace. As St. Pius X taught in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, the modernists’ fundamental error is the denial of the supernatural order and its reduction to natural, psychological, and social phenomena. The conciliar sect’s entire approach to the abuse crisis — from John Paul II’s “papacy” through Bergoglio’s “reign” to Leo XIV’s message — has been characterized by this same naturalistic reduction: more rules, more procedures, more “safeguarding officers,” more “listening sessions” — and never, ever, a return to the sacramental life as the primary means of sanctification and protection.
Consider what a true successor of Peter would say to a meeting on the protection of minors: he would begin with the reality of original sin and the concupiscence that afflicts fallen human nature. He would insist on the necessity of frequent Confession and Holy Communion for all who work with youth. He would demand the restoration of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in its traditional form, which teaches the faithful the reality of sin, the wrath of God, and the propitiatory nature of Christ’s sacrifice. He would speak of the necessity of mortification, of custody of the eyes, of the flight from occasions of sin. He would remind bishops and priests that their first duty is the sanctification of souls, not the management of institutional reputation. None of this is present in Leo XIV’s message. The omission is not accidental; it is the inevitable fruit of a system that has lost the faith.
The “Wounds” of Victims Without the Balm of Redemptive Suffering
Leo XIV states that the wounds of those who have suffered abuse “call for sincere closeness, humble listening, and perseverance in seeking what is right and possible for repair.” The language of “wounds” and “repair” is therapeutic, not theological. Where is the teaching of the Church on the redemptive value of suffering? Where is the doctrine that suffering, united to the Cross of Christ, can become a means of sanctification and a source of grace for the sufferer and for the entire Church? Where is the acknowledgment that true healing comes not from “humble listening” by a committee, but from the grace of God received through prayer, sacrifice, and the sacraments?
The antipope’s message reduces the victim to a patient and the Church to a therapist. This is the exact inversion of the Catholic understanding, in which the victim is a soul redeemed by the Precious Blood of Christ and the Church is the dispenser of the mysteries of God (1 Corinthians 4:1). The conciliar sect has no supernatural medicine to offer; it can only offer the bandage of psychological counseling and the aspirin of institutional reform. As Pius XI lamented in Quas Primas, “the entire human society had to be shaken, because it lacked a stable and strong foundation” — and that foundation is Christ and His Church, not a “culture of prevention.”
The Systemic Apostasy Behind the Rhetoric
This message must be understood not as an isolated statement but as a symptom of the systemic apostasy that has consumed the structures occupying the Vatican since the death of Pius XII. The abuse crisis itself — the scale of it, the systematic cover-up, the transfer of predators from diocese to diocese — is not a failure of the conciliar system but one of its fruits. The same council that gutted the seminary system, replaced ascetic formation with psychological “formation,” introduced the “theology of the body” as a substitute for the virtue of chastity, and opened the Church to the spirit of the world is the same council that produced the conditions in which predators could flourish.
Leo XIV’s message does not — and cannot — address this root cause, because to do so would require acknowledging that the conciliar revolution itself is the disease. The antipope calls for “evangelical conversion” while presiding over a system that has emptied the Gospel of its supernatural content. He calls for “transparency” while the structures he leads continue to resist full disclosure of abuse files. He calls for “communities in which the most fragile are welcomed, protected, and loved” while the conciar sect continues to welcome, protect, and promote men who have abandoned the faith — men like Cardinal Zuppi himself, whose “synodal” vision of the Church is indistinguishable from liberal Protestantism.
The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX condemned the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80). Leo XIV’s message is precisely such a reconciliation — a “safeguarding” program that adopts the language, the methods, and the assumptions of secular modernity while retaining the appearance of Catholic concern. It is the hermeneutics of continuity applied to institutional crisis management: the forms of Catholic discourse are preserved while their content is hollowed out and replaced with the spirit of the world.
Conclusion: The Voice of the Abomination
The message of Leo XIV to the Italian Bishops’ Conference is not a Catholic document. It is a piece of institutional public relations dressed in the borrowed garments of Christian language. It omits sin, grace, the sacraments, the Last Judgment, the Kingship of Christ, and the supernatural mission of the Church. It substitutes therapeutic jargon for theological precision, bureaucratic procedure for sacramental life, and secular humanitarianism for the charity of Christ. It is the voice of the abomination of desolation — a structure that occupies the Vatican, that speaks in the name of the Church, and that leads souls not to the narrow gate of salvation but to the broad road of naturalistic self-improvement.
The true Church endures — in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith, who attend the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in its immemorial form, who confess their sins to validly ordained priests, and who place their trust not in “cultures of prevention” but in the infinite merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the King whose reign shall have no end.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV Calls for the ‘Safeguarding’ and ‘Accompanying’ of Minors and Vulnerable Adults (ncregister.com)
Date: 17.04.2026