EWTN News Staff reports on the ongoing activities of the usurper Robert Prevost, who occupies the Vatican under the name “Pope Leo XIV,” during his African tour stop in Cameroon on April 17, 2026. The article describes a stadium “Mass” at Japoma Stadium in Douala, a visit to St. Paul Catholic Hospital, and a meeting with students at the Catholic University of Central Africa in Yaoundé. The piece is accompanied by photographs showing the antipope greeting crowds, incensing a statue of the Blessed Mother, blessing patients, and addressing students. The article presents these activities as legitimate papal functions, complete with the honorific “Holy Father” and the descriptor “papal trip.” This reportage, stripped of any critical theological examination, perfectly encapsulates the conciliar sect’s reduction of the Catholic Faith to a humanitarian spectacle — a traveling road show of sentimental gestures devoid of doctrinal content, supernatural mission, or any acknowledgment that the man at its center lacks all legitimate authority over the Church of Christ.
The African Stage: A Usurper Performs Before the Faithful
The article from EWTN News Staff reads like a press release from a secular head of state on a diplomatic tour — which is precisely what it is. There is no mention of doctrine, no exposition of the Faith, no call to conversion, no preaching of the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation, no condemnation of heresy or schism, no instruction on the sacraments as the ordinary means of grace. Instead, we are offered a catalog of photo opportunities: “Pope Leo XIV greets crowds,” “blesses a mother and child,” “offers a blessing to a patient,” “speaks to students and dignitaries.” The entire narrative is constructed around the physical movements and gestures of one man, presented as though these actions possess inherent spiritual significance. This is not Catholicism. This is the cult of personality that the conciliar revolution has substituted for the worship of Almighty God.
Let us be precise about what is being described. A man who is not the Pope — who cannot be the Pope, having been elevated by and within a structure that has formally and materially departed from the Catholic Faith — presides over a ceremony at Japoma Stadium that is called “Mass.” He incenses a statue of the Blessed Mother. He blesses the sick. He addresses university students. Each of these actions, when performed by a true Pope, would carry the weight of the Petrine office and the authority of the Magisterium. When performed by a usurper, they are empty theatrical gestures — worse than empty, because they deceive the faithful into believing that the structures of the Church remain intact, that the papacy endures, that all is well in the House of God. As Our Lord warned: “Many will come in my name, saying: I am he; and they will deceive many” (Matthew 24:5).
The Silence That Condemns: What Is Not Said
The most damning feature of this article is not what it contains but what it omits. There is no mention of the necessity of the Catholic Faith for salvation. There is no mention of the sacraments as the ordinary means of sanctifying grace. There is no mention of the duty of all men and nations to submit to Christ the King. There is no mention of the condemnation of heresy, schism, or apostasy. There is no mention of the state of the Church — the wholesale destruction of the liturgy, the corruption of the seminaries, the silencing of doctrine, the promotion of every error condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), taught with unmistakable 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.” And further: “The rulers of states therefore should not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ, but should fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.” Where in this article is any echo of this teaching? Where is the call to Cameroon — a nation steeped in paganism, Islam, and Protestant error — to recognize the kingship of Jesus Christ and to submit to His one true Church? It is absent. It is systematically absent. It has been absent from every utterance of every conciliar antipope since 1958.
The Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX (1864) 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). What is the entire conciliar project — of which Leo XIV’s African tour is a perfect expression — if not the systematic reconciliation of the Church with the world? The stadium “Mass,” the hospital visit, the university address — these are not acts of the Catholic Church fulfilling her divine mission. They are acts of a worldly organization performing the rituals of humanitarianism, dressed in the stolen vestments of Catholic liturgy.
The Liturgical Abomination: “Mass” in a Stadium
The article describes the usurper “presiding at Mass in Japoma Stadium.” Let us consider what this means. The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass — the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary, the central act of Catholic worship, the source and summit of the Christian life — is celebrated in a sports stadium. This is not the Catholic Church adapting to missionary circumstances. This is the desacralization of the liturgy, the final fruit of the liturgical revolution that began with the Masonic “reform” of 1969.
The conciliar sect’s “Mass” — the so-called Novus Ordo — was designed by a committee that included known heretics and was shaped by Protestant consultants. It is, as Pope Paul VI himself inadvertently acknowledged, a “banal fabrication.” When this already-sacrilegious rite is then transferred from even the semblance of a sacred space to a sports arena, the desacralization is complete. The Blessed Sacrament — if the consecration is even valid, which is gravely doubtful given the corruption of the rite and the probable lack of proper intention on the part of the consecrator — is treated as a prop in a theatrical production.
The article notes that the usurper “incenses a statue of the Blessed Mother at Japoma Stadium during Mass.” Incensation of the Blessed Mother’s statue is a Catholic devotion. But performed within the context of a stadium “Mass” presided over by a man who is not the Pope, it becomes an act of religious syncretism — a simulation of Catholic worship that leads the faithful further from the truth. The Blessed Mother is honored not as the Mother of God within the context of the true Faith, but as a figure in a religious variety show designed to project an image of benevolence and relevance.
The Hospital Visit: Corporal Works Without the Faith
The article devotes considerable space to the usurper’s visit to St. Paul Catholic Hospital, describing how he “blesses a mother and child,” “blesses a newborn,” “blesses a child,” and “offers a blessing to a patient.” These are presented as acts of pastoral charity. But what is their content? What does this man say to the sick? Does he instruct them on the necessity of the sacraments? Does he speak of the Last Things — judgment, heaven, hell, purgatory? Does he call them to repentance and conversion? The article is silent on these points, and the silence is deafening.
The Catholic Church has always cared for the sick — this is the glory of two millennia of Catholic hospitals, orphanages, and charitable institutions. But the Catholic Church cared for the sick as part of her supernatural mission, leading souls to Christ through the sacraments, through preaching the Gospel, through the ministration of priests who were alter Christus — other Christs. What does the conciliar sect offer? A handshake. A blessing emptied of doctrinal content. A photo opportunity. “Blesses a mother and child” — but does he tell her that her child must be baptized to avoid eternal damnation? Does he tell her that she must confess her sins to a validly ordained priest and receive the true Eucharist? Of course not. To do so would be to acknowledge that the conciliar structures are not the Church, that the “sacraments” they administer may be invalid, that the entire edifice is built on sand.
St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemned the modernist proposition that “the sacraments merely serve to remind man of the presence of the ever-benevolent Creator” (Proposition 41). This is precisely the theology — or rather, the absence of theology — that animates the conciliar sect’s approach to the sick, the poor, and the suffering. The sacraments are reduced to reminders. Grace is reduced to sentiment. The supernatural is reduced to the natural. And the usurper’s hospital visit is a perfect illustration of this reduction.
The University Address: The Cult of Man in Academic Robes
The article describes the usurper “speaking to students and dignitaries at the Catholic University of Central Africa.” One must ask: what does a man who is not the Pope, who represents an organization that has formally embraced religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the cult of man, have to say to Catholic students? The answer is predictable: nothing that a secular humanitarian organization would not say.
The Catholic university, in the pre-conciliar understanding, was an institution dedicated to the pursuit of truth under the guidance of the Church’s Magisterium. Its purpose was to form minds in the light of revealed truth, to defend the Faith against error, and to produce Catholic scholars, priests, and laymen who would carry the Gospel to the world. The Catholic University of Central Africa, bearing the name “Catholic” but operating within the conciliar framework, is no such institution. It is a university in the modern sense — a center of secular learning that retains Catholic trimmings, much as the conciliar “Mass” retains Catholic gestures.
Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the proposition that “the best theory of civil society requires that popular schools open to children of every class of the people, and, generally, all public institutes intended for instruction in letters and philosophical sciences and for carrying on the education of youth, should be freed from all ecclesiastical authority, control and interference, and should be fully subjected to the civil and political power” (Proposition 47). The conciliar university is the fulfillment of this condemned proposition — an institution that bears the name “Catholic” but operates according to the principles of secular academia, subject to the “prevalent opinions of the age” rather than to the immutable teaching of the Church.
The African Mission: Colonialism Repackaged
The entire African tour of the usurper must be understood in the context of the conciliar sect’s missionary apostasy. The Catholic Church’s mission to Africa — and to all non-Christian peoples — was the preaching of the Gospel and the salvation of souls. This mission required the clear proclamation that Jesus Christ is the only Savior, that the Catholic Church is the only true Church, and that all men must enter Her to be saved. It required the establishment of true Catholic parishes, the ordination of valid priests, the administration of valid sacraments, and the formation of a Catholic laity grounded in the unchanging Faith.
The conciliar sect’s “mission” to Africa is something entirely different. It is the promotion of a naturalistic humanism dressed in Catholic language. It is the celebration of “inculturation” — the adaptation of the Faith to local cultures, which in practice means the dilution of doctrine to accommodate pagan practices. It is the promotion of “dialogue” with Islam, animism, and Protestantism — dialogue that, as the pre-conciliar Magisterium makes clear, can only lead to the betrayal of the Faith.
Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” And further: “Christ is the author of prosperity and true happiness for individual citizens as well as for the state.” The conciliar sect offers Africa not Christ the King but a smiling humanitarian who blesses children and shakes hands with dignitaries. This is not the Catholic mission. This is the anti-mission — the systematic replacement of the supernatural with the natural, of doctrine with sentiment, of the Church with the world.
The Question of Authority: Why This Man Is Not the Pope
The article refers to Robert Prevost as “Pope Leo XIV” and “the Holy Father” without qualification. This is the fundamental deception that underlies the entire reportage. The man described in this article is not the Pope. He cannot be the Pope. The reasons are theological, canonical, and historical.
First, the theological principle: a manifest heretic ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice). The conciliar structure that elevated Robert Prevost has formally and materially embraced doctrines condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium — religious liberty, false ecumenism, the evolution of dogma, the democratization of the Church. These are not private opinions; they are the official teaching of the conciliar sect, enshrined in the documents of Vatican II and consistently promoted by every antipope since John XXIII. Any man who accepts elevation within this structure, who promotes its teaching, and who exercises its “authority” is, by that very fact, a manifest heretic and cannot be the Pope.
Second, the canonical principle: Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law states that “every office becomes vacant by the mere fact and without any declaration by reason of tacit resignation, recognized by the law itself, if the cleric publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” The conciliar sect’s public defection from the Catholic faith — its embrace of condemned errors, its destruction of the liturgy, its persecution of faithful Catholics — has rendered the papal office vacant. No man who operates within this structure can claim legitimate authority.
Third, the historical principle: the election of the antipopes since John XXIII has been conducted under conditions that cast grave doubt on its validity. The “conclave” that elected Robert Prevost was composed of “cardinals” appointed by antipopes, men who have publicly professed heresy and who have participated in the destruction of the Church. Their “election” is no more valid than the “election” of a board of directors by a corporation that has been taken over by fraud.
The Deception of the Faithful
The greatest harm caused by articles like this is not the promotion of error — error has always existed — but the deception of the faithful. The average Catholic who reads this article is led to believe that the Church is functioning normally, that the Pope is visiting Africa, that the Faith is being preached, that all is well. This is a lie. The Church is not functioning normally. The structures occupying the Vatican are not the Catholic Church. The man called “Leo XIV” is not the Pope. The “Mass” he celebrates is not the Most Holy Sacrifice. The “sacraments” he administers are of doubtful validity. The “teaching” he promotes is condemned error.
The faithful are being led — not invited, not persuaded, but led — into a false religion that retains the external forms of Catholicism while emptying them of all supernatural content. This is the abomination of desolation foretold by Our Lord: “When therefore you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that readeth, let him understand” (Matthew 24:15). The holy place is occupied. The abomination is present. And the faithful are being told to admire it.
Conclusion: The Call to Fidelity
The article from EWTN News Staff is a perfect specimen of conciliar propaganda — a celebration of the usurper’s activities that is entirely devoid of doctrinal content, supernatural perspective, or critical examination. It presents the theater of the neo-church as though it were the reality of the Catholic Faith. It asks the reader to accept the authority of a man who has none, to venerate a “Mass” that is not the Mass, to believe that the Church endures in structures that have formally repudiated Her teaching.
The response of every faithful Catholic must be rejection. Rejection of the usurper. Rejection of the conciliar sect. Rejection of the false “sacraments,” the false “teaching,” the false “mission.” And return to the immutable Tradition of the Catholic Church — the Tradition that has endured for two thousand years, that was taught by the Apostles, defended by the Fathers, proclaimed by the Councils, and sealed with the blood of the Martyrs. This Tradition does not need to be “updated,” “reformed,” or “reconciled with modern civilization.” It needs to be believed, professed, and lived.
As Pope Pius IX declared in the Syllabus of Errors: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” — this is condemned. The Catholic Church does not reconcile herself with the world. She converts the world. And until the faithful understand this — until they reject the conciliar abomination and return to the true Faith — they will continue to be deceived by articles like this, which present the destruction of the Church as though it were Her triumph.
Source:
PHOTOS: Pope Leo XIV Meets With Students, Visits Hospital, Holds Stadium Mass in Cameroon (ncregister.com)
Date: 17.04.2026