The bishops of the Canary Islands, Eloy Santiago of Tenerife and José Mazuelos of the Diocese of Canary Islands, have expressed their feeling of “powerlessness” in the face of mass migration from Africa, as reported by EWTN News (April 22, 2026). Their statements, made in anticipation of the visit of the antipope Leo XIV to the archipelago in June, reveal the complete theological and spiritual bankruptcy of the conciliar sect: a Church that has abandoned its divine mission of souls’ salvation to become a humanitarian NGO, incapable of distinguishing between charity and the suicidal dissolution of Christian civilization.
The Neo-Church’s Powerlessness: When “Welcoming” Replaces the Kingship of Christ
A “Powerless” Church That Has Abdicated Its Divine Mandate
Bishop Eloy Santiago lamented that the Canary Islands, as “Europe’s southern frontier,” are overwhelmed by immigration from Africa, and that “we lack the human and economic resources to address this dramatic reality. We feel powerless in the face of this deadly Atlantic route.” Bishop José Mazuelos added that the visit of Leo XIV would “shed light on the matter, to see if it is possible to put an end to the Atlantic route,” while clarifying that the visit is “pastoral in nature” and not intended to “use the issue of migration as a stick to politically beat one side or the other.” Mazuelos further suggested that critics of the Church’s migration work should be placed on a cayuco — a flat-bottomed wooden boat — “spending five days in the Atlantic, day and night, without food so that they can see when [the migrants] get here what it is that we’re doing.”
This language is revealing. When a bishop suggests that critics of mass migration should be subjected to the same suffering as migrants, he has ceased to speak as a shepherd of souls and has become a political activist. The true Church, founded by Christ as a societas perfecta — a perfect society — endowed with all the means necessary for its divine mission, has never described itself as “powerless.” Powerlessness is the inevitable consequence of a Church that has abandoned the supernatural order and reduced itself to the dimensions of a humanitarian organization.
Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), proclaimed with apostolic authority: “The Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men… 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.” Christ the King 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. The bishops of the Canary Islands, by contrast, speak not of Christ’s kingship but of “human and economic resources” — the language of the world, not of the Church.
The Omission of the Supernatural: A Church Without a Soul
What is most striking in these statements is the total absence of any supernatural perspective. Not once do the bishops speak of the eternal salvation of souls, of the necessity of baptism, of the dangers of indifferentism, or of the obligation of states to govern according to divine law. The “dramatic reality” is described exclusively in naturalistic terms: resources, logistics, development aid, work papers. Caya Suárez of Caritas even reduced the papal visit to “a call to prayer for the victims who have lost their lives on the Atlantic route” — as if the death of a body were the ultimate tragedy, rather than the death of a soul in mortal sin.
This silence about the supernatural is not accidental. It is the defining characteristic of Modernism, which Pius X condemned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) as “the synthesis of all heresies.” The Modernist, Pius X taught, “puts the foundation of religious philosophy in that doctrine which is commonly called Agnosticism… Hence, God can never be the direct object of science, and, as regards history, He must not be considered as an historical subject.” The bishops of the Canary Islands have perfectly internalized this agnosticism: God is absent from their analysis, and the Church’s mission is reduced to social work.
The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX (1864) condemned precisely this naturalistic reduction of the Church’s mission. Proposition 40 declared: “The teaching of the Catholic Church is hostile to the well-being and interests of society” — an error that the post-conciliar sect has inverted into its own operating principle. Proposition 77 went further: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.” The bishops’ call for “alternative channels” for migrants to come and work is a practical application of this condemned proposition: the dissolution of Catholic nations into religiously indifferent multicultural societies.
The False “Welcoming” That Destroys Both Migrants and Host Nations
Bishop Mazuelos spoke of “seeking ways for migrants to come to work through alternative channels,” citing the example of Spaniards who “legally emigrated to central European countries with their proper work papers” in the second half of the 20th century. He acknowledged this approach is “a bit idealistic.” Indeed it is — not because of logistical difficulties, but because it ignores the fundamental question: What is the purpose of a Catholic nation if not to be a Catholic nation?
The true Church has always taught that the state has a duty to protect its people and to order society toward the common good, which includes the spiritual good of its citizens. Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei (1885), taught: “The Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, each the highest in its own kind, each fixed within certain limits, and within those limits defined by its own nature and special object.” The state is not a mere administrative machine for processing human flows; it is a moral community ordered toward God.
When the bishops speak of “welcoming, protecting, and integrating” migrants without any reference to the religious and moral conditions necessary for true integration, they promote a false charity that is, in reality, a form of cruelty — both to the migrants, who are abandoned to the spiritual darkness of a post-Christian Europe, and to the host nations, whose Christian identity is systematically dissolved. This is not charity; it is the abdication of pastoral responsibility.
Moreover, the bishops’ suggestion that development aid should be given to countries of origin “to eliminate the causes that lead so many to leave their homes,” while simultaneously calling for “cracking down on the mafias,” reveals a naive naturalism that ignores the deeper spiritual causes of social disintegration. The true Church has always known that the root cause of all social evils is sin — original and actual — and that no amount of development aid can substitute for the preaching of the Gospel and the conversion of nations to Christ the King.
The Antipope’s Visit: A Stage in the Conciliar Apostasy
The article notes that the Canary Islands visit was originally desired by the antipope Francis and will now be fulfilled by his successor, Leo XIV. The visit is described as “pastoral in nature” and will include “personal testimonies” of migrants, as “one of the Catholic Church’s priorities is to ‘put a human face’ on the reality of migrants.” Bishop Mazuelos expressed his conviction that “personal testimonies will be shared during at least one of the gatherings.”
This is the religion of the conciliar sect: not the adoration of God, not the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass for the salvation of souls, but “personal testimonies” — the cult of subjective human experience that Pius X identified as the very essence of Modernism. Proposition 22 of Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907) condemned the proposition that “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.” The “human face” of migration has replaced the divine face of Christ in the pastoral vision of these bishops.
The island of El Hierro, where 25,000 migrants arrived last year to a local population of 9,000, is described as a place where “this reality has become most palpable.” But the reality that is truly palpable is the collapse of Christian civilization under the weight of a Church that has lost the faith. When a bishop says that “the people of El Hierro are eagerly anticipating” the possibility of a visit from the antipope, we see the tragic spectacle of souls who have been taught to place their hope in a human institution rather than in God.
The Theological Bankruptcy of the Conciliar Sect
The statements of the Canary Islands bishops are not isolated incidents; they are the logical and inevitable fruit of the conciliar revolution. Since the antipope John XXIII convoked the Second Vatican Council — an act of usurpation by a manifest heretic who, according to the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine, “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” — the structures occupying the Vatican have pursued a consistent program of reducing the Church to a naturalistic humanitarian organization.
The Defense of Sedevacantism file reminds us that “a manifest heretic cannot be Pope” and that “heretics are already outside the Church before excommunication and deprived of all jurisdiction. They have indeed been condemned by their own judgment, as the Apostle teaches (Titus 3:10-11).” The bishops who serve in communion with the antipopes are not true bishops of the Catholic Church but functionaries of a paramasonic structure that has occupied the Vatican since 1958.
Their “powerlessness” is not a sign of humility but of apostasy. The true Church, which endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith and are led by bishops with valid sacraments, has never been powerless — because its power comes not from “human and economic resources” but from Christ Himself, who promised: “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Matt. 28:20). The conciliar sect, having abandoned Christ’s doctrine, His sacraments, and His Mass, finds itself powerless — because it has nothing left but the world, and the world is passing away.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, warned: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed.” The bishops of the Canary Islands have removed Christ from their analysis of migration, replacing Him with humanitarian sentimentality. The result is precisely what Pius XI predicted: a Church that feels “powerless” because it has no foundation but itself.
The only true response to the migration crisis — as to all crises — is the restoration of the Social Kingship of Christ, the preaching of the Gospel to all nations, and the conversion of individuals and societies to the Catholic faith. Until the structures occupying the Vatican return to this immutable truth, their “pastoral” visits and “personal testimonies” will remain what they are: the empty rituals of a dying counterfeit church, powerless to save either the living or the dead.
Source:
Canary Islands bishop on migration: ‘We feel powerless’ (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 22.04.2026