EWTN News reports on a social media spat between Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski concerning an IDF soldier filmed destroying a statue of Jesus Christ in the southern Lebanese Christian village of Debel. The article also covers: South Korea’s Catholic population surpassing 6 million; the preservation of a Jesus mosaic by Jewish-Hungarian refugee George Mayer-Marton; a report on Syrian protest violations; the death of Italian missionary Fr. Natalino Belingheri in Indonesia; Belarusian Catholic Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski’s plea for Church intervention for political prisoners; and the funeral of four Thai teenagers, including two seminarians, killed in a car accident.
A Broken Statue and a Broken World: The Diplomatic Circus Overshadows the Real War
The spectacle of two foreign ministers squabbling on social media over a destroyed statue of Our Lord Jesus Christ is a fitting metaphor for the modern world’s approach to sacred things: outrage without repentance, condemnation without conversion, and diplomacy devoid of any supernatural framework. While Gideon Sa’ar calls the destruction “grave and disgraceful” and Radosław Sikorski demands punishment, neither man — nor the article itself — addresses the fundamental question: why does Christ continue to be crucified, not merely in stone, but in the souls of men who have rejected His kingship over nations?
The Idol of National Sovereignty Replaces Christ the King
Sa’ar’s defense of the IDF as “a professional and ethical army” and his warning about “irresponsible statements that can ultimately lead to dangerous consequences” reveals the modernist mindset that places national military institutions above moral accountability. This is precisely the error condemned by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas: “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.” The soldier who destroyed the statue acted within a system that, like all modern states, operates on the principle of national sovereignty divorced from divine law. That Sa’ar expresses mere regret rather than ordering the soldier’s court-martial for sacrilege demonstrates that Israel, like all nations since the French Revolution, has effectively dethroned Christ.
Sikorski’s response, while superficially more sympathetic, is equally bankrupt. His accusation that “IDF soldiers themselves admit to war crimes” and that they “killed not only civilian Palestinians but even their own hostages” reduces the sacred image of Christ to a political bargaining chip in the endless cycle of Middle Eastern geopolitics. Neither minister invokes the Name of Christ as King; neither calls for reparation to the afflicted Christian community in Debel; neither acknowledges that the destruction of a sacred image is an offense against the Second Commandment requiring sacramental confession and public penance. The entire exchange is conducted in the register of secular diplomacy — damage control, reputation management, political posturing — while the Crucified One is treated as a cultural artifact rather than the Living God.
The Article’s Deafening Silence on the State of the Church
EWTN News, a self-described Catholic outlet, reports this incident without a single reference to the teaching of the Church on sacred images, the virtue of religion, or the duty of Catholic states to protect the faith. The Council of Trent, Session XXV, explicitly decreed that “the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other saints are to be placed and retained especially in the churches, and due honor and veneration is to be given them.” The destruction of a statue of Our Lord is not merely vandalism; it is an act of sacrilege that, in a properly ordered Catholic society, would be punished as a crime against divine worship.
Yet the article treats this as a diplomatic incident rather than a spiritual catastrophe. This is symptomatic of the post-conciliar Church’s systematic evacuation of supernatural content from its reporting. Where a Catholic newspaper of the 19th century would have called for prayers of reparation, expiatory Holy Hours, and perhaps even a public act of consecration to the Sacred Heart, EWTN News offers only the sterile language of international relations. This is the abomination of desolation: not the destruction of statues, but the destruction of the Catholic mind that no longer recognizes sacrilege for what it is.
South Korea’s “Catholic” Growth: Numbers Without Souls
The report that South Korea’s Catholic population has surpassed 6 million is presented as unqualified good news. But the article provides no information on the state of faith among these 6 million. Are they receiving the true sacraments? Do they attend the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, or the Protestantized Novus Ordo service? Do they believe in transubstantiation, the Real Presence, the necessity of Catholic baptism for salvation? The conciliar sect has long since abandoned the distinction between the true Church and false religions, as condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 17: “Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ” — condemned).
Without these distinctions, the statistic is meaningless — or worse, deceptive. A population of 6 million “Catholics” who attend modernist services, receive invalid sacraments, and are taught the errors of ecumenism and religious liberty is not a triumph of the faith but a triumph of the very indifferentism that the pre-conciliar Magisterium condemned. As St. Pius X warned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu, Proposition 65: “Contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.” The growth of the conciliar sect in South Korea is not evangelization; it is the multiplication of sheep without a shepherd, led by wolves in sheep’s clothing.
The Mayer-Marton Mosaic: Art Preserved, Faith Abandoned
The preservation of George Mayer-Marton’s mosaic at Holy Rosary Church in Manchester is presented as a cultural heritage victory. But the article notes that the church itself is being converted into “an arts and culture center.” This is the fate of countless Catholic churches in the post-conciliar era: stripped of their sacred purpose, desacralized, and repurposed for secular use. The mosaic of Christ on the cross will be preserved as art — as an aesthetic object — while the worship of Christ as God is abandoned. This is the ultimate modernist reduction: the Creator of the universe reduced to a museum piece, admired for His artistic value while His divine claims are ignored.
Mayer-Marton, a Jewish refugee from Nazism, created this work in 1955 — the very year before the conciliar revolution began its assault on the Church. That his mosaic survives while the church that housed it is converted into a cultural center is a bitter irony: the art of the Crucified endures, but the faith that gave it meaning has been extinguished by the very institution that should have preserved it.
Syria, Belarus, Thailand: Suffering Without Supernatural Hope
The remaining items in the roundup — the Syrian protest report, Bialiatski’s plea for Belarusian political prisoners, and the Thai seminarians’ deaths — are reported in the same naturalistic register. The Syrian report calls for “independent investigations” and “protections for journalists” — the language of secular human rights, not of Catholic social teaching. Bialiatski asks “Western Church leaders and Vatican diplomats” to intervene, apparently unaware that the conciliar sect’s diplomats are themselves agents of the very forces oppressing the faithful. The Thai seminarians’ funeral is described in terms of community grief and lost potential, but there is no mention of the communion of suffrages, the efficacy of prayers for the dead, or the hope of the resurrection.
In each case, the article’s silence on supernatural realities is the gravest accusation. The conciliar sect has so thoroughly naturalized the faith that its own news service cannot distinguish between a Catholic worldview and a secular humanitarian one. This is the fruit of the very Modernism condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis: the reduction of the supernatural to the natural, of grace to psychology, of the Church to a humanitarian organization.
Conclusion: The World Weeps Over Stone While Souls Perish
The destroyed statue in Debel is a symbol of our age: Christ is broken, and the world argues about who is to blame while refusing to acknowledge that He is Lord. The diplomats spar on social media; the “Catholic” news service reports without faith; the churches are converted into museums; the seminarians die and are mourned without the full consolation of the faith. But Christ is not a statue, nor a mosaic, nor a cultural artifact. He is the King of kings and Lord of lords, and His kingdom — the true Church, the Catholic Church — endures in the faithful who profess the integral faith, celebrate the Most Holy Sacrifice, and refuse the lies of Modernism.
Let us pray for the Christians of Lebanon, for the conversion of Israel and all nations, for the repose of the souls of the Thai seminarians, for the persecuted faithful of Belarus, and for the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King — not in diplomatic communiqués, but in the hearts of men and the laws of states. Adveniat regnum tuum.
Source:
Israeli, Polish foreign ministers spar on X about destroyed Jesus statue (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 25.04.2026