VaticanNews portal reports on initiatives in Bahrain marking the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi. The Embassy of Italy in Manama, in collaboration with “This is Bahrain,” announced a program underscoring “a commitment to dialogue, coexistence, and respect for diversity.” The article highlights the meeting between St. Francis and the Sultan of Egypt, Al-Kamil, in 1219 as a model for “peace and dialogue,” and links this to the figure of Sheikh Isa bin Ali Al Kabir, praising their shared “legacy” of “compassion, openness, and the acceptance of diversity.” The program includes an interreligious conference, a drawing competition, and a concert titled “Canticle of the Creatures.”
The article presents St. Francis of Assisi primarily as a universal icon of “dialogue, coexistence, and respect for diversity,” using his encounter with the Sultan Al-Kamil as a historical precedent for modern interreligious initiatives. This framing, however, systematically distorts the saint’s true mission and the nature of his encounter with the Sultan, reducing a profound act of Catholic witness and evangelization to a bland, naturalistic plea for “peace” and “understanding.” The entire program, with its emphasis on “shared heritage” and “acceptance of diversity,” reflects the conciliar sect’s fundamental error: the elevation of natural virtues and human fraternity above the supernatural order and the exclusive salvific mission of the Catholic Church.
The Distortion of St. Francis’s Mission: From Evangelizer to Diplomat of “Dialogue”
The article claims St. Francis is “remembered worldwide as a man of peace and dialogue, who gave witness to respect for differences through his historic encounter with the Sultan of Egypt in 1219.” This characterization is a profound misrepresentation. St. Francis’s journey to meet Sultan Al-Kamil was not an exercise in “dialogue” or “respect for differences” in the modern, relativistic sense. It was an act of supreme missionary zeal, driven by an ardent desire to convert the Sultan and his people to the Catholic Faith, and if necessary, to achieve martyrdom for Christ.
As St. Bonaventure, his contemporary and biographer, recounts in the “Major Life of St. Francis” (Chapter 9), Francis, moved by the Holy Spirit, sought to go to the Saracens “to preach penance and the Gospel of Christ.” He declared to the Sultan, “I am sent by the Most High God to show you and your people the way of salvation.” His intent was not to find “common ground” or “accept diversity,” but to proclaim the unique truth of Christ and the necessity of baptism for salvation. The article’s portrayal reduces a saint’s heroic act of faith to a mere historical anecdote supporting the conciliar agenda of interreligious dialogue, which the Syllabus of Errors condemns as the “pest of indifferentism” (Proposition 79).
The Sultan Encounter: Witness, Not “Coexistence”
The article’s framing of the encounter as a model for “coexistence” and “respect for diversity” completely inverts its true meaning. St. Francis did not go to the Sultan to “coexist” or to “respect” Islam as a valid path to God. He went to preach Christ Crucified, knowing full well the mortal danger. His “respect” was for the Sultan’s person, as a human being, but his absolute, unwavering respect was for the Truth of God. He sought to convert, not to compromise.
The very notion that St. Francis’s encounter serves as a precedent for modern interreligious dialogue, where all religions are implicitly treated as equally valid paths to God, is a direct contradiction of Catholic dogma. The Church has always taught, as stated in the Syllabus of Errors, that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church” is an error (Proposition 18). This principle extends a fortiori to non-Christian religions like Islam. To suggest that St. Francis’s mission was about anything other than the conversion of souls to the one true Faith is to blaspheme his memory and distort history for ideological purposes.
The Conciliar Agenda: “Shared Heritage” and the Denial of Exclusive Truth
The article’s statement that “both figures share a common legacy: their lives remind us that true strength lies in compassion, openness, and the acceptance of diversity” is a hallmark of modernist thought. It substitutes supernatural charity and the zeal for souls with naturalistic virtues like “compassion” and “openness,” detached from the imperative of conversion and the defense of objective truth. This “acceptance of diversity” is precisely the religious indifferentism condemned by Pope Pius IX, who warned against the error that “man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (Syllabus of Errors, Proposition 16).
By linking St. Francis to Sheikh Isa Al Kabir, who “opened the doors to diverse communities,” the article implicitly promotes the idea that the Catholic Faith is merely one among many “diverse” paths, all contributing to a generic “coexistence.” This is the very essence of the “ecumenism project” and “religious relativism” that the conciliar sect has embraced, directly contradicting the Church’s constant teaching that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), as Pope Pius XI reiterated in Quas Primas. The “shared heritage” touted is not one of faith, but of a naturalistic humanism that ultimately denies the supernatural mission of the Church.
The “Economy” and “Ecology” of St. Francis: Naturalism Replacing Supernaturalism
The program’s focus on the “Economy of St Francis” as a response to “scarcity and poverty” and the “Ecology of St Francis” as a “call to preserve the earth and renew its resources” further illustrates the conciliar sect’s naturalistic bent. While St. Francis certainly embraced poverty and had a deep love for creation, these were always ordered towards supernatural ends: poverty for the sake of Christ and detachment from the world, and love for creation as a reflection of God’s glory and a means to praise the Creator.
The article, however, presents these aspects as standalone, secular concerns, aligning them with modern socio-economic and environmental agendas. This is a classic modernist error, condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, which reduces religion to a “feeling” or a “practical function” rather than a body of objective truths and a means of supernatural salvation. The “Economy of St Francis” becomes a blueprint for social justice, and the “Ecology of St Francis” a call to environmental stewardship, both divorced from the primary purpose of human existence: to know, love, and serve God in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next. This is the “cult of man” replacing the worship of God.
The Role of “Clergy” and the Promotion of Apostasy
The involvement of the “Embassy of Italy” and “This is Bahrain” in promoting this distorted vision is expected, as they are secular entities. However, the fact that this narrative is disseminated through VaticanNews, the official portal of the conciliar sect, and implicitly endorsed by the “Church” in Bahrain, highlights the depth of the apostasy. The “interreligious conference” bringing together “leaders and scholars” to reflect on “the universal message of peace associated with St Francis” is not a gathering for the propagation of the Faith, but a forum for the propagation of modernist errors under the guise of a saint’s legacy. The “concert titled Canticle of the Creatures” further reduces the saint’s profound hymn of praise to God into a mere celebration of “harmony with creation and humanity,” devoid of its theological depth and salvific purpose.
The “attention to the role of women” and the mention of St. Clare and the “Poor Clares” in the context of “women to live lives of meaning, devotion, and influence within society” also subtly shifts the focus from the supernatural vocation of religious life to a secular notion of “influence” and “meaning” within the world. This aligns with the conciar sect’s tendency to integrate religious life into secular societal structures, rather than emphasizing its radical separation for the sake of the Kingdom of God.
The Abomination of Desolation: A Saint’s Legacy Profaned
In conclusion, the article from VaticanNews, detailing the Bahraini commemoration of St. Francis of Assisi, is a textbook example of how the conciar sect appropriates and distorts the legacy of true Catholic saints to promote its modernist agenda. St. Francis, a fiery evangelizer who sought to convert the Saracens and die for Christ, is recast as a gentle proponent of “dialogue, coexistence, and respect for diversity.” His encounter with the Sultan, a moment of profound Catholic witness, is emptied of its supernatural significance and repackaged as a model for interreligious “understanding.”
This is not merely a historical inaccuracy; it is a theological perversion. It substitutes the Church’s divine mandate to “teach all nations” (Matthew 28:19) with a humanistic pursuit of “peace” and “harmony” on naturalistic terms. It replaces the exclusive salvific mission of Christ and His Church with a relativistic “acceptance of diversity.” It transforms the saint’s heroic virtues into secular social and environmental concerns. The “Year of Isa Al Kabir” and the “800th anniversary of St. Francis” become occasions not for the propagation of the true Faith, but for the further entrenchment of the conciliar apostasy, where the “abomination of desolation” (Matthew 24:15) continues to profane all that is holy, even the memory of its own saints. The faithful must reject these distortions and return to the true spirit of St. Francis: a spirit of unwavering faith, burning zeal for souls, and absolute submission to the one true Church of Christ.
Source:
Bahrain: Celebrations mark 800 years from death of St Francis (vaticannews.va)
Date: 30.04.2026