VaticanNews portal (May 4, 2026) reports on the Oblate Sisters of the Most Holy Redeemer and a Verbum Dei missionary, Lucía Herrerías, working with women in prostitution in Mexico City. The article describes street outreach, sharing the Word of God, retreats, and restoring dignity. It frames this as a “Church that goes forth” embodying mercy through presence and accompaniment. The piece is a textbook example of the post-conciliar substitution of naturalistic humanism for the supernatural life of grace, reducing the Church’s mission to social work while remaining silent on the sacramental means of salvation.
The Reduction of Mercy to Mere Human Presence
The article presents the work of the Oblate Sisters and Lucía Herrerías as the embodiment of mercy: “a presence that restores dignity, transmitting God’s closeness and the concrete witness of his mercy.” The language is revealing. Mercy here is not the remission of sins through the sacrament of Confession, not the sanctifying grace conferred in Baptism, not the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Mercy is reduced to a human gaze, a listening ear, a non-judgmental attitude. This is the mercy of the world, not the mercy of God.
Pius XI taught in Quas Primas that Christ’s kingdom “is primarily spiritual and relates mainly to spiritual matters,” and that the Church’s mission is “to teach, govern, and lead all to eternal happiness.” The article speaks of “human formation, education, healthcare, psychological accompaniment and formation in the faith” — a list in which the natural completely overshadows the supernatural. Where is the call to the sacraments? Where is the preaching of contrition, confession, and amendment of life? Where is the doctrine that no one in the state of mortal sin can enter the Kingdom of Heaven, regardless of how much “dignity” is restored to them on a natural level?
St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici gregis, condemned the modernist tendency to reduce religion to “a certain sentiment of dependence on God” and to make the essence of Christianity consist in “practical action” and “sentiment.” The article’s description of women who “capture God’s mercy and his closeness” through shared Scripture readings, without any mention of the sacramental economy, is precisely this modernist reduction. The “Word of God becomes a source of hope and inner healing” — but the Word of God, properly understood, leads to the sacraments, to the Sacrifice of the Mass, to the Real Presence. Without these, the “Word” is merely a text, and “healing” is merely psychological comfort.
The Verbum Dei Missionary Fraternity: A Conciliar Creation
The article identifies Lucía Herrerías as “a missionary of the Verbum Dei Missionary Fraternity.” This congregation was founded in 1963 in Spain by Father Jaime Fernández — squarely within the period of the conciliar revolution. It is a product of the post-conciliar emphasis on lay movements, “shared mission,” and the democratization of religious life that the Second Vatican Council unleashed. The Verbum Dei is emblematic of the conciar sect’s preference for new foundations over the ancient religious orders that were built on the Rule, the vows, and the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
The article quotes Herrerías: “I was attracted by the opportunity to share the Word of God with the poorest of the poor.” This echoes the conciliar slogan of a “preferential option for the poor” — a phrase that, while superficially appealing, in practice has consistently meant the abandonment of supernatural preaching in favor of temporal assistance and social justice activism. The “poorest of the poor” in Catholic teaching are those in the state of mortal sin, deprived of sanctifying grace, destined for eternal perdition. The article’s “poorest” are defined entirely by material and social conditions. This is the inversion of values that defines the abomination of desolation.
The Retreat Without the Sacraments: A Parody of the Spiritual Life
The most revealing passage in the article is the account of a Christmas retreat. Lucía recounts reading the Nativity scene to a woman who could not read, and the woman’s response: “She told me she had seen how the Virgin placed the Child in her arms and told her that she loved her very much.”
This is presented as a profound spiritual experience. But let us examine it critically. There is no mention of this woman’s baptismal status, her state of grace, her reception of any sacrament. The “retreat” consists of a guided visualization — a technique borrowed from secular psychology and New Age spirituality, not from Catholic ascetical theology. The woman “sees” the Virgin placing the Child in her arms. This is not the Catholic understanding of prayer, which is “an act of the mind, by which we speak to God” (St. John Damascene), nor is it the infused contemplation of the mystics, which presupposes a life of sacramental grace and heroic virtue. It is imagination stimulated by suggestion — a technique indistinguishable from those used in secular therapeutic settings.
The article then invokes Jesus’ words that “prostitutes and tax collectors will precede many in the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 21:31). But Our Lord’s words referred to those who believed and were baptized — the publicans and harlots who received John’s baptism and converted. The article uses this text to validate a situation in which women remain in prostitution while being told they are loved by God. This is not the Gospel; it is the antithesis of the Gospel.</b Our Lord said to the woman taken in adultery: "Go, and sin no more" (John 8:11). He did not say, "Go, and continue in your situation while I affirm your dignity."
The Language of Dignity Without the Doctrine of Sin
The article is careful to note that “the sisters refer to them not as prostitutes or as sex workers, but as women in a situation of prostitution. Prostitution is not something they are; it is a situation in which they are and which they can leave.” This linguistic maneuver is characteristic of the post-conciliar mentality. It reflects the modernist refusal to make definitive moral judgments about objective states of life. The Church has always taught that prostitution is a grave sin, that those who engage in it and those who exploit it are in mortal sin, and that the duty of the Church is to call them to repentance and conversion — which means ceasing to sin, not merely being “accompanied” in it.
The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX condemned the proposition that “the Church is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics, because it steadfastly adheres to its views, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress” (Proposition 63). The article’s approach — affirming dignity while refusing to name sin — is precisely this capitulation to modern progress. The “gaze that transforms” praised in the article is explicitly contrasted with any judgment of the past: “Their gaze does not judge or question the past; it recognizes the person and her dignity.” But the Catholic faith teaches that judgment of sin is an act of mercy, because it awakens the conscience to the reality of eternal consequences. A gaze that refuses to judge is not the gaze of Jesus, who said, “If you do not repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3).
The Silence About the Most Holy Sacrifice
The most damning feature of the article is what it does not say. There is not a single mention of the Holy Mass, the Holy Eucharist, Confession, Baptism, or any sacrament. The “formation in the faith” offered to these women is entirely devoid of sacramental content. The “retreat” involves reading Scripture and guided visualization, not the Sacrifice of the Mass and the reception of the sacraments.
This silence is not accidental. It is the defining characteristic of the post-conciliar Church. The conciliar sect has systematically emptied the Church’s mission of its supernatural content and replaced it with humanitarian activity. Pius XI declared in Quas Primas that “the Church, established by Christ as a perfect society, demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority, and that in fulfilling the mission entrusted to it by God — to teach, govern, and lead all to eternal happiness, those who belong to the Kingdom of Christ — it cannot depend on anyone’s will.” The article presents a Church that has entirely subordinated its supernatural mission to temporal concerns, leading women not to eternal happiness but to “human formation, education, healthcare, psychological accompaniment.”
The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the center of the Catholic religion, the renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary, the source of all grace. Any “Church” that engages in charitable works while remaining silent about the Mass is not the Church of Jesus Christ. It is a humanitarian organization wearing ecclesiastical vestments.
The “Church That Goes Forth”: A Conciliar Slogan
The article explicitly invokes the conciliar slogan of a “Church that goes forth” — a phrase popularized by the Bergoglio pontificate and rooted in the theology of Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes. This concept, while superficially appealing, in practice means a Church that goes forth into the world on the world’s terms, adopting the world’s methods and the world’s goals. The true Church has always “gone forth” — but she went forth with the sacraments, with the preaching of repentance, with the Most Holy Sacrifice, with the authority of Christ the King.
The article’s vision of a Church that “risks walking in the human peripheries” is a Church that risks everything except the one thing necessary: the salvation of souls through the sacramental economy established by Christ. The “risks” mentioned are physical dangers on the streets of Mexico City. But the infinitely greater risk — the risk of leading souls to perdition by failing to preach the necessity of the sacraments, of conversion, of the renunciation of sin — is not even acknowledged.
Conclusion: The Counterfeit Mercy of the Neo-Church
The article from VaticanNews presents a portrait of religious women and a lay missionary engaged in what appears to be compassionate work. But beneath the surface of “mercy” and “dignity” lies the full program of the conciar revolution: the reduction of the Church’s mission to naturalistic humanism, the substitution of psychological accompaniment for sacramental grace, the refusal to name sin, and the complete silence about the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
The women on the streets of Mexico City deserve more than a “gaze that does not judge.” They deserve the full Catholic faith: the preaching of repentance, the sacrament of Confession, the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. They deserve to be told the truth — that they are in mortal sin, that they must leave their state of life, that God’s mercy is available through the sacraments, and that without conversion and sanctifying grace, no amount of “dignity” or “accompaniment” will save their souls from eternal damnation.
The conciliar sect offers bread stones and calls it mercy. The true Church offers the Bread of Life — but she is silenced, marginalized, and replaced by the abomination of desolation that now occupies the Vatican and its global network of humanitarian pretense.
Source:
Mercy on the streets of Mexico City (vaticannews.va)
Date: 04.05.2026