The National Catholic Register reports that on May 7, 2026, the antipope Leo XIV, addressing employees of the Vatican Publishing House (Libreria Editrice Vaticana) on its centenary, urged Catholics to read printed books, claiming they “nourish the mind,” foster “critical sense,” guard against “fundamentalism,” and serve as “an antidote to closed-mindedness.” He further invoked the “culture of encounter” — a hallmark of his predecessor Bergoglio’s pontificate — and cited St. Paul VI’s 1976 exhortation to “look ahead” as a model for the publishing house’s mission. The address, wrapped in the veneer of cultural conservatism, reveals the profound spiritual bankruptcy of an institution that has systematically dismantled the faith it now pretends to promote through the medium of printed paper.
The Irony of a Usurper Defending Books While Destroying Doctrine
There is a bitter, almost blasphemous irony in the spectacle of an antipope — a man who occupies the Chair of Peter without legitimate authority, who was elected by a conclave of manifest heretics and apostates — solemnly lecturing the faithful about the value of reading books. The Vatican Publishing House, which Leo XIV praises on its centenary, has for decades been one of the principal instruments of the conciliar revolution’s propaganda apparatus. It was this very publishing house that disseminated the documents of Vatican II — those architecturally destructive texts that gutted Catholic ecclesiology, sacramental theology, and the Church’s missionary mandate. It published the Novus Ordo Missae rubrics, the reformed breviary, the watered-down catechism, and the theological works of the very modernists who have led millions of souls into error. That the same institution now receives the bland endorsement of an antipope who urges the faithful to “read books” is not a sign of renewal but of the abomination of desolation sitting in the temple of God, proclaiming itself to be something it is not.
The 1917 Code of Canon Law, Canon 188.4, establishes that every ecclesiastical office becomes vacant by the mere fact of public defection from the Catholic faith, without any declaration required. The antipope Leo XIV, like his predecessors from John XXIII onward, has publicly defected from the Catholic faith through his endorsement of the heretical doctrines of Vatican II — religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, and the novel conception of the Church’s relationship with the modern world. He therefore holds no office, possesses no jurisdiction, and his words carry no authority whatsoever. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches in De Romano Pontifice (II.30): “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… a manifest heretic is not a Christian… therefore, a manifest heretic cannot be Pope.” The faithful owe him no obedience, no attention, and certainly no credence when he speaks about books, reading, or anything else.
“Guarding Against Fundamentalism” — The Modernist Code Word for Orthodoxy
Perhaps the most revealing phrase in the entire address is Leo XIV’s claim that reading “guards us against fundamentalism and ideological shortcuts.” This is not an innocent literary observation. In the lexicon of post-conciliar modernism, “fundamentalism” is the pejorative term applied to any Catholic who insists on the unchanging doctrines of the faith, the necessity of the Church for salvation, the exclusive validity of Catholic sacraments, and the obligation of all men and nations to submit to the reign of Christ the King. It is the word used to marginalize, silence, and ultimately persecute those who refuse to accept the revolutionary novelties of the conciliar sect.
When Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), instituted the Feast of Christ the King, he declared that “the Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men” and that “men united in societies are no less subject to the authority of Christ than individuals.” There was no concern in Pius XI about “fundamentalism.” There was no anxiety about “closed-mindedness.” There was instead the clear, uncompromising declaration that Christ’s royal dignity 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 contrast could not be starker. Where Pius XI proclaimed the universal and absolute kingship of Christ over every sphere of human life, Leo XIV warns against the dangers of taking that kingship too seriously. His exhortation to read books as “an antidote to closed-mindedness” is, in substance, an exhortation to embrace the very indifferentism and religious relativism that Pius IX condemned as errors in the Syllabus of Errors (1864). Proposition 15 of the Syllabus condemns the idea that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.” Proposition 17 condemns the proposition that “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.” These are the very doctrines that the conciliar sect has embraced, and Leo XIV’s warning against “closed-mindedness” is nothing more than a pastoral application of these condemned errors.
The “Culture of Encounter” — Syncretism Dressed in Pastoral Language
Leo XIV explicitly invokes the “culture of encounter” that his predecessor Francis taught, describing a book as “a bridge to others, a source of dialogue that enriches us.” This language is not Catholic. It is the language of the Masonic operation that has infiltrated and captured the Vatican structures. The “culture of encounter” is the practical implementation of the false ecumenism condemned by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos (1928), where he declared that “the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it.” The idea that dialogue with error “enriches” the Catholic is a direct contradiction of the Church’s perennial teaching that there can be no compromise with heresy, no “encounter” with false religion that does not endanger the faith of the faithful.
The Syllabus of Errors, in its final and eightieth proposition, condemns the idea that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” This is precisely what the “culture of encounter” represents — a reconciliation with modernity, a coming to terms with the world, and a betrayal of the Church’s divine mandate to teach, govern, and sanctify all nations. Leo XIV’s endorsement of this culture is yet another confirmation that he is not a legitimate successor of Peter but an agent of the very forces that the true popes spent centuries combating.
The Invocation of Saints — Weaponizing the Faithful Against Themselves
The antipope’s invocation of the Virgin Mary “reading the holy Scriptures” at the Annunciation, St. Anthony of Padua with the open Book of the Gospels, and St. Augustine with “truth and charity” is a masterclass in modernist manipulation. These saints are being co-opted to serve an agenda that they would have abhorred. The Virgin Mary, who is the Mediatrix of All Graces and the Destroyer of All Heresies, is reduced to a literary model for leisurely reading. St. Anthony, the “Hammer of Heretics,” is presented as a gentle bibliophile rather than the fearsome defender of orthodoxy he was. St. Augustine, who wrote De Haeresibus and fought relentlessly against every error of his age, is invoked to promote a “culture of encounter” with those very errors.
This is the modernist method described with surgical precision by St. Pius X in the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907): the modernists do not openly deny the faith; they reinterpret it, empty it of its supernatural content, and refill it with naturalistic meaning. They use the language of Catholicism to advance the agenda of the world. The decree Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907) condemned the proposition that “revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (Proposition 20) and 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” (Proposition 22). These are the very principles that animate Leo XIV’s address: the faith is reduced to a cultural phenomenon, reading becomes a substitute for prayer and doctrine, and the saints are transformed into mascots for a program of worldly engagement.
The Silence About What Matters
The most damning aspect of Leo XIV’s address is not what it says but what it omits. There is no mention of the necessity of faith for salvation. There is no mention of the obligation to profess the Catholic faith exclusively. There is no mention of the reality of sin, the danger of mortal sin, the necessity of the sacraments, the existence of hell, or the final judgment. There is no mention of the duty of Catholics to reject the conciliar novelties and return to the unchanging tradition of the Church. There is no mention of the fact that the Vatican Publishing House has been a primary instrument of the destruction of the faith.
In the address, there is not a single word about the state of grace, the necessity of confession, the reality of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, or the obligation of the faithful to resist the apostasy that has consumed the conciliar structures. The entire discourse is naturalistic, horizontal, and devoid of supernatural content. It is, in the language of St. Pius X, a perfect example of the modernist error that reduces religion to a matter of sentiment and culture rather than objective truth and divine revelation.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared that the reign of Christ is not merely spiritual but extends to every aspect of human society, and that “rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him.” Where is this in Leo XIV’s address? Where is the call to restore the social reign of Christ the King? Where is the condemnation of secularism, laicism, and the expulsion of God from public life? The silence is deafening, and it is the silence of an apostate.
St. Paul VI’s “Look Ahead” — The Blueprint for Destruction
Leo XIV’s invocation of St. Paul VI’s 1976 exhortation to “look ahead, to refine ideas and plans for the future” is particularly sinister in its implications. Paul VI was the pontiff who imposed the Novus Ordo Missae upon the Church, the new rite of ordination whose validity remains gravely doubtful, the reformed breviary, and the entire apparatus of the conciliar revolution. His “looking ahead” was the looking ahead of a man who was systematically dismantling the Catholic liturgy, Catholic theology, and Catholic discipline. To invoke his words as a model for the Vatican Publishing House is to endorse the very program that has led to the near-total destruction of Catholic faith and practice throughout the world.
The faithful should recall that Paul VI himself, in his Credo of the People of God (1968), professed doctrines that he simultaneously undermined through his disciplinary actions. This is the modernist contradiction: professing the faith with the lips while destroying it with the hands. Leo XIV continues this tradition with perfect consistency. He speaks of books, reading, and encounter while presiding over an institution that has abandoned every essential element of the Catholic faith.
Conclusion: Paper Cannot Substitute for the Faith
The address of Leo XIV to the employees of the Vatican Publishing House is a textbook example of the conciliar sect’s method: using the outward forms of Catholicism — saints, Scripture, books, culture — to advance an agenda that is fundamentally anti-Catholic. The printed book, in the hands of the modernist, becomes not a vessel of truth but a tool of deception. It is not the book that will save the faithful; it is the unchanging doctrine of the Catholic faith, preserved in the true Church and transmitted through the legitimate Magisterium of the pre-conciliar era.
The faithful are urged not to read the books of the conciliar sect but to return to the immortal works of the Church Fathers, the Doctors of the Church, the true popes, and the saints who suffered and died for the faith. They are urged to reject the antipope and his entire apparatus, to seek out valid priests who offer the true Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and to profess the integral Catholic faith without compromise or hesitation. As the Syllabus of Errors declares in its final anathema: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” — this is the very error that Leo XIV embodies and promotes. Let the faithful reject it with the firmness and clarity that the times demand.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV Urges Catholics to Read Printed Books (ncregister.com)
Date: 07.05.2026