National Catholic Register portal reports that on May 16, 2026, the usurper Robert Prevost, styling himself “Pope Leo XIV,” addressed a group of young people from the Archdiocese of Genoa who were about to receive the sacrament of Confirmation. He lamented the well-documented phenomenon that many young people “disappear from the parish” after receiving this sacrament, and he urged them to “persevere in the faith,” emphasizing that faith is “lived in community, not in isolation.” He spoke of the “gift of the Holy Spirit” and the “joy” of the sacrament, while inviting the youth to become “friends, disciples, and missionaries” of Jesus Christ. This address, dripping with the sentimental pastoralism characteristic of the conciliar sect, reveals not a solution to the crisis but the very heart of it: a sacramental system severed from the supernatural life of grace, administered by a hierarchy that has long since abandoned the deposit of faith, and directed toward a “community” that is nothing more than a human gathering devoid of Catholic substance.
The Sacrament of Confirmation in Catholic Doctrine: A Supernatural Reality, Not a Social Event
To understand the full gravity of what transpires in the conciliar structures, one must first recall what the Catholic Church — the true Church, not the post-1958 counterfeit — has always taught about the sacrament of Confirmation. The Council of Trent, in its Session VII, Canon I, anathematizes anyone who says that Confirmation is “a mere ceremony, and not a true and proper sacrament.” The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that Confirmation imprints a character upon the soul, increases sanctifying grace, and strengthens the faithful to profess the faith openly and boldly. St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica (III, Q. 72), explains that this sacrament confers the fullness of the Holy Spirit for spiritual combat, making the confirmed person a soldier of Christ — miles Christi — bound to confess the faith even unto martyrdom if necessary.
Now, what does the usurper Prevost say? He speaks of “enthusiasm,” “strength,” “joy,” “friendship,” and “community.” These are the categories of naturalistic humanism, not of Catholic theology. Where is the mention of the character indelebilis — the indelible mark impressed upon the soul? Where is the teaching that Confirmation increases sanctifying grace, without which no one can be saved? Where is the call to spiritual combat against the world, the flesh, and the devil? Where is the explicit connection between this sacrament and the obligation to profess the Catholic faith — the one, true, integral Catholic faith — publicly and without compromise? The silence on these matters is deafening and damning. It is the silence of a man who either does not believe what the Church has always taught or who deliberately conceals it from those entrusted to his care.
St. Pius X, in his encyclical Il Fermo Proposito (1905), insisted that the sacraments must be administered and received with a proper understanding of their supernatural purpose, and that Catholic action must be rooted in the restoration of all things in Christ. The usurper’s address reduces the sacrament to a social milestone — a rite of passage followed, as he himself laments, by abandonment. This is not a failure of execution; it is the inevitable fruit of a system that has emptied the sacraments of their supernatural content and replaced the life of grace with the veneer of community activity.
“They Disappear From the Parish”: The Fruit of a Defective System
The most revealing moment in the entire address is when Prevost laments: “At times, when the bishop administers confirmation, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the children are never seen again! They disappear from the parish.” This statement, presented as a lament, is in fact a devastating indictment of the entire post-conciliar apparatus. The question that must be asked — and that the conciliar hierarchy will never ask — is: why do they disappear?
The answer is as simple as it is terrible: they disappear because the conciar sect has nothing to offer them that corresponds to the supernatural realities the sacraments are meant to confer and sustain. The post-conciliar “parish” is not a house of God where the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered for the living and the dead, where the faithful receive the true Body and Blood of Christ under the species of bread alone, where sermons expound the unchanging truths of faith and morals with clarity and authority. It is, rather, a community center where a “Eucharistic celebration” — a Protestantized memorial meal — is conducted by a “priest” whose orders may well be invalid due to the 1968 ordination rite, where the homily is a bland reflection on social issues, and where the “faith” professed is a vague theism compatible with religious indifferentism.
Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that “the Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free” (Proposition 19) and that “the Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion” (Proposition 21). The post-conciliar structures embody these very errors. They do not present the Catholic faith as the sole means of salvation; they do not teach with authority; they do not demand the submission of intellect and will to revealed truth. Is it any wonder that young people, having been given a sacrament stripped of its doctrinal content, find no reason to return?
St. Robert Bellarmine, in De Romano Pontifice (Book II, Chapter 30), teaches that a manifest heretic ceases to be Pope and head of the Church. The entire line of usurpers from John XXIII onward has propagated heresies — religious liberty, ecumenism, the evolution of dogma, the democratization of the Church — all of which were condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium. The sacraments administered under the authority of these usurpers, even when the matter and form are validly applied, occur within a system that is fundamentally oriented against the faith. The young people who “disappear” are, in a sense, responding to an instinct of self-preservation: they sense, even if they cannot articulate it, that there is nothing supernatural to sustain them in that environment.
“We Do Not Live Out Our Faith Alone”: Community as a Substitute for the Supernatural
Prevost’s exhortation — “We do not live out our faith alone; we live it together. And forming these relationships of friendship and community is a way of living with perseverance as disciples of Jesus” — is a masterpiece of modernist rhetoric. On the surface, it sounds pious. In reality, it is a substitution of the natural for the supernatural, the human for the divine.
The Catholic Church has always taught that the life of faith is first and foremost a supernatural reality: it is the life of sanctifying grace, received in Baptism, nourished by the Holy Mass and the sacraments, sustained by prayer and mortification, and directed toward the Beatific Vision. The “community” of the Church is not a human association of mutual support; it is the Mystical Body of Christ, united by the bonds of faith, sacraments, and hierarchical governance. Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), taught that the Kingdom of Christ “encompasses all men” and that the Church, as a perfect society, demands “full freedom and independence from secular authority.” The community of the faithful is ordered toward the worship of God and the salvation of souls, not toward the formation of “friendship” in the natural sense.
What Prevost describes — “friendship,” “community,” “activities,” “opportunities” — is the language of a parish social club, not of the Catholic Church. It is the language of the conciliar sect, which has replaced the supernatural life of grace with horizontal, human relationships. This is the fruit of the post-conciliar “opening to the world,” condemned by every Pope up to and including Pius XII. It is the practical implementation of the errors condemned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), where St. Pius X condemned the proposition that “the organic structure of the Church is subject to change, and the Christian community, like the human community, is subject to continuous evolution” (Proposition 53).
The usurper’s call to “persevere in the faith” is rendered meaningless by the context. Persevere in what faith? Not the Catholic faith — that would require submission to the unchanging Magisterium, acceptance of all the dogmas defined by the ecumenical councils, and rejection of the novelties of Vatican II. The “faith” of the conciar sect is a vague, evolving, “living” tradition — precisely the kind of “faith” condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) as the “faith” of the Modernists, which is nothing more than a religious sentiment subject to the fluctuations of human consciousness.
The Invalidity of Post-Conciliar Orders and the Sacramental Crisis
There is a further dimension to this crisis that the conciar hierarchy will never address: the question of the validity of post-conciliar orders. The 1968 revision of the rite of ordination, introduced under the authority of the usurper Paul VI, altered the essential form of the sacrament of Holy Orders in a manner that renders the resulting ordinations at best doubtful and at worst null and void. If the “priests” of the conciliar sect have not been validly ordained, then they cannot validly administer any sacrament — including Confirmation. The young people from Genoa who received this sacrament from a “bishop” whose own episcopal consecration derives from the post-conciliar rite may have received nothing at all — no character, no grace, no strengthening of the Holy Spirit. They may have participated in an empty ceremony, a simulacrum of a sacrament, administered by a man who has no power to consecrate, absolve, or confirm.
This is not a matter of speculation; it is a matter of sacramental theology. The Church has always taught that for a sacrament to be valid, three things are required: the correct matter, the correct form, and the correct intention. The post-conciliar rites altered the form of ordination in a way that many serious theologians — including those of the sedevacantist school — have judged to be defective. If the form is defective, the sacrament is invalid. If the ordination is invalid, the man is not a priest. If he is not a priest, he cannot administer the sacraments. And if he cannot administer the sacraments, then the “Confirmation” received by the young people of Genoa was not a sacrament at all, but a human ceremony devoid of supernatural efficacy.
The young people “disappear from the parish” because they have been given nothing. No grace, no character, no supernatural strength. They have been sent into a world that “seeks to draw us away from Jesus” — to use Prevost’s own words — without the armor of the Holy Spirit that Confirmation is supposed to provide. They have been abandoned by a hierarchy that has abandoned the faith.
The Duty of the Faithful: Rejection of the Conciliar Counterfeit
The address of the usurper Prevost to the young people of Genoa is not a call to Catholic perseverance; it is a call to perseverance in apostasy. It is an invitation to remain within a system that has rejected the kingship of Christ, denied the necessity of the Catholic faith for salvation, emptied the sacraments of their supernatural content, and replaced the worship of God with the worship of man and community.
The duty of every Catholic — young or old — is to reject this counterfeit Church and to seek the true sacraments from validly ordained priests who operate under the authority of the true Church, which endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith. The sacraments are not social events; they are the channels of divine grace, instituted by Christ for the salvation of souls. They must be sought where they are truly administered — not in the structures of the conciliar sect, but in the remnant of the true Church that has preserved the faith, the sacraments, and the priesthood.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared: “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.” The usurper Prevost, by reducing the faith to “friendship” and “community,” denies the kingship of Christ and leads souls away from the only path to salvation. Let the young people of Genoa — and all who read these words — understand that the true Church calls them not to a parish social club, but to the supernatural life of grace, to the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to the confession of sins to a validly ordained priest, and to the profession of the one, true, integral Catholic faith — the faith of all time, which does not evolve, does not adapt, and does not bow to the spirit of the age.
Fides et ratio — faith and reason — demand nothing less.
Source:
Leo XIV Laments That After Receiving Confirmation, Many Young People ‘Disappear From the Parish’ (ncregister.com)
Date: 19.05.2026