VaticanNews portal reports that on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, the antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) visited the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo, greeting the religious, lay, and scientific staff present. This was not his first visit to the facility, as he had previously done so on July 20, 2025, on the 56th anniversary of the Moon landing. The report notes that the astronomical observatory is located in Castel Gandolfo, where the antipope spent his Tuesday “working and resting, as he usually does.” He was accompanied by Sister Raffaella Petrini, president of the Governorate of Vatican City State, along with other officials, and was welcomed by Jesuit Father Richard Anthony D’Souza, director of the Observatory, and his predecessor, Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno. After “a brief moment of prayer in the chapel,” the usurper met and greeted the staff. This seemingly innocuous report is, upon integral Catholic analysis, yet another manifestation of the post-conciliar sect’s systematic diversion of attention from the supernatural mission of the Church toward naturalistic pursuits, consistent with the modernist apostasy condemned by Saint Pius X.
The Silence That Condemns: Absence of the Supernatural Mission
The VaticanNews report is a masterclass in conciliar vacuity. It meticulously records the comings and goings of the antipope, the names of Jesuit functionaries, the location of the facility, and even the duration of a “brief moment of prayer.” Yet not a single word is spoken about the supernatural mission of the Church, the salvation of souls, the necessity of the Most Holy Sacrifice, the state of grace, or the final judgment. This is not accidental; it is the very hallmark of the post-conciliarist mentality. As Saint Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), the modernist “progresses by denying the divine” while cloaking itself in the language of science and progress. The Church, established by Christ as a perfect society for the salvation of souls, is here reduced to a patron of astronomical curiosity.
The report states that the antipope “visited the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo, just outside of Rome,” and that this was “not the Pope’s first time in the Observatory, as he had visited the space on July 20th, 2025, on the 56th anniversary of the Moon landing.” The Moon landing anniversary is invoked not as an occasion for theological reflection on the majesty of God’s creation, but as a secular milestone worthy of commemoration by the supposed Vicar of Christ. This is precisely the error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), Proposition 80: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” The usurper’s presence at an astronomical observatory on the anniversary of a technological achievement is not a neutral act; it is a public alignment of the conciliar sect with the worship of human progress, the very “secularism” and “laicism” that Pope Pius XI identified in Quas Primas (1925) as the plague poisoning human society: “This plague is the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors… It began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.”
The Jesuit Observatory: Science in Service of Apostasy
The report identifies the director of the Observatory as “Jesuit Father Richard Anthony D’Souza” and his predecessor as “fellow Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno.” The Society of Jesus, once a bulwark of orthodoxy and the Counter-Reformation, has been among the most thoroughly compromised religious orders since the conciliar revolution. The involvement of Jesuits in the Vatican Observatory is consistent with the order’s post-conciliar trajectory of subordinating Catholic truth to secular scientific consensus, a tendency condemned by Saint Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), which rejected the proposition that “the method and principles by which the old scholastic doctors cultivated theology are no longer suitable to the demands of our times and to the progress of sciences” (Proposition 13), and that “philosophy is to be treated without taking any account of supernatural revelation” (Proposition 14).
The Vatican Observatory itself, while it may have had legitimate historical purposes, has become in the conciliar era yet another instrument through which the neo-church signals its acceptance of the modernist premise that natural science, rather than divine revelation and the teaching authority of the Church, is the primary lens through which reality is to be understood. The antipope’s visit is not an act of Catholic faith but a gesture of solidarity with the religion of scientism, the very naturalism condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself, and suffices, by its natural force, to secure the welfare of men and of nations” (Proposition 3).
“A Brief Moment of Prayer”: The Liturgy of Emptiness
The report notes that “after a brief moment of prayer in the chapel of the facility, the Pope met and greeted the religious, scientific, and lay staff.” The phrase “a brief moment of prayer” is telling in its brevity and vagueness. There is no mention of what was prayed, to whom, or in what manner. In the theology of the true Church, prayer is not a perfunctory prelude to a social gathering; it is the lifting of the mind and heart to God, the first duty of every Christian, and especially of the one who claims to occupy the Chair of Peter. The Council of Trent taught that prayer is necessary for salvation and that God hears the prayers of those who ask for His grace through Christ. But in the conciliar sect, prayer has been reduced to a ceremonial formality, emptied of its supernatural content, much like the Novus Ordo “Mass” has been reduced to a “table of assembly.”
The antipope’s prayer in the chapel of the Vatican Observatory is, in all likelihood, a prayer offered within the framework of the post-conciliar liturgy, which has been stripped of its propitiatory character and its explicit affirmation of the Catholic faith. If it was not the Traditional Latin Mass — and there is no indication whatsoever that it was — then it was a prayer offered within a rite that the Church herself has historically regarded with suspicion when conducted outside the true faith. The conciar sect’s prayer is, at best, naturalistic aspiration; at worst, it is idolatry, directed not to the Triune God revealed through Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church, but to the god of modernism, the “god within” condemned by Saint Pius X in Lamentabili: “Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (Proposition 20).
The Reign of Christ the King: Publicly Denied by Omission
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, taught with absolute clarity that Christ the King reigns over all nations, all societies, and all aspects of human life, and that rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Him and obey Him: “Not only private individuals, but also rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him: for it will remind them of the final judgment, in which Christ, whom not only was cast out of the state, but was also forgotten and ignored through contempt, will very severely avenge these insults, because His royal dignity demands that all relations in the state be ordered on the basis of God’s commandments and Christian principles.”
The antipope’s visit to the Vatican Observatory, conducted without any reference to the Kingship of Christ, without any mention of the duty of the Church to proclaim His social reign, and without any acknowledgment that the salvation of souls is the supreme law (salus animarum suprema lex), is a public act of omission that constitutes a denial of Catholic teaching. The usurper goes to Castel Gandolfo not to pray for the conversion of sinners, not to offer the Most Holy Sacrifice, not to proclaim the truths of faith, but to greet astronomers. This is the conciliar sect in miniature: a structure that has replaced the supernatural mission of the Church with naturalistic humanism, the “cult of man” condemned by Paul VI himself (before his own apostasy was complete) and by the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
The Antipope and the Religion of Progress
The reference to the “56th anniversary of the Moon landing” during the usurper’s previous visit in July 2025 is not incidental. It reveals the theological orientation of the conciar sect: the celebration of human technological achievement as if it were a salvific event. The Moon landing, a feat of engineering, is commemorated by the supposed successor of Peter not as an occasion to give glory to God the Creator, but as a milestone in humanity’s autonomous progress. This is precisely the error of “absolute rationalism” condemned by Pius IX: “All the truths of religion proceed from the innate strength of human reason; hence reason is the ultimate standard by which man can and ought to arrive at the knowledge of all truths of every kind” (Proposition 4, Syllabus of Errors).
The antipope’s repeated visits to the Observatory, his fraternizing with Jesuit scientists, his “brief moment of prayer” — all of these are symptoms of a Church that has lost its supernatural identity and has become, in the words of the pre-conciliar Magisterium, a servant of the world rather than the servant of God. As Pope Pius XI lamented 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, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed.”
The usurper Leo XIV, by his visit to the Vatican Observatory, demonstrates that the conciar sect has not only removed God from the laws and states but has removed Him from its own institutional priorities. The Church of Christ is a supernatural society; the conciliar sect is a naturalistic club for the scientifically curious. The faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith must reject this usurpation and cling to the immutable Tradition, which teaches that the Church exists for one purpose alone: ad maiorem Dei gloriam — for the greater glory of God, not for the greater glory of human achievement.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV visits the Vatican Observatory (vaticannews.va)
Date: 20.05.2026