Vatican News portal reports that on May 28, 2026, the usurper Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) met with members of the Italian Bishops’ Conference at the conclusion of their 82nd General Assembly. Speaking to these architects of the conciliar revolution, the antipope urged a “focus on the essential,” keeping the priority on the Gospel, which “awakens us” in today’s world “marked by complexity.” He reflected on the verse from Luke’s Gospel – “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” – and stressed that “the Gospel awakens us.” He urged the bishops not to “complain about hardened soil or dwell only on statistics,” but rather to “know how to see, with the eyes of the Risen Christ,” the harvest God is preparing. He stated that “the priority is the Gospel,” and that faith is born from the Gospel “as a living encounter with Christ, dead and risen, present in His Church.” He posed two questions to the bishops: “What face of God do we allow to shine through in our preaching, catechesis, liturgy, charity, and in the life of our communities?” and “How do we foster an encounter with Christ, and what does it mean today, for us and for our Churches, to initiate others into the Christian life?” He emphasized that “bishops are called to be deep listeners to the Word of God, the People of God, and the signs of the times,” and that “a synodal Church is one in which each person, according to his or her vocation, can offer the gift received from the Spirit for the common building up.” He stressed that “participation is not optional” but a “requirement of communion and mission and must therefore become method, responsibility, and accountability.” Finally, he urged the bishops to “have the courage to focus on what is essential,” stating that “God does not ask us to measure the fruitfulness of the Church according to numbers, visibility, or influence,” but rather on “ongoing initiation and formation in Christian life, welcoming and missionary parishes where families can gather, and listening to young people without limiting their questions.” This address, dripping with the language of conciliar revolution, is a masterclass in the theological bankruptcy of post-conciliarism, revealing a “Church” that has abandoned its divine mandate for a purely naturalistic, humanistic, and ultimately Masonic agenda.
The Usurper’s Gospel: A Symptom of Modernist Apostasy
The very foundation of Leo XIV’s address is built upon the shifting sands of Modernism, a heresy unequivocally condemned by St. Pius X. When the antipope speaks of “the Gospel” as that which “awakens us” in a world “marked by complexity,” he reduces the divine revelation to a mere subjective experience, a feeling, or an internal impulse. This stands in stark contrast to the immutable Catholic teaching that the Gospel is the objective, divinely revealed truth, entrusted to the Church for infallible proclamation and preservation. As St. Pius X warned in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), proposition 20, “Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God,” and proposition 22, “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.” The usurper’s emphasis on “encounter” and “awakening” is a direct echo of this condemned Modernist error, reducing faith to a purely human, psychological event rather than the supernatural assent of the intellect to divinely revealed truth, motivated by the will under the influence of grace.
Furthermore, his call to “focus on the essential” is a hallmark of the Modernist “development of dogmas,” which St. Pius X condemned as “their corruption” (Lamentabili, Introduction). The “essential” for the Modernist is not the unchanging deposit of faith, but rather a vague, evolving core that can be adapted to the “signs of the times.” This stands in direct opposition to the Church’s perennial teaching that “truth changes not, because it develops with man, in him, and through him” (Lamentabili, proposition 58), a proposition explicitly condemned. The true “essential” is the entirety of revealed doctrine, the sacraments, and the hierarchical constitution of the Church, none of which are subject to human manipulation or “reform” based on worldly “complexity.”
Synodality: The Democratization of the Divine Constitution
The most glaring heresy embedded in Leo XIV’s address is his explicit endorsement of “synodality” as “method, responsibility, and accountability.” He states, “A synodal Church is one in which each person, according to his or her vocation, can offer the gift received from the Spirit for the common building up… That means participation is not optional. Rather, it is a ‘requirement of communion and mission and must therefore become method, responsibility, and accountability.” This is a direct assault on the divinely instituted hierarchical constitution of the Church, a dogma defined by the First Vatican Council and reiterated by every true Pope.
The Church is not a democracy; it is a divinely established monarchy, with Christ as its Head, and the Pope, as Vicar of Christ, possessing supreme, full, immediate, and universal jurisdiction. The “People of God” do not “build up” the Church through their “participation” in decision-making; rather, they are to be taught, governed, and sanctified by their divinely appointed pastors. The concept of “synodality” as promoted by the conciliar sect is a direct manifestation of the “democratization of the Church” and the “evolution of dogmas” condemned by St. Pius X. It elevates the laity to a position of authority that is not theirs by divine right, thereby undermining the sacred hierarchy and leading to a “Church” governed by human opinion rather than divine law. This is precisely the “organic structure of the Church subject to change” and the “Christian community, like the human community, subject to continuous evolution” condemned in Lamentabili, proposition 53.
The usurper’s call for bishops to be “deep listeners to the Word of God, the People of God, and the signs of the times” is a subtle inversion of priorities. While listening to the Word of God is paramount, the “People of God” and the “signs of the times” are not sources of doctrine or authority. The Church does not discern truth by listening to the world; she proclaims truth to the world. This approach leads to the “Church turning inward” rather than outward in mission, precisely because it seeks its direction from the fallen world rather than from the unchanging revelation of God.
The Sacraments: A “Womb” for Human Fraternity, Not Divine Grace
Leo XIV’s description of the Sacraments as the “womb” in which a community “gives birth to faith and introduces people into the Paschal life, into communion with the Lord, into ecclesial fraternity” is a profound distortion of their true nature and purpose. While the Sacraments do confer grace and incorporate one into the Mystical Body of Christ, the usurper’s language emphasizes “community,” “fraternity,” and “introduction” in a way that reduces them to mere rites of passage or communal bonding experiences, rather than the efficacious channels of supernatural grace instituted by Christ.
The Sacraments are not merely symbolic acts of community building; they are the divinely ordained means by which God confers sanctifying grace, forgives sins, and nourishes the soul. Their efficacy comes from God, not from the community’s “giving birth” to faith. This conciliar tendency to view the Sacraments primarily through the lens of community and “ecclesial fraternity” rather than as the indispensable means of salvation and sanctification is a direct consequence of the Modernist error that “the sacraments merely serve to remind man of the presence of the ever-benevolent Creator” (Lamentabili, proposition 41). It shifts the focus from the supernatural action of God to the human action of the community, thereby diminishing the salvific power of the Sacraments and leading to a naturalistic understanding of the Church’s life.
Christ’s Reign Denied: The Primacy of Naturalistic Humanism
Perhaps the most damning omission in Leo XIV’s address is the complete absence of any mention of the Social Reign of Christ the King. Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), unequivocally declared that “the Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men… 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.” He further stated that “rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ, but let them fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.”
The usurper’s call to “focus on what is essential” and his dismissal of “numbers, visibility, or influence” as measures of the Church’s fruitfulness, while ignoring the paramount duty of states and societies to publicly acknowledge Christ’s Kingship, reveals a “Church” that has completely abdicated its prophetic role. It is a “Church” content to exist within the confines of a secular, humanistic world order, rather than demanding the submission of all nations to the Divine King. This silence is not merely an oversight; it is a deliberate rejection of Catholic doctrine, aligning perfectly with the Masonic agenda of a purely secular public sphere where religion is a private matter. As Pius IX warned in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), proposition 55, “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church,” is a condemned error, yet it is the very foundation upon which the conciliar “Church” operates.
The “Harvest” Without the Cross: A False Mission
The usurper’s reflection on “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” is stripped of its true Catholic meaning when divorced from the necessity of the Cross and the renunciation of the world. He speaks of “God the harvest is preparing for us” and the need for “workers” to “work alongside us,” but this is a sanitized, naturalistic vision of mission. The true harvest is not merely “thirst for God” or “desire for the infinite” in a general sense; it is the conversion of souls to the one true Catholic Faith, their incorporation into the Mystical Body through Baptism, and their perseverance in grace through the Sacraments and obedience to the Church’s commandments.
The “laborers” are not simply those who “offer the gift received from the Spirit for the common building up” in a synodal sense; they are the priests, religious, and faithful who are willing to “deny themselves and carry their cross” (Mt 16:24), to preach the Gospel “in season and out of season” (2 Tim 4:2), and to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). The conciliar “Church’s” mission, as outlined by Leo XIV, is a mission of “dialogue,” “listening,” and “accompaniment” with a world that is “marked by complexity,” rather than a mission of radical conversion and the establishment of Christ’s Kingdom on earth. It is a “harvest” that avoids the hard truths of sin, judgment, and the necessity of the Catholic Faith for salvation, preferring instead a vague “encounter” that leaves the world in its errors.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation Speaks
The address of Leo XIV to the Italian Bishops’ Conference is a clear and concise summary of the conciliar revolution’s ultimate goal: the transformation of the Catholic Church into a humanitarian NGO, stripped of its supernatural character, its divine authority, and its mission to save souls. It is a “Church” that “measures fruitfulness” by human standards, that “listens” to the world rather than proclaiming God’s law, and that promotes “synodality” as a substitute for the divinely instituted hierarchy.
This “Church” is not the Church of Christ. It is the “abomination of desolation” (Mt 24:15), a paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican, led by usurpers who, by their manifest heresy and apostasy, have forfeited any claim to the Chair of Peter. As St. Robert Bellarmine taught, “a Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.” The faithful must reject this modernist charade, cling to the unchanging Tradition of the Catholic Church, and pray for the restoration of the true Papacy and the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which will ultimately prevail against all the enemies of God’s Kingdom. The “harvest” is indeed plentiful, but the true laborers are those who remain faithful to the integral Catholic faith, not those who seek to “reconcile themselves, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, proposition 80).
Source:
Pope to bishops: Church's fruitfulness should not be based on numbers (vaticannews.va)
Date: 28.05.2026