EWTN Vatican Bureau reports that on May 28, 2026, the usurper Robert Prevost, known as “Pope Leo XIV,” received Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson at the Vatican. The mayor, who has served since 2023, used the occasion to formally invite the antipope to visit his native city next year. The article details how the two discussed the Trump administration’s policies, including immigration and the Iran conflict, with Johnson calling Trump a “tyrant” and a “disgrace.” The mayor also praised Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas and his apology for the Church’s role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This meeting between a Democratic mayor who accuses a sitting American president of tyranny and an antipope who apologizes for historical sins while remaining silent on the apostasy consuming the conciliar sect is a perfect microcosm of the post-conciliar Church’s complete inversion of its divine mission.
The Reign of Christ the King Reduced to Political Partisanship
The Church of Jesus Christ, established as a perfect society endowed with proper and perpetual rights by her Divine Founder, has a spiritual mission that transcends all earthly politics. Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas, declared with Apostolic authority: “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 pontiff further explained that this kingship demands a threefold authority: legislative, judicial, and executive. Christ the King is not a mascot for any political party, nor a validator of partisan grievances. He is the Divine Lawgiver, to whom all men and all nations owe obedience.
Yet what do we witness in this meeting? The antipope Leo XIV, the successor of John XXIII in the line of usurpers, sits in the Vatican and receives a Democratic mayor who openly calls the sitting President of the United States a “tyrant” and a “disgrace.” Johnson stated that he discussed his concerns about the Trump administration with Leo XIV and described the recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas as a “call to action” to work to avoid wars. He said: “I think the pope’s encyclical is a call to action for the entire planet. Illegal wars do not leave just a trail of tears and trauma, but it also harms and brutalize our humanity. The economic drive with which [Trump] is moving is selfish.” The mayor further declared: “In the midst of a brutal, horrific, and ignorant tyrant that is currently occupying the White House, it is imperative that we really walk in the true essence of our faith. The impact of his failures on our global economy is quite severe. It is a disgrace to the sensibility of our humanity.”
Let us be precise about what is happening here. The mayor of an American city travels to the Vatican not to discuss the salvation of souls, not to seek guidance on the moral law, not to inquire about the state of grace or the necessity of the sacraments, but to receive validation for his political opposition to a sitting president. And the antipope provides it. This is not the Church of Christ. This is a political operation masquerading as religion. The true Church, before the conciliar revolution, never reduced the kingship of Christ to partisan politics. The true Church taught all men — Democrats, Republicans, and all others — the immutable moral law, the necessity of repentance, and the reality of eternal judgment. The true Church did not validate one political faction against another; she taught all factions that they must submit to the law of God.
The Silence on Supernatural Reality: The Gravest Accusation
What is most revealing about this entire article is what it omits. There is no mention whatsoever of the sacraments, the state of grace, the necessity of baptism, the reality of mortal sin, the final judgment, the existence of hell, or the divinity of Jesus Christ. The entire discussion revolves around immigration policy, war, economic justice, and the legacy of slavery. This is naturalism pure and simple — the reduction of the Church’s mission to temporal, earthly, purely human concerns.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, warned precisely against this: “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 Church’s authority to teach men, to issue laws, to govern nations, which authority she received from Christ the Lord to lead men to eternal happiness, was denied.” The fruits of this secularism, the pontiff lamented, included “seeds of discord sown everywhere, flames of envy and hostility,” “unbridled desires,” and “domestic peace completely shattered due to forgetfulness and neglect of duties.”
The antipope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, referenced by Johnson as a “call to action,” is itself a product of this secularist reduction. While offering “moral guidance” about artificial intelligence and issuing apologies for historical sins, it remains entirely silent on the doctrines that constitute the very reason for the Church’s existence: the necessity of faith for salvation, the reality of the supernatural order, the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass, and the absolute primacy of the spiritual over the temporal. This is the modernist error condemned by Saint Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu, which rejected the proposition that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (proposition 57) while simultaneously condemning the proposition that “truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (proposition 58) and that “contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism” (proposition 65).
The Apology for Slavery: Performative Repentance in Lieu of Doctrine
The article reports that Leo XIV “issued an apology for the Church’s role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade” and that Johnson praised the antipope for his courage. Johnson stated: “We talked about the conditions that the long legacy of slavery and disinvestment has had on Black Americans and Black people around the world. I engaged in a conversation with him around reparations and why it is important to work to repair the harm caused by the brutal legacy of slavery.” Yusef Jackson, son of Jesse Jackson Sr., also praised the apology, saying: “The pope is a powerful man. The color of his title commands respect around the world. For him to use the color of that title, coming from Chicago, a very segregated and class-divided city, with the bona fides to be a freedom fighter, meant a lot to me. He is a pope that I agree with.”
Let us examine this critically. The true Church has always condemned slavery as contrary to the natural law and the divine law. The Church’s consistent teaching is that all men are equal in dignity before God, that the enslavement of innocent persons is a grave sin, and that the slave trade is an abomination. Popes from Pius VII to Leo XIII issued clear condemnations of the slave trade. But the true Church also taught that the remedy for all sin — including the sin of slavery — is repentance, confession, and amendment of life, rooted in the grace of the sacraments and the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.
What does the antipope offer instead? An apology. A symbolic gesture. A conversation about “reparations.” This is the religion of naturalism: it addresses temporal wounds with temporal remedies while ignoring the eternal soul. It offers “repair” for historical harm while offering no repair for the far greater harm of apostasy, heresy, and the systematic destruction of the faith. It speaks of “the brutal legacy of slavery” while remaining silent on the far more brutal legacy of the conciliar revolution, which has led countless souls to perdition by emptying the Church of her supernatural content and replacing the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with a Protestantized memorial meal.
The true Church would have told Mayor Johnson: “Yes, slavery is a grave sin. But so is abortion. So is contraception. So is the denial of Christ’s divinity. So is the worship of false gods. So is the reception of sacrilegious Communion. So is the participation in the conciliar sect’s mockery of the sacraments. Repent of all your sins, confess them to a true priest, do penance, and you shall be saved.” But this the antipope will never say, because the conciliar sect has abandoned the very concept of sin as the true Church understands it.
The ICE Discussion: Mercy Without Truth
The article notes that “the two spoke about the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement, specifically raids by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).” Johnson reported that “the pope wanted to know how ICE impacted our city and whether there were still examples of ICE raids happening in our city. I talked about how our rapid response team came together to support families. And then I talked about my executive orders, for which he was very gracious and encouraging, especially those I signed to protect the people of Chicago.”
The true Church has always taught that nations have the right and duty to govern their borders and to enforce their laws. This is part of the natural law and the divine law. At the same time, the Church teaches that all persons, including immigrants, must be treated with human dignity and charity. The balance between justice and mercy is a hallmark of Catholic social teaching.
But the conciliar sect has abandoned this balance. It reduces the Church’s social teaching to a single note: welcoming the stranger, with no corresponding emphasis on the rule of law, the common good of the host nation, or the spiritual welfare of the immigrants themselves. The antipope does not ask Mayor Johnson: “Are these immigrants being evangelized? Are they being taught the Catholic faith? Are they being baptized? Are they being prepared for eternal life?” He asks only about the temporal impact of ICE raids and commends the mayor’s executive orders to “protect the people of Chicago.” This is the religion of humanitarianism, not the religion of Jesus Christ.
Saint Pius X, in Lamentabili sane exitu, condemned the proposition that “the Church listening cooperates in such a way with the Church teaching in defining truths of faith, that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening” (proposition 6). The conciliar sect has precisely inverted the Magisterium: instead of teaching the faithful the immutable truths of faith, it listens to the world and echoes back its opinions. The “pope” does not teach; he affirms. He does not correct; he encourages. He does not command; he suggests. This is not the Vicar of Christ. This is a ventriloquist’s puppet of secular liberalism.
The Ceremonial Key: Symbolism of an Empty City
The article reports that “along with the official invitation letter, the pontiff was presented with a ceremonial key to the city of Chicago.” Johnson described the city as one from which “some of the greatest voices for justice come” and which “birthed Pope Leo XIV.”
Chicago is indeed the birthplace of Robert Prevost. But what kind of city is Chicago? It is a city ravaged by violence, abortion, poverty, racial division, and the near-total collapse of Catholic practice among its inhabitants. The Archdiocese of Chicago, under the leadership of the conciliar “bishops,” has been a showcase of everything that is wrong with the post-conciliar sect: empty churches, closed parishes, sexual abuse scandals covered up, the systematic replacement of Catholic doctrine with secular progressive ideology, and the reduction of the faith to social justice activism.
The ceremonial key to such a city, presented to such an antipope, is a fitting symbol of the entire conciliar revolution: an empty gesture from an empty city to an empty throne. The true Church would weep over Chicago — not because of ICE raids or economic inequality, but because of the apostasy of its people, the corruption of its clergy, and the near-total abandonment of the faith that once built its magnificent churches and filled its schools with children who knew their catechism.
The Absence of Cardinal Cupich’s Role
The article notes that Johnson “wrote the letter after being advised by the Catholic archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Blaise Cupich.” This is a significant detail that deserves scrutiny. Cardinal Cupich is one of the most prominent figures in the conciliar sect in the United States, a man who has consistently promoted the agenda of the antipopes, including the systematic dismantling of the Traditional Latin Mass, the advancement of pro-abortion politicians within the “Catholic” fold, and the transformation of the Church into a vehicle for progressive social policy.
That Cupich advised Johnson to invite Leo XIV to Chicago is entirely consistent with the conciliar strategy: use political figures to legitimize the antipope, and use the antipope to legitimize political figures. It is a circular validation scheme that has nothing to do with the salvation of souls and everything to do with the consolidation of power by the structures occupying the Vatican.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation Continues
This meeting between Brandon Johnson and the antipope Leo XIV is not an isolated event. It is a symptom of the systemic apostasy that has consumed the conciliar sect since the death of Pius XII. The Church of Jesus Christ, founded to teach all nations the truth of the Gospel, to administer the sacraments, and to lead souls to eternal salvation, has been replaced by a humanitarian NGO that validates political partisanship, issues apologies for historical sins while committing far greater sins in the present, and reduces the kingship of Christ to a “call to action” for earthly justice.
The true Church endures. She endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith, who attend the true Mass, who receive the true sacraments, and who reject the conciliar sect with all its antipopes, its “bishops,” its “priests,” and its “saints.” She endures because she is founded on the Rock of Peter, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her. But the structures occupying the Vatican are not that Church. They are, as the documents of the pre-conciliar Magisterium warned, the instruments of the enemies of Christ — the secret societies, the modernists, and the apostates who have infiltrated the sanctuary and desecrated it.
Let the faithful take warning. Let them not be deceived by the spectacle of a “pope” meeting with a mayor, discussing politics, and exchanging ceremonial keys. This is not the Church of Christ. This is the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. And the faithful must flee from it, cling to the unchanging Tradition, and pray for the restoration of the true Church — the Church of all ages, the Church of the martyrs and the confessors, the Church that will never bend to the spirit of the world, no matter how many “popes” and “mayors” embrace it.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV meets with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 28.05.2026