EWTN News portal reports that the current usurper of the Apostolic See, Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), addressed presidents and senior administrators from Catholic institutions belonging to the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities on June 3, 2026. The occasion was the Rome Seminar, June 1–5, where university leaders met with senior Vatican officials to reflect on the “opportunities and challenges” of higher education. The occupant of the Vatican lectured these educators on “authenticity as true disciples of Christ,” quoting from his own encyclical Magnifica Humanitas and his apostolic letter Drawing New Maps of Hope. He spoke of instilling a “passion for the truth,” of Christ as truth itself, of the fragmentation of knowledge, and of the challenges posed by artificial intelligence. The entire spectacle is a masterclass in bureaucratic pious language that, when measured against the immutable standard of Catholic doctrine, reveals itself as yet another manifestation of the conciliar revolution’s systematic destruction of genuine Catholic education and its replacement with a naturalistic, modernist simulacrum.
The Illegitimacy of the Speaker: A Usurper Addresses Apostates
Before examining the content of this address, the fundamental question must be posed: who is Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) to speak on Catholic education? He is a man who occupies the Vatican apparatus without legitimate claim to the Chair of Peter. The entire line beginning with John XXIII represents a rupture with the perennial Magisterium of the Church. As the theological principles articulated by St. Robert Bellarmine in De Romano Pontifice establish, a manifest heretic ceases by that very fact to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church. The post-conciliar occupants have, through their public and manifest heresies — religious liberty, ecumenism, the democratization of the Church, the evolution of dogmas — separated themselves from the Church ipso facto, before any declaration. Pope Celestine I’s letters concerning Nestorius confirm this principle with devastating clarity: “he who has departed from the faith with such preaching cannot depose or remove anyone.” Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law further confirms that every office becomes vacant by the mere fact of public defection from the Catholic faith. Leo XIV, as a product and defender of the entire post-conciliar revolution, is a manifest heretic and therefore possesses no jurisdiction, no authority, and no right to address anyone in the name of the Catholic Church. His words carry no more weight than those of any other private individual — indeed, they carry less, because he speaks under the false pretense of an authority he does not possess.
“Passion for the Truth” Without the Deposit of Faith
The central theme of the address is the call for Catholic universities to instill a “passion for the truth” in students, with the caveat that this truth is “not only intellectual truth, but the truth that is Christ himself (cf. John 14:6).” On the surface, this sounds orthodox. But what does this man mean by “truth”? For the Catholic Church before the conciliar rupture, truth was not an abstraction to be “passionately” pursued as though it were an elusive quarry; it was the depositum fidei, the deposit of faith, once and for all delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3), guarded and infallibly taught by the Magisterium of the true Church. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the proposition that “divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the advancement of human reason” (Proposition 5), and that “the faith of Christ is in opposition to human reason and divine revelation not only is not useful, but is even hurtful to the perfection of man” (Proposition 6). St. Pius X, in Lamentabili sane exitu, condemned the proposition 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), and that “truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (Proposition 58).
When Leo XIV speaks of “truth” without defining it as the unchanging dogmas of the Catholic faith, without naming the heresies that have destroyed Catholic education, without condemning the very council (Vatican II) that gutted Catholic universities of their doctrinal content, he is engaging in the modernist game of using Catholic vocabulary to smuggle in relativism. The “passion for the truth” he advocates is not the passionate defense of defined dogmas but the modernist “pursuit” of an ever-evolving understanding — precisely the error condemned by St. Pius X as the “pursuit of novelty in the investigation of things” that “leads to the most grievous errors, which become particularly pernicious when they concern sacred sciences” (Lamentabili, Introduction).
The “Fragmentation of Knowledge” — A Problem Created by the Conciliar Sect Itself
The usurper acknowledged “the increasing fragmentation of knowledge,” noting that specialized experts “often lack a global vision of reality that is capable of uniting not only the various fields of knowledge but also the multiple aspects of life and the inner longings of the human heart.” This is a remarkable admission from the representative of the very system that caused this fragmentation. The pre-conciliar Catholic university was precisely the institution that provided the global vision of reality through the sapiential role of theology as the queen of the sciences, with philosophy — particularly Thomistic philosophy — serving as its handmaid. The Studiorum Ducem of Pius XI (1923) established St. Thomas Aquinas as the preeminent guide in Catholic universities precisely because his synthesis provided the unifying vision that ordered all knowledge to its ultimate end: God.
What destroyed this unity? The conciar revolution itself. Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes and the subsequent modernization of Catholic higher education deliberately dismantled the Thomistic framework, opened the doors to secular methodologies, and subjected Catholic theology to the “sciences” of man — sociology, psychology, historical criticism — that St. Pius X had condemned as instruments of modernist destruction. The “fragmentation of knowledge” is not a problem that befell Catholic universities from outside; it is the direct and intended consequence of the conciliar sect’s abandonment of the Catholic intellectual tradition. For the usurper to lament this fragmentation while offering no condemnation of its cause — while indeed perpetuating the very system that produced it — is not merely hypocrisy; it is a diabolical inversion that blames the victim for the crimes of the perpetrator.
“The Christian Vision Permeates Every Discipline” — But Which Christianity?
Leo XIV invited Catholic educational institutions to be “a living environment in which the Christian vision permeates every discipline and every interaction,” quoting from his apostolic letter Drawing New Maps of Hope. The phrase “Christian vision” is deliberately vague. The Catholic Church before 1958 had a precise understanding of what it means for the Christian vision to permeate education: it means the explicit teaching of Catholic dogma in every subject, the subordination of all human knowledge to the supernatural end of man, the recognition of the Church’s authority to teach and govern in all matters touching faith and morals, and the absolute primacy of the salvation of souls as the supreme law of the Church (Salus animarum suprema lex).
What “Christian vision” does the conciliar sect offer? One that has been condemned by the very popes whose authority these institutions claim to recognize. Pius IX condemned the proposition that “the Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free — nor is she endowed with proper and perpetual rights of her own, conferred upon her by her Divine Founder” (Proposition 19, Syllabus of Errors). He condemned the idea that “the Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion” (Proposition 21). He condemned the separation of Church and State (Proposition 55) and the proposition that “in the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship” (Proposition 77). The “Christian vision” of the post-conciliar university is one that has explicitly embraced religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio), and dialogue with the world (Gaudium et Spes) — all of which represent a fundamental betrayal of the Church’s self-understanding as the one true religion founded by Christ.
Artificial Intelligence and the Abdication of the Supernatural
Perhaps the most revealing portion of the address concerns artificial intelligence. The usurper reflected on “the prolific use of artificial intelligence, making it ‘increasingly difficult to evaluate the work of students, requiring educators to adapt their methods creatively to ensure the integral human formation of those in their care.” He continued: “It is crucial that young men and women learn to engage positively with new technologies, while at the same time truly developing their God-given skills and capacities to reason, to think critically and commit knowledge to memory.”
This passage is a textbook example of the naturalistic mentality that pervades the conciliar sect. The “integral human formation” spoken of here is purely naturalistic — it concerns itself with reasoning, critical thinking, and memory, but is entirely silent about the supernatural formation of the soul: the state of grace, the cultivation of the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity), the avoidance of mortal sin, the reception of the sacraments, the practice of mental prayer and mortification, the development of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. The Catholic understanding of “integral formation” was articulated with precision by every pre-conciliar pope: the formation of the whole man — body and soul — ordered toward his supernatural end, which is the Beatific Vision. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared that Christ’s reign encompasses all of human nature and that “there is no power in us that is exempt from this reign.” He specified that Christ must reign in the mind, in the will, in the heart, and in the body — and that the body and its members should serve as “weapons of justice for God” (Romans 6:13).
The usurper’s treatment of artificial intelligence as merely a pedagogical challenge to be “creatively” addressed, rather than as a potential instrument of deception and spiritual destruction that must be evaluated in light of Catholic moral theology, reveals the depth of the conciar sect’s capitulation to the world. Where is the warning about the dangers of technology divorced from moral formation? Where is the reminder that no technological advancement can substitute for grace? Where is the recognition that the modern world’s obsession with technology is itself a symptom of the forgetting of God that Pius XI lamented in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio? The silence is deafening — and damning.
The Omission That Condemns: No Mention of the Crisis
The most telling aspect of this address is what it does not say. There is no mention of the apostasy that has consumed Catholic higher education since the 1960s. There is no condemnation of the systematic removal of orthodox theology from Catholic universities. There is no acknowledgment that the vast majority of so-called “Catholic” universities have become, in practice, indistinguishable from their secular counterparts — indeed, that many have openly embraced ideologies condemned by the Church, including abortion advocacy, gender theory, and religious indifferentism. There is no mention of Vatican II as the catalyst for this destruction. There is no call to return to the pre-conciliar model of Catholic education as articulated in Pius XI’s Divini Illius Magistri (1929), which established with magisterial authority that the purpose of Catholic education is “to cooperate with divine grace in forming the true and perfect Christian” and that the Church has the right to teach and govern in all matters of education.
The usurper speaks of “authenticity” and “challenges” as though Catholic universities are merely facing ordinary difficulties in an otherwise sound system. The reality — which he cannot acknowledge without condemning his own authority — is that Catholic higher education was deliberately destroyed by the conciliar revolution and replaced with an instrument of modernist formation. The “Catholic” universities he addresses are, for the most part, institutions that teach heresy, promote religious indifferentism, and form students in the religion of humanitarianism rather than in the Catholic faith. For the usurper to address their presidents without naming this reality is not merely an oversight; it is a deliberate act of concealment that perpetuates the destruction.
The Source: EWTN and the Illusion of Catholic Media
It is necessary to note that this report comes from EWTN News, an outlet that, while using traditional Catholic aesthetics, operates within the framework of the conciar sect and recognizes the legitimacy of the post-conciliar usurpers. The report is presented in a tone of respectful coverage, treating the usurper’s words as though they carried authentic magisterial authority. This is consistent with EWTN’s broader posture of accepting the conciliar revolution while attempting to maintain certain traditional devotional practices — a contradiction that renders it incapable of providing genuine Catholic analysis. The faithful must be vigilant: not everything that uses Catholic language, references papal documents, and employs traditional imagery is authentically Catholic. The test is always the unchanging doctrine of the Church as taught before the conciliar rupture.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation Speaks of “Hope”
The address of Leo XIV to Catholic university presidents is a perfect encapsulation of the conciliar sect’s method: it uses the language of Catholicism to advance a program that is fundamentally anti-Catholic. It speaks of “truth” while denying defined dogma. It laments “fragmentation” while perpetuating the cause of that fragmentation. It calls for “authenticity” while occupying a throne obtained through the systematic destruction of authentic Catholicism. It addresses the “challenges” of artificial intelligence while remaining silent about the far greater challenge of souls dying without sanctifying grace.
The true Catholic response to the crisis of Catholic education is not to seek “creative adaptation” within the conciliar framework but to reject that framework entirely and return to the perennial teaching of the Church. As Pius IX declared in the Syllabus of Errors, the Church has never disobeyed the divine command to render to God what is God’s and to Caesar what is Caesar’s — and the usurper’s call for Catholic universities to engage “positively” with the world’s technologies while remaining silent about the world’s apostasy is a betrayal of that command. The faithful must recognize that there is no “hope” to be found in the documents of the conciar sect, no “authenticity” in its structures, and no “truth” in its teachings. The truth is Christ — not the abstract, evolving “truth” of the modernists, but the Christ of the Catholic Church, who founded a Church that teaches with authority, governs with jurisdiction, and sanctifies with grace. That Church endures, outside and against the structures occupying the Vatican, in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith and refuse the lies of the conciliar revolution.
Source:
Pope calls on Catholic universities to be authentic, instill ‘passion for the truth’ (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 03.06.2026