EWTN News portal reports that Cardinal George Koovakad, prefect of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, will lead a meeting in Sanremo on October 9 dedicated to the theme “Interreligious Dialogue Today in the Social and Cultural Context of Our Diocese.” The event follows a pastoral letter by Bishop Antonio Suetta on charity, Christian witness, and the proclamation of the Gospel to Muslims living in the diocese. The pastoral letter, titled “No One Has Greater Love Than This,” takes its inspiration from the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi and the 60th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council declaration Nostra Aetate. Bishop Suetta emphasizes esteem, welcome, and missionary courage, recalling the example of St. Francis and his 1219 encounter with the sultan of Egypt. The letter stresses dialogue and collaboration, beginning from the teaching of Nostra Aetate and the recognition that Christians and Muslims are creatures of the one God. This initiative, supported by the structures occupying the Vatican, represents yet another manifestation of the systematic apostasy that has consumed the conciliar sect since the abomination of Vatican II.
The Heresy of Nostra Aetate as Foundation
The entire Sanremo initiative is built upon the rotten foundation of Nostra Aetate, the conciliar declaration that marked the formal abandonment of the Church’s exclusive claim to truth. Bishop Suetta explicitly anchors his pastoral letter in this document, writing that Christians and Muslims are “creatures of the one God” and that this “shared foundation” calls believers to work together. This language is not accidental — it is the precise theological poison that Vatican II injected into the veins of the Catholic world.
The Catholic Church has always taught, with the full weight of her infallible Magisterium, that there is only one true religion and one true Church outside of which there is no salvation. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (proposition 15) and that “man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (proposition 16). The same pope, in his encyclical Quanto conficiamur (1863), while expressing hope for those invincibly ignorant of the Catholic faith, never once suggested that Islam — a religion that explicitly denies the Holy Trinity, the Divinity of Christ, and the Redemption through the Cross — could serve as a “shared foundation” for collaboration.
The very premise that Christians and Muslims worship the same God in a manner that permits joint religious initiative is a direct contradiction of Catholic doctrine. Islam denies the central mysteries of the Catholic faith: the Incarnation, the Redemption, the Holy Trinity, and the Divine Sonship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. To speak of a “shared foundation” with a religion that explicitly blasphemes these truths is not dialogue — it is apostasy. As Pope Eugene IV declared at the Council of Florence (1441): “The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes, and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal.” This dogmatic definition, binding on all Catholics until the end of time, is trampled underfoot by the Sanremo initiative.
The Myth of St. Francis and the Sultan
Bishop Suetta invokes the example of St. Francis of Assisi and his 1219 encounter with the sultan of Egypt as a model for “evangelization first as a witness offered through deeds and the coherence of Christian life, and only afterward through words.” This hagiographic distortion is a hallmark of modernist reinterpretation of the saints. The conciliar sect systematically rewrites the lives of the saints to serve its ecumenical agenda, stripping them of their Catholic substance and recasting them as proto-modernist dialogue partners.
The traditional account of St. Francis’ encounter with Sultan al-Kamil is one of bold, uncompromising proclamation of Christ as the only Savior. Francis did not go to the sultan to discover “shared foundations” or to collaborate on “human dignity and moral values.” He went to preach Christ Crucified and, if necessary, to suffer martyrdom for the faith. The modernist retelling transforms this act of supreme missionary courage into a model for interreligious dialogue — a concept that would have been incomprehensible and repugnant to St. Francis and every Catholic saint who undertook missionary work among infidels.
The saints of the Church — from St. Francis Xavier to St. Isaac Jogues to the martyrs of Vietnam and China — understood that there is no neutral ground between the true faith and false religion. They did not seek “shared foundations” with paganism or Islam; they sought the conversion of souls to Jesus Christ and His one true Church. To invoke St. Francis in support of interreligious dialogue is to bear false witness against the saints themselves.
The Linguistic Apostasy of “Dialogue”
The language employed throughout the article and the pastoral letter reveals the depth of the theological corruption. Phrases such as “esteem, welcome, and missionary courage,” “dialogue and collaboration,” “shared foundation,” and “defense of human dignity and moral values” are the characteristic vocabulary of conciliar Modernism. This is not the language of the Catholic Church — it is the language of naturalistic humanism dressed in ecclesiastical vestments.
The Catholic Church has always taught that the primary duty of bishops and pastors is the salvation of souls through the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and the governance of the faithful according to the law of God. Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), 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 Kingdom of Christ is not served by dialogue with those who deny His divinity — it is served by their conversion.
The emphasis on “human dignity” and “moral values” as the basis for collaboration with Islam is particularly revealing. These are secular, naturalistic concepts that have replaced the supernatural ends of the Church. The Church does not exist to defend “human dignity” in the abstract — she exists to lead souls to eternal salvation through Jesus Christ. When “human dignity” becomes the basis for interreligious collaboration, the supernatural order is implicitly denied, and the Church is reduced to a humanitarian NGO.
The Omission of the Primary Duty: Conversion
While Bishop Suetta’s letter mentions “proclamation” and making known “the true face of Jesus Christ,” the entire framework of the initiative subordinates this proclamation to the prior categories of “dialogue,” “collaboration,” and “welcome.” The article states that “charity and welcome must never lead Christians to conceal their spiritual identity,” but the practical effect of the Sanremo initiative is precisely this concealment — the reduction of the Church’s missionary mandate to one item on a checklist dominated by interreligious niceties.
The Catholic Church has always taught that the conversion of infidels and heretics is an act of the highest charity. Pope Benedict XIV, in his encyclical Ex Quo Primum (1756), and the Holy Office under various popes, consistently affirmed that the Church’s missionary activity is not optional but a divine command. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not say “Go and dialogue with all nations” — He said “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). The conciliar sect has replaced the mandate of conversion with the mandate of dialogue, and in doing so, it has betrayed Christ’s explicit command.
There is no mention in the article or the pastoral letter of the necessity of baptism for salvation, the reality of original sin, the existence of hell, or the urgency of converting Muslims to the Catholic faith. These omissions are not accidental — they are the very essence of the conciliar apostasy. The supernatural order is systematically silenced in favor of naturalistic concerns, and the result is a pastoral program that, while using Christian vocabulary, is fundamentally anti-Christian in its substance.
The Structural Apostasy of the “Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue”
The presence of Cardinal George Koovakad, prefect of the so-called “Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue,” is presented as “a sign of support from the Holy See for the diocesan initiative.” This “dicastery” is itself a creation of the conciliar revolution — an institutional embodiment of the heresy that the Catholic Church can engage in religious dialogue with false religions as equals or near-equals.
The true Church of Christ has never had a “dicastery for interreligious dialogue” because the very concept is heretical. The Church does not dialogue with error — she condemns it. Pope Pius XI, in Mortalium Animos (1928), condemned the ecumenical movement in unambiguous terms: “The union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it.” The establishment of a permanent Vatican bureaucracy dedicated to interreligious dialogue is a permanent institutionalization of heresy — a structural apostasy that gives ongoing, official sanction to the denial of the Church’s exclusive salvific mission.
The fact that this “cardinal” and this “dicastery” operate from the Vatican and claim the authority of the Holy See only underscores the completeness of the conciliar takeover. The structures occupying the Vatican are not the Catholic Church — they are, as the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates, a paramasonic structure that has systematically dismantled Catholic doctrine and replaced it with the religion of Modernism, which is the synthesis of all heresies.
The Secularization of the Church’s Mission
The Sanremo initiative explicitly frames interreligious collaboration in terms of “an increasingly secularized society” and the need to defend “human dignity and moral values” within it. This framing reveals the conciliar sect’s fundamental orientation: it sees the primary threat not as heresy, apostasy, or the denial of God, but as secularism. The Church is thus repositioned as a partner with Islam against secularism — a common enemy that supposedly unites all “religions of good will.”
This is a diabolical inversion of the Church’s true mission. The Church does not exist to form alliances with false religions against secularism — she exists to convert all men, including Muslims, to the Catholic faith, and to establish the social reign of Christ the King over all nations and all aspects of human life. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, taught that “the Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men” and that “rulers of states therefore should not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ.” The Sanremo initiative, by contrast, implicitly accepts the legitimacy of a secular public order and seeks merely to carve out a space for “religious values” within it — a position that Pius XI explicitly condemned as the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors.”
The collaboration with Islam against secularism is not merely a tactical error — it is a theological absurdity. Islam is itself a false religion that denies the central truths of the Catholic faith. To ally with Islam against secularism is to ally with one form of error against another, while the truth — Jesus Christ and His one true Church — is marginalized and ignored.
The Canonical and Theological Nullity of Conciliar Acts
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the acts of the conciliar sect — including pastoral letters, “dicasteries,” and “interreligious dialogue” initiatives — have no binding authority whatsoever. The usurpers occupying the Vatican lack legitimate jurisdiction, as the true Pope alone possesses the authority to govern the Church. St. Robert Bellarmine, in De Romano Pontifice, taught that “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 conciliar “popes” from John XXIII onward have promulgated and enforced doctrines that are manifestly heretical — including the very Nostra Aetate that Bishop Suetta invokes — and have thereby forfeited any claim to the Chair of Peter.
The Sanremo initiative, therefore, is not an act of the Catholic Church. It is an act of a counterfeit institution that has usurped the name and structures of the Church while emptying them of Catholic content. The faithful are bound in conscience to reject all such initiatives and to hold fast to the unchanging Catholic faith as taught by the true Magisterium before the conciliar revolution.
Conclusion: The Duty of Resistance
The Sanremo meeting on interreligious dialogue is not an isolated incident — it is a symptom of the comprehensive apostasy that has consumed the conciliar sect. From its foundation in the heretical Nostra Aetate, through its distortion of the example of St. Francis, to its naturalistic language of “human dignity” and “moral values,” every element of this initiative is antithetical to the Catholic faith.
The faithful must recognize that the structures occupying the Vatican are not the Church of Christ but the abomination of desolation spoken of by Our Lord (Matthew 24:15). The duty of every Catholic is not to participate in interreligious dialogue with those who deny Christ, but to profess the faith boldly, to seek the conversion of souls, and to work for the restoration of the true Church and the social reign of Christ the King. As Pope Pius IX declared in the Syllabus of Errors: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” — this proposition, condemned as error number 80, is precisely the program that the conciliar sect has implemented, and the Sanremo initiative is its latest manifestation.
Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus — outside the Church there is no salvation. This is the unchanging truth that the Sanremo initiative, and the entire conciliar apostasy, seeks to destroy. Let Catholics hold fast to this truth and reject all counterfeits.
Source:
Cardinal Koovakad to lead Sanremo meeting on interreligious dialogue (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 04.06.2026