EWTN News portal reports on the upcoming visit of the antipope Leo XIV to Spain (June 6–12, 2026), presenting ten “facts” about the Catholic Church in Spain that serve as a showcase for the triumphant narrative of the post-conciliar sect. The article, authored by Francesca Pollio Fenton, reads like a press release from the Vatican’s tourism bureau rather than a serious examination of the state of the faith in a nation once known for its Catholic zealotry. Beneath the veneer of pious travelogue lies a systematic omission of the most critical truths: the wholesale apostasy of the Spanish hierarchy, the near-total collapse of Catholic practice in the country, and the fact that the man visiting Spain holds no legitimate authority whatsoever. This article is not merely incomplete; it is a carefully curated exercise in deception, designed to project an image of vitality and continuity where only spiritual ruin remains.
The Antipope Tours a Nation in Spiritual Ruin
The article opens with the matter-of-fact statement that “Pope Leo XIV will visit Spain from June 6–12, making stops in Madrid, Barcelona, the Canary Islands, and Tenerife.” The use of the title “Pope” for Robert Prevost is not merely a conventional courtesy in this context — it is a theological falsehood that the entire article presupposes and propagates. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches in De Romano Pontifice (Book II, Chapter 30), a manifest heretic ceases to be Pope and Head by that very fact, just as he ceases to be a Christian and a member of the body of the Church. The post-conciliar occupants of the Vatican have professed — through their official acts, teachings, and promulgated documents — heresies condemned by the perennial Magisterium: religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio), the novel concept of collegiality undermining papal primacy, and the effective destruction of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass through the Novus Ordo Missae of Paul VI (Montini). Wernz and Vidal, in Ius Canonicum, confirm Bellarmine’s position: a Pope who falls into manifest heresy is deprived ipso facto of his personal jurisdiction even before any declaratory sentence by the Church. There is no Pope. There has not been a valid Pope since the death of Pius XII in 1958. The man touring Spain is a usurper, and every act he performs in his assumed capacity is null and void.
The article notes that “this is the ninth time a pope has visited the country,” referencing John Paul II (Wojtyła) and Benedict XVI (Ratzinger) as predecessors. Both were manifest heretics and apostates. Wojtyła’s entire pontificate was a systematic demolition of Catholic doctrine, from his Assisi gatherings — where he placed the cross beside pagan idols and invited representatives of false religions to pray for peace — to his kissing the Koran and prostrating himself before Buddhist monks. Ratzinger, the theologian of the “hermeneutic of discontinuity,” spent his career dismantling dogma from within, and his abdication (itself of dubious canonical validity) opened the door for the Argentine apostate Bergoglio and now the American Montinian Prevost. The article presents this lineage of destruction as though it were a proud heritage.
Missionaries Without a Mission: The Shell Game of “Evangelization”
Point 1 claims that “Spain is the country that sends out the most missionaries,” citing nearly 10,000 missionaries, about 5,000 of whom are active. The article reports this with evident pride. But what, precisely, are these “missionaries” evangelizing? The post-conciliar missionary enterprise has been thoroughly documented as a vehicle for liberation theology, social activism, and the promotion of the very religious indifferentism condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 17: “Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ”). The missionary exhibition during the Holy Year of 1925, referenced by Pius XI in Quas Primas, was intended to expand the Kingdom of Christ — the true Kingdom, demanding conversion to the Catholic faith and submission to the social reign of Christ the King. The modern “missionary” enterprise, by contrast, frequently involves handing out condoms, promoting “interreligious dialogue,” and building schools that teach no dogma. Spain does not send out Catholic missionaries; it sends out agents of the conciar sect’s program of humanitarianism dressed in religious vestments. The article’s boast is an indictment.
Pius XI declared in Quas Primas that the reign of Christ 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 modern missionary enterprise has abandoned this principle entirely, replacing the command to “teach all nations” (Matt. XXVIII, 19) with a program of mutual enrichment and cultural exchange. The article celebrates this betrayal.
“Mary’s Land” Without the Marian Dogmas
Point 2 recalls that “St. John Paul II” called Spain “Tierra de María.” The use of the canonization title “St.” for Wojtyła is itself a scandal, given that his “canonization” was performed by the antipope Bergoglio — a man with no authority to canonize anyone, since he himself held no legitimate office. But the deeper problem is the reduction of Marian devotion to a sentimental brand. Spain’s Marian heritage — Our Lady of the Pillar, Our Lady of Guadalupe (the original, in Extremadura), Our Lady of Montserrat — was always inseparable from defined Catholic dogmas: the Immaculate Conception (defined 1854), the Divine Maternity (defined at Ephesus, 431), the Perpetual Virginity, the Assumption (defined 1950). Modern Marian devotion in the conciliar sect has been emptied of dogmatic content and reduced to a vague spiritual sentiment compatible with the veneration of the “Great Goddess” at Assisi. The article mentions Spain’s “dense network of Marian shrines” without a single word about the dogmatic foundations that give these shrines their meaning. This is Mariology without Mary — or rather, it is the post-conciliar “Mary,” a figure of universal motherhood indistinguishable from the “divine feminine” of the New Age.
The Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War: Exploited and Instrumentalized
Point 3 discusses the martyrs of the Spanish Civil War, noting that “around 6,832 bishops, priests, religious, and nuns were killed for their faith, along with thousands of lay Catholics.” The article cites the beatification of 498 martyrs by Benedict XVI (Ratzinger) in 2007 as “the single-largest beatification ceremony ever held.” This is perhaps the most egregious instance of the article’s method: presenting the fruits of the conciar sect’s false authority as though they were genuine acts of the Church.
The martyrs of the Spanish Civil war are genuine witnesses to the faith — martyr meaning “witness” in Greek. They died in odium fidei, in hatred of the faith, at the hands of communist and anarchist persecutors. Their witness is precious. But the “beatifications” and “canonizations” performed by the conciliar antipopes are null and void. An antipope has no authority to beatify or canonize. The Church’s canonization process requires the authority of the Roman Pontiff, and since there is no Roman Pontiff, there can be no valid canonizations. To claim otherwise is to attribute divine authority to a man who publicly professes heresy.
Moreover, the article’s treatment of the Spanish martyrs is stripped of its most important theological context. These men and women died because they were Catholic — because they professed the Catholic faith in its entirety, including the social reign of Christ the King, the necessity of the one true Church, the reality of sin and hell, and the absolute primacy of the supernatural end of man. The conciliar sect has systematically repudiated or obscured every one of these truths. To venerate the martyrs while embracing the heresies for which they died is the height of blasphemy. As Pius XI warned in Quas Primas, the rejection of Christ’s kingship leads to the destruction of society — “the entire human society had to be shaken, because it lacked a stable and strong foundation.” The Spanish Civil War was a direct consequence of the rejection of Catholic principles by the Republican government, and the martyrs died precisely because they refused to accept this rejection. The conciliar sect, which has embraced the very liberalism and secularism that fueled the persecution, has no right to claim these martyrs as its own.
The Almudena Cathedral: Consecrated by a Heretic
Point 4 notes that Madrid’s Cathedral of Our Lady of Almudena “was consecrated by Pope John Paul II in 1993.” The article presents this as a mark of honor. In reality, it is a mark of the penetration of apostasy into the very stones of Spain’s churches. Wojtyła was a manifest heretic. His “consecration” of the cathedral was an act performed by a man who had already, by that date, committed countless public acts of apostasy: the Assisi gathering of 1986, the kissing of the Koran, the promotion of the “spirit of Vatican II” that dismantled Catholic worship and doctrine. A consecration performed by a heretic is not merely spiritually ineffective — it is a profanation. The cathedral, whatever its architectural merits, has been marked by the touch of the conciliar revolution.
The article also notes that the cathedral “stands across from the Royal Palace of Madrid, symbolizing the historic relationship between church and crown.” This is true — and it is precisely the relationship that the conciliar sect has repudiated. The traditional Catholic teaching on the alliance of the throne and the altar, the social reign of Christ the King over civil society, the duty of Catholic rulers to profess and protect the faith — all of this was condemned by the Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae) and the entire post-conciliar program. The Almudena Cathedral, “consecrated” by a heretic and situated in a kingdom that has embraced liberal democracy and religious indifferentism, is a monument to the betrayal of Spain’s Catholic heritage.
The Virgin of Almudena: A True Devotion in False Hands
Point 5 recounts the tradition of the Virgin of Almudena — the statue hidden in the walls during the Moorish invasion, discovered miraculously when the wall crumbled, with the candles still burning after centuries. This is a beautiful tradition, and the devotion to Our Lady of Almudena is a genuine expression of Spanish Catholic piety. But the article immediately subordinates this truth to the conciliar narrative: “That same venerable image will be processed through the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium during the Holy Father’s meeting with the diocesan community of Madrid on June 8.”
A sacred image of the Virgin Mary processed through a football stadium — a temple of modern pagan entertainment — for the benefit of an antipope. The symbolism is almost too perfect. The conciar sect has consistently desacralized Catholic devotions, reducing them to public spectacles and media events. The true purpose of Marian processions — reparation, supplication, the public profession of faith — has been replaced by the logic of the television camera and the crowd count. The Virgin of Almudena deserves to be carried through the streets of Madrid in a true Catholic procession, behind the Most Blessed Sacrament, with the faithful on their knees — not paraded through a sports arena for the amusement of the conciliar sect’s followers.
The Royal Family: Catholic in Name Only
Point 6 states that “Spain’s royal family maintains strong ties to the Catholic Church,” citing the 2004 wedding of King Felipe VI and Letizia Ortiz in the Almudena Cathedral. The article presents this as evidence of the continuing vitality of Catholicism in Spain. In reality, it is evidence of the continuing pretense of Catholicism in a nation that has wholly abandoned the faith in practice.
The Spanish Constitution of 1978, enacted after the death of Franco, established freedom of religion and separated the Catholic Church from the state — a direct repudiation of the traditional Catholic teaching on the duty of states to profess the true faith, as articulated by Leo XIII in Immortale Dei and by Pius XI in Quas Primas. The Spanish monarchy, far from being a Catholic institution, is a liberal democratic monarchy that recognizes no special status for the Catholic faith. King Felipe VI is a constitutional monarch in a secular state, and his “ties to the Church” are purely ceremonial. The wedding in the Almudena Cathedral was a social event, not a statement of Catholic principle. The Spanish royal family is as Catholic as the British royal family — that is to say, nominally and culturally, but not in faith or practice.
Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 77), condemned 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.” Spain’s constitutional order is precisely the liberalism that Pius IX condemned. The article celebrates this as a sign of health.
The Sagrada Família: A Masterpiece Desecrated
Point 7 describes the Basilica of the Sagrada Família as “a catechesis in stone” and “one of the world’s most distinctive expressions of the Catholic faith.” The article praises Gaudí’s design, noting that “the basilica’s major façades depict the Nativity, the Passion, and the glory of Christ.” This is all true — the Sagrada Família is indeed a remarkable architectural achievement, and Gaudí’s original vision was genuinely Catholic.
But the article omits the most important fact: the Sagrada Família has been effectively hijacked by the conciliar sect. The basilica was consecrated as a minor basilica — not by a true Pope, but by Benedict XVI (Ratzinger) in 2010, in a ceremony that was itself a Novus Ordo service. The basilica now functions as a tourist attraction and a showcase for the post-conciliar “spirit of dialogue” with modern culture. Its theological program, originally designed to communicate the Catholic faith, has been reinterpreted through the lens of the conciliar hermeneutic. The Sagrada Família, like so many of Spain’s Catholic treasures, has been captured by the enemy and pressed into the service of apostasy.
The article also notes that Gaudí “deliberately planned the Sagrada Família so that it would remain slightly shorter than Barcelona’s nearby Montjuïc hill, because he believed no human work should surpass God’s creation.” This is a beautiful sentiment — and it stands in stark contrast to the conciliar sect’s cult of human achievement, its celebration of “human dignity” as an end in itself, and its replacement of the supernatural with the natural. Gaudí understood that man is ordered toward God; the conciliar sect teaches that God is ordered toward man.
Gaudí: A Potential Saint in a Church Without Saints
Point 8 reports that “the Vatican announced April 14, 2025, that Pope Francis had formally recognized Gaudí’s ‘heroic virtue,’ a key step in the canonization process.” The article presents this as exciting news. In reality, it is another instance of the conciliar sect’s usurpation of the Church’s authority.
The recognition of “heroic virtue” is a step in the canonization process — but it is a process that requires the authority of the Roman Pontiff. Since there is no Roman Pontiff, there can be no valid recognition of heroic virtue, no valid beatification, and no valid canonization. Bergoglio’s declaration regarding Gaudí is null and void. It is an act of a man who holds no office, performed by a man who has publicly professed heresy (through the promotion of Amoris Laetitia, the Abu Dhabi Declaration, and countless other acts). The conciliar sect’s “canonizations” are not merely invalid — they are blasphemous, because they attribute to a human institution the authority that belongs to Christ alone, exercised through His true Vicar.
Moreover, the article’s treatment of Gaudí’s cause reveals the conciar sect’s fundamental confusion about sanctity. True Catholic sanctity is measured by fidelity to the faith, the practice of the virtues in light of supernatural grace, and the avoidance of sin. The conciliar sect, by contrast, has “canonized” men like John Henry Newman — a convert from Anglicanism whose writings on the development of doctrine were condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis — and John Paul II, whose entire pontificate was a systematic betrayal of the faith. Gaudí may well have been a man of genuine virtue, but his cause is being promoted by a sect that has no authority to promote it and no understanding of what sanctity means.
Our Lady of Candelaria: The Black Madonna and the Guanche Problem
Point 9 discusses the Basilica of Our Lady of Candelaria in Tenerife, noting that the Virgin of Candelaria “was venerated by the indigenous Guanche people before Spain completed its conquest of Tenerife.” The article adds that the Virgin of Candelaria “is often associated with the tradition of Black Madonnas.”
This point raises a delicate issue that the article handles with characteristic superficiality. The tradition of the Guanche veneration of the Virgin is often cited by the conciliar sect as evidence of the “universality” of the Marian message and as a precedent for the “inculturation” of the Gospel — that is, for the adaptation of Catholic worship to local cultures, including pagan ones. This is precisely the error condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 18: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion”) and by St. Pius X in Lamentabili (Proposition 60: “Christian doctrine was initially Jewish, but through gradual development, it became first Pauline, then Johannine, and finally Greek and universal”). The Catholic faith is not a cultural phenomenon that adapts to local traditions; it is the deposit of divine revelation, entrusted to the Church, and proposed to all nations without alteration. The suggestion that the Guanches venerated the Virgin Mary before the arrival of Catholic missionaries — and that this somehow validates the conciliar program of inculturation — is a dangerous error that undermines the necessity of evangelization and the uniqueness of the Catholic faith.
The association of the Virgin of Candelaria with the “Black Madonna” tradition is similarly problematic. While Black Madonnas are a genuine and ancient feature of Catholic devotion, the conciliar sect has increasingly interpreted them through the lens of racial and cultural politics, reducing a theological mystery to a sociological phenomenon. The article’s treatment of this point is superficial and uninformative.
The Canary Islands: From Catholic Outpost to Tourist Destination
Point 10 notes that the Canary Islands “were an early Catholic outpost” and “played a notable role in the spread of Catholicism across the New World.” This is historically accurate — the Canary Islands were indeed an important waypoint for Spanish missionaries traveling to the Americas. But the article’s treatment of this point is a masterpiece of omission.
The evangelization of the Americas was one of the greatest achievements of the Catholic Church — and it was carried out by the true Catholic Church, the Church of the Council of Trent, the Church of the Roman Catechism, the Church of the Traditional Latin Mass. The missionaries who departed from the Canary Islands were men of faith who believed in the necessity of baptism, the reality of original sin, the existence of hell, and the duty of all men to embrace the Catholic faith. They were not the “missionaries” of the conciliar sect, with their interreligious dialogue and their humanitarian programs. The evangelization of the Americas was an act of the true Church; the conciliar sect has repudiated the theological principles that motivated it.
The article also fails to mention that the Canary Islands, like the rest of Spain, have been devastated by the conciar revolution. The dioceses of the Canary Islands are led by bishops who profess the heresies of Vatican II, who celebrate the Novus Ordo, and who promote the very religious indifferentism that the missionaries who departed from these islands gave their lives to combat.
The Omissions: What the Article Refuses to Say
The most damning aspect of this article is not what it says, but what it omits. There is no mention of the catastrophic decline of Catholic practice in Spain. There is no mention of the fact that regular Mass attendance in Spain has fallen to single digits in many dioceses. There is no mention of the legalization of abortion, the promotion of gender ideology, the collapse of Catholic education, or the systematic persecution of the remaining faithful Catholics who cling to the Traditional Latin Mass. There is no mention of the fact that the Spanish hierarchy — the “bishops” and “priests” of the conciliar sect — are complicit in all of this, having abandoned their duty to preach the faith and govern the faithful.
There is no mention of the true state of the Church in Spain — the small communities of faithful Catholics who attend the Traditional Latin Mass, who profess the integral Catholic faith, and who reject the apostasy of the conciliar sect. These faithful are invisible to the EWTN News reporter, because they do not fit the narrative of a vibrant, growing Church.
There is no mention of the theological principles that should govern any discussion of the Church in Spain: the social reign of Christ the King, the necessity of the Catholic faith for salvation, the duty of states to profess the true faith, the reality of sin and the need for conversion, the absolute primacy of the supernatural end of man. These principles — articulated by Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and every true Pope — are the only measure by which the state of the Church in Spain (or anywhere else) can be judged. By this measure, the situation is catastrophic. The article’s silence on these matters is not accidental — it is the silence of apostasy.
The Corpus Christi Procession: A Hollow Spectacle
The article mentions that one of the “most anticipated moments” of the antipope’s visit will be “an open-air Mass celebrating Corpus Christi, and a procession through the streets of Madrid.” The feast of Corpus Christi was instituted by Pope Urban IV in 1264, in response to the Eucharistic miracles of Bolsena and the theological work of St. Thomas Aquinas, who composed the propers for the feast. It is a feast of the true Presence of Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament — a dogma defined by the Council of Trent and reaffirmed by every subsequent Pope until 1958.
The conciliar sect has systematically undermined the doctrine of the Real Presence through the Novus Ordo Missae, which was designed to be acceptable to Protestants and which obscures the sacrificial nature of the Mass. The “open-air Mass” celebrated by the antipope Leo XIV will be a Novus Ordo service — a ceremony that, as the Ottaviani Intervention of 1969 demonstrated, represents a “striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent.” A Corpus Christi procession behind an antipope, following a Novus Ordo “Mass,” is not a profession of faith in the Real Presence — it is a parody of one.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, warned that “the more the sweetest Name of our Redeemer is omitted with unworthy silence in international gatherings and parliaments, the more loudly it must be confessed and the more urgently the rights of Christ the Lord’s royal dignity and authority must be recognized.” The article’s treatment of the Corpus Christi celebration as a tourist attraction — one of the “most anticipated moments” of a papal visit — is the opposite of this exhortation. It is the reduction of the most sacred truths of the faith to a spectacle for the masses.
Conclusion: A Journey Through the Abomination of Desolation
The EWTN News article on the antipope Leo XIV’s visit to Spain is a document of the conciliar sect’s self-referential world — a world in which the antipope is the “Holy Father,” the Novus Ordo is “the Mass,” the heretical “bishops” are the “hierarchy,” and the systematic destruction of the faith is “renewal.” It is a world in which statistics about “missionaries” and “pilgrimage sites” substitute for the preaching of the Gospel, and in which the martyrs of the Spanish Civil War are invoked to legitimize the very heresies for which they died.
The truth about the Church in Spain — the true Church, the Church of all ages, the Church that endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith — is the opposite of what this article portrays. The true Church in Spain is small, persecuted, and faithful. It is found in the chapels where the Traditional Latin Mass is celebrated, in the homes where the Rosary is prayed, in the hearts of those who reject the apostasy of Vatican II and cling to the immutable deposit of faith. These faithful do not need an antipope to visit Spain — they need a true Pope to teach, govern, and sanctify them, as Christ intended when He established the papacy.
Until that day, the faithful must resist the lies of the conciar sect, reject the authority of its usurpers, and profess the faith of their fathers — the faith for which the martyrs of Spain shed their blood. As St. Pius X wrote in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Modernism is “the synthesis of all heresies,” and its fruit is the destruction of the faith. The article analyzed here is a fruit of that destruction — and it must be rejected as such.
Source:
10 things to know about the Catholic Church in Spain ahead of Pope Leo XIV’s visit (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 05.06.2026