EWTN News portal reports that forty teenagers from war-torn countries gathered in Rome from May 31 to June 5, 2026, for an event called “Project Oxygen Teen Peace Summit,” organized under the auspices of Scholas Occurrentes — the educational movement founded by Jorge Mario Bergoglio during his tenure as Archbishop of Buenos Aires and subsequently elevated to institutional status within the conciliar structures. The participants, hailing from Ukraine, Nigeria, and the Middle East, engaged in “peace-building workshops on diplomacy and political engagement,” visited Vatican dicasteries and the Italian Parliament, attended conferences on artificial intelligence, and were granted a Wednesday general audience with the occupant of the Chair of Peter, “Pope” Leo XIV. Kathleen Hessert, founder of Project Oxygen and CEO of Sports Media Challenge, declared that “the people in charge have not been able to come up with the solutions to peace,” and therefore “we need to look somewhere else” — namely, to the “creativity and imagination” of teenagers. This entire enterprise constitutes a textbook manifestation of the modernist reduction of the Church’s supernatural mission to naturalistic humanitarianism, dressed in the language of “peace” while systematically excluding the only true foundation of peace: the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ and the integral Catholic faith.
The Reduction of Peace to Naturalistic Humanism
The fundamental error of Project Oxygen, and of the conciliar apparatus that sponsors it, lies in its implicit — and at times explicit — definition of “peace” as a purely natural, political, and psychological achievement. Kathleen Hessert’s statement that “the people in charge have not been able to come up with the solutions to peace” reveals the operative assumption: that peace is a technical problem to be solved through human ingenuity, diplomatic creativity, and the imagination of youth. This is not merely inadequate; it is a direct repudiation of the Church’s perennial teaching.
Pope Pius XI, in the encyclical *Quas Primas* (1925), established with irrefutable clarity that “the hope of lasting peace will not yet shine upon nations as long as individuals and states renounce and do not wish to recognize the reign of our Savior.” The encyclical further declares: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed.” Peace, in Catholic doctrine, is not a product of workshops, diplomacy, or artificial intelligence conferences. It is the fruit of the order established by Christ the King — an order that requires the submission of nations, families, and individuals to His divine law, the authority of His Church, and the sanctification of souls through the sacraments.
The Project Oxygen initiative, by contrast, operates entirely within the framework of what Pope Pius XI identified as the root cause of modern disorder: the removal of Christ and His law from public life. The teenagers are taught “diplomacy” and “political engagement” — purely naturalistic categories — while not a single reference is made to the necessity of conversion, the state of grace, the sacramental life, or the Social Kingship of Christ. This is not an oversight; it is the logical consequence of the conciliar revolution’s systematic replacement of supernatural religion with humanitarian activism.
Scholas Occurrentes: A Instrument of the Conciliar Sect
The institutional home of this initiative, Scholas Occurrentes, was founded by Jorge Mario Bergoglio — the same figure who, as “Pope” Francis, oversaw the most aggressive phase of the conciliar sect’s program of deconstruction. Scholas Occurrentes has no mandate from the Church’s authentic magisterium; it is a creation of the post-conciliar apparatus, designed to advance the Bergoglian agenda of “dialogue,” “encounter,” and “culture of meeting” — all euphemisms for the dissolution of Catholic identity into a vague, syncretistic humanitarianism.
That this organization is permitted to operate within Vatican dicasteries and to present its participants to the occupant of the Chair of Peter demonstrates the extent to which the conciliar structures have been captured by the very forces that the pre-conciliar Church condemned. Pope Pius XI warned in *Quas Primas*: “The plague that poisons human society… is the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors.” Project Oxygen is not a remedy for this plague; it is one of its symptoms. The initiative does not challenge the secular order; it collaborates with it, seeking “peace” through the same secular mechanisms — diplomacy, political engagement, artificial intelligence — that have produced the wars it claims to oppose.
The Exclusion of the Supernatural: Silence as Apostasy
The most damning indictment of Project Oxygen is not what it says, but what it omits. The article makes no mention of prayer, the sacraments, the necessity of conversion to the Catholic faith, the reality of sin, the existence of hell, the Social Kingship of Christ, or the authority of the Church to teach, govern, and sanctify. The word “God” does not appear in any quoted statement from organizers or participants. The word “Christ” is absent. The word “faith” is absent. The word “Church” appears only in reference to institutional visits, not as the Mystical Body of Christ with divine authority over the salvation of souls.
This silence is not accidental. It is the hallmark of the modernist apostasy condemned by Pope St. Pius X in *Pascendi Dominici Gregis* (1907) and in the decree *Lamentabili sane exitu*, which condemned the proposition that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (proposition 57) and that “the progress of sciences requires a reform of the concept of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, Revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption” (proposition 64). The modernist method, as St. Pius X diagnosed it, consists precisely in the systematic exclusion of the supernatural from public discourse, reducing religion to a matter of sentiment, social action, and psychological well-being.
Project Oxygen is a perfect instantiation of this method. The teenagers are taught to be “creative” and “compassionate” — natural virtues that, without the supernatural virtue of charity infused by grace, are incapable of producing true peace. As Pope Pius XI taught: “Peace will flourish and internal order will be established, for every cause of disturbance will be removed… when all willingly accept the reign of Christ and obey Him.” Without Christ, there is no peace. Without the Church, there is no Christ effectively known and loved. Without the sacraments, there is no grace. Project Oxygen offers none of these things, and therefore offers nothing — only the illusion of action in place of the reality of supernatural order.
The Wednesday Audience: Sacralizing Apostasy
The fact that these teenagers were granted a Wednesday general audience with “Pope” Leo XIV is itself a scandal of the first order. The occupant of the Chair of Peter — to the extent that he exercises the functions of the conciliar sect — is not the Vicar of Christ but the visible head of an organization that has systematically dismantled the Church’s doctrine, worship, and discipline. To present teenagers to this figure as participants in a “peace initiative” is to sacralize the apostasy, to lend the appearance of papal authority to a program that is fundamentally incompatible with the Church’s mission.
Pope Pius XI, in *Quas Primas*, explicitly stated that the annual celebration of the feast of Christ the King would “remind states that not only private individuals, but also rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him.” The feast was instituted precisely to combat the secularism that removes Christ from public life. Project Oxygen, by contrast, operates entirely within the secularist framework, seeking peace without Christ, order without the Church, and salvation without the sacraments. That it receives the endorsement — or at least the audience — of the conciliar “pope” is a confirmation, not a contradiction, of its fundamental orientation.
The Myth of Youthful Creativity as Substitute for Truth
Kathleen Hessert’s appeal to the “creativity and imagination” of teenagers as the source of peace solutions is a particularly insidious form of the modernist error. It substitutes human subjectivity — the “creativity” of fallen, unregenerate human minds — for the objective truth of divine revelation. This is precisely the error condemned in the *Syllabus of Errors* of Pope Pius IX (1864), which rejected the proposition that “human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil” (proposition 3), and that “all the truths of religion proceed from the innate strength of human reason” (proposition 4).
The imagination of teenagers, however well-intentioned, cannot substitute for the teaching authority of the Church. Peace is not a matter of creativity; it is a matter of conformity to the divine order. The teenagers from Ukraine, Nigeria, and the Middle East do not need workshops on diplomacy; they need the Catholic faith, the sacraments, and the Social Kingship of Christ. They need to be told that the wars devastating their homelands are the consequence of sin — original and actual — and that the only true peace is found in the Heart of Jesus, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in submission to the authority of His Church.
The Conciliar Sect’s Perpetual “Peace” Theater
This initiative must be understood within the broader context of the conciliar sect’s perpetual theater of “peace” and “dialogue.” From the Assisi gatherings of John Paul II to the “Human Fraternity” document of “Pope” Francis and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, the post-conciliar apparatus has consistently pursued a strategy of false peace — peace without truth, peace without conversion, peace without Christ. This strategy was condemned in advance by Pope Pius XI, who wrote: “The entire government of public schools… may and ought to pertain to the civil power” (cf. *Syllabus*, proposition 45) — but the Church’s authority over the education of youth in the faith cannot be surrendered to secular or naturalistic frameworks without grave sin.
Project Oxygen is merely the latest iteration of this strategy. It takes teenagers from war-torn countries — precisely those who most desperately need the truth of the Catholic faith — and teaches them that peace comes from human creativity rather than divine grace, from diplomacy rather than the Social Kingship of Christ, from political engagement rather than the sacramental life. It is, in the language of Pope Pius XI, a contribution to “the public apostasy, which secularism has initiated with great harm to society.”
Conclusion: The Only True Peace Initiative
The only true peace initiative is the one that the Church has always proclaimed: the restoration of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ over all nations, families, and individuals. This requires the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments, the teaching of integral Catholic doctrine, and the submission of all human authority to the divine law. It requires, in short, the very things that the conciliar sect has spent seven decades dismantling.
The teenagers gathered in Rome deserve better than workshops on diplomacy and conferences on artificial intelligence. They deserve the truth — the truth that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), that “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) is found only in Christ, and that the Church alone, in her integral and unchanging form, possesses the fullness of the means of salvation. Until the conciliar sect is rejected and the true Church is restored to her rightful authority, every “peace initiative” launched from the Vatican will be nothing more than a monument to the apostasy that now occupies the Chair of Peter.
Source:
Refusing to inherit hatred and war: Teenagers launch peace initiative at the Vatican (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 10.06.2026