National Catholic Register portal (June 12, 2026) reports that the usurper Leo XIV, in a message read at the Becket Fund’s Canterbury Medal Gala in Philadelphia, commended the defense of “religious freedom” as “the cornerstone of any just society,” praising the organization’s 30-year effort to defend this right and linking it to the innate dignity of the human person as expressed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The article describes the event, held at the National Constitution Center with Independence Hall as a backdrop, where Becket Fund chairman Bill Mumma received the Canterbury Medal, and where Becket President Mark Rienzi declared that “religious freedom is at the heart of the American story,” enabling people of “differing and conflicting beliefs to live together in peace.” The article lists past medalists including Elie Wiesel, an Orthodox rabbi, and a Latter-Day Saint leader. This message from the Vatican usurper represents the formal coronation of the very heresy of religious liberty that the true Church has consistently condemned as a rebellion against the Kingship of Christ and the social reign of God.
The Dogmatic Foundation: Christ the King Demands the Submission of Nations
The entire edifice of “religious freedom” as praised by the usurper Leo XIV stands in direct, irreconcilable contradiction to the defined dogma of the universal Kingship of Christ over all nations, societies, and individuals. Pope Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secularist error that the state and its citizens can be free from the obligations imposed by the law of Christ. Pius XI taught with absolute clarity: “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.” This is not a metaphor or a spiritual abstraction. The same Pontiff declared: “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” Therefore, the state, no less than the individual, is subject to Christ the King, and rulers who “refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ” act against the order established by God and undermine their own authority.
The usurper’s message explicitly affirms that “the right to religious freedom is the cornerstone of any just society,” a statement that Pius XI would have recognized as the very definition of injustice, for a society built on the premise that men are “free” to practice any faith or none, “without coercion or fear,” is a society that has dethroned Christ. The true Church has always taught that the Catholic religion is the only true religion, and that the state, in its public capacity, is bound to recognize and favor it. The Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX (1864) 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” (Proposition 77), and further condemned the claim that “the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, [does not] conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism” (Proposition 79). The usurper’s commendation of the Becket Fund’s defense of religious liberty is not a minor disciplinary preference; it is the embrace of a condemned error, the elevation of indifferentism to a “cornerstone” of justice.
The Americanist Heresy and the Declaration of Independence
Perhaps the most revealing element of the usurper’s message is his explicit endorsement of the United States Declaration of Independence as containing truth about the human person: “Indeed, we can recognize in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence an expression of the truth regarding the human person. Namely, the innate dignity of every man and woman, created by God in his own image and likeness, and the rights that stem therefrom.” This statement is a textbook expression of the heresy of Americanism, condemned by Pope Leo XIII in his letter Testem Benevolentiae (1899), which warned against the error of adapting the Church’s doctrine to the spirit of American liberalism, as if the Church in America should be different from the Church elsewhere.
The Declaration of Independence, a product of Enlightenment rationalism and Masonic philosophy, grounds rights in “Nature and Nature’s God” — a deistic abstraction — and in the “self-evident” truths of human reason, not in divine revelation or the authority of the Catholic Church. Its assertion that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” reflects the naturalism and rationalism condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself, and suffices, by its natural force, to secure the welfare of men and of nations” (Proposition 3). The usurper’s endorsement of this document as containing truth about the human person is a betrayal of the Church’s constant teaching that all truth comes from God through His Church, and that human dignity is not an autonomous possession but a gift ordered toward the supernatural end of knowing and serving the true God in the true Church.
The article notes that the event was held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, with Independence Hall forming a backdrop — a setting dripping with Masonic symbolism and revolutionary ideology. The United States Constitution, with its First Amendment establishing religious “freedom,” was a deliberate rejection of the Catholic principle that the state must recognize the true religion. The Founding Fathers, many of them Freemasons or Deists, constructed a system designed to ensure that no religion would have public authority — a system that Pius IX recognized as hostile to the Church.
The Becket Fund: Defending the Pest of Indifferentism
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, praised by the usurper for 30 years of defending “religious freedom,” is a nonprofit law firm that represents clients of various faiths — and none — in court cases involving religious liberty claims. The article lists past Canterbury medalists who include an Orthodox rabbi, a Latter-Day Saint leader, and Elie Wiesel, a Jewish Holocaust survivor. This ecumenical pantheon of “religious liberty” defenders reveals the true nature of the organization: it is an instrument of the very indifferentism and religious relativism that the true Church condemns.
The medal’s namesake, Thomas à Becket, was Archbishop of Canterbury who defended the liberties of the Church against the encroachments of King Henry II — a defense of the Church’s proper liberty, not the abstract “religious liberty” of all religions. To invoke Becket’s name while awarding a medal to a Latter-Day Saint leader and an Orthodox rabbi is a grotesque parody of Becket’s witness. Becket died defending the Catholic Church’s freedom from secular interference; the Becket Fund defends the “freedom” of every false religion to operate on equal footing with the truth. This is not continuity with Becket’s witness; it is its inversion.
The usurper’s message commends the Becket Fund for “ensuring that all men and women are free to act in conformity with the dictates of their conscience and to practice their faith openly, without coercion or fear.” This language is taken directly from the conciliar document Dignitatis Humanae (1965), which proclaimed the “right to religious freedom” based on the dignity of the human person — a document that contradicts the consistent teaching of the true Church. Pope Gregory XVI, in Mirari Vos (1832), condemned the idea that “liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone,” calling it a “deliramentum” (delirium). Pius IX, in the Syllabus, 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). The usurper Leo XIV, by commending an organization whose entire purpose is the legal defense of this condemned “right,” places himself squarely in the line of conciliar apostates who have betrayed the Church’s social teaching.
The Omission of Christ’s Social Kingship
The most damning aspect of the usurper’s message is what it omits. There is not a single mention of the obligation of the state to recognize the Catholic Church as the one true Church. There is no mention of the duty of Catholic rulers to suppress public manifestations of false worship. There is no mention of the social Kingship of Christ. There is no mention of the necessity of the salvation of souls through the Catholic Church as the only ark of salvation. There is no warning that “religious freedom” in the sense of equal legal status for all religions leads to the propagation of error and the damnation of souls.
Instead, the usurper speaks of “the innate dignity of every man and woman, created by God in his own image and likeness, and the rights that stem therefrom,” as if dignity and rights exist in a vacuum, detached from the obligation to submit to the true faith. This is the language of the Enlightenment, not of the Gospel. The Church has always taught that human dignity is real, but that it is ordered toward a supernatural end, and that the state has a duty to facilitate that end by recognizing the true religion and restraining public error. Pius XI taught: “The Church, established by Christ as a perfect society, demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority.” The usurper’s message, by contrast, treats the Church as merely one participant in a pluralistic marketplace of religions, all equally “free” under the law.
The usurper adds that “the Scriptures tell us that truth itself has a name, Jesus Christ (cf. Jn 14:6), and that God will undoubtedly aid those who search for him with all their heart (cf. Jer 29:13).” This pious-sounding appendage cannot disguise the heresy of the preceding message. If truth has a name — Jesus Christ — then there is no “religious freedom” to propagate falsehood. If God aids those who search for Him with all their heart, then the state’s duty is to ensure that the true God is publicly honored and that obstacles to the search for truth are removed. The usurper’s invocation of Scripture is a fig leaf covering the naked apostasy of his endorsement of religious liberty.
The Symptomatic Level: The Conciliar Revolution Complete
This message from the usurper Leo XIV is not an isolated incident; it is the logical culmination of the conciliar revolution that began with John XXIII’s Apostolic Act opening the Church to the modern world. The entire post-conciliar period has been characterized by the systematic replacement of the Church’s social teaching with the liberal democratic values of the Enlightenment. The usurper’s commendation of the Becket Fund, his endorsement of the Declaration of Independence, and his embrace of “religious freedom” as a cornerstone of justice are all symptoms of the same disease: the capitulation of the conciliar sect to the spirit of the age.
The article reports that Becket President Mark Rienzi declared that “religious freedom is at the heart of the American story” and that “for 250 years, U.S. religious freedom has enabled people of differing and conflicting beliefs to live together in peace.” This is the myth of American religious pluralism — a myth that ignores the fact that this “peace” was purchased at the cost of the public dethronement of Christ the King and the relegation of all religion to the private sphere. It is a peace built on the principle that truth does not matter, that all religions are equally valid paths, and that the state’s role is to ensure that no religion claims public authority. This is not the peace of Christ; it is the peace of indifferentism, the peace of the synthesis of all errors that is Modernism, as defined by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907).
The usurper’s message, delivered at an event celebrating the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, represents the formal alignment of the conciliar sect with the Masonic principles of the American founding. The “noble task” that Leo XIV commends is, in reality, the defense of the very system that was designed to ensure that the Catholic Church would never exercise public authority in the United States. It is the defense of a constitutional order that treats the Church as merely one voluntary association among many, with no special claim to truth or public recognition.
The Linguistic Level: The Bureaucratic Language of Apostasy
The tone of the usurper’s message is revealing in its bureaucratic blandness. Phrases like “the inviolable dignity of the human person,” “the dictates of their conscience,” and “the pursuit of truth sincerely and without fear” are the stock language of conciliar documents — language deliberately chosen to avoid any mention of the supernatural order, the necessity of the Catholic faith, the duty of the state to recognize the true Church, or the reality of sin and error. This is the language of naturalistic humanism, not of Catholic theology.
The usurper does not speak of the obligation of nations to submit to Christ the King. He does not speak of the duty of Catholic rulers to suppress heresy and schism. He does not speak of the necessity of the salvation of souls through the sacraments of the Catholic Church. He speaks instead of “dignity,” “conscience,” “freedom,” and “truth” in the abstract — concepts emptied of their Catholic content and filled with the content of liberal democracy. This is the language of the abomination of desolation — the language of a structure that occupies the Vatican but has emptied it of its Catholic substance.
Conclusion: The Usurper’s Seal on the Conciliar Betrayal
The usurper Leo XIV’s commendation of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is not a minor diplomatic courtesy; it is a formal, public, and explicit endorsement of the heresy of religious liberty as defined and condemned by the true Church. It is the coronation of the Americanist heresy, the elevation of the Declaration of Independence to a source of truth about the human person, and the alignment of the conciliar sect with the Masonic principles of the American founding. It represents the complete abandonment of the social Kingship of Christ, the duty of the state to recognize the true Church, and the necessity of suppressing public error for the salvation of souls.
The true Church teaches that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” — this proposition, condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (Proposition 80), is precisely what the usurper Leo XIV has done. He has reconciled himself with the liberal order, embraced its foundational heresy of religious freedom, and commended those who defend it. This is not the act of a true successor of Peter; it is the act of an antipope, a usurper, a servant of the conciliar revolution that has emptied the Church of its divine mission and transformed it into a chaplaincy for the liberal democratic order.
The faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith must recognize this message for what it is: a seal on the conciliar betrayal, a public act of apostasy, and a confirmation that the structures occupying the Vatican are not the Catholic Church but the synagogue of Satan (Apoc. 2:9, 3:9). The response of the faithful must be not accommodation but rejection — the rejection of all forms of religious liberty, the reaffirmation of the social Kingship of Christ, and the uncompromising confession that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church and no justice in a society that refuses to recognize its King.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV Commends Becket Fund for ‘Noble Task’ of Defending Religious Freedom in U.S. (ncregister.com)
Date: 12.06.2026