The National Catholic Register portal reports that on June 18, 2026, the antipope Leo XIV signed decrees declaring several individuals “Venerable,” including American religious sister Mary Teresa Tallon, foundress of the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate. The article presents this as a routine step toward sainthood, noting her birth in 1867, her time with the Sisters of the Holy Cross, and her founding of a new congregation in 1920. It also mentions the recognition of martyrdom for Juan Torres Torres and 19 companions killed during the Spanish Civil War. The entire piece operates within the framework of the post-conciliar canonization machinery, treating it as a legitimate exercise of authority — an assumption that collapses under even the slightest scrutiny from the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine.
The Canonization Apparatus of the Conciliar Sect: An Illegitimacy Built on Illegitimacy
The very first and most fundamental observation — one that the article, in its servile deference to the structures occupying the Vatican, completely fails to make — is that the entity conducting these “canonizations” has no authority whatsoever to do so. The antipope Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost, occupies the Chair of Peter not by divine institution but by a series of illegitimate elections carried out by men who are themselves manifest heretics. From John XXIII onward, each successive usurper was elected within a system already corrupted by Modernism, and each one publicly defected from the Catholic faith through the promotion of heretical doctrines — religious liberty, ecumenism, the evolution of dogmas, and the democratization of the Church.
As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches in De Romano Pontifice (Book II, Chapter 30): “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.” This is not a fringe opinion. Wernz and Vidal in Ius Canonicum confirm: “By notorious and publicly manifested heresy, the Roman Pontiff, should he fall into it, is deprived ipso facto of his personal jurisdiction even before any declaratory sentence by the Church.” The post-conciliar occupants of the Vatican have, through their endorsement of the Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae), their participation in interreligious prayer gatherings (such as the 1986 Assisi meeting), and their systematic dismantling of Catholic doctrine, made themselves manifest heretics beyond any reasonable dispute. They are, in the language of Pope Celestine I regarding Nestorius, men who “had already brought the divine judgment upon themselves” — men who “could not remove anyone by sentence who [themselves] had already shown that [they] must be removed.”
Pope Paul IV’s Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio (1559) is explicit: “If at any time it shall appear that any… Roman Pontiff, prior to his promotion… has defected from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy: his promotion or elevation… shall be null, void, and of no effect.” This Bull, referenced 19 times in the marginal notes of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, is not merely disciplinary. It is a declaration of divine law: a heretic cannot hold ecclesiastical office. The entire post-conciliar hierarchy is therefore an edifice built on nullity. Every “decree” signed by Leo XIV, every “canonization” performed by this machinery, is ipso facto void — not merely illicit, but invalid, carrying no more spiritual weight than a decree issued by any layman or pagan.
The article’s reference to Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, “prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints,” is revealing in its unconscious absurdity. A “dicastery” — a bureaucratic neologism of the conciliar sect — is treated as though it were a legitimate organ of the Church. It is not. It is an administrative department of the neo-church, an anti-church that has abandoned the depositum fidei and replaced it with the cult of man, dialogue, and progress. Its “prefect” is a appointee of a usurper, operating within a structure that has no mandate from Christ. The entire process of “canonization” under these authorities is a theatrical performance designed to lend credibility to the conciar revolution by manufacturing saints who either conform to its agenda or are retroactively reinterpreted to do so.
The Omission of the Supernatural: Sainthood Without Sanctity
What does it mean, in authentic Catholic theology, for a person to be declared “Venerable”? It means that the Church — the true Church, guided by the Holy Ghost — has examined the life of the individual and found that he or she practiced the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) and the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) to a heroic degree. This is an exercise of the Church’s infallible judgment, made with the utmost gravity, because it concerns the eternal glory of a soul and the edification of the faithful.
Now consider what the article actually tells us about Mary Teresa Tallon. She was born to Irish immigrants. She joined the Sisters of the Holy Cross. She taught in Catholic schools. She was “inspired to establish a new congregation dedicated to contemplation and to preaching the Gospel to the neglected.” She authored a report on the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. She died in 1954.
Let the reader reflect on this biography. Where is the evidence of heroic virtue? Where are the miracles? Where is the testimony of a life lived in extraordinary union with God? The article provides none of this — because the conciliar sect’s canonization process does not require it in any meaningful sense. The old process, governed by the Codex Iuris Canonici of 1917 and centuries of rigorous theological investigation, demanded proof of miracles both for beatification and canonization, demanded the examination of every word written or spoken by the candidate, and demanded the appointment of a Promotor Fidei (the “Devil’s Advocate”) whose explicit role was to find every possible objection. This process was designed by the Church to protect the faithful from error — to ensure that no one was held up for veneration who did not genuinely merit it.
The post-conciliar process abolished these safeguards. It streamlined canonization into a bureaucratic procedure. It reduced the requirements for miracles. It eliminated the adversarial role of the Promotor Fidei. The result is that the neo-church can produce “saints” at an industrial rate — over 900 canonizations under John Paul II alone, a figure that dwarfs the entire previous history of the Church. This is not the careful discernment of the Holy Ghost; it is the mass production of false saints to serve the ideological purposes of Modernism.
The article’s description of Tallon’s congregation — the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate — with its motto “Make every soul count,” is a masterpiece of ambiguity. What does it mean to “make every soul count”? In the mouth of a Catholic, this would mean the salvation of souls through the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and the call to conversion to the Catholic faith — the only true religion, outside of which there is no salvation (extra ecclesiam nulla salus). But in the context of the conciliar sect, with its embrace of religious liberty and ecumenism, “making every soul count” can just as easily mean a naturalistic concern for human dignity that makes no distinction between truth and error, between the Church and heresy, between Christ and Antichrist. The article provides no clarification because the neo-church sees no need for one — it has abandoned the very categories that would make such clarification necessary.
The Martyrdom Decree: Exploiting the Dead for a False Church
Perhaps the most cynical element of the article is the mention of Juan Torres Torres and 19 companions, “all Catholic priests, for having been killed in odium fidei (in hatred of the faith) in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.” The recognition of martyrdom is significant because, unlike other causes, it does not require a miracle for beatification — the martyrdom itself is considered sufficient proof of sanctity.
But here again, the question of authority is decisive. A usurper who is himself a manifest heretic cannot authenticate a martyr. He cannot exercise the Church’s infallible judgment because he is not the Church’s head. The very concept of martyrdom — death suffered in odium fidei, in hatred of the faith — presupposes a clear understanding of what the faith is. The post-conciliar authorities have systematically redefined the faith, diluting it with Modernist novelties. How can men who deny the necessity of conversion to the Catholic faith (as the conciliar sect does through Dignitatis Humanae and subsequent documents) authentically judge that someone died in hatred of the faith? They cannot. Their judgment is void.
Moreover, the exploitation of the Spanish Civil War martyrs by the neo-church is a particularly bitter irony. Many of those killed in Spain died precisely because they resisted the forces of liberalism, Freemasonry, and communism — the very forces that the conciliar sect has since embraced through its dialogue with the world, its religious indifferentism, and its abandonment of the social reign of Christ the King. As Pius XI declared in Quas Primas (1925): “The Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men… the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The martyrs of Spain died defending this truth. The neo-church, which has repudiated it, has no right to claim them.
The Silence That Condemns: What the Article Refuses to Say
The most damning feature of the article is not what it says, but what it omits. There is no mention of the theological crisis that has consumed the structures occupying the Vatican since 1958. There is no acknowledgment that the men issuing these decrees are manifest heretics. There is no reference to the fact that the conciliar sect has abandoned the traditional canonization process, eliminated the Devil’s Advocate, and reduced the requirements for miracles. There is no questioning of whether a “saint” produced by a heretical antipope has any validity whatsoever.
The article treats the post-conciliar canonization machinery as though it were the legitimate continuation of the Church’s ancient practice. This is the fundamental lie of the “hermeneutic of continuity” — the Modernist deception that the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath represent a faithful development of Catholic doctrine rather than a radical rupture. As St. Pius X warned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemning the Modernist proposition that “the organic structure of the Church is subject to change, and the Christian community, like the human community, is subject to continuous evolution” (Proposition 53). The conciar sect has done precisely this — it has treated the Church as an evolving human institution rather than a divine society instituted by Christ with an immutable constitution.
The article’s tone is that of dutiful, unquestioning obedience to the neo-church. It reports the antipope’s actions as news to be accepted and celebrated, not as events to be evaluated in light of Catholic truth. This is the tone of the conciliar religion — a religion of submission to human authority rather than to God, of deference to the structures of the world rather than to the Church of Christ.
The Machinery of False Sanctity: A Pattern of Deception
The declaration of Mary Teresa Tallon as “Venerable” must be understood within the broader pattern of the neo-church’s manipulation of the cult of the saints. This pattern includes the canonization of men who were themselves Modernists or whose lives, when examined honestly, reveal not heroic virtue but accommodation to error.
Consider the case of John Henry Newman, “canonized” by Bergoglio — a man whose theory of the development of doctrine was essentially identical to the Modernism condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907). Or consider Faustyna Kowalska, whose mystical writings bear striking similarities to those of Maria Franciszka Kozłowska, condemned by Pius X, and whose cause was advanced by the crypto-Mason Stefan Sopoćko. Or Maximilian Kolbe, who died not in odium fidei but as a substitute for a fellow prisoner — an act of charity, certainly, but not martyrdom in the theological sense, since the cause of death was not hatred of the Catholic faith.
The neo-church selects its “saints” not on the basis of genuine holiness but on the basis of utility to its agenda. Mary Teresa Tallon, foundress of a congregation dedicated to parish visitation and catechetics, fits the conciliar model perfectly — she represents the kind of naturalistic, works-oriented “holiness” that the neo-church wishes to promote. Her cause advances the narrative that the post-conciliar structures are fruitful, that they produce saints, that they are the true Church. This is a lie, and it is a lie told at the expense of the faithful, who are encouraged to venerate individuals whose sanctity has not been — and cannot be — authentically verified.
The Only True Church and the Only True Saints
The Catholic Church is the one true Church of Jesus Christ, founded on Peter, governed by the successors of the Apostles in communion with the Roman Pontiff, and guided by the Holy Ghost in the proclamation of infallible truth. This Church endures — not in the structures of the Vatican II sect, which have abandoned the faith, but in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith, who worship at the Traditional Latin Mass, and who reject the conciliar apostasy.
This Church has always venerated the saints — not as products of a bureaucratic process, but as genuine friends of God, whose intercession is powerful before the throne of grace. The saints were canonized by true popes, acting in their capacity as Vicars of Christ, exercising the authority given to Peter: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” (Matthew 16:19). The neo-church’s “canonizations” have no such authority. They are acts of a usurper, performed within a heretical organization, according to a corrupted process. They bind nothing in heaven.
The faithful are called not to submit to this machinery but to reject it — to reject the antipope, to reject the conciliar sect, and to hold fast to the faith of all ages. As the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX (1864) condemns: “Roman pontiffs and ecumenical councils have wandered outside the limits of their powers, have usurped the rights of princes, and have even erred in defining matters of faith and morals” (Proposition 23). The post-conciliar authorities have done precisely this — they have usurped powers they do not possess and erred grievously in matters of faith and morals. Their decrees are null. Their “saints” are not saints. Their church is not the Church.
Let the faithful therefore turn away from the abomination of desolation and return to the immutable Tradition of the Catholic Church — the only ark of salvation, the only society in which true sanctity can be recognized, authenticated, and venerated as it deserves.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV Declares American Religious Founder Mary Teresa Tallon ‘Venerable’ (ncregister.com)
Date: 18.06.2026