EWTN News reports that on June 18, 2026, the usurper Robert Prevost, known as “Pope” Leo XIV, presided over the funeral rites in St. Peter’s Basilica for Cardinal Camillo Ruini, whom he praised as a humble servant who “knew how to guide the people of God.” The article, originally published by ACI Stampa and translated by EWTN News, recounts how Leo XIV extolled Ruini’s “Cultural Project,” his “active and dialoguing presence” in both ecclesiastical and secular spheres, his service under “St.” Paul VI and especially “St.” John Paul II, and his episcopal motto: “The truth will set us free.” The “pontiff” cited Ruini’s spiritual testament, in which the cardinal expressed hope that he had acted “not for personal interests but for the goals that were entrusted to me,” and reflected on St. Paul’s words that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God.” The article also references a related piece describing Ruini as “John Paul II’s chief strategist in Italy” and “architect of the Italian Church’s ‘cultural project,'” who “led high-stakes fights over life, family, and secularism while seeking to re-anchor Catholic witness in national culture.” This funeral homily is not merely a tribute to a deceased prelate; it is a concentrated manifesto of everything that has destroyed the Catholic Church from within — a eulogy for one of the principal architects of the conciliar revolution, delivered by the current occupant of the Vatican’s throne of lies.
The Canonization by Omission: A Heretic Presented as Model Shepherd
The most striking feature of this funeral homily is what it systematically refuses to say. There is no mention — not a single word — of the depositum fidei, the immutable truths of Catholic doctrine that a true shepherd is bound to defend unto death. There is no mention of the extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church there is no salvation), no mention of the Social Reign of Christ the King over nations, no mention of the necessity of the conversion of Italy to the Catholic Faith specifically, no mention of the mortal dangers of modernism, religious liberty, false ecumenism, or the obligation of Catholic states to suppress public worship of false religions. Instead, we are offered a portrait of a man whose entire career was dedicated to the implementation of the very errors that the pre-conciliar Magisterium condemned as heresy.
When Leo XIV praises Ruini’s “active and dialoguing presence at the various levels of the life of the Church, as well as of the secular world and society,” he is not describing a Catholic bishop. He is describing a diplomat of the world, a man whose “dialogue” with the secular order was precisely the kind of capitulation that Pope Pius XI warned against in Quas Primas: “the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors.” Pius XI identified this plague as having “begun with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations” and the attempt to “equate the Christian religion with other false religions and shamelessly place them in the same category.” Ruini’s entire career was a living embodiment of this laicism — a man who sought not the conversion of Italy to Christ the King, but the “re-anchoring of Catholic witness in national culture,” which is to say, the subordination of the Church to the categories of liberal democracy.
The “Cultural Project”: Catholic Faith Subordinated to Civil Society
The article explicitly cites Ruini’s “Cultural Project” as one of the initiatives that “left a deep mark on the journey of the ecclesial community and also on civil society.” This is the language of the conciliar revolution — the reduction of the Church’s supernatural mission to a “contribution” within a pluralistic, secular framework. The Catholic Church does not exist to make a “contribution” to civil society; she exists to teach, govern, and sanctify all nations, to bring them under the kingship of Jesus Christ. As Pope Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “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 “Cultural Project” was, in substance, the Italian Church’s adaptation to the post-conciliar paradigm of Dignitatis Humanae — the conciliar declaration on religious freedom that directly contradicts the teaching of Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (propositions 77-78), which condemned the idea that “in the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State” and that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” Ruini’s project was not a defense of Catholic truth in the public square; it was an accommodation of the Church to the liberal order — precisely the “reconciliation with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” that Pius IX condemned as error.
Service Under Apostate “Popes”: Paul VI and John Paul II
Leo XIV’s homily explicitly recalls that Ruini served under “St.” Paul VI and “St.” John Paul II, and that in the latter, Ruini “experienced” the presence of the Lord. This is a staggering statement that reveals the theological bankruptcy of the conciliar sect. Paul VI was the “pope” who promulgated the apostate Novus Ordo Missae, the liturgical revolution that destroyed the theology of the propitiatory sacrifice and replaced it with a Protestant memorial meal. John Paul II was the heretic who kissed the Koran, who prayed with animists and pagans at Assisi, who promoted the theology of religious liberty, and who “canonized” a man — Maximilian Kolbe — who died not for the faith but for a fellow prisoner, and who was “canonized” by an antipope whose authority is null and void.
That Ruini “experienced the presence of the Lord” in John Paul II is not a testimony to Ruini’s holiness; it is a testimony to his blindness. The true presence of the Lord is in the Holy Eucharist — and it was John Paul II who opened the tabernacles of the world to the desecration of Communion in the hand, to intercommunion with heretics and schismatics, and to the general sacrilege that has emptied the churches of their divine life. To “experience the presence of the Lord” in such a man is to confess that one does not know what the presence of the Lord actually is.
“The Truth Will Set You Free”: A Motto Stripped of Catholic Content
Ruini’s episcopal motto, “The truth will set us free” (Veritas liberabit nos), is taken from John 8:32. But in the mouth of a man who spent his career implementing the conciliar revolution — a revolution built on the denial of truth, the evolution of dogmas, the democratization of the Church, and the embrace of religious liberty — this motto is emptied of all Catholic content. The truth that Christ proclaimed is not a vague spiritual sentiment; it is the fullness of revealed doctrine, the depositum fidei, which the Church is bound to guard inviolate until the end of time. As Pope St. Pius X declared in Lamentabili sane exitu, condemning the modernist errors: “The Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (proposition 57) and “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (proposition 58) — both condemned as heresy.
When Leo XIV says that Ruini’s motto “summarize[s] the profound understanding of the person and of freedom that Christ has revealed to us and that the Church teaches,” he is lying. The Church teaches that freedom is not the absence of constraint but the ability to live according to truth — and that the truth is not subject to development, dialogue, or accommodation with the world. The “freedom” that Ruini pursued was the freedom of the conciliar sect to abandon the Church’s supernatural mission and reduce her to a humanitarian NGO operating within the framework of liberal democracy.
The Spiritual Testament: A Confession Without Contrition
Ruini’s spiritual testament, as quoted by Leo XIV, contains the words: “I hope, Lord, that I have acted not for personal interests but for the goals that were entrusted to me and that I shared from the heart.” This is the language of a man who never examined the goals themselves. What were the goals entrusted to him? The implementation of Vatican II — the council that introduced religious liberty, false ecumenism, the collegiality of bishops, and the liturgical revolution. These are not goals that come from God; they are goals that come from the enemies of God, condemned repeatedly by the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
A true shepherd does not merely ask whether he pursued his goals with personal purity; he asks whether his goals were themselves in conformity with the will of God as revealed through the unchanging Magisterium of the Church. Ruini never asked this question — or if he did, he suppressed the answer. His “humility” and “trust in God” were not virtues; they were the absence of the theological courage required to resist the revolution that was destroying the Church from within.
The Funeral Liturgy: A Sacrilege in the Basilica of St. Peter
That this funeral took place at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica — the very heart of what was once the Catholic Church — is itself a blasphemy. The Chair of St. Peter is the symbol of the teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, the authority to teach the truth of Christ to all nations. That it should now be used to honor a man who spent his life undermining that truth is a sign of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matthew 24:15). The “funeral liturgy” celebrated by Leo XIV is not a true Catholic funeral; it is a rite of the conciliar sect, using the forms of Catholic worship to honor a man who served the destruction of the Catholic Faith.
Conclusion: A Sign of the Times
The funeral of Camillo Ruini, as reported by EWTN News and celebrated by “Pope” Leo XIV, is not an occasion for mourning the loss of a faithful servant. It is a sign of the depth of the apostasy that has consumed the structures occupying the Vatican. A man who dedicated his life to the implementation of the conciliar revolution — to the subordination of the Church to the secular order, to the embrace of religious liberty, to the dialogue with the world that Pius XI identified as the plague of laicism — is now held up as a model of humble service and trust in God.
This is what the conciar revolution produces: not martyrs, not confessors, not doctors of the Church, but diplomats, strategists, and “cultural project” managers who guide the people of God not toward the Kingdom of Christ but toward the kingdom of man. The truth that Ruini served was not the truth of Christ; it was the truth of the world, which is the lie. And the freedom he pursued was not the freedom of the sons of God; it was the freedom of the sons of perdition — the freedom to deny Christ, to empty the churches, to destroy the Mass, and to hand the faithful over to the mercy of a world that hates God.
Let those who still have eyes to see recognize in this funeral the final fruit of the conciar revolution: the triumph of the natural man over the supernatural Church, the enthronement of human wisdom over divine revelation, and the enthronement of the Antichrist in the House of God.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV remembers Cardinal Ruini as a shepherd who guided the people of God (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 18.06.2026