VaticanNews portal reports that the usurper on Peter’s throne, “Pope” Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), has sent a video message to the 50th Steubenville Summer Youth Conference, dispensing the conciliar sect’s characteristic blend of naturalistic sentimentality and doctrinal vacuity. Beneath the superficially pious veneer of invoking St. Francis and speaking of “joy,” the message reveals the complete capitulation of the post-conciliar structure to the spirit of the world, reducing the supernatural life of grace to a therapeutic self-help program while remaining conspicuously silent on the one thing necessary: the conversion of sinners to the one true Catholic Faith and the absolute necessity of the sacraments for salvation. This is not a call to holiness, but a recruitment pamphlet for the New Church’s anthropocentric religion.
The Emptiness of “Joy” Without the Cross
The message from the impersonator of the papal office begins with a superficially attractive premise: “Only the love of God can provide us with true and perfect joy.” One might expect, from a true successor of St. Peter, an immediate explication of what this love entails — namely, the theological virtue of charity, infused by the Holy Ghost, whereby we love God above all things for His own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for God’s sake. Instead, the message descends into a banal, therapeutic reduction of divine love to an emotional state, a psychological mechanism for coping with anxiety. The “secret” revealed to young people is not the way of the Cross, not the mortification of the flesh, not the uncompromising pursuit of sanctifying grace through the sacraments of confession and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is, rather, a vague sentiment: “If we have the profound conviction that God cares for us as His beloved children, we will not be flustered or discouraged.”
This is the language of modernist immanentism condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici gregis: the reduction of religion to subjective religious sentiment, divorced from objective supernatural truth. The modernists teach that “revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (Condemned Proposition #20, Lamentabili sane exitu). This message from the Vatican is a practical application of that condemned error. The “peace” offered is not the peace that comes from a state of grace and submission to the authority of the true Church, but a naturalistic tranquility achieved through positive thinking about one’s relationship with a benevolent deity. It is the peace of the world, which Christ Himself warned is a false peace: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, do I give unto you” (Jn 14:27). The passage is quoted, but its meaning is inverted; the world’s peace of psychological comfort is substituted for the supernatural peace of Christ that comes through suffering and the denial of self.
The Omission of the Supernatural Life
What is most damning about this address is not what it says, but what it refuses to say. The message warns against seeking joy through “drug use, alcohol abuse, promiscuity, superficial relationships, obsession with image, or any kind of damaging behavior.” This is a naturalistic morality, accessible to any rational person, pagan or atheist. It requires no revelation, no Church, no sacraments. It is the morality of the Enlightenment, the morality enshrined in the modernist condemnation of Proposition #80 of the Syllabus of Errors, which Pius IX condemned as the claim that “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.”
But where is the call to the supernatural life? Where is the explicit mention that without sanctifying grace, the soul is in a state of spiritual death and incapable of the beatific vision? Where is the warning that mortal sin — including the sins of the flesh mentioned — destroys this grace and sends the soul to eternal damnation? There is no mention of hell, no mention of the reality of sin as an offense against God requiring not merely positive thinking but true contrition and sacramental absolution. The “sacraments” are mentioned only in passing, as one of several means for “cultivating a trusting relationship,” placed on par with “regular prayer.” There is no distinction between the Sacrament of Penance, which restores the soul to grace after mortal sin, and common prayer. There is no mention of the necessity of confession, of the examination of conscience, of the demands of divine justice. The entire framework is one of therapeutic deism, not Catholic theology.
The Francis of the New Church
The invocation of St. Francis is particularly cynical. The message presents a domesticated, sentimentalized Francis, a figure who might say “Pace e bene” with a “serene and loving smile.” This is not the Francis of history, the stigmatized saint who wept for sins, who embraced the leper, who received the wounds of Christ in his own body, who preached repentance with fiery zeal. This is the Francis of the modernist imagination: a gentle, eco-conscious, peace-loving figure whose “joy” is compatible with the abandonment of doctrinal rigor. It is the same Francis used to justify the syncretistic “Assisi” gatherings, where representatives of false religions pray together for “peace” — a direct violation of the Church’s perennial teaching against religious indifferentism, condemned in Proposition #15 of the Syllabus of Errors: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.”
The real St. Francis understood that true joy is found not in the absence of suffering but in union with Christ Crucified. His “joy” was the joy of the saints who “rejoiced that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus” (Acts 5:41). It was a supernatural joy, born of charity, tested by the most severe trials, and inseparable from the Cross. To invoke his name while stripping his message of its supernatural content is an act of intellectual theft and spiritual deception.
Vocations to What?
The message encourages young people to consider vocations to the priesthood and religious life, to “say to the Lord, ‘Here I am, send me!'” But what kind of priesthood is being proposed? The conciliar sect has systematically dismantled the theology of the priesthood as defined by the Council of Trent. The “priesthood” of the post-conciliar structure is a ministerial function, not an ontological transformation of the soul through Holy Orders. The “Mass” celebrated in these structures is not the true propitiatory sacrifice of Calvary, as defined by Trent, but a “memorial meal” and “table of assembly” — a Protestant understanding condemned by the Council of Trent (Session 22, Chapter 1). To encourage a young man to enter a seminary of the conciliar sect is to encourage him to participate in a system that has abandoned the very nature of the priesthood and the Holy Sacrifice. It is to recruit for the abomination of desolation, not for the Holy Catholic Church.
Moreover, the message’s encouragement to “welcome the Lord’s plans” is rendered meaningless without the recognition that God’s plan for salvation is mediated exclusively through the one true Church of Jesus Christ, outside of which there is no salvation (Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus). The conciliar sect, by teaching religious freedom (as in Dignitatis Humanae, contradicting Gregory XVI’s Mirari Vos and Pius IX’s Syllabus), by promoting false ecumenism with heretics and schismatics, and by engaging in syncretistic worship with pagans, has effectively denied the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation. To speak of “vocations” within such a structure is to speak of vocations to serve the enemies of Christ.
The Silence on the Reign of Christ the King
Perhaps the most telling omission is the complete silence on the social reign of Christ the King. Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas, solemnly declared that “the Kingdom of our Savior encompasses all men” and that “the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” He warned that “when God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The message from the antipope makes no mention of this fundamental truth. There is no call to restore the public reign of Christ over nations, no condemnation of secularism and laicism — the very errors Pius XI sought to combat by instituting the Feast of Christ the King. Instead, the message is entirely interiorized, focused on personal feelings of peace and joy, with no reference to the objective order of society under God’s law. This is the perfect modernist program: a religion of the heart that leaves the world to the devil.
Conclusion: The Counterfeit Gospel of the New Church
The video message from “Pope” Leo XIV to the Steubenville conference is a masterclass in modernist rhetoric. It uses the vocabulary of Catholic piety — joy, peace, St. Francis, prayer, sacraments, vocations — while emptying it of supernatural content. It offers a therapeutic, naturalistic religion compatible with the spirit of the world, the very spirit condemned by St. Pius X as “the synthesis of all errors.” It is a religion without the Cross, without the reality of sin, without the necessity of the Catholic Church, without the social reign of Christ the King, and without the supernatural life of grace that alone leads to eternal salvation.
The faithful remnant of the true Catholic Church must recognize this message for what it is: a recruitment tool for the conciliar sect, a counterfeit gospel designed to lead souls away from the narrow path that leads to life. True joy is found not in the sentimental affirmations of a modernist antipope, but in the faithful observance of the Commandments of God, the profession of the Catholic Faith, the frequentation of the true sacraments, and the acceptance of the Cross as the only means of union with Christ. As St. Pius X warned: “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” (Condemned Proposition #64, Lamentabili sane exitu). This is precisely the reform being enacted by the conciliar sect, and this message is its fruit.
The full analysis of the antipope’s message reveals the systematic replacement of supernatural religion with naturalistic humanism. The conciliar sect continues its mission of spiritual destruction, offering the world a Christ without the Cross, a Church without authority, and a salvation without repentance. The faithful must reject this counterfeit gospel and cling to the immutable Tradition of the Holy Catholic Church, which alone possesses the words of eternal life.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV: 'Only the love of God can provide us with true and perfect joy' (vaticannews.va)
Date: 19.06.2026