The National Catholic Register reports that on June 25, 2026, the individual occupying the Vatican under the name “Pope” Leo XIV held a private audience with the Italian Swimming Federation. During this meeting, the usurper pontiff declared that “sport, when practiced well, is medicine for both body and spirit,” emphasizing its role in teaching “commitment, solidarity, and honesty.” He further reduced the sacramental nature of Baptism to a mere symbolic parallel to the act of swimming, stating that water “symbolically recalls an aspect that has been part of us since our mother’s womb.” This address is consistent with his previous naturalistic writings, such as the letter *Life in Abundance* published for the Winter Olympics, which systematically reduces the supernatural life of grace to a program of physical and psychological self-improvement. The theology of Leo XIV is not a call to sanctity, but a blasphemous exaltation of the flesh that ignores the reality of sin and the necessity of the Cross.
The Reduction of Grace to Physical Exercise
The remarks made by the usurper in the Apostolic Palace represent a fundamental inversion of the Catholic hierarchy of being. By asserting that competitive swimming is “medicine for both body and spirit,” Leo XIV implicitly denies the supernatural order. True medicine for the soul is not found in the regulation of physical exertion, but in the sacraments, prayer, and the mortification of the flesh. The Apostle Paul warns, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13). The modernist occupier of Peter’s throne replaces the mortification required for salvation with the glorification of physical achievement.
This naturalism is the logical fruit of the post-conciliar apostasy. The Church has always taught that the body is subject to the soul, and the soul is subject to God. Pius XI, in *Quas Primas*, established the Feast of Christ the King specifically to combat the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism,” which removes Christ from public life. The current occupant of the Vatican does not call for the Social Reign of Christ the King; instead, he baptizes secular athletic federations, declaring their profane activities to be vehicles for “spiritual growth.” This is not evangelization; it is the surrender of the Faith to the world.
The Blasphemy of the “Mother’s Womb”
Perhaps the most theologically bankrupt statement in the address was the usurper’s commentary on the symbolism of water. He stated: “[Swimming] symbolically recalls an aspect that has been part of us since our mother’s womb: to live means learning to move in harmony with others and with the environment around us.”
This statement is a direct assault on the doctrine of Original Sin. To be in the “mother’s womb” is to be conceived in sin, as the Psalmist declares: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). The womb is not a place of natural harmony or spiritual innocence; it is the vessel through which the fallen nature of Adam is transmitted to the human race. By romanticizing the prenatal state as a model for “moving in harmony with the environment,” Leo XIV promotes a Rousseauian naturalism that denies the necessity of redemption. He ignores the supernatural life entirely, replacing the tragedy of the Fall with a pantheistic reverence for nature.
Furthermore, his reference to Baptism is reduced to a mere symbolic echo of a biological process. He says, “For us Christians, moreover, water is a symbol of Baptism and of new life in Christ.” While water is indeed the matter of the sacrament, the grace of Baptism is not a “symbol” of moving in harmony with the environment; it is the actual destruction of sin and the infusion of sanctifying grace. The Council of Trent anathematized anyone who denies that grace is remitted through the sacrament or reduces it to a mere sign. The usurper’s language strips the sacrament of its objective, supernatural power, reducing it to a psychological metaphor for social cooperation.
The “Values” of the New Church
The usurper pontiff praised sport for instilling “commitment, solidarity, and honesty.” These are the civic virtues of the secular humanist, not the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity. The Church was not founded to produce honest athletes or socially cohesive swimmers; she was founded to make saints.
The emphasis on “solidarity” is a hallmark of the modernist lexicon, frequently used to obscure the necessity of the Catholic Church as the sole ark of salvation. True solidarity is found only in the unity of the true Faith, not in the shared physical exertion of a sports team. By elevating these natural virtues to the level of spiritual growth, the conciliar sect continues its project of *immanentism*—the reduction of the supernatural to the natural. This was precisely the error condemned by St. Pius X in *Lamentabili Sane Exitu*, which rejected the proposition 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 current Vatican does not reform doctrine to fit science; it reforms doctrine to fit the Olympic Games.
The Vacant See and the Silence of Authority
It is necessary to state clearly that the individual speaking from the Vatican is not the Pope. As established by the principles of St. Robert Bellarmine and the 1917 Code of Canon Law (Canon 188.4), a public and manifest heretic loses his jurisdiction *ipso facto*. The entire line of occupants beginning with John XXIII has been guilty of promoting heresy, naturalism, and the destruction of the Mass. The current speaker, Leo XIV, continues this tradition by using the Apostolic Palace as a stage for secular humanism.
The faithful are not bound to listen to these addresses, nor are they permitted to participate in the religious syncretism that characterizes the conciliar sect. The “Italian Swimming Federation” has been blessed not by the Vicar of Christ, but by an antipope who serves the agenda of the world. The true Church remains in the catacombs, faithful to the unchangeable doctrine that the body is profane without the sanctification of the soul, and that the only true “abundant life” is found in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the sacraments of the true Faith.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV: Sport Is an Opportunity for Spiritual Growth (ncregister.com)
Date: 25.06.2026