EWTN News reports that Colombia’s president-elect, Abelardo de la Espriella, has embarked on a tour of Catholic shrines to consecrate the nation to Marian protection and pray for various national causes. While presented as an act of personal piety, this political pilgrimage reveals the profound religious indifferentism that has infected Catholic public life since the conciliar revolution, where the supernatural distinctions between true and false religion are systematically erased in the name of “dialogue” and “life and family” coalitions.
The Illusion of Catholic Public Life
The article presents de la Espriella’s shrine visits as unambiguously positive, describing his consecration of Colombia to “the protection of the Most Holy Virgin Mary” and his prayers at various basilicas. The president-elect is quoted saying he would continue “traveling this path with the conviction that, when a people places its destiny in God’s hands, it always finds hope.”
This language, while superficially Catholic, operates within the framework established by the conciliar revolution. The very concept of a Catholic politician engaging in public devotions while simultaneously participating in interfaith gatherings reveals the fundamental incoherence of post-conciliar Catholicism. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, established that Christ’s kingship extends over all nations and that rulers have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him. Yet this kingship is not generic theism—it demands the recognition of the Catholic Church as the one true religion.
The Ecumenical Poison in “Commitment to Life and Family”
The article notes that de la Espriella “has also engaged with Christians of other denominations,” specifically mentioning his April 15 attendance at “the Tabernacle of Faith evangelical congregation in Bogotá, where the then-candidate signed the ‘Commitment to Life and Family’ promoted by the United for Life platform.”
This ecumenical engagement is not incidental but central to the article’s framing. The conciliar sect has systematically promoted such interfaith collaborations as expressions of “shared values,” directly contradicting Catholic teaching. Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors 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) and that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion” (Proposition 18).
By signing a “Commitment to Life and Family” alongside Protestants, de la Espriella implicitly treats schismatics and heretics as legitimate partners in public morality. This is the fruit of Dignitatis Humanae and the entire conciliar apparatus of religious liberty. The article presents this without criticism, revealing its own modernist assumptions.
The Redemptorist Damage Control
The article includes a statement from the Redemptorist missionary community administering the Lord of Miracles basilica in Buga, clarifying that “the shrine did not endorse any candidate and that the visit was personal in nature, ‘motivated by his prayer and devotion, just like that of any other pilgrim or member of the faithful who comes to entrust themselves to the Lord of Miracles.'”
This statement is itself symptomatic of the conciliar mentality. The Redemptorists, like all religious orders, have been thoroughly modernized since 1958. Their concern is not with the supernatural order or the proper relationship between Church and state, but with avoiding “political misinterpretation”—that is, with maintaining the secular fiction that religion is purely private. This directly contradicts the teaching of Pius XI that the state must publicly recognize Christ’s kingship.
The very need for such a statement reveals the success of the conciliar revolution in reducing Catholicism to one “spiritual option” among many, stripped of its public claims.
The Silence on Doctrinal Substance
The article is entirely silent on the doctrinal content of de la Espriella’s faith. We are told that “the death of a loved one from COVID-19 led him to embrace the Catholic faith,” but nothing about what this faith entails. Does he accept the defined dogmas? Does he recognize the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation? Does he understand that consecration to Mary is not a magical ritual but an entry into the total consecration to Christ through her?
The conciliar sect has reduced Catholicism to vague “values” and emotional devotions, stripped of doctrinal content. The article reflects this reduction perfectly. The “pilgrimage of hope for the miracle homeland” is pure naturalism dressed in Catholic imagery—precisely the “cult of man” that the pre-conciliar Church condemned.
The Inauguration as Liturgical Parody
De la Espriella will be inaugurated on August 7, the feast of St. Cajetan in the traditional calendar. The conciliar sect has transferred this feast to August 7, but the date retains its Catholic resonance. Yet what will this inauguration entail? Almost certainly a “prayer service” with representatives of various religions, or at best a sacrilegious “Mass” celebrated according to the Pauline rite—an rite that the modernists themselves have admitted does not clearly express the Catholic doctrine of the propitiatory sacrifice.
The article’s uncritical presentation of this political pilgrimage as Catholic witness reveals the depth of the apostasy. When Catholic shrines become props for political campaigns, when ecumenical collaboration is presented as virtue, when the public reign of Christ is reduced to personal “devotion,” the abomination of desolation has truly taken its place in the holy places.
Non serviam (I will not serve) remains the unspoken motto of all who refuse to submit to Christ’s kingship as defined by His true Church. The conciliar structures, including their media organs like EWTN News, serve not the Kingdom of Christ but the kingdom of man—the “miracle homeland” built on sand.
Source:
President-elect De la Espriella of Colombia visits Catholic shrines to pray for the nation (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 29.06.2026