The EWTN News portal (July 7, 2026) reports that the conciliar “Cardinal” Cristóbal López Romero, the “archbishop” of Rabat in Morocco, has temporarily withdrawn from “public and pastoral activities” while a “preliminary investigation” is conducted by the “competent authorities of the Holy See” into allegations of “inappropriate behavior toward adult women.” The “Cardinal” asserts his innocence, claiming he committed no “assault, violence, or sexual harassment,” and asks for prayers for “those suffering,” “the Church,” and himself. This sordid spectacle of a putative prince of the Church submitting to the bureaucratic machinery of the very structure that elevated him is not a sign of accountability; it is the inevitable theater of a counterfeit hierarchy devoid of supernatural authority, canonical legitimacy, and the very Faith it pretends to serve.
The Fiction of Jurisdiction: A “Cardinal” Without Office
The first and most fatal fact omitted by the EWTN report is that the man at the center of this drama, Cristóbal López Romero, holds no canonical office whatsoever. Since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, the See of Peter has been vacant (sede vacante). The line of claimants beginning with John XXIII—continuing through Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and now the current usurper Leo XIV (Robert Prevost)—constitutes a manifestly heretical antipapacy. By the principle Cum ex Apostolatus Officio of Pope Paul IV (1559), confirmed by the 1917 Code (Canon 188.4), any cleric who publicly defects from the Catholic Faith loses his office ipso facto, without need of declaration. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches in De Romano Pontifice: “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.”
López Romero, by his public adherence to the Vatican II sect—its false ecumenism, its religious liberty, its novel “Mass,” its collegiality—has publicly defected from the integral Catholic Faith. He is not a Cardinal. He is not an Archbishop. He is a layman masquerading in scarlet, a usurper of ecclesiastical dignity. The “investigation” conducted by the “Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith” (formerly the Holy Office, gutted by Paul VI in 1965) is a legal fiction performed by a paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican. It has no more canonical weight than a tribunal of Freemasons judging one of their own brethren.
Linguistic Sanitization: “Inappropriate Behavior” vs. Mortal Sin
The linguistic level of the report reveals the naturalistic anthropology of the conciliar sect. The allegations are reduced to “inappropriate behavior toward adult women.” There is no mention of scandal, sacrilege, violation of the sixth and ninth commandments, loss of the state of grace, or danger of eternal damnation. The vocabulary is borrowed from corporate HR departments and secular safeguarding policies: “preliminary investigation,” “competent authorities,” “cooperating with the process,” “stepping back,” “pastoral activities.”
This is the language of the Church of the New Advent, which has replaced the salus animarum (the salvation of souls) with compliance and transparency. As Pope St. Pius X condemned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), the Modernist error holds that “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities” (Prop. 25) and that “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Prop. 26). Here, the “Cardinal” treats the accusation not as a soul-destroying sin requiring canonical penance and excommunication (ferendae sententiae), but as a procedural hurdle to be managed by “ecclesiastical authorities” who themselves possess no jurisdiction.
The request for prayers—for “those suffering,” “the Church,” and “himself”—is a masterpiece of therapeutic deism. It equates the putative victims, the mystical Body of Christ (which this sect is not), and the accused layman in a flat, horizontal solidarity. There is no act of contrition, no purpose of amendment, no invocation of the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary (which the Novus Ordo “table of assembly” has replaced), no appeal to the Mediatrix of All Graces. It is pure Protestantized sentimentalism.
Theological Bankruptcy: The Conciliar “Clergy” as Wolves
Theologically, this episode is the rotten fruit of the conciliar revolution. The “priesthood” of the new rite (promulgated by Paul VI in 1968, invalid in form and intention according to the traditional Thomistic criteria of matter, form, intention) produces not alter Christus but functionaries of a neo-pagan NGO. The Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX, 1864) condemned the proposition: “The Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free… but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church” (Error 19). Today, the conciliar sect has internalized the State. Its “canonical processes” mimic civil law; its “safeguarding” offices mimic corporate compliance; its “bishops” mimic managers.
The “Cardinal” López Romero is a Salesian, a son of Don Bosco—yet the Salesians of the conciliar obedience have long since abandoned the preventive system of grace and frequent sacraments for the repressive system of psychology and sociology. The very concept of an “investigation into allegations toward adult women” implies a clerical caste that views the faithful not as souls redeemed by the Precious Blood but as “stakeholders” or “vulnerable adults” in a risk-assessment matrix.
Furthermore, the report notes the “Cardinal” informed his “archdiocesan community at the end of the pastoral year.” This phrase—”pastoral year“—is a liturgical novelty unknown to the immemorial tradition of the Church, which knows only the liturgical year anchored in the Temporal and Sanctoral cycles of the Missale Romanum of St. Pius V. The “pastoral year” is the invention of the hermeneutic of rupture, marking time not by the mysteries of Christ the King (whose feast Pius XI instituted in Quas Primas to assert His social reign over nations) but by the bureaucratic calendar of the abomination of desolation.
Symptomatic Exposure: The Systemic Nature of the Rot
This is not an isolated “scandal.” It is the ontological condition of the conciliar sect. When the “pope” (Leo XIV) creates “cardinals” like López Romero—men formed entirely in the crucible of Vatican II, the Nouvel Ordre, and the aggiornamento—he ensures the perpetuation of a counter-church structured to resemble the Catholic Church while denying its dogmas, its liturgy, its morality, and its jurisdiction.
The “investigation” will follow the now-standard script: a whitewash or a managed resignation designed to protect the institution’s “credibility” with the world. The “Holy See” (the Roman Curia of the antipapacy) acts as both judge and party. As Pope Celestine I declared regarding Nestorius: “He who has departed from the faith with such preaching cannot depose or remove anyone.” The conciliar “Dicastery” judging a conciliar “Cardinal” is a closed loop of invalidity.
The EWTN report itself—coming from the mouthpiece of the “indult” and “conservative” wing of the neo-church—serves the controlled opposition function. It reports the “news” with professional detachment, never questioning the legitimacy of the “Cardinal,” the “Holy See,” or the “process.” It reinforces the illusion of a living hierarchy. This is the great delusion (2 Thess 2:11) foretold: the structures remain, the titles remain, the vestments remain, but the Spirit of God has departed. Ichabod—the glory is departed from Israel (1 Sam 4:21).
The Only Remedy: Rejection of the Counter-Church
No “reform,” no “investigation,” no “prayer for the Church” offered within the conciliar framework can heal this gangrene. The Cum ex Apostolatus Officio declares the promotion of a heretic “null, void, and of no effect.” The 1917 Code (Canon 188.4) declares the office vacant “by the mere fact and without any declaration.” The faithful Catholic—verus catholicus—has the duty, by divine law (lex divina) and natural law (lex naturalis), to withdraw all recognition, obedience, and financial support from these usurpers.
The true Church of Christ subsists in the remnant (reliquiae) who hold fast to the Tradition of the Fathers, the Tridentine Mass, the Catechism of the Council of Trent, and the Syllabus of Errors—governed by bishops validly consecrated in the Roman Rite before 1968, possessing true jurisdiction supplied by the Church (Ecclesia supplet) in this time of universal necessity (casus necessitatis).
Let the “Cardinal” of Rabat enjoy his “administrative leave” in the sight of men. Before the Judgment Seat of Christ the King—whose social reign Pius XI proclaimed in Quas Primas (“Peace is only possible in the Kingdom of Christ“)—he stands not as a Prince of the Church, but as a thief and a hireling (John 10:12) who has scattered the flock in Morocco and will answer for every soul lost to his false ministry. Vade retro me, Satana (Matt 16:23).
Source:
Cardinal archbishop of Rabat temporarily steps aside from ministry due to abuse investigation (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 07.07.2026