The EWTN News portal (July 8, 2026) reports that the Spanish Bishops’ Conference has compiled a census of 349 open causes for canonization involving 3,344 candidates, presented to the prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro. The data, resulting from a three-year bureaucratic cross-referencing exercise, reveals 53 martyrdom causes (48 from the 20th-century religious persecution), 292 causes for heroic virtue, one for “offering of life,” and one “equivalent canonization.” Fifty-seven of seventy dioceses participate. The vast majority of the 2,449 current “blesseds” are martyrs of the Spanish Civil War era. This statistical barrage exposes the conciliar sect’s assembly-line production of counterfeit sanctity, a bureaucratic simulacrum substituting for the supernatural action of the Holy Ghost in the true Church.
The Usurped Authority and the Nullity of Its Acts
The entire edifice rests on a foundation of sand. The “Dicastery for the Causes of Saints” operates under the authority of the antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), the latest in the line of usurpers beginning with John XXIII. As Pope Paul IV defined in Cum ex Apostolatus Officio (1559), any elevation to the papacy of one who has “defected from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy” is “null, void, and of no effect” (irritam, cassam, et nullam). The post-conciliar “popes,” by their public adherence to the heresies of Vatican II — religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, the new ecclesiology — are manifest heretics who ipso facto lost all jurisdiction before any declaration by the Church (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, lib. 2, cap. 30). Consequently, every “beatification” and “canonization” enacted since 1958 lacks the potestas iurisdictionis necessary for an infallible act of the Magisterium. They are not merely irregular; they are non-existent in the forum of divine law.
The article cites Cardinal Semeraro, prefect of the dicastery, receiving the report. Semeraro, a creature of the Bergoglian revolution, exercises a simulated authority. The “Spanish Bishops’ Conference” itself is a canonical fiction, an episcopal conference structure unknown to the 1917 Code and erected by the conciliar sect to facilitate collegial usurpation of the papal primacy. As Pius XI taught in Quas Primas (1925), Christ’s Kingdom is “primarily spiritual” and His authority is threefold: legislative, judicial, and executive. The conciliar sect, having abandoned the legislative authority of Christ the King for the democratic spirit of the world, cannot exercise the judicial authority of canonization, which is an act of the Keys binding the universal Church.
The Industrialization of Martyrdom: Political Victims vs. Witnesses of the Faith
The report boasts of 48 martyrdom causes from the “religious persecution in 20th-century Spain,” bundled into group causes. This methodology reveals the naturalistic reduction of martyrdom. True martyrdom, as defined by the Church, requires odium fidei — hatred of the faith on the part of the persecutor — and the voluntary acceptance of death for a virtue related to the faith (St. Thomas Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 124, a. 5). The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was a complex conflict where many clergy and religious were killed by Republican forces, but not all deaths constitute martyrdom in the strict theological sense. The conciliar sect’s practice of bundling hundreds into “group causes” — “one diocese or religious order bundles all its members killed in the same persecution episode into a single joint case” — treats martyrdom as a statistical category rather than a supernatural grace requiring rigorous individual discernment of odium fidei.
This inflation serves a political agenda: to canonize the narrative of the “Church of the martyrs” in Spain, legitimizing the post-conciliar hierarchy’s claim to continuity with the pre-war Church while obscuring their betrayal of that Church’s integral doctrine. The true martyrs of Spain — those who died propter fidem at the hands of Marxist militias — are dishonored by being lumped together with those who may have died for political affiliation or mere ecclesiastical status, their cause managed by bishops who have embraced the very errors (religious liberty, separation of Church and State) that the martyrs opposed. As Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus (1864), error 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” The conciliar sect’s “martyrs” are thus weaponized to sanctify the very separation the true martyrs died resisting.
The Novel Category of “Offering of Life”: A Modernist Innovation
The article notes “one [cause] on the offering of one’s life.” This category, introduced by the antipope Bergoglio in 2017 (Maiorem hac dilectionem), is a theological novelty unknown to the perennial Magisterium. It expands the causes of canonization beyond the traditional martyrdom and heroic virtue to include those who “freely offered their life” and died prematurely. This democratization of sanctity reflects the conciliar sect’s anthropocentric shift: the focus moves from the objective holiness wrought by grace (heroic virtue) or the supreme witness of blood (martyrdom) to a subjective act of generosity, measurable by human criteria. It is the cult of man masquerading as the cult of saints. St. Pius X condemned the Modernist error that “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities” (Lamentabili sane exitu, prop. 25); here, sanctity is reduced to a probability calculus of “heroic” human gestures, detached from the necessity of habitual grace and the gifts of the Holy Ghost.
Equivalent Canonization by an Antipope: A Contradiction in Terms
The report mentions “one is an equivalent canonization, which, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, occurs when the pope, in an exercise of his infallibility, ‘bypassing the judicial process and the ceremonies, orders that a certain servant of God be venerated in the universal Church.'” The article cites the Catholic Encyclopedia (pre-1958 authority) to legitimize a act performed by a non-pope. Equipollent canonization (e.g., St. Cyril of Alexandria by Leo XIII, 1882) requires a true Roman Pontiff exercising the fullness of the Keys. An antipope possesses no infallibility, no Keys, no jurisdiction. His “equivalent canonization” is a nullity, a theatrical gesture devoid of sacramental efficacy. It cannot bind the faithful to veneration; indeed, it may oblige them to avoid such veneration lest they participate in a cultus not approved by the Church. The faithful are bound by Canon 1255 §1 (1917 Code): “The public cult of the saints is forbidden without the approval of the Holy See” — the true Holy See, vacant since 1958.
The “Blesseds” of the Conciliar Sect: A Gallery of Counterfeits
The article states: “The number of blesseds stands at 2,449, the vast majority of whom are martyrs of the religious persecution of the 20th century.” This figure includes the “beatifications” of the conciliar sect, which are not true beatifications. As documented in the provided context, the post-conciliar “saints” are frauds: Maximilian Kolbe (died for a fellow prisoner, not odium fidei), the Ulma family (unborn child unbaptized), John Henry Newman (apostle of doctrinal evolution), Faustina Kowalska (writings on the Index, diary likely ghostwritten by her Masonic-linked confessor), John Paul II (arch-heretic of religious liberty and ecumenism). The Spanish “blesseds” from the Civil War era are processed through the same corrupt machinery. Their “beatifications” by antipopes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and now Leo XIV are acts of a false church, simulating the Church’s judicial authority. They create a false communion of saints, replacing the Church Triumphant with a pantheon of modernist heroes.
Founders of Religious Institutes: Canonizing the Architects of the New Order
Notably, “82 are founders: 71 from religious institutes and 11 from secular institutes.” Many post-conciliar founders are architects of the “new evangelization,” the charismatic movement, or “secular institutes” — structures often imbued with the errors of Vatican II (religious indifferentism, activism, loss of contemplative primacy). To propose them for canonization is to canonize the conciliar revolution itself. The true religious life, as defined by Pius XII in Sponsa Christi (1950), demands enclosure, contemplation, and separation from the world. The “secular institutes,” canonized by Pius XII only under strict conditions (Provida Mater Ecclesia, 1947), have largely become vehicles for the apostolate of the laity in the world, blurring the distinction between the religious and lay states — a distinction the Council of Trent defended (Sess. 25, cap. 5). The conciliar sect’s promotion of these founders signals its desire to enshrine its own novelties as models of holiness.
The Silence on the True Crisis: Sede Vacante and the Loss of the Mass
The most damning aspect of the article is its total silence on the supernatural crisis. Not a word on the validity of the sacraments, the state of grace, the necessity of the Traditional Latin Mass, the vacancy of the Holy See, or the obligation to resist the modernist hierarchy. The “Office for the Causes of Saints” functions as a bureaucratic agency of the Spanish state’s concordat church, processing paperwork for a “dicastery” in a Vatican occupied by the “abomination of desolation” (Matt. 24:15). The three-year “research and inter-diocesan collaboration” is a work of human hands, opus humanum, devoid of the sensus fidei that guides the true Church. As Pius XI warned in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The Spanish hierarchy, by devoting immense resources to this canonization factory while the true Mass is suppressed and the faithful starved of valid sacraments, proves its allegiance is to the City of Man, not the City of God.
Conclusion: A Statistical Potemkin Village
The 349 causes and 3,344 candidates are not a sign of vitality but of spiritual necrosis. The conciliar sect, unable to produce saints by the traditional means — the unchanging doctrine, the Traditional Mass, the unbroken apostolic succession of valid bishops — manufactures them by bureaucratic fiat. The “comprehensive overview” is a Potemkin village, a facade of holiness concealing the apostasy within. The true Church, reduced to the faithful remnant adhering to the integral Faith and valid sacraments under true bishops (consecrated before 1968), recognizes none of these “causes.” She waits for the restoration of the true Hierarchy and the true Pope, who alone can exercise the Keys of Peter. Until then, non est inventus similis illis (Dan. 1:19) — no likeness is found between this industrial output and the true sanctorum communio. The faithful must reject these counterfeit canonizations as they reject the false church that produces them, clinging to the Traditio of the saints already canonized by true Popes, whose intercession alone avails before the throne of the Lamb.
Source:
Church in Spain has 349 open causes for canonization involving more than 3,000 candidates (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 08.07.2026