Clothes Do Not Make Any Man A True and Legitimate Successor of Saint Peter, part 3: What Further Need Does Anyone Have for Clues?

Although this commentary will be relatively brief, it will be followed within twenty-four hours by a companion commentary that discusses Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Evangelii Gaudium (November 24, 2013), which Robert Leo Prevost/Leo XIV told his “cardinals” on Saturday, May 10, 2025, the Feast of Saint Antoninus, O.P., within the Octave of Saint Joseph, would be the cornerstone of his false pontificate.

Thus, all the wishful “conservatives” and “traditionalists” within the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism who have been looking for “clues” about what kind of “pope” Robert Leo Prevost is going to be can stop looking. Now. He has told us in his own words that he is going to continue the heretical path of the “Second” Vatican Council as expressed by Bergoglio in Evangelii Gaudium.

As I have tried to explain in the past week now (has it only been a week?), Robert Francis Prevost is a son of the conciliar revolution. To be sure, he is going to proceed with that revolution in a more “dignified” manner than his vulgar, coarse predecessor, but proceed with it he will no matter his style of dress, reserved bearing and the public use of Latin in his prayers.

Dispensing with opening part of his short address to the “cardinals,” I will cut directly to the new false “pope’s” lavish praise on his deceased predecessor, who has only been dead for twenty-four days now:

In this regard, I would like us to renew together today our complete commitment to the path that the universal Church has now followed for decades in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Francis masterfully and concretely set it forth in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, from which I would like to highlight several fundamental points: the return to the primacy of Christ in proclamation (cf. No. 11); the missionary conversion of the entire Christian community (cf. No. 9); growth in collegiality and synodality (cf. No. 33); attention to the sensus fidei (cf. Nos. 119-120), especially in its most authentic and inclusive forms, such as popular piety (cf. No. 123); loving care for the least and the rejected (cf. No. 53); courageous and trusting dialogue with the contemporary world in its various components and realities (cf. No. 84; Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 1-2).

A Brief Interjection:

Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s buzzwords have survived him.

“Return to the primacy of Christ in proclamation,” which means that Prevost/Leo believes that somehow this was not done in the centuries before the “Second” Vatican Council. This also means that the Catholic Church had somehow “defected” from the proclaiming the “primacy of Christ” even though Holy Mother Church is infallibly guided at all times by the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, to teach only that which Our Lord as deposited in her to teach infallibly in His Holy Name. Our Lord and the teaching of His Holy Church are inseparable.

“The missionary conversion of the entire Christian community,” which was Bergoglio’s way of saying that the Catholic Church had taught for centuries in the “abstract” without addressing the “real problems” of contemporary people. This “missionary conversion,” therefore means that the Catholic Church had “imposed” “rules” upon the faithful without taking account of the alleged “difficulties” they face in trying to live up to a supposedly impossibly unrealizable “ideal.”

Evangelii Gaudium was meant in this regard to lead directly to Amoris Laetitia twenty-eight months later as the latter document speaks much about “missionary conversion:”

186. The Eucharist demands that we be members of the one body of the Church. Those who approach the Body and Blood of Christ may not wound that same Body by creating scandalous distinctions and divisions among its members. This is what it means to “discern” the body of the Lord, to acknowledge it with faith and charity both in the sacramental signs and in the community; those who fail to do so eat and drink judgement against themselves (cf. v. 29). The celebration of the Eucharist thus becomes a constant summons for everyone “to examine himself or herself ”(v. 28), to open the doors of the family to greater fellowship with the underprivileged, and in this way to receive the sacrament of that eucharistic love which makes us one body. We must not forget that “the ‘mysticism’ of the sacrament has a social character”.207 When those who receive it turn a blind eye to the poor and suffering, or consent to various forms of division, contempt and inequality, the Eucharist is received unworthily. On the other hand, families who are properly disposed and receive the Eucharist regularly, reinforce their desire for fraternity, their social consciousness and their commitment to those in need.

201. “This effort calls for missionary conversion by everyone in the Church, that is, one that is not content to proclaim a merely theoretical message without connection to people’s real problems”.229 Pastoral care for families “needs to make it clear that the Gospel of the family responds to the deepest expectations of the human person: a response to each one’s dignity and fulfilment in reciprocity, communion and fruitfulness. This consists not merely in presenting a set of rules, but in proposing values that are clearly needed today, even in the most secularized of countries”.230 The Synod Fathers also “highlighted the fact that evangelization needs unambiguously to denounce cultural, social, political and economic factors – such as the excessive importance given to market logic – that prevent authentic family life and lead to discrimination, poverty, exclusion, and violence. Consequently, dialogue and cooperation need to be fostered with societal structures and encouragement given to lay people who are involved, as Christians, in the cultural and socio-political fields”.231 (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Amoris Laetita, March 19, 2016.)

These passages served to prepare readers for the coup de grace that Bergoglio delivered to discredit and to undermine the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church in Paragraphs 291 to 310 of what some have aptly called his ode to the adversary, Amoris Laetitia.

“Pope Francis” believed that the denial of what purports to be Holy Communion to those who are living in sin, a phrase that he rejections as being “unmerciful” and without any sense of “nuance” (a word that was one of the late Bernard “Cardinal” Law’s ways to cloud the clarity of Catholic teaching on Faith and Morals), constituted the “creation” of “distinctions” and “divisions” that are “sins” against “equality.” Bergoglio believed that those who “created” such distinctions were the ones who partook of the Eucharist unworthily, thereby turning the following words of Saint Paul the Apostle in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians on their head:

For as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink the chalice, you shall shew the death of the Lord, until he come. [27] Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. [28] But let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice. [29] For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. [30] Therefore are there many infirm and weak among you, and many sleep. (1 Cor. 11:17-34.)

The meaning of this is quite clear.

Bishop Richard Challoner commented as follows in his English translation of the Douay-Rheims Bible:

[27] Guilty of the body: not discerning the body. This demonstrates the real presence of the body and blood of Christ, even to the unworthy communicant; who otherwise could not be guilty of the body and blood of Christ, or justly condemned for not discerning the Lord's body. (Bishop Richard Challoner Commentary, Douay-Rheims Bible.)

Father George Haydock commented similarly:

The real presence in the sacrament is also proved by the enormity of the crime, in its profanation. See St. Chrysostom, hom. de non contem. ec. and hom. lx. and lxi. ad pop. Antioch. where he shews that the unworthy receiver imitates the Jews in crucifying Jesus, and trampling under foot his sacred blood. Hence the dreadful punishments we read of in verses 27 and 30. ((Haydock Commentary.)

It is interesting that Jorge Mario Bergoglio cited verses 26-29 of Saint Paul the Apostle’s First Epistle to the Corinthians but omits a reference to verse 30, which Father Haydock explained as follows:

Ver. 30-32. Therefore in punishment of the sin of receiving unworthily, many are infirm, visited with infirmities, even that bring death, which is meant by those words, many sleep. But it is a mercy of God, when he only punishes by sickness, or a corporal death, and does not permit us to perish for ever, or be condemned with this wicked world. To avoid this, let a man prove himself, examine the state of his conscience, especially before he receives the holy sacrament, confess his sins, and be absolved by those to whom Christ left the power of forgiving sins in his name, and by his authority. If we judge ourselves in this manner, we shall not be judged, that is, condemned. (Haydock Commentary.)

Leave it to a figure of Antichrist to have twisted the clear meaning of the words of Saint Paul the Apostle to condemn those who are in a state of Sanctifying Grace while looking with an indulgent “kindness” upon those who are not.

Believing Catholics know that Saint Paul the Apostle condemned those who dare to receive Holy Communion unworthily, that is, those who are in a state of Mortal Sin. Saint Paul’s admonition applies directly to the very people whose sins against Holy Purity were justified by “Pope Francis” by various means, including what he called “gradualness,” in Amoris Laetitia. It was nothing other than the work of a figure of Antichrist to have twisted the words of Saint Paul in verse twenty-seven of Saint Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians to make them apply to those would deny Holy Communion to the very sort of unrepentant sinners condemned by the Apostle to the Gentiles.

The Argentine Apostate believed that unrepentant sinners were worthy to partake of what purports to be the Holy Eucharist while those who call sin by its proper name and seek to protect the Sacred Species from sacrilegious reception are said to be creating “distinctions” and “divisions,” thus rendering themselves unworthy. This kind of theological filth can only have one author, the devil himself. His concept of "missionary conversion" referred to a Stalnist or Maoist style "re-education" of "reprogramming" of Catholics who still cling to what he believed were Pharisaical standards that simply cannot be realized by people in contemporary circumstances, and Robert Leo Prevost/Leo XIV has now made this kind moral relativism wrapped up in a euphemism called “missionary conversion” his very own.

“Growth in collegiality and synodality.”

Collegiality is opposed to Holy Mother Church’s monarchical nature and has been discussed in recent years, synodality is an effort to listen to the “people” rather than to God.

Jean-Claude Hollerich, a Luxembourg conciliar “cardinal” who was the “relator general” of the 2024 “synod on synodality,” told as much in 2023:

CHICAGO (LifeSiteNews) – The openly pro-homosexual head of the European bishops’ commission has again cast doubt on the perennial Catholic doctrine on homosexuality and appeared to suggest that he thinks the Catholic Church can change its teaching through the worldwide “Synod on Synodality,” and claimed that he knows that he is “in full agreement with Pope Francis” on the issue.

In a 90-second exchange captured on video Sunday at Holy Child Jesus parish in Chicago, Illinois, Jesuit Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, who plays an important role in Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality as the Relator General, said that “we have to give an interpretation to the Bible teaching” when asked for his thoughts regarding a possible change in the Catholic doctrine on sexual ethics. . . .

During Hollerich’s visit to the U.S., lay Catholic activist Richard Smaglick asked whether the high-ranking cardinal thinks sodomy might no longer be considered a grave sin in Catholic doctrine following the worldwide synodal process.

“I do not know what the synod will bring,” Hollerich answered, “we now listen to the people of the world, what they express.”

“I start getting in reports. As you know, I’m the Relator General of the synod and so, reading all of that, in September we will make a first draft for the continental meetings which will take place,” explained the cardinal, who also serves as Archbishop of Luxembourg, later adding that he “would never consider sexuality separated from love.”

Attempting to draw clarity from Hollerich’s comments, Smaglick noted that the Sacred Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church have “taught for 2,000 years that sodomy is a sin, an abomination that cries out to heaven.”

However, in response to Smaglick’s comment, the cardinal appeared to cast doubt on the clear and ancient Scriptural teaching on homosexual acts as sinful, stating that “the Bible also said we should stone the woman who is adulterous.”

“The Bible said that the sun turns around the earth,” Hollerich continued. “So, the Bible is … [we] have to give an interpretation to the Bible.” (Pro-LGBT cardinal claims Pope Francis is in 'full agreement' with his stance.)

Apart from his clear disbelief in the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture, every word of which was written under the Divine inspiration of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, and his hideous attempt to use the precepts of the Mosaic Law that were superseded by the New and Eternal Covenant that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ instituted at the Last Supper and ratified by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday to “prove” that Holy Writ is unreliable, Jean-Claude Hollerich’s belief that his false religious sect must listen to the “people” on such matters as sodomy is a direct endorsement of subjective morality that is contrary to right reason and was condemned by Pope Pius XII as follows on September 14, 1957:

The more serious cause, however, was the movement in high Jesuit circles to modernize the understanding of the magisterium by enlarging the freedom of Catholics, especially scholars, to dispute its claims and assertions. Jesuit scholars had already made up their minds that the Catholic creeds and moral norms needed nuance and correction. It was for this incipient dissent that the late Pius XII chastised the Jesuits’ 30th General Congregation one year before he died (1957). What concerned Pius XII most in that admonition was the doctrinal orthodoxy of Jesuits. Information had reached him that the Society’s academics (in France and Germany) were bootlegging heterodox ideas. He had long been aware of contemporary theologians who tried “to withdraw themselves from the Sacred Teaching authority and are accordingly in danger of gradually departing from revealed truth and of drawing others along with them in error” (Humani generis).

In view of what has gone on recently in Catholic higher education, Pius XII’s warnings to Jesuits have a prophetic ring to them. He spoke then of a “proud spirit of free inquiry more proper to a heterodox mentality than to a Catholic one”; he demanded that Jesuits not “tolerate complicity with people who would draw norms for action for eternal salvation from what is actually done, rather than from what should be done.” He continued, “It should be necessary to cut off as soon as possible from the body of your Society” such “unworthy and unfaithful sons.” Pius obviously was alarmed at the rise of heterodox thinking, worldly living, and just plain disobedience in Jesuit ranks, especially at attempts to place Jesuits on a par with their Superiors in those matters which pertained to Faith or Church order (The Pope Speaks, Spring 1958, pp. 447-453). (Monsignor George A. Kelly, Ph.D.,The Catholic College: Death, Judgment, Resurrection. See also the full Latin text of Pope Pius XII's address to the thirtieth general congregation of the Society of Jesus at page 806 of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis for 1957: AAS 49 [1957]. One will have to scroll down to page 806.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was trained by the very sort of revolutionaries whose false moral theology was condemned by Pope Pius XII in 1957, and it is this false moral theology, which is nothing other than Judeo-Masonic moral relativism, is the product of the Protestant Revolution’s theological relativism. Modernism is, of course, the synthesis of all heresies. 

Jean-Claude Hollerich wants to listen to “the people.” That’s rich. The Catholic Church has always taught what she has received from God, Who is immutable. The voices of contingent beings can never change anything about Catholic Faith and Morals. It is not up to what purports to be (but is not) the Catholic Church to listen to the “people.” It is up to us all to listen to the voice of God as He speaks us through Holy Mother Church, she who is the sole explicator of all that is contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith and the infallibly authoritative interpreter of all that is contained in the Natural Law.

Saint Paul’s Second Epistle to Saint Timothy described efforts to placate “the people,” who are always ready to make excuses for their sins, as follows:

[1] I charge thee, before God and Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and the dead, by his coming, and his kingdom: [2] Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. [3] For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: [4] And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables. [5] But be thou vigilant, labour in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill thy ministry. Be sober. (2 Tim. 4: 1-15.)

Jean-Claude Hollerich is a latter Aesop, a man who spins fables for the unrepentant, a man who seeks to curry favor with men without a thought of offending God. That men such as Jean-Claude Hollerich do not understand this is one of the many proofs that the conciliar revolutionaries truly do not believe in God. Men such as Hollerich are pagans who project their concepts of what they believe God should be like even though their falsehoods have been condemned repeatedly by the authority of the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church does not conform her teaching to how the people choose to live, She exhorts her children to cooperate with God’s graces to attempt always to conform their lives to Our Lord’s immutable teaching as He has entrusted to us exclusively through His Holy Church.

Attention to the sensus fidei?

Jorge Mario Bergoglio sought to corrupt the sensus fidei by making it appear as though the faithful’s sense of the Holy Faith is something inchoate, perhaps even inexpressible.

However, Catholics from time immemorial who were trained in the truths of the Holy Faith properly knew full well, although never perfectly because of fallen human nature, to how to discern that which was true from false as they were children of the Church who, despite their own sins and failings, tried to please God, Who is incapable of “changing with the times” to correspond to what the “people” want Him and His teaching to be.

Here is what Jorge Mario Bergoglio wrote about “popular piety” in Evangelii Gaudium, November 24, 2013:

122. In the same way, we can see that the different peoples among whom the Gospel has been inculturated are active collective subjects or agents of evangelization. This is because each people is the creator of their own culture and the protagonist of their own history. Culture is a dynamic reality which a people constantly recreates; each generation passes on a whole series of ways of approaching different existential situations to the next generation, which must in turn reformulate it as it confronts its own challenges. Being human means “being at the same time son and father of the culture to which one belongs”.[97] Once the Gospel has been inculturated in a people, in their process of transmitting their culture they also transmit the faith in ever new forms; hence the importance of understanding evangelization as inculturation. Each portion of the people of God, by translating the gift of God into its own life and in accordance with its own genius, bears witness to the faith it has received and enriches it with new and eloquent expressions. One can say that “a people continuously evangelizes itself”.[98] Herein lies the importance of popular piety, a true expression of the spontaneous missionary activity of the people of God. This is an ongoing and developing process, of which the Holy Spirit is the principal agent.[99]

123. Popular piety enables us to see how the faith, once received, becomes embodied in a culture and is constantly passed on. Once looked down upon, popular piety came to be appreciated once more in the decades following the Council. In the Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, Pope Paul VI gave a decisive impulse in this area. There he stated that popular piety “manifests a thirst for God which only the poor and the simple can know”[100] and that “it makes people capable of generosity and sacrifice even to the point of heroism, when it is a question of bearing witness to belief”.[101] Closer to our own time, Benedict XVI, speaking about Latin America, pointed out that popular piety is “a precious treasure of the Catholic Church”, in which “we see the soul of the Latin American peoples”.[102]

124. The Aparecida Document describes the riches which the Holy Spirit pours forth in popular piety by his gratuitous initiative. On that beloved continent, where many Christians express their faith through popular piety, the bishops also refer to it as “popular spirituality” or “the people’s mysticism”.[103] It is truly “a spirituality incarnated in the culture of the lowly”.[104] Nor is it devoid of content; rather it discovers and expresses that content more by way of symbols than by discursive reasoning, and in the act of faith greater accent is placed on credere in Deum than on credere Deum.[105] It is “a legitimate way of living the faith, a way of feeling part of the Church and a manner of being missionaries”;[106] it brings with itself the grace of being a missionary, of coming out of oneself and setting out on pilgrimage: “Journeying together to shrines and taking part in other manifestations of popular piety, also by taking one’s children or inviting others, is in itself an evangelizing gesture”.[107] Let us not stifle or presume to control this missionary power!  (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Evangelii Gaudium, November 24, 2013.)

Bergoglio’s concept of “popular piety” had to do with the “Second” Vatican Council’s call for the “inculturation of the Gospel” that became the basis for all manner of pagan practices being incorporated into the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical travesty. The conciliar revolutionaries have obliterated the distinction between eternity and time, between Heaven and earth. They have made of what they think is the Sacred Liturgy a mockery of Calvary by festooning it with all manner of symbols that celebrate the world and the very sort of paganism that was wiped out by the authentic missionary work of Holy Mother Church, and the roadmap to “inculturation of the Gospel” began at the “Second” Vatican Council and is embodied in each edition of its General Instruction to the Roman Missal:

395. Finally, if the participation of the faithful and their spiritual welfare requires variations and more thoroughgoing adaptations in order that the sacred celebration respond to the culture and traditions of the different peoples, then Bishops' Conferences may propose such to the Apostolic See in accordance with article 40 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy for introduction with the latter's consent, especially in the case of peoples to whom the Gospel has been more recently proclaimed. The special norms given in the Instruction On the Roman Liturgy and Inculturation should be carefully observed.

Regarding procedures to be followed in this matter, the following should be followed:

In the first place, a detailed preliminary proposal should be set before the Apostolic See, so that, after the necessary faculty has been granted, the detailed working out of the individual points of adaptation may proceed.

Once these proposals have been duly approved by the Apostolic See, experiments should be carried out for specified periods and at specified places. If need be, once the period of experimentation is concluded, the Bishops' Conference shall decide upon pursuing the adaptations and shall propose a mature formulation of the matter to the Apostolic See for its decision. (General Instruction to the Roman Missal.)

This calls to mind what a conciliar presbyter said to me when riding from Emmaus, Pennsylvania, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II's liturgical extravaganza at Logan Circle there on Thursday, October 4, 1979, the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, as he envisioned a day where "Rome was nothing more than a clearinghouse for the ideas and liturgies developed at the local level." I found this idea to preposterous at the time, telling the man that this would never happen. 

I found this idea to preposterous at the time, telling the man that this would never happen. 

Guess what?

I was an idiot.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s concept of “popular piety,” which Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV, has now made his own by highlighting it in the address he gave to his “cardinals” five days ago, was meant to lead to Querida Amazonia, February 2, 2020, and to its implementation in what the conciliar Vatican itself calls the “Mayan rite”:

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Vatican has approved the Mayan rite of the Mass which will involve ritual dancing, women taking the place of the priest in incensing the altar, and lay leadership of certain prayers in the liturgy.

The announcement came via Cardinal Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel, who is bishop emeritus of the San Cristobal de Las Casas diocese in Mexico and one of the leading promoters of this new rite.

Writing in his weekly column November 13, Arizmendi joyfully revealed that the Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has “with the authority of the Pope, on November 8 of this year, granted the long-awaited recognitio of some liturgical adaptations for the celebration of the Holy Mass in the Tseltal, Tsotsil, Ch’ol, Tojolabal, and Zoque ethnic groups of the diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas.”

Arizmendi has previously been in communication with LifeSite’s Dr. Maike Hickson, providing her with details about the proposed draft of the rite when it was being assessed by the Vatican. Subsequently, he confirmed to this correspondent a few times about his consternation that the Dicastery was taking so long to approve the rite.

The Vatican’s approval is “the official recognition of the Church by which these adaptations are approved as valid and legitimate,” he wrote in his column.

“They are the liturgy of the Church, and not just customs and habits that are viewed with suspicion,” he said in defense of the new rite of the Novus Ordo Mass. {Emphasis original}

Arizmendi was keen to highlight the significance of the development, since it is indeed only the second such rite since the Second Vatican Council which has been approved, the other being the Zaire rite in Africa.

Echoing Pope Francis on the topic, Arizmendi opined that such rites “are a form of incarnation of faith in expressions that are very specific to these cultures. We did not invent them, but we adopted what they live and which is in accordance with the Roman rite.”

“If there are deviations in some indigenous customs, we can help them to reach their fullness in Christ and in his Church,” he said.

Last summer, Arizmendi provided LifeSite with the draft that had been submitted to the Vatican.

The now Vatican-approved rite – as described by Arizmendi – is outlined below:

Ritual dances: “Ritual dances” were approved at the Offertory, in the prayer of the faithful or in the thanksgiving after communion. These, Arizmendi said, are “simple movements of the entire assembly, monotonous, contemplative, accompanied by traditional music, and which express the same thing as the Roman rite, but in a different cultural form.”

“The content of the Mass is not changed, but the way it is expressed,” he said.

Women to incense instead of the priest: Women will perform the “ministry of incense bearers” in Mass “instead of the priest.” After the priest blesses and imposes incense, the woman then incense the “altar, the images, the Gospel book, the ministers and the assembly.” They will apparently not use the customary thurible, but rather “an incense burner proper to their culture.”

This, Arimenzi said, is born out of the indigenous custom of having usually women incensing during prayer.

Lay leadership of Mass prayers: The practice of having a lay man or woman of “recognized moral importance” who will be the “principal,” has been approved to “lead certain parts of the community prayer.” These times would be: “either at the beginning of the Mass, to initiate the community into the celebration, to name the intentions and to ask for forgiveness, or in the prayer of the faithful, after the priest makes the initial invitation and closes with the concluding prayer, or after communion as a thanksgiving, which the priest concludes with the post-communion prayer.”

The cardinal attested that the new practice did not mean “removing the priest from his service as president of the assembly, since he is the one who is at the head of the celebration, and he authorizes these moments.”

The lay leader “promotes and guides the prayer of all,” as he does not pray in just his name. “It is another way for the assembly to participate; the content of the Roman rite is not changed, but its cultural expression,” said Arizmendi.

Pagan theology underpinning rite

The Vatican had been assessing the text since July of 2023, after Mexico’s bishops voted 103-2 in favor during the April 2023 plenary assembly of the rite. The bishops of Mexico discussed an initial draft version, which was then amended slightly for presentation to the Vatican.

Speaking last year, Arizmendi stated that the country’s bishops extended the proposals to “all the native peoples of the country,” rather than just to those of the San Cristóbal diocese. However, that nation-wide permission has not been officially given, though in practice it remains very unlikely that the rite will be limited to the areas outlined by the Vatican.

Dr. Hickson previously noted that a Mayan rite has already been practiced in the Diocese of San Cristóbal, as it has been approved by the Mexican bishops’ conference. (See her prior coverage HERE and HERE)

In the March 2023 draft of the rite sent to LifeSite, the role of the “principal” was posited as being key as such an individual would “become even more relevant during the period of absence of the clergy in our diocese.” Such a line prompts the suggestion of completely lay led ceremonies as a norm in the future, rather than simply certain parts of the Mass.

It is not yet clear from Arizmendi’s description if the “principal” will engage in the pagan practice of praying to the four directions of the earth. The March 2023 draft noted that “on special occasions this prayer can be realigned by invoking God from the four cardinal points.” To invoke God from the four cardinal points implies in the Mayan polytheistic tradition: the four directions of the earth—north, west, south, east—which are traditionally connected with gods. However this was not present in the draft sent to the Vatican last summer and seen by LifeSite at the time.

But despite this, the underlying pagan theology remains. The “ritual dance” Arizmendi mentions was described in the March 2023 draft thus: “the feet caress the face of Mother Earth, making light movements. The face of God is greeted by moving to the four directions of the universe.”

The Undersecretary of the Dicastery — Bishop Aurelio García Macías — was heavily involved in drawing up the rite. He told local media in March last year that the process was “a personal enrichment for me because I believe that the local experience of San Cristóbal de Las Casas has discerned, has been able to study, reflect and can be enriched with the universal experience of the Catholic Church.”

Meanwhile, another pagan-based rite is also under consideration by the Vatican. The Amazon, or Amazonian, rite is about to begin a three-year trial period later this year. The Amazon rite is a product of the highly controversial 2019 Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, or the Amazon Synod.

Among the many proposals raised by the Amazon Synod and its final document are the opening of the clerical state to women and admitting married men to the priesthood, in an attempt to make the Church more appealing to Catholics in the region.

This “Amazonian rite” would “expresses the liturgical, theological, disciplinary and spiritual heritage of the Amazon,” which would assist the “work of evangelization.”

Meanwhile, the Dicastery for Divine Worship has been accused of implementing a “persecution” of the Church’s traditional liturgy across the global Church. (Vatican approves Mayan rite with ritual dance, female incensors and lay leadership of Mass parts.)

This is a direct worship of the devil that he himself has inspired. The adversary directed the Mayans to sacrifice children and others to him, and even secular sources have been admitting, albeit with reluctance, that the Aztecs and Mayans were as brutally barbaric as the Spanish missionaries said they were. Although the secularists believe that the Spanish missionaries exaggerated the number of human sacrifices, which they did not, of course, some realize that the brutalities can no longer be denied:

MEXICO CITY —  It has long been a matter of contention: Was the Aztec and Mayan practice of human sacrifice as widespread and horrifying as the history books say? Or did the Spanish conquerors overstate it to make the Indians look primitive?

In recent years archeologists have uncovered mounting physical evidence that corroborates the Spanish accounts in substance, if not number.

Using high-tech forensic tools, archeologists are proving that pre-Hispanic sacrifices often involved children and a broad array of intentionally brutal killing methods.

For decades, many researchers believed Spanish accounts from the 16th and 17th centuries were biased to denigrate Indian cultures. Others argued that sacrifices were largely confined to captured warriors. Still others conceded the Aztecs were bloody, but believed the Maya were less so.

“We now have the physical evidence to corroborate the written and pictorial record,” said archeologist Leonardo Lopez Lujan. “Some ‘pro-Indian’ currents had always denied this had happened. They said the texts must be lying.”

The Spaniards probably did exaggerate the number of victims to justify their war against idolatry, said David Carrasco, a Harvard Divinity School expert on Mesoamerican religion.

But there is less doubt about the nature of the killings. Indian pictorial texts known as “codices,” as well as Spanish accounts of the time, quote Indians as describing multiple forms of brutal human sacrifice.

Victims had their hearts cut out or were decapitated, shot full of arrows, clawed, sliced, stoned, crushed, skinned, buried alive or tossed from the tops of temples.

Children were said to be frequent victims, in part because they were considered pure and unspoiled.

“Many people said, ‘We can’t trust these codices because the Spaniards were describing all these horrible things,’ which in the long run we are confirming,” said Carmen Pijoan, a forensic anthropologist who found some of the first direct evidence of cannibalism in a pre-Aztec culture more than a decade ago: bones with butcher-like cut marks.

In December, at an excavation in an Aztec-era community in Ecatepec, just north of Mexico City, archeologist Nadia Velez Saldana described finding evidence of human sacrifice associated with the god of death.

“The sacrifice involved burning or partially burning victims,” Velez Saldana said. “We found a burial pit with the skeletal remains of four children who were partially burned, and the remains of four other children that were completely carbonized.”

Although the remains don’t show whether the victims were burned alive, there are depictions of people -- apparently alive -- being held down as they were burned.

The dig turned up other clues to support descriptions of sacrifices in the Magliabecchi codex, a pictorial account painted between 1600 and 1650 that includes human body parts stuffed into cooking dishes, and people sitting around eating, as the god of death looks on.

“We have found cooking dishes just like that,” said archeologist Luis Manuel Gamboa. “And, next to some full skeletons, we found some incomplete, segmented human bones.” Researchers don’t know if those remains were cannibalized. 

In 2002, government archeologist Juan Alberto Roman Berrelleza announced the results of forensic testing on the bones of 42 children, mostly boys around age 6, sacrificed at Mexico City’s Templo Mayor, the Aztecs’ main religious site, during a drought.

All shared one feature: serious cavities, abscesses or bone infections painful enough to make them cry.

“It was considered a good omen if they cried a lot at the time of sacrifice,” which was probably done by slitting their throats, Roman Berrelleza said.

The Maya, whose culture peaked farther east about 400 years before the Aztecs founded Mexico City in 1325, had a similar taste for sacrifice, Harvard University anthropologist David Stuart wrote in a 2003 article.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, “The first researchers tried to make a distinction between the ‘peaceful’ Maya and the ‘brutal’ cultures of central Mexico,” Stuart wrote. “They even tried to say human sacrifice was rare among the Maya.”

But in carvings and mural paintings, he said, “we have now found more and greater similarities between the Aztecs and Mayas,” including a Maya ceremony in which a costumed priest is shown pulling the entrails from a bound and apparently living sacrificial victim.

Some Spanish-era texts have yet to be corroborated with physical remains. They describe Aztec priests sacrificing children and adults by sealing them in caves or drowning them. But the assumption now is that the texts appear trustworthy, said Lopez Lujan, who also works at the Templo Mayor site.

For Lopez Lujan, confirmation has come in the form of advanced chemical tests on the stucco floors of Aztec temples, which were found to have been soaked with iron, albumen and genetic material consistent with human blood.

“It’s now a question of quantity,” said Lopez Lujan, who thinks the Spaniards -- and Indian picture-book scribes working under their control -- exaggerated the number of sacrifice victims, claiming in one case that 80,400 people were sacrificed at a temple inauguration in 1487.

“We’re not finding anywhere near that ... even if we added some zeros,” Lopez Lujan said.

Researchers have largely discarded the old theory that sacrifice and cannibalism were motivated by a protein shortage in the Aztec diet, although some still believe it may have been a method of population control.

Pre-Hispanic cultures believed the world would end if the sacrifices were not performed. Sacrificial victims, meanwhile, were often treated as gods before being killed.

“It is really very difficult for us to conceive,” Pijoan said of the sacrifices. “It was almost an honor for them.” (Brutality of Aztecs, Mayas Corroborated.) 

Our Lady herself appeared to Juan Diego atop Tepeyac Hill nearly four hundred ninety-three years ago to eradicate pagan superstition and practices from the Americas, and fully nine million people did indeed convert from paganism to the Catholic Faith, almost person for person the number of people lost to the Protestant Revolution in Europe.

The Catholic Church has always sought to keep what is good in the cultures of those people she has evangelized throughout the centuries, but she has never hesitated—and indeed insists upon—the eradication of all pagan practice. (For further commentary on the “Mayan rite,” please see Bergoglio Extols and Idolizes the Very Pagan Practices that Our Lady Sought to Eradicate).

Loving care for the least and the rejected?

The conciliar revolutionaries have constantly contended that the “Second” Vatican Council “rediscovered” the “poor” even though Sillonism has claimed for itself a genuine “concern” for the “poor” that had been “rediscovered” in their meetings at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, a claim that Pope Saint Pius X eviscerated as follows in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

Finally, at the root of all their fallacies on social questions, lie the false hopes of Sillonists on human dignity. According to them, Man will be a man truly worthy of the name only when he has acquired a strong, enlightened, and independent consciousness, able to do without a master, obeying only himself, and able to assume the most demanding responsibilities without faltering. Such are the big words by which human pride is exalted, like a dream carrying Man away without light, without guidance, and without help into the realm of illusion in which he will be destroyed by his errors and passions whilst awaiting the glorious day of his full consciousness. And that great day, when will it come? Unless human nature can be changed, which is not within the power of the Sillonists, will that day ever come? Did the Saints who brought human dignity to its highest point, possess that kind of dignity? And what of the lowly of this earth who are unable to raise so high but are content to plow their furrow modestly at the level where Providence placed them? They who are diligently discharging their duties with Christian humility, obedience, and patience, are they not also worthy of being called men? Will not Our Lord take them one day out of their obscurity and place them in heaven amongst the princes of His people? (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

Must one speak of Saint Vincent de Paul, of Saint Peter Claver, of Saint Camillus de Lellis, of Saint John of God, of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, of countless other saints, including Saint Louis IX, Saint Edward the Confessor, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Saint Wenceslaus, and Catholic leaders such as the assassinated President of Ecuador, Gabriel Garcia Moreno?

The Catholic Church has always served the poor from Apostolic times, but she has done so in light of eternity and not on the grounds of socialism, Communism, or globalism, something that Pope Leo XIII noted in Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891 (and was discussed at length sixteen month in Pope Pius XI to Jorge the Red: "No One Can Be at the Same Time a Good Catholic and a True Socialist"):

9. But Catholic wisdom, sustained by the precepts of natural and divine law, provides with especial care for public and private tranquillity in its doctrines and teachings regarding the duty of government and the distribution of the goods which are necessary for life and use. For, while the socialists would destroy the “right” of property, alleging it to be a human invention altogether opposed to the inborn equality of man, and, claiming a community of goods, argue that poverty should not be peaceably endured, and that the property and privileges of the rich may be rightly invaded, the Church, with much greater wisdom and good sense, recognizes the inequality among men, who are born with different powers of body and mind, inequality in actual possession, also, and holds that the right of property and of ownership, which springs from nature itself, must not be touched and stands inviolate. For she knows that stealing and robbery were forbidden in so special a manner by God, the Author and Defender of right, that He would not allow man even to desire what belonged to another, and that thieves and despoilers, no less than adulterers and idolaters, are shut out from the Kingdom of Heaven. But not the less on this account does our holy Mother not neglect the care of the poor or omit to provide for their necessities; but, rather, drawing them to her with a mother’s embrace, and knowing that they bear the person of Christ Himself, who regards the smallest gift to the poor as a benefit conferred on Himself, holds them in great honor. She does all she can to help them; she provides homes and hospitals where they may be received, nourished, and cared for all the world over and watches over these. She is constantly pressing on the rich that most grave precept to give what remains to the poor; and she holds over their heads the divine sentence that unless they succor the needy they will be repaid by eternal torments. In fine, she does all she can to relieve and comfort the poor, either by holding up to them the example of Christ, “who being rich became poor for our sake,[18] or by reminding them of his own words, wherein he pronounced the poor blessed and bade them hope for the reward of eternal bliss. But who does not see that this is the best method of arranging the old struggle between the rich and poor? For, as the very evidence of facts and events shows, if this method is rejected or disregarded, one of two things must occur: either the greater portion of the human race will fall back into the vile condition of slavery which so long prevailed among the pagan nations, or human society must continue to be disturbed by constant eruptions, to be disgraced by rapine and strife, as we have had sad witness even in recent times. (Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891.)

There is no need for the conciliar revolutionaries to have “rediscovered” service to the poor as the children of Holy Mother Church have been serving the poor since Pentecost Sunday.

Courageous and trusting dialogue with the contemporary world in its various components and realities?

So, Prevost/Leo is a maniac for dialogue, is he?

What a surprise.

Not.

To “dialogue with the contemporary world” is to converse with the devil himself.

Here is how Pope Pius IX dealt with such “dialogue” in The Syllabus of Errors, December 8, 1864:

80. The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.- -Allocution “Jamdudum cernimus,” March 18, 1861.

The faith teaches us and human reason demonstrates that a double order of things exists, and that we must therefore distinguish between the two earthly powers, the one of natural origin which provides for secular affairs and the tranquillity of human society, the other of supernatural origin, which presides over the City of God, that is to say the Church of Christ, which has been divinely instituted for the sake of souls and of eternal salvation…. The duties of this twofold power are most wisely ordered in such a way that to God is given what is God’s (Matt. 22:21), and because of God to Caesar what is Caesar’s, who is great because he is smaller than heaven. Certainly the Church has never disobeyed this divine command, the Church which always and everywhere instructs the faithful to show the respect which they should inviolably have for the supreme authority and its secular rights….

. . . Venerable Brethren, you see clearly enough how sad and full of perils is the condition of Catholics in the regions of Europe which We have mentioned. Nor are things any better or circumstances calmer in America, where some regions are so hostile to Catholics that their governments seem to deny by their actions the Catholic faith they claim to profess. In fact, there, for the last few years, a ferocious war on the Church, its institutions and the rights of the Apostolic See has been raging…. Venerable Brothers, it is surprising that in our time such a great war is being waged against the Catholic Church. But anyone who knows the nature, desires and intentions of the sects, whether they be called masonic or bear another name, and compares them with the nature the systems and the vastness of the obstacles by which the Church has been assailed almost everywhere, cannot doubt that the present misfortune must mainly be imputed to the frauds and machinations of these sects. It is from them that the synagogue of Satan, which gathers its troops against the Church of Christ, takes its strength. In the past Our predecessors, vigilant even from the beginning in Israel, had already denounced them to the kings and the nations, and had condemned them time and time again, and even We have not failed in this duty. If those who would have been able to avert such a deadly scourge had only had more faith in the supreme Pastors of the Church! But this scourge, winding through sinuous caverns, . . . deceiving many with astute frauds, finally has arrived at the point where it comes forth impetuously from its hiding places and triumphs as a powerful master. Since the throng of its propagandists has grown enormously, these wicked groups think that they have already become masters of the world and that they have almost reached their pre-established goal. Having sometimes obtained what they desired, and that is power, in several countries, they boldly turn the help of powers and authorities which they have secured to trying to submit the Church of God to the most cruel servitude, to undermine the foundations on which it rests, to contaminate its splendid qualities; and, moreover, to strike it with frequent blows, to shake it, to overthrow it, and, if possible, to make it disappear completely from the earth. Things being thus, Venerable Brothers, make every effort to defend the faithful which are entrusted to you against the insidious contagion of these sects and to save from perdition those who unfortunately have inscribed themselves in such sects. Make known and attack those who, whether suffering from, or planning, deception, are not afraid to affirm that these shady congregations aim only at the profit of society, at progress and mutual benefit. Explain to them often and impress deeply on their souls the Papal constitutions on this subject and teach, them that the masonic associations are anathematized by them not only in Europe but also in America and wherever they may be in the whole world. (Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus of Errors, December 8, 1864.)

Conciliarism’s mania for dialogue the “world” has permitted “the world” go about it business of expanding the size, scope, and power of both domestic governments and global governing bodies, promoting every evil that cries out to Heaven for vengeance, and seeking to restrict the exercise of genuine human liberty to advance a collectivist dreams of environmentalists, globalists, socialists, communists, and transhumanists to even tamper with the human genome to mock the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of the Most Holy Trinity.

Pope Leo XIII wrote the following about “dialogue with the world”:

15. Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)

There is no need for anything else now as anyone looking for “clues” about Robert Francis Prevost now or, worse yet, attempting to justify his praise for Evangelii Gaudium is to be pitied for being unable (or perhaps unwilling) to see yet another wolf in shepherds’ clothing.

Pray Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary daily.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint John Baptist de la Salle, pray for us.

Saint Isidore the Farmer (whose feast is kept in Spain today), pray for us.