August–September 2025
Early Reckoning : 1
We pray that Pope Leo realises that the faithful do not need
a whitewashed papacy garbed in traditional vestments. – Bishop Strickland
Basically, at this point, I think Prevost, in reality, is Francis II. – Gene Gomulka
In terms of comportment Pope Leo's low-key papacy continues to act as a soothing balm for souls battered and bruised by his predecessor. Deo gratias!
At the same time, very sadly and as flagged in the last editorial, it also proceeds as an OTOH-OTOH papacy:
On The One Hand:
Further ominous episcopal/dicasterial decisions by Leo include:
• doubling down on his predecessor's subversive appointment of a nun as Prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (over and above a Cardinal Pro-prefect) by appointing yet another nun as her Under-Secretary (over and above a priest of similar designation).
• elevating blue-ribbon Modernist Bishop Shane Mackinlay as Archbishop of Brisbane despite his having embraced the ordination of women and hosted a pagan New Age exhibit in his cathedral. (See Bishop Strickland herein.)
• appointing an Argentine Archbishop renowned for warring against Catholic piety in his former diocese: to include forbidding choirs to sing in Latin, publicly rebuking altar boys who wished to kneel for Communion and denying First Communion to children expressing the same preference (which reverential practice he condemns as "ideological" and "divisive").
• tightening the grip of the Lavender Mafia by elevating Father Thomas Hennen as bishop of Baker, Oregon; a priest involved in LGBT directives that "echo rhetorical strategies of gender ideology, undermining Catholic clarity and weakening the call to chastity." (Bishop Strickland again.)
• ratifying 75-year-old Cardinal Carlo Castillo as Archbishop of Lima for a further five years. With his long history of scandals and outrages, Castillo, who reportedly had links to the Revolutionary Communist Party in Peru, is said to be "much worse" than soft porn author Cardinal Fernández. Typically, he claims that Christ "died as a murdered layman" and "did not offer a sacrifice", and that "no one converts in front of the tabernacle." He has refused repeatedly to give Communion on the tongue; nearly two dozen priests he considers 'too' Catholic are currently sidelined without pastoral assignments; and he has led a blasphemous "Mother Earth"-Pachamama Eucharist in his cathedral. "In Lima," he declares, "we will try to fulfil Francis' dream." Nightmare, more like!
On The Other Hand:
Some very welcome Leo effects:
• rapid banishment of perverse Archbishop Paglia (he of homo-erotic cathedral mural notoriety) from the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences;
• equally rapid removal of ex-Jesuit Marco Rupnik's 'art' from the Vatican News Website which had long defended its presence despite Rupnik's alleged sexual abuse of nearly two dozen Slovenian nuns: accusations considered credible by the Vatican, and which demonic crimes are said to have fuelled his 'artistic process'. (Dare we hope that every single place now finally scrubbing Rupnik's 'art' off their walls will be just as dutifully exorcised? To include John Paul's shrine in Krakow?);
• bringing esteemed traditionalist Cardinal Sarah in from the cold; appointing him Special Envoy to preside over liturgical celebrations of a 400th anniversary of apparitions of Saint Anne in France. A small task but a significant gesture after the Cardinal's ill-treatment by Francis;
• likewise resuming cordial relations with Cardinal Burke, who has spoken with the Holy Father about ending the persecution of the traditional Mass and its adherents;
• continuing to reinstitute cherished customs at the Vatican, such as the annual imposition of the pallium on new metropolitan archbishops named in the past year, on the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul; a practice introduced by John Paul II but ditched by Francis.
God's hand!
The ledger could be lengthened on both sides: good and bad in abundance. For instance:
On the one hand, Good Leo says the West needs to rediscover a "sense of mystery" in the liturgy — giving us hope.
On the other hand, Bad Leo has quietly formed a new study group to deal with "The Liturgy in Synodal Perspective" — giving us palpitations.[1]
But there is no need to list and juxtapose every item.
The mere fact that we have such a ledger speaks volumes.
A pontiff acutely aware of the hellish depths to which a debased hierarchy has dragged Holy Church would not indulge in OTOH-OTOH ledger-balancing. Rather, he would declare emphatically in words and deeds that there is no synodal Other hand but simply God's Right hand: namely, Absolute Truth and Authority proclaimed and wielded by His Holy Church in matters of doctrine, morals, discipline, and tradition — e basta!
Most certainly he would not be currying PC favour with the worldlings by needlessly feminising the curia: inverting God's ecclesiastical order by subordinating prelates and priests to nuns and laywomen. (On the other hand, as Cardinal Prevost he freely confessed that "Clericalising women doesn't necessarily solve a problem, and it might make a new problem" — further underlining that "our categories...and the life of the Church are different, need to be different." Sentiments retired Swiss Bishop Marian Eleganti echoed in lamenting that women taking priests’ roles become "genderless" and "bureaucratised." Amen.)
Nor would a pontiff wide awake to our chronic degeneration be elevating creatures like Shane Mackinlay! That is, rewarding prelates for subverting the Faith and endangering souls — as Leo also did by replacing the degenerate Archbishop Paglia with Paglia's right-hand man, Msgr Renzo Pegoraro; an on-message globalist sympathetic to the "right to die."
Pegoraro abomination
You read that correctly!
No matter the nature of Msgr Pegoraro's appointment (whether permanent or provisional), at this moment in time, when dumbed-down Catholics are embracing euthanasia laws as rapidly as they rationalised and normalised cremations, an advocate of assisted suicide heads the Pontifical Academy for Life!
As Chris Jackson of the Hiaeth in Exile blog put it: "Pegoraro proposes a legal framework for institionalising mortal sin and now leads the Vatican body once created to prevent exactly that." In other words, the Academy now promotes exactly what Evangelium Vitae condemned. "The teaching is clear," notes Jackson. "The new [Leo] regime is clearer. It doesn't care." In taking the Academy to the dark side, Pegoraro has also:
• Blurred the line between public health and Catholic morality, praising experimental COVID-19 vaccination (developed from aborted fetal cell lines) as a form of “communal salvation.”
• Hosted pro-abortion speakers and tolerated heterodox views within its own ranks.
• Retweeted articles calling for “rethinking” the Church’s condemnation of contraception.
For much more on the globalistic Pegoraro see Jackson herein.
Post-conciliar mindset
A keenly attuned, clear-eyed Catholic pontiff would also spurn the worldly and revolutionary documents underpinning FrancisChurch, not laud them. Even in Peru, however, then-Cardinal Prevost praised and implemented the corrosive likes of Evangelii gaudium, Fratelli tutti, and the Green Abomination Laudato si. As Pope he continues wholeheartedly to promote Laudato (as we shall see in Part 2), while praising the heretical Amoris laetitia.
As regards the latter, the faithful found signs of hope in our new Holy Father's Jubilee address to families (reprinted herein). In particular, we exhaled as one with thanksgiving and relief that he corrected his predecessor's false teaching in Amoris laetitia that lifelong sacramental marriage is a mere "ideal."
On the other hand, he eagerly quoted from the same heretical encyclical, placing its corrupting content on a papal pedestal!
Not that there was a snowball's chance in Hades of a public rebuke of the pernicious Amoris and its papal author. But had His Holiness desired to distance himself from it far more pointedly still, he could have used the address to correct the jaw-dropping Bergoglian insistence that relationships involving cohabitation, by virtue of the fidelity between the persons involved, constitute a “true marriage” that has the “grace of matrimony.” (Yes, Jorge the Worst really believed that ... lest we forget.).
And he could have done so by plainly stating the gravity of the sin of cohabitation — adding a call for couples to co-operate with the action of grace in the manner of Pius XII, who stated that "In order that the grace of this sacrament may produce its full fruit, there is need, as we have already pointed out, of the cooperation of the married parties" (cf Casti Connubii).
Instead, Pope Leo put the Modernist cart before the Catholic horse, preferring to emphasise the importance of personal example in attracting others to the truth. That is, he did not teach but merely encouraged. As commentator Louis Verrechio explained:
The point is plain: Encouraging good behaviour on the part of Catholic couples is not enough. It’s part of the false “the Church grows by attraction” narrative, when in reality, the Lord established a teaching Church.
To the mind of thinking Catholics, who are not prone to being overcome by emotion, genuine clarity on the matter – especially in light of Bergoglio’s errors – would have necessarily included the Church’s unambiguous doctrine on cohabitation vs holy matrimony, e.g., by plainly teaching that not only is sacramental grace absent from cohabitation, but also that persons living more uxorio – as if they were husband and wife outside of true marriage – are committing a grave mortal sin.
Though clearly well-intentioned his post-conciliar mindset automatically buried the bedrock doctrinal message – supposedly too harsh for modern ears – that his audience needed to hear. The encouragement would then have had a solid base on which to take root.
The plague of sexual sin and marital collapse ushered in by that missing doctrinal foundation is reflected in surveys the world over. Typically, a recent UK poll reported by Rayden Solicitors found that 42% of 18-24-year-olds think lifelong faithfulness to one partner is no longer a "realistic" goal in modern relationships.
Faced with this socio-spiritual collapse, that surely pains him and which his predecessor further fomented, the Holy Father not only tip-toed around the doctrine in time-honoured post-conciliar fashion, but just as tragically channelled the spirit of Jorge to a tee. Verrechio notes:
In this same address, Leo made Bergoglio’s disdain for objective doctrinal and moral teaching his own, criticising those who would dare to:
"…present Christian life mostly as a set of rules to be kept, replacing the marvellous experience of encountering Jesus – God who gives himself to us – with a moralistic, burdensome and unappealing religion that, in some ways, is impossible to live in concrete daily life."
And we thought the infuriating false-dichotomies died with Francis! Silly us.
Déjà vu all over again
Doubtless, just as further fine and orthodox words will be negated by troubling and contradictory ones, we should also expect to see a few good (or at least less harmful) appointments thrown in to offset the Mackinlays, Hennans, Pegoraros and Castillos. In that event we should of course thank God for any and every episcopal good He deigns to grant us. Thus far, however, Leo's approach at best smacks of the Hegelian thesis + antithesis equation beloved of John Pau II, who sought to balance conservative and liberal leanings with a view to a flowering Catholic synthesis. ... How did that blossom?
In this episcopal regard, therefore, we appear to be back at square one. We hoped for more — far more — from a former head of the Dicastery for Bishops familiar with heroes and villains the world over. That key role should have primed the Holy Father to clean out the Augean stables of episcopal filth in Rome and abroad once and for all. Yet far from hitting the ground running there is no sense of urgency at all. Not even the German apostasy has evoked signs of summary action to redress a catastrophe that cannot be overstated. Consider this recent report:
On 1 July, German Catholic author Gabriele Kuby told Edward Pentin's Substack.com-account that almost 90% of German bishops support a distorted sexual education that involves teaching children that homosexual acts and gender ideology are normal and acceptable.
Two German bishops have recently indicated their support for such education in Catholic schools.
On 20 June, Bishop Peter Kohlgraf of Mainz said that biblical statements about homosexuality should not be read as timeless truths. Bishop Heinrich Timmerevers of Dresden-Meissen recently called for "a new way of thinking" concerning the sexual morality expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The Archdiocese of Hamburg has imposed anti-Catholic sex education guidelines on Catholic schools last week.
[GloriaTV, 1/7/25]
If Leo's apostolic blood is not stirred by this cataclysmic German "relapse into paganism," as Kuby describes such "demoralisation of sexuality", will anything stir him?
True, the German hierarchy personifies extreme filth. But it also reflects the ongoing diabolic descent that necessitates depositions of filthy bishops everwhere. England's Bishop Terence Drainey of Middlesbrough for one typifies the all-pervasive workaday filth.
In a blog post of 11 June, pro-life leader John Smeaton raised the alarm about Drainey's relentless sodomitic push, pointing to his "LGBT+ Ministry" which gaily declares its "warm welcome here in the Diocese for everyone, and this includes in an explicit way members of the LGBT+ community (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and all those who identify under 'plus)."
In England, the late Cardinal Hume and his current successor Archbishop Nichols paved this repugnant path (CO passim). As with every other country, however, papal or curial interventions here were rare to non-existent; even as sacrilege and blasphemy defined Nichols' 'gay' Masses, and despite the constant efforts of faithful priests and people to have all such facilitating prelates called in to HQ, read the riot act, and disciplined: viz., sequestered in a far flung monastery out of harm's way.
Since the necessity and charity of that salvific disciplinary process slides further down the memory hole with every passing year, as facilitators and practitioners of unnatural vice tighten their stranglehold on Rome and local Churches, it does us good to recall the Catholic norm:
Anyone caught in the practice of the sin against nature, on account of which the wrath of God was unleashed upon the children of disobedience, if he is a cleric, let him be demoted from his state and kept in reclusion in a monastery to do penance; if he is a layman, let him be excommunicated and kept rigorously distant from the communion of the faithful.
- Third Lateran Council (1179)
Let's face it, after decades of homo-infiltration and consequent tip-toeing around ecclesiastical crimes, scandals and apostasy, or simply turning a blind eye to them, the Vatican is now hostage to unclean spirits and demonic inertia. The Draineys and Nichols of the world, like the Humes before them, rest easy, complacent in the knowledge that even their most outrageous comrades are never reined in, and that blunt historical directives like that above sit gathering dust on the shelves of the Vatican Library.
Consider that two months into Leo's pontificate not only does notorious homo-activist Fr James Martin SJ remain in situ as a consultant to the Vatican's Dicastery for Communications, but a certain Fr Capella, a former Vatican diplomat sentenced for possessing kiddie porn, has been parachuted back into a cosy Curial post. Like all mafias, the Lavender mob looks after its own.
For his part, Fr Martin continues to subvert Church teaching, scandalise the faithful and disgrace the priesthood of Jesus Christ with impunity. In a recent online interview with a renowned homosexual politician he even compared that homosexual's relationship with his 'husband' and their adopted children to the Holy Trinity! How easily the Holy Father could cancel his Vatican 'consultancy' and thereby signal to wolves in episcopal clothing everywhere that their days of sponsoring the scandalous likes of Martin are over. Swift action would have sent this message already, loud and clear.
Yet all we hear are chirping crickets.
No action.
No papal imperative.
As for the slippery and sinister Fiducia supplicans which in the practiced manner of homo-activism muddied the pristine water of Catholic teaching on sodomy (see "Sodomorum Supplicans", Jan. 2024), its instigator Cardinal "Tucho" Fernández, a key contributor to heretical offerings like Amoris and author of the timeless romantic classic Heal me with your mouth: the art of kissing, insists that Pope Leo will not withdraw it. "The declaration will remain," he told the Italian press.
In 2012, on the other hand, Cardinal Prevost condemned the "homosexual lifestyle" as a prime example of "beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel."
We can only hope against hope that fumble bumble-"Tucho" (clearly an artful kisser but not the sharpest tool in the box) has got it wrong — again.
To deconstruct FrancisChurch
As I write, the Holy Father is enjoying a well-deserved summer break at Castel Gandolfo. There, he will doubtless recharge, reflect and contemplate the direction of his papacy and the makeup of the Roman Curia.
"The [Curial] appointments will come after the summer," said Father Alejandro Moral, the Prior General of Leo's Augustinian order and close friend of the Pope. "This break will certainly help him weigh everything."
We should pray that during this quiet time the Holy Spirit inspires a miraculous volte-face and top-down deconstruction of FrancisChurch: commencing with the removal of problematic prelates and priests from their posts.
Leo's immediate post-summer action in this Curial regard will be even more indicative of where the Church is headed than, say, the nature of his first encyclical.[2]
The reason being that an uncompromising U-turn by way of a Great (Catholic) Replacement within the Vatican would impact directly on what should be the supreme papal focus: the ongoing, deeply embedded crisis of doctrine and morals. Archbishop Athanasius Schneider for one has urged Leo to act without delay:
"Regarding the current situation of the Church, of the tremendous doctrinal confusion which reigns in the life of the Church which is so evident, therefore it would be [the] most urgent act of the new Pope to issue a document or magisterial act – he can do this in various forms as an encyclical or apostolic exhortation or an even more solemn way – to clarify, rectify, those issues in doctrine and morals which were in the last decades and especially in the last pontificate undermined and disfigured, or sometimes even denied."
"In many ways, the moral crisis is intimately linked to the appointments Leo might make in the Roman Curia," confirmed LifeSiteNews, observing that:
Several key officials have been the cause of widespread controversies in recent years, and whose continued presence beside the Pope would send a key message about his intentions. Certain of these figures include:
Cardinal Roche, prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, responsible for implementing the restrictions on the Latin Mass.
Cardinal Parolin, Secretary of State, responsible for the disastrous Sino-Vatican deal.
Conniving and corrupt, this Curial can has been kicked down Via della Conciliazione for many decades by popes far too busy gaslighting the faithful (about Vatican II, the New Mass and New Springtime delusions) to deal with it.
Yet the ruinous post-conciliar settlement embodied by the Roman Curia is what any pope conscious of his grave duty before God must tackle head on and face down.
And he must do so with all the determination and no-nonsense plain-speaking and tough action that defined St. Pius X's attempt to rein in the increasingly rampant Modernists of his day.
It is painful, though not surprising, to find no signs whatever of the combative papacy required.
Quite the opposite.
If we take Leo's lack of anti-Modernist signals on the one hand, the rash of ultra-Modernist appointments on the other, and factor in his baseline synodal obsession, an early reckoning of the papal ledger reveals a gentler, kinder Francis II — tranquillising the flock with fine words, comforting traditions, and papal gravitas, while directing Jorge's revolution from bad to worse. A deadly combo.
That said, faith-filled/prayer-fuelled HOPE springs eternal!
As Bishop Strickland stated plainly and truly in the last edition:
It is no secret that this new Holy Father comes from the heart of a movement in the Church that has, over the last decades, distanced itself from doctrine, loosened its hold on tradition, and often sought to please the world more than to challenge it. ... At the same time, we must remember that a man’s past does not always dictate his future. God has worked surprising reversals in the hearts of leaders before, and He can do so again.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] With good reason! The final document of the October 2024 session of the Synod on Synodality insists that "Deepening the link between liturgy and synodality will help all Christian communities, in the diversity of their cultures and traditions, to adopt celebratory styles that make visible the face of a synodal Church."
[2] As flagged by both the Holy Father's regnal name and his discourses, it may well be concerned with the poor and/or the "new challenges" that he sees being posed by the AI revolution to "human dignity, justice and labour"; a kind of Rerum Novarum 2.0 in the spirit of Leo XIII's great social charter in response to the first industrial revolution.