Jorge’s Perfect Sendoff: One Protector of Clerical Abusers Will Slam the Lid on Another

Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s mortal remains will be buried in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in less than thirty-six hours from the time of this posting after his “Mass of Christian Burial in the Piazza di Santo Pietro in front of the Basilica of Saint Peter on Easter Saturday, April 26, 2025, and the Commemoration of Popes Saint Cletus and Marcellinus and, in some places, of Our Lady of Good Counsel.

Before the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo is held, however, none other the disgraced and utterly disgraceful enabler of clerical abusers, the revolutionary pro-perversity supporter of illegal immigration who never met a pro-abortion politician he did not seek to enable, the eighty-nine-year-old Roger “Cardinal” Mahony, will close the lid on Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s coffin, One protector of clerical abusers and promoter of sodomite “rights” will close the lid on the coffin of a like-minded uber-progressive Jacobin/Bolshevik conciliar revolutionary.

For those who are young and/or were not following events in the 1980s, 1990s, and the first decade of the Twentieth Century, let me provide you with a Roger Mahony primer, which consists of excerpts taken from an article, “The Six Hundred Million Dollar Man and His Friends,” I published on this website on July 15, 2007:

This particular article is about something so serious and appalling that it simply staggers the mind of one who did a good deal of reporting about perversity in the conciliar structures when associated with The Wanderer. Its appalling nature is compounded by the fact that so few Catholics in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism care enough to recognize that their money has gone to subsidize perversity and the cover up thereof that no sane person can any longer deny has taken place systematically over the course of the last thirty to forty years.

On second thought, however, I guess that there is no cause to be surprised about the apathy on the part of Catholics to see how their money has subsidized perversity when they do not see how their money has subsidized spiritual perversity in the form of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service and the false doctrines, both "approved" and "unapproved," that circulate within the conciliar structures. Indeed, there are plenty of otherwise, sane, rational, intelligent people who enable the antipopes of conciliarism and their false "bishops" without for a single moment (and I mean not a single, solitary moment) paying any attention at all to the massive harm caused to the souls of ordinary Catholics by the false teachings and liturgical abominations to which they have been subjected for the past forty years. This wreckage of souls is ultimately far more costly than the payout of money recounted below. There is a point, however, at which the subsidizing of physical and moral perversity and the subsidizing of spiritual perversity intersect to produce a multi-headed hydra that sweeps away the truths of the Catholic Faith as it sweeps more and more people into the fold of the One World Church that is but the diabolical ape of the Catholic Church.

Here is the story about the spiritual and moral cesspool that is the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, written by Laurie Goodstein of The New York Times:

Lawyers for more than 500 victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy members say they are on the verge of settling their lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for as much as $650 million.

If completed, it would be the largest payout made by any single diocese since the clergy sexual abuse scandals first became public in Boston in 2002. It would dwarf the $85 million paid for 552 claims by the Archdiocese of Boston.

The lawyers in the Los Angeles cases said the settlement could be announced on or before Monday, when jury selection is set to begin in the first of the cases. But they said many details remained to be settled. Also, any agreement would require a judge’s approval.

Tod M. Tamberg, director of media relations for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said in an e-mail message that the only comment he could make was, “The archdiocese will be in court Monday at 9:30 a.m.”

A lawyer for the archdiocese did not return calls for comment.

Raymond P. Boucher, the lawyer who is representing 242 of the plaintiffs in the Los Angeles cases, and his co-counsel, Laurence E. Drivon, confirmed in telephone interviews on Saturday that a deal was imminent, but cautioned that it could still dissolve.

“I think we’re committed to getting to the point where we could get it resolved and announce a settlement,” Mr. Boucher said. “I’m more optimistic than I have been.”

Mr. Drivon said, “The primary motivation for the archdiocese to settle is that it is substantially likely that if they don’t resolve these cases they’re going to get hit” for much more than $650 million.

The Los Angeles cases have been particularly complex because they involve so many victims, multiple insurance companies, many Catholic religious orders whose own priests and brothers stand accused, and a prominent archbishop, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who has cast himself as an ally of victims but has been accused by them of intransigence.

Many dioceses in California have been hit by large numbers of lawsuits because the state passed a law in 2002 that opened a one-year window for cases to be filed without regard to the statute of limitations.

Steven Sanchez, a 47-year old financial adviser who is one of the plaintiffs in the case set to begin on Monday, said he had been girding himself to testify about the abuse he suffered when he was 9 or 10 years old, and he said he wanted to see church officials called to account in a courtroom.

Asked what he would do with the money, should the anticipated settlement be reached, he said simply, “Where can you take that check and cash it that will make you 10 years old again?”

Cardinal Mahony announced in May that, to raise money for a settlement, the archdiocese would sell its administrative building on Wilshire Boulevard and might sell about 50 other church properties that were not being used by parishes or schools.

The Associated Press was the first news organization to report on Saturday that the archdiocese had agreed to a settlement for $600 to $650 million, and attributed the report to two plaintiffs’ lawyers who asked for anonymity.

Katherine K. Freberg, a lawyer in Irvine, Calif., who represents 109 victims, said, “We are hopeful that this is going to happen, but we still have some remaining details to work on.”

Cardinal Mahony is expected to be called to testify in the case that is set to begin on Monday, involving what the archdiocese knew about two decades of alleged abuse by one priest — the Rev. Clinton Hagenbach, who died in 1987. Cardinal Mahony became archbishop of Los Angeles in 1985.

The trial on Monday is only one of more than a dozen scheduled to start between now and January.

Any settlement would require the archdiocese to make public its confidential files that could shed light on which church officials knew of the abuse accusations, and when they knew, Mr. Boucher said. Many of the accused priests had multiple victims because they were moved by their superiors from one parish to another when accusations arose.

Mary Grant, 44, is an abuse victim whose case was settled by the Diocese of Orange, in California, and is a plaintiff in the Los Angeles cases.

Ms. Grant is Western regional director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and counsels other victims. She said any settlement in Los Angeles would be “a bitter release.”

“We understand there are survivors who are desperately in need of medical care, therapy,” she said. “They may not be able to go through a trial. But on the other hand, there are many survivors really who’ve wanted their day in court.”

She added: “It’s been a long, hard five-year battle for survivors in Los Angeles. So I think that probably a sense of temporary relief that may come from it.”

The Los Angeles Archdiocese, its insurers and several Roman Catholic religious orders, including the Carmelites, the Franciscans and the Jesuits, have already paid a total of $114 million in several separate agreements, to settle 86 claims.

Lawsuits over sexual abuse have already cost the Roman Catholic church in the United States more than $1.5 billion. Each diocese must handle the costs on its own, with no assistance from the Vatican. Few cases have gone to trial, usually because of laws on the statute of limitations.

Settlements are far more common, and victims in California have consistently won some of the largest payouts. In California, the Diocese of Orange paid $100 million for 90 abuse claims in 2004 and the Diocese of Oakland paid $56 million to 56 people in 2005. The Diocese of Covington, in Kentucky, paid about $85 million to about 350 people.

Five dioceses have filed for bankruptcy protection: San Diego; Davenport, Iowa; Portland, Ore.; Spokane, Wash.; and Tucson.

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said of the reported settlement: “They should feel incredibly proud, and Catholics should be very grateful to them. Without their courage, dozens of predators would still be unknown and maybe working in parishes today, and we would know absolutely nothing about who covered up these crimes.”

He said, however, “We don’t know as much as we would have if some of these cases had gone to trial.”  (Settlement Near on Abuse Cases in Los Angeles.) 

Roger Mahony himself confirmed the settlement, which must be approved by a California Superior Court judge on Monday, July 16, 2007, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, on Sunday, July 15, 2007, stating that the actual figure of the settlement is $660 million (seems like they're missing another "six" to communicate the nature of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles under conciliar control). This means that the Archdiocese will have paid out over three quarters of a billion dollars to victims of priests (some validly ordained, others not) steeped in unrepentant sins of perversity who have been protected, if not promoted, over the years as they were permitted to "celebrate" their "diversity" quite openly in parish settings. Roger Mahony, the phony "archbishop" of Los Angeles, has shown himself to be a friend of such "diversity" and "sensitivity" on issues pertaining to perversity. He has also shown himself to be a spiritual predator who issued a "pastoral letter" in 1997 that explained the importance of "de-Europeanizing" the liturgy. His $200 million monstrosity alongside US-101, the Hollywood Freeway, features "yin and yang" symbols in the sidewalk leading up to it and is designed in such a way as to make it appear that the "presider" is below the people. All manner of monstrous sacrileges have taken place there since its "dedication" in September of 2002.

Protection and promotion of perversity, both physical and spiritual, is a common theme throughout the conciliar structures in California. Most Holy Redeemer Church in the Archdiocese of San Francisco has been a particularly hideous haven of those who celebrate sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance without a thought for how their sins wounded the Sacred Humanity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ once in time and how they wound Him mystically in the Church Militant here on earth today. These shameless purveyors of the Homosexual Collective are even less concerned about how their unrepentant sins helped to thrust Seven Swords of Sorrow through and through to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. And each and every single one of them is in perfectly good "canonical" standing in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

The situation in California is so bad that an elderly Claretian priest in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, who came to one of my "To be Catholic from the Womb to the Tomb" lectures at Saint Mary's by the Sea Church in Huntington Beach, California, which is in the equally corrupt Diocese of Orange, California, gave me a Christmas card in early 2002 that someone had sent to him. It featured two "priests" of the Diocese of Orange photographed in a most inappropriate manner. What did that matter to "Bishop" Tod Brown, a contemporary of Mahony's and San Francisco's George Niederauer, who heaped praise on Brokeback Mountain in early 2006, and William Levada at that factory of perversion known as Saint John's Seminary in Camarillo, California. (Levada, born in 1936, was ordained for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles on December 20, 1961; Mahony, born in 1936, was ordained for the Diocese of Fresno on May 1, 1962; Niederauer, born in 1936, was ordained for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles on June 14, 1962; Brown, born in 1936, was ordained for the Diocese of Monterey-Fresno on May 1, 1963)?  Levada, Mahony and Niederauer jointly own a beach house in Manhattan Beach, California, where they must enjoy spinning their respective tales of how they have helped to push the envelope of the conciliar revolution.

There is a direct connection between the conciliarist revolution against the Faith and the systematic recruitment, retention and promotion of effeminate men who have been steeped in perverse sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandment to serve in the conciliar priesthood, admitting that the problem existed before the onset of conciliarism and afflicted even top ranking cardinals, as explained by Mrs. Randy Engel in The Rite of Sodomy, but not to the extent that developed in the wake of the "Second" Vatican Council and the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service. Music, art and architecture in many conciliar church buildings have been designed by and to suit the "needs" of those steeped in perversity unrepentantly.

It is no accident that Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI was afflicted in this manner himself while he helped to oversee the construction of a false "Mass" that removed almost all references to sin and judgment and Hell from the Collects that were still in use in the 1962 Missal of Angelo Roncalli (which Missal contained numerous concessions to Jansenism, including the suppression of feast days and the suppression of the second Confiteor and the breaking of the Canon of the Mass with the insertion of the name of Saint Joseph) before the "transitional" Ordo Missae of 1965 took effect on November 29, 1964. Men steeped in objectively sinful behavior could not stand to say prayers that reminded them of their own subjectively culpability before God, which is why Paragraph 15 of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal had the unmitigated gall to claim that "outward signs of penance" belonged to "another age in the history of the Church:"

The same awareness of the present state of the world also influenced the use of texts from very ancient tradition. It seemed that this cherished treasure would not be harmed if some phrases were changed so that the style of language would be more in accord with the language of modern theology and would faithfully reflect the actual state of the Church's discipline. Thus there have been changes of some expressions bearing on the evaluation and use of the good things of the earth and of allusions to a particular form of outward penance belonging to another age in the history of the Church. (General Instruction to the Roman Missal, 2002 English edition.)

Who says that "outward penance" belongs to another "age in the history of the Church?"

Not anyone who is conscious of and most sorrowful for the horror of his own sins (I am raising my own hand at present, thank you) and who wants to make reparation for those sins before he dies, understanding that our puny, finite, self-absorbed minds cannot possibly comprehend how much pain and suffering the least one of our venial sins imposed upon the Sacred Humanity of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, during His Passion and Death. Only those who take sin lightly or who, along with Martin Luther, believe it impossible or unnecessary to reform one's life, either because one is a dung heap and is saved by making a profession of faith the Name of the Lord Jesus (Luther) or because of a belief in the heresy of Hans Urs von Balthasar's "universal salvation, do not want a Mass that "bothers" them and singes what is left of their badly damaged and distorted consciences. . . .

Roger Mahony's testimony in a deposition involving a priest in the Diocese of Stockton, Oliver O'Grady, now in Ireland, who was abusing both boys and girls throughout California for over twenty years before his behavior became public knowledge. Look at paragraph two to see what kind of moral monster Roger Mahony is and how little his monstrous attitude matters to the conciliar Vatican, which retains him in power despite all that has been revealed about him in the documentary movie Deliver Us From Evil:

In a telephone interview on Thursday from Ireland, Mr. O’Grady maintained that he informed Cardinal Mahony of his “situation” while working as a priest in Stockton. “I told him I would go to counseling and he said fine,” Mr. O’Grady said. “We thought I had resolved it.” ...

In a 2004 deposition related to civil trials in Los Angeles, Cardinal Mahony stated that expressing sexual urges toward a 9-year-old would not be automatic cause for removing a priest from duty. He also said he barely knew Mr. O’Grady, though lawyers in the cases presented warm letters exchanged between the two.

In the Stockton civil case, a jury awarded $30 million in damages to the brothers in 1998, an award reduced to $7 million in negotiations. According to news media accounts at the time, jurors said they did not find Cardinal Mahony’s testimony, that he was unaware of Mr. O’Grady’s proclivities, credible. (The New York Times, October 7, 2006.)

It is very apart from the point to argue, as some in the conciliar Vatican have done, that the "problem" amongst conciliar bishops and priests is about the same, if not a little less, than that which exists in other denominations. That's not the point at all, if that point is true at all, that is. The point is this: souls are not expendable. Our Lord shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood to redeem just one soul, no less the whole human race. It is a tragedy of monstrous proportions when a soul is scandalized by the bad behavior of any one of us, no less one purporting to be a "bishop" or a "priest." The Apostles and the Fathers of the Church did not have a bevy of lawyers and insurance companies to decide how best to suppress evidence and to protect them from the flocks that were entrusted to their pastoral care. They had no need of lawyers and insurance companies as they hated sin and took seriously the pursuit of personal sanctity and to promote same among the sheep they were given to get home safely to the eternal sheepfold of Heaven itself.

Once again, those who do not have contact with the lost and confused souls wandering around in the world who have been neglected or abandoned by the false shepherds of the counterfeit church of conciliarism will believe that these matters are anomalies that will go away rather than being representative of the whole ethos of conciliarism. As I have pointed out before, yes, sure, there have been instances of terrible, scandalous behavior in traditional circles, including in sedevacantist circles. Reality is what it is. No Catholic makes excuses for anyone's terrible, scandalous behavior, least of all his own behavior! One who loves God hates his sins and wants to live long enough to do penance for them, knowing that what has been confessed in internal forum and sometimes manifests itself in headlines will be revealed for all to see and behold on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the Living and the Dead.

There is, however, simply no point of comparison between the isolated instances of scandalous behavior in traditional circles (save for the Society of Saint John, which was indeed much more systematically corrupt than it was "traditional" in the slightest and which has, as pointed out last week, reinvented itself in the conciliar structures with a "bishop" in Paraguay) and the outright promotion of perversity in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, starting with the insidious and immoral warfare waged against young Catholics in so-called "Catholic" schools by means of graphic propagandizing in behalf of perversity in "sex-education" classroom programs about "diversity" and "tolerance" and "love." There has been a cultivation of the propaganda of the Homosexual Collective within the very structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism that is deep-rooted and that is now costing ordinary Catholics who have yet to see their way out of the counterfeit church over a billion dollars.

Alas, as noted earlier, the cost in terms of souls is far more important than the staggering sum of money paid out to victims of the conciliarists' efforts to protect their own who were caught in perversity. A systematic warfare against the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, which began to come to the surface as early as the 1950s by means of the revolutionary efforts of Fathers Annibale Bugnini and Ferdinando Antonelli and exploded beyond even their own wildest imaginings in the 1960s, and against the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church has resulted in a cesspool of spiritual corruption that has placed the Church Militant on earth in the tomb, some believe, as Our Lord undergoes a mystical Crucifixion and Death at the present time. Our only recourse in the midst of this corruption is to make regular use of the Sacrament of Penance and to live penitentially as we offer our acts of reparation for our own sins to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. (From The Six Hundred Million Dollar Man and His Friends, July 15, 2007.)

The excerpts above only summarize the egregious nature of Roger Mahony’s own reign of terror over the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, including the construction of the $200 Taj Mahony within view of the Hollywood Freeway (US 101) and his sponsorship of the annual Los Angeles Religious Education Conference that regularly features of speakers whose heterodox views were once the source of protest from “conservative” Catholics during the antipapal reign of Karol Josezf Wojtyla/John Paul II but were really reflective of what the Argentine Apostate himself was teaching in Argentina in the 1990s.

It is, therefore, supremely just for Roger Mahony to slam the lid shut on his fellow revolutionary’s coffin, especially when one considers Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s own record protecting clerical abusers during his time as the conciliar “archbishop” of Buenos Aires, Argentina:

o 2013 and president of the Argentine bishops’ conference from 2005 to 2011. During these years, as church officials in the US and Europe began addressing the catastrophe of child sexual abuse by clergy – and even as Popes John Paul II and Benedict made public statements – Bergoglio stayed silent about the crisis in Argentina.

He released no documents, no names of accused priests, no tallies of accused priests, no policy for handling abuse, not even an apology to victims.

In his many homilies and statements (archived on the Buenos Aires archdiocesan website), he attacked government corruption, wealth inequities, and human sex trafficking, but he said nothing about sexual violence by priests.

In On Heaven and Earth (first published in Spanish in 2010), a wide-ranging collection of conversations with Argentine rabbi Abraham Skorka, he suggested in fact that the problem did not exist in his archdiocese:

In my diocese it never happened to me, but a bishop called me once by phone to ask me what to do in a situation like this and I told him to take away the priest’s faculties, not to permit him to exercise his priestly ministry again, and to initiate a canonical trial.

 Bergoglio’s implication, that he handled no abusive priests, is implausible. Buenos Aires is Argentina’s largest diocese, and Bergoglio was one of its top executives from 1992 to 2013 – a period when tens of thousands of victims worldwide reported their abuse to the Church. Based on data disclosed in dioceses in the US and Europe, we estimate conservatively that from 1950 to 2013, more than 100 Buenos Aires archdiocesan priests offended against children and that dozens of them were known to archdiocesan supervisors, including Bergoglio.

BishopAccountability.org presents this overview of Bergoglio’s role and the abuse crisis in the Argentina church in the hopes of facilitating more disclosure and understanding of Pope Francis’s approach to this grave and pressing issue. We highlight Bergoglio’s involvement in five cases, the current response to abuse by other Argentine bishops, and the unusually important role of whistleblowers. Finally, we provide an in-depth database of accused Argentine priests. Our first non-US database, this marks the launch of our global coverage; we eventually will produce accused priest databases for all countries with significant Catholic populations. (Also see the database in Spanish.)

Questions about Bergoglio’s role in five abuse cases

The factors that have produced disclosure by bishops and religious superiors in other countries – civil action by victims, investigations of the church by prosecutors, and governmental inquiries – have occurred little or not at all in the Federal Capital of Buenos Aires, which is the territory of the archdiocese. As a result, almost no information has emerged about Cardinal Bergoglio’s direct management of accused priests. Only one Buenos Aires archdiocesan priest – Carlos Maria Gauna – has been publicly accused. But in the high-profile cases of four child molesters from religious orders or other dioceses – Grassi, Pardo, Picciochi, and Sasso – there is evidence that Bergoglio knowingly or unwittingly slowed victims in their fight to expose and prosecute their assailants. Victims of all four offenders say that they sought the cardinal's help. None of them received it, even those who were poor, struggling on the periphery of society – the people whom Pope Francis has championed. (According to Bergoglio's former spokesman, the cardinal declined to meet with victims.)

• Fr. Julio César Grassi – Grassi was convicted in 2009 of molesting a boy who had lived in a home for street children that Grassi founded. After Grassi’s conviction, Bergoglio commissioned a secret study to persuade Supreme Court judges of Grassi's innocence. Bergoglio’s intervention is believed to be at least part of the reason that Grassi remained free for more than four years following his conviction. He finally was sent to jail in September 2013. See our detailed summary of the Grassi case with links to articles.

• Fr. Rubén Pardo – In 2003, a priest with AIDS who had admitted to his bishop that he had sexually assaulted a boy was discovered to be hiding from law enforcement in a vicarage in the archdiocese of Buenos Aires, then headed by Bergoglio. Pardo also was reportedly hearing children's confessions and teaching in a nearby school. One of Bergoglio’s auxiliary bishops, with whom he met every two weeks, appears to have lived at the vicarage at the same time. Typically, an ordinary must give permission for a priest to live and work in his diocese. It is unlikely that Pardo lived and ministered in Buenos Aires without Bergoglio's approval. See our detailed summary of the Pardo case.

• Brother Fernando Enrique Picciochi, S.M. – After a victim discovered that his abuser had fled Argentina to the US, eluding law enforcement, the victim sought Bergoglio’s help in getting released from the confidentiality order imposed by the cleric’s religious order. He conveyed his request in meetings with Bergoglio’s private secretary and with the auxiliary bishop, current archbishop Mario Poli. The archdiocese would not help. See our detailed summary of the Picciochi case.

• Rev. Mario Napoleon Sasso – In 2001, following a diagnosis as a pedophile at a church-run treatment center, Sasso was made pastor of a very poor parish with a community soup kitchen in the Zárate-Campana diocese. In 2002-2003, he sexually assaulted at least five little girls in his bedroom off the soup kitchen. In 2006, with Sasso in jail but not yet convicted, the parents of the little girls reportedly sought Bergoglio's help. Bergoglio was then president of the Argentine bishops' conference, and the soup kitchen was just 25 miles from the Buenos Aires archdiocese. Bergoglio would not meet with them. See our detailed summary of the Sasso case.

• Rev. Carlos Maria Gauna – Gauna was an archdiocesan priest under Bergoglio's direct supervision. In 2001, two girls at a school filed a criminal complaint saying Gauna had touched them inappropriately. Bergoglio reportedly was going to look into it. Gauna still works in the Buenos Aires archdiocese. Notably, he's now a deacon and a hospital chaplain – possible indicators that Bergoglio considered the allegations credible but decided to demote him rather than remove him from ministry. See our detailed summary of the Gauna case. (Francis and Clergy Sexual Abuse in Argentina, Including a Database of Publicly Accused Argentine Clerics.)

As is well known, of course, “Pope Francis” was very selective when it came to dealing with proven clerical abusers during his time as the universal public face of apostasy from March 13, 2013, to April 21, 2025. Here is a summary of his sorry record:

The largest single gathering of the Catholic Church’s hierarchical leadership to combat clerical sexual abuse and coverup closed five years ago–five years to the day, if you are reading this on Saturday, February 24, 2024–with Pope Francis calling for “an all-out battle” against “abominable crimes that must be erased from the face of the earth.”

What have we seen in the way of leadership from Pope Francis in the intervening quinquennium?

Five years of failure

Pope Francis has refused to defrock a confessed child molester or even remove him from the College of Cardinals.

Pope Francis has protected a favorite Argentinian prelate he himself raised to the episcopate and threatened those who sought justice from the Church.

Pope Francis has presided over the appalling miscarriage of justice that has allowed a powerful celebrity artist-cleric not only to escape punishment for the abuse of as many as forty-one victims over three decades but even to remain in ministry as an extern priest resident in Rome.

Pope Francis has done more.

He has issued paper reforms–including one major piece of procedural legislation–and refused to use them except very sparingly, selectively and never transparently.

Before the year that preceded and precipitated the gathering in February 2019 was out, Pope Francis demonized men and women who demand vindication of their right to know the true character and conduct of their rulers in the faith.

More recently, Pope Francis has praised others–those who would be known as guardians and sentinels of the truth–for their perceived reticence in the face of appalling misdeeds.

He has paid lip service to impartial justice while he promoted an unready and thoroughly compromised favorite to high office, discouraging that hapless fellow from taking the interest in the administration of justice that his very office demands.

Were Pope Francis’s every other act of governance redolent with Solomonic wisdom, these alone–one may adduce many others– would be sufficient to measure his conduct of the Church’s government and find it sorely wanting.

The meeting itself had little in the way of a real agenda. Ahead of the meeting, Pope Francis talked a great game from one side of his mouth. From the other, he was at pains to tamp down hopes for it. The chief organizers of the meeting were about the work of managing expectations for months before the thing even opened.

Almost immediately, opportunities presented themselves for Pope Francis and other senior churchmen to prove their earnest, but there were no real takers. By 2021, it was apparent that the watchword was no more than a collection of buzzwords.

Responsibility under Pope Francis had definite form by the bottom half of 2023, when the world stood witness as the Pope’s own Commission for the Protection of Minors lambasted the Vatican for “tragically harmful deficiencies in the norms intended to punish abusers and hold accountable those whose duty is to address wrongdoing.”

That statement came the very same day France’s La Croix reported that the disgraced former Archbishop of Bordeaux, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, would be keeping his red hat and voting rights, and–as far as the Vatican was concerned–could keep his faculties to minister within the confines of the diocese where he resides, even though he admitted to molesting a fourteen-year-old girl.

Accountability under Pope Francis finds its most eloquent expression in his remark to the Associated Press regarding the impossibly sordid matter of Fr. Marko Rupnik: “I had nothing to do with this.”

“Nothing” was all Pope Francis had to do in order to see that his depraved olim confrère escape justice.

Francis’s late decision to change course and waive the statute of limitations behind which Rupnik had found refuge only made matters worse. The volte-face followed the explosion of worldwide outrage at news that Rupnik would be incardinated in a diocese of his native Slovenia after his expulsion from the Jesuits for disobedience.

Transparency under Francis was a Catholic bishop–Michael J. Hoeppner, insufferably emeritus of Crookston, Mn.–accused of interfering in a canonical or civil investigation into clerical sexual abuse, getting early retirement with honor and going to live with relatives in the Sun Belt.

Pope Francis allowed Hoeppner to preach at his own farewell liturgy, billed as a “Mass of Thanksgiving” for his time in office. “It’s been a real joy and a treat,” Hoeppner told the congregation in Crookston’s Immaculate Conception cathedral.

Just this past week, stories from Texas in the United States to the Australian outback either broke or saw major development. A simmering crisis spanning Europe and Asia also began to boil.

It has long since become inescapably evident that the rot in the Church’s clerical and hierarchical leadership culture is systemic. The clerical culture we have right now–without respect to ideological leanings or theological inclination–is utterly in thrall to the intrinsically perverse libido dominandi.

“The Church’s house will be clean,” this journalist wrote in the autumn of 2018–annus horribilis in which the carelessness of the hierarchy was already on garish display–the only questions then being whether Francis or Caesar would be holding the broom and whether the cleansing would come before or after the fire sale.

Those questions have not yet received a definitive answer, though the experience of the past five years has provided unequivocable indications. (Pope Francis’s “all-out battle” against clerical abuse has been a failure.)

While the author of the above commentary thought that Jorge Mario Bergoglio really was “Pope Francis,” the facts speak for themselves.

In addition to the notorious Marko Rupnik case, there was also the time when the Argentine Apostate protected of his “cardinals” actually presided over an unspeakable festival of sodomy in the apartments of Santo Uffizio, the Holy Office, which is located across from the Bernini columns and thus the Piazza di Santo Pietro itself:

ROME, October 10, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, a close collaborator of Pope Francis, was present at the homosexual drug-fuelled party raided by the Vatican police in the summer of 2017 at which his secretary, Monsignor Luigi Capozzi, was arrested.

A highly-placed Vatican source with direct knowledge, who must remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, tells LifeSite that the Pope himself knows of Coccopalmerio’s presence at the party. The party took place in an apartment in the building of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

Coccopalmerio was head of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts until his retirement in April.

The same Vatican source spoke in more depth in a private meeting this summer with a group of priests, three of whom spoke to LifeSite about it.

One of these priests told LifeSite that according to the Vatican source, Cardinal Coccopalmerio, 80, was not only an attendee. The source said “in fact, that he ‘was presiding’ over it when the Vatican Gendarmes broke in, and that they instructed him to absent himself before they started making arrests,” according to the priest.

Another priest who was at the private meeting said the Vatican source “stated clearly to me and a number of others that, when the police raided the apartment and arrested Capozzi, Cardinal Coccopalmerio was actually present at the orgy.” He was then told by the police to leave “immediately.” This priest added that the source “gave us to understand that Coccopalmerio is a practicing homosexual.”

A third priest told LifeSite that he “heard in an informal conversation in the presence of other priests from a high-ranking cleric within the Roman Curia” that at the reported 'homosexual orgy' “said Cardinal was present and quickly whisked away by Vatican police.”

As LifeSiteNews reported earlier, Pope Francis himself insisted that Monsignor Capozzi be given that apartment in the CDF building, instead of the secretary of the then-prefect for the CDF, Cardinal Gerhard Müller.

Coccopalmerio has spoken in the past about the “positive realities” that can be found in homosexual relationships. Prior to working in the Vatican he was an auxiliary bishop of Milan under Cardinal Carlo Martini. He said in a 2014 interview with Rossoporpora: “If I meet a homosexual couple, I notice immediately that their relationship is illicit: the doctrine says this, which I reaffirm with absolute certainty. However, if I stop at the doctrine, I don’t look anymore at the persons. But if I see that the two persons truly love each other, do acts of charity to those in need, for example ... then I can also say that, although the relationship remains illicit, positive elements also emerge in the two persons. Instead of closing our eyes to such positive realities, I emphasize them. It is to be objective and objectively recognize the positive [parts] of a certain relationship, of itself illicit.”

The cardinal’s reduction of moral truth to a vague notional status (an “ideal”), with no necessary bearing on conduct, is the same as Pope Francis' approach in his post-synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia.

Accordingly, Coccopalmerio is a strong supporter of Amoris Laetitia. He wrote a booklet titled The eighth Chapter of the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia praising the more lenient attitude toward “remarried divorcees.” Holy Communion, insisted the cardinal, “must be given” to them.

Benjamin Leven, a German theologian and editor of the German Catholic journal Herder Korrespondenz, explains in the October 2018 issue of that journal that, according to his own sources, it was Cardinal Coccopalmerio who approached the Pope in favor of the child abuser Don Mauro Inzoli in order to have him partially reinstated as priest. As Leven puts it, in this incident Coccopalmerio played here “not a good role.” This cardinal, Leven continues, is known in Rome for generally opposing the removal of culprit priests from the priesthood, which for him is a sort of “death penalty.”

In light of these new revelations, the fact that the roof of St. Joseph the Carpenter Church, Coccopalmerio's own titular Church in Rome, collapsed in August 2018 might gain further significance. (Vatican "Cardinal" Was at Drug-Fueled Sodomite Party and Jorge Knows.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio knew what his pal Francesco Coccopalmerio had done but this did deter him from sending Coccopalmerio to Kazakhstan to represent the conciliar Vatican at an “interreligious” conference on October 11, 2018, the Feast of the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (see Bergoglio Sends Corrupt Coccopalmerio to Represent Conciliar Vatican at Interfaith Jam Session), and of appointing him as his personal representative to a newly-opened "dialogue" with Freemasonry (see Cardinal of Vatican orgy fame takes part in 'historic' meeting with Italian Freemasons). Only a man who believed that sodomy is not "bad" could continue to appoint a "cardinal" steeped in it to represent him to promote the corrupt agenda of a corrupt religious sect.

Ever the revolutionary, Jorge Mario Bergoglio adopted the language of the homosexual collective, whose members are filled with bitter anger and hatred at anyone who dares to criticize their "lifestyles" as they are, whether or not they realize it, in rebellion against the very nature that God has implanted within them and have thus done what all revolutionaries do to justify themselves before men: to do violence to language in order to cloud supernatural and natural truth with a fog of irrationality and sentimentality.

It is shameful that one conciliar official after another has adopted this language, thereby conceding that one can identify himself on the basis of the inclination to and/or the commission of perverse sins against nature and the Sixth and Ninth Commandments and that civil society and must treat such self-identification as a legitimate basis for social interaction and legal protection under various "civil rights" statutes and ordinances. 

Then again, obviously, many conciliar officials, not a few of them afflicted with perversity themselves, have gone of their way created, fostered and promote a culture that has sustained and propagated the entire agenda of homosexual collective, including "marriage" and, quite importantly, persecuting anyone who criticizes sodomy for what it is. There has been the systematic recruitment, retention and promotion of homosexuals through the nooks and crannies of the conciliar structures, including its hierarchy, such as it is, and within parishes, schools, universities, colleges, seminaries, professional schools, religious houses and houses of so-called "spiritual formation." 

Thus it is that the counterfeit church of concilairism, reflecting its "openness to the world" and its falsehoods, has bought into the ideology of the homosexual collective by building it into programs that are taught to presbyters, teachers and children, doing so with an special application to "touching" and expressions of "affection" when the problem of clergy abuse that has exploded into full public view in the past twelve years now has been caused by the creation of an entire environment that is friendly to perversity. Jorge Mario Bergoglio wass a creature of error and licentiousness, believing that the only "sins" one can commit revolve around being "rigid" in one's "positions" and to be "clear-cut" in one's thinking about truth and heresy, moral right and moral wrong.

Also speaking for itself is Norah O’Donnell’s total lack of investitive curiosity as neither she nor her producers did any real homework to interrogate the Argentine Apostate about his actual record of protecting clerical abusers as summarized in the commentary above during a 60 Minutes interview with Bergoglio in 2018:

It's Francis' capacity for forgiveness and openness that has defined his leadership of the Church's nearly 1.4 billion Catholics. He put them and the world on notice, during an impromptu press conference on a plane in 2013, when he spoke on the subject of homosexuality.

"If someone is gay," he said, "and he searches for the Lord and has good will…who am I to judge?" 

… and he did not stop there.

Norah O'Donnell: Last year you decided to allow Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples. That's a big change. Why?

Pope Francis (In Spanish/English translation): No, what I allowed was not to bless the union. That cannot be done because that is not the sacrament. I cannot. The Lord made it that way. But to bless each person, yes. The blessing is for everyone. For everyone. To bless a homosexual-type union, however, goes against the given right, against the law of the Church. But to bless each person, why not? The blessing is for all. Some people were scandalized by this. But why? Everyone! Everyone!

Norah O'Donnell: You have said, "Who am I to judge?" "Homosexuality is not a crime."

Pope Francis (In Spanish/English translation): No. It is a human fact. (Pope Francis tells 60 Minutes in rare interview: "the globalization of indifference is a very ugly disease" .)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio continues to insist to “bless” those in a sodomite relationship is simply to bless “persons” and not the union in a feat of sophistry and positivism of the highest order.

If the “union” is not “blessed,” then why do the “persons” present themselves together for the “blessing,” which is a de facto recognition that those in mortally sinful relationships can be “blessed” for choosing voluntarily to do that which cries out to Heaven for vengeance? (See Jorge Demands That His Clergy Suborn Sins That Cry Out to Heaven for Vengeance, Jorge Demands that His Clergy Suborn Sins That Cry Out to Heaven for Vengeance, part two.)

Insofar as the contention that homosexuality is not a crime, perhaps the words that God the Holy Ghost inspired Saint Paul the Apostle and Saint Jude to write might be of some use:

For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error. And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, Detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy. Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them. (Romans 1: 18-32.)

[1] Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James: to them that are beloved in God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called.[2] Mercy unto you, and peace, and charity be fulfilled. [3] Dearly beloved, taking all care to write unto you concerning your common salvation, I was under a necessity to write unto you: to beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. [4] For certain men are secretly entered in, (who were written of long ago unto this judgment,) ungodly men, turning the grace of our Lord God into riotousness, and denying the only sovereign Ruler, and our Lord Jesus Christ. [5] I will therefore admonish you, though ye once knew all things, that Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, did afterwards destroy them that believed not:

[6] And the angels who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day. [7] As Sodom and Gomorrha, and the neighbouring cities, in like manner, having given themselves to fornication, and going after other flesh, were made an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire. [8] In like manner these men also defile the flesh, and despise dominion, and blaspheme majesty. [9] When Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil,contended about the body of Moses, he durst not bring against him the judgment of railing speech, but said: The Lord command thee. [10] But these men blaspheme whatever things they know not: and what things soever they naturally know, like dumb beasts, in these they are corrupted.

[11] Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain: and after the error of Balaam they have for reward poured out themselves, and have perished in the contradiction of Core. [12] These are spots in their banquets, feasting together without fear, feeding themselves, clouds without water, which are carried about by winds, trees of the autumn, unfruitful, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, [13] Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own confusion; wandering stars, to whom the storm of darkness is reserved for ever. [14] Now of these Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying: Behold, the Lord cometh with thousands of his saints, [15] To execute judgment upon all, and to reprove all the ungodly for all the works of their ungodliness, whereby they have done ungodly, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against God.  

[16] These are murmurers, full of complaints, walking according to their own desires, and their mouth speaketh proud things, admiring persons for gain' s sake. [17] But you, my dearly beloved, be mindful of the words which have been spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, [18] Who told you, that in the last time there should come mockers, walking according to their own desires in ungodlinesses. [19]These are they, who separate themselves, sensual men, having not the Spirit. [20] But you, my beloved, building yourselves upon your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,

[21] Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, unto life everlasting. [22] And some indeed reprove, being judged: [23] But others save, pulling them out of the fire. And on others have mercy, in fear, hating also the spotted garment which is carnal. [24] Now to him who is able to preserve you without sin, and to present you spotless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, [25] To the only God our Saviour through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory and magnificence, empire and power, before all ages, and now, and for all ages of ages. Amen. (Jude 1-25.)

One wonders who will close the lid on Roger Mahony’s own coffin.

Blase Cupich?

Joseph “Nighty-night, baby” Tobin?

Robert McElroy?

John Stowe?

The fact remains, though, that Roger Mahony’s prominent role at his fellow revolutionary’s burial speaks volumes about the perverse nature of the doctrines, liturgical rites, and pastoral practices of a false religious entity that is the counterfeit ape of the Catholic Church.

Although I must admit that I am relieved that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is gone and that it will no longer be necessary to have to write about him and his Modernist ravings, I am also aware that the next conciliar “pope” will be worse, which is why we must pray to Our Lady and to Saints Peter and Paul every day for the restoration of a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter.

Dom Prosper Gueranger on Easter Friday

Today, Friday, April 25, 2025, is Easter Friday (the Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist is transferred this year to Monday, April 28, 2025, although the Greater Litanies are sung today).

Dom Prosper Gueranger commented on Easter Friday as follows in The Liturgical Year:

Eight days ago, we were standing near the cross, on which died the Man of Sorrows, (Isaiah 53:3) abandoned by His Father, and rejected, by a solemn judgment of the Synagogue, as a false Messias: and lo! this is the sixth time the sun has risen upon our earth since the voice of the Angel was heard proclaiming the Resurrection of this adorable Victim. The Church, His widowed spouse, then lay prostrate before the justice of the eternal God and Father who spared not even His own Son, (Romans 8:32) because He had taken upon Himself the likeness of sin; but now she is feasting in the sight of her Jesus’ triumph, for He bids her be exceedingly glad. But if within this glad Octave there be one day, rather than another, on which she should proclaim His triumph, it surely is the Friday; for it was on that day she saw Him filled with reproaches (Lamentations 3:30) and crucified.

Today, therefore, let us meditate upon our Savior’s Resurrection as being the zenith of His own dear glory, and as the chief argument whereon rests our faith in His Divinity. If Christ be not risen again, says the Apostle, your faith is vain; (1 Corinthians 15:17) but because He is risen again, our faith rests on the surest of foundations. Our Redeemer owed it to us, therefore, that our certainty with regard to His Resurrection should be perfect. In order to give this master-truth such evidence as would preclude all possibility of doubt, two things were needed: His Death was to be certified, and the proofs of His Resurrection were to be incontestable. Jesus fulfilled both these conditions, and with the most scrupulous completeness. Hence, His triumph over death is a fact so deeply impressed on our minds that even now, nineteen hundred years since it happened, we cannot celebrate our Easter without feeling a thrill of enthusiastic admiration akin to that which the guards at His tomb experienced when they found their Captive gone.

Yes, Jesus was truly dead. The afternoon of Friday was at its close, and Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took down the Body from the cross; they gave it, stiff and covered with blood as it was, to His afflicted Mother. Who could doubt of His death? The terrible agony of the previous night, when His human Nature shrank at the foresight of the cup He had to drink; the treachery of one and the infidelity of the rest of His Apostles, which broke His sacred Heart; the long hours of insult and cruelty; the barbarous scourging, which Pilate devised as a means for softening brutal Jews to pity; the cross, to which He was fastened with nails that opened four founts of Blood; the anguish of His agonizing Heart, when He beheld His Mother at the foot of the cross; the burning thirst which choked the throbs of life still left; the spear that pierced His side through to the very Heart, and drew from it a stream of Blood and water:—thee are proofs enough that death had made God his victim. Dear Jesus! they are now but so many motives for us to love Thy beautiful glory. How could we, for whom Thou didst suffer death, be unmindful of the sufferings that caused it? How could we forget them now, for they enhance the splendor of Thy Resurrection?

He, therefore, gained a true victory over death: He appeared on the earth as a conqueror of a very different kind from any that had hitherto been known. Here was a fact which it was impossible to deny: a Man, whose whole life had been spent in obscurity, was put to death by the most-cruel tortures, and amidst the insulting shouts of His unworthy fellow citizens. Pilate sent to the Emperor Tiberius an official account of the judgment and death of One, whom he represented as calling Himself the King of the Jews. What would men think after all this, of them that professed themselves followers of this Jesus? The philosophers, the wits, the slaves of the world and pleasure, would point the finger of scorn at them and say: “Lo! these are they that adore a God who died on a cross!” But if this God rose again from the grave, is not His death an evidence of His Divinity? He died, and He rose again; He foretold His death and His Resurrection; who but a God could thus hold in His power “the keys of death and hell?” (Apocalypse 1:18)

Yet so it was: Jesus was put to death, and rose again from the grave. How do we know it? By the testimony of His Apostles; they saw Him after He had risen, they touched Him, they conversed with Him for forty days. But are these Apostles to be credited? Surely they are, for never was there a testimony that bore such internal evidence of truth. What interest could these men have in publishing the glory of their Master, who had been put to a death that brought ignominy both upon Himself and them, if they knew that He never rose again, as He had promised He would? The chief priests bribed the soldiers to say that while they were asleep, His disciples, poor timid men as they were, came during the night and stole away the Body. They thought, by this, to throw discredit upon the testimony of the Apostles. But what folly! We may justly address to them the sarcastic words of St. Augustine: “What! do you adduce sleeping witnesses? Surely, you yourselves must have been asleep, to have had recourse to such a scheme as this!” (Enarrat. in Psalm. lxiii) But as for the Apostles, what motive could they have for preaching the Resurrection if it never took place? “In such a supposition,” says St. John Chrysostom, “they would have looked upon their Master as a false prophet and an impostor: and is it likely they would go and defend Him against the accusations of a whole nation? Would they expose themselves to all manner of suffering for One who had so cruelly deceived them? What was there to encourage them in such an undertaking? The rewards He had promised them? But if He had not fulfilled His promise of rising again, how could they trust to the rest of His promises?” (In Matt. Homil. lxxxix) No: we must either deny every principle of nature and common sense, or we must acknowledge the testimony of the Apostles to be a true one.

Moreover, this testimony was the most disinterested that could be, for it brought nothing but persecution and death upon them that gave it. It was a proof that God was with such men as these who, but a few hours before, had been timid cowards, and now were fearless of every danger, asserting their conviction with an intrepidity which human courage could never inspire, and this too in cities which were very centers of civilization and learning. The world was made to listen to their testimony, which they confirmed by miracles; and thousands of every tongue and nation were converted into believers of Jesus’ Resurrection. When, at length, these Apostles laid down their lives for the doctrines they had preached, they left the world in possession of the truth of the Resurrection; and the seed they had down in lands where even the Roman Empire had not extended its conquests, produced a quick and world-wide harvest. All this gave to the astounding fact, which they proclaimed, a guarantee and a certainty beyond suspicion. It was impossible to refuse such evidence without going against every principle of reason. Yes, O Jesus! Thy Resurrection is as certain as Thy death. Thy Apostles could never have preached, they could never have converted the world, as they did, unless they had had truth on their side.

But the Apostles are no longer here to give their testimony: the equally solemn testimony of the Church has succeeded to theirs, and proclaims, with a like authority, that Jesus is no longer among the dead. By the Church we here mean those hundreds of millions of Christians who have proclaimed the Resurrection of Jesus by keeping, for now nineteen hundred years, the Feast of the Pasch. And can there be room for doubt here? Who is there that would not assent to what has been thus attested every year since the Apostles first announced it? Among these countless proclaimers of our Lord’s Resurrection, there have been thousands of learned men, the bent of whose mind led them to soft every truth and who, before embracing the faith, had examined its tenets in the light of reason; there have been millions of others, whose acceptance of a dogma like this, which puts a restraint on the passions, was the result of the conviction that the only way to eternal happiness is in the due performance of the duties this dogma imposes; and finally, there have been millions of others who, by their virtues, were the support and ornament of the world, but who owed all their virtues to their faith in the death and Resurrection of Jesus.

Thus, the testimony of the Church, that is of the wisest and best portion of mankind, is admirably united with that of the Apostles, whom our Lord Himself appointed as His first witnesses. The two testimonies are one. The Apostles proclaimed what they had seen; we proclaim, and shall proclaim to the end, what the Apostles preached. The Apostles made themselves sure of the Resurrection, which they had to preach to the world; we make ourselves sure of the veracity of their word. They believed after experience; so also do we. They had the happiness of seeing, hearing, and touching the Word of Life; (John 1:1) we see and hear the Church, which they established throughout the world, although it was but in its infancy, when they were taken from the earth. The Church is that tree of which Jesus spoke in the parable, saying, that though exceeding small in its first commencement, it would afterwards spread out its branches far and wide. (Matthew 13:31-32, Mark 4:31-32) St. Augustine in one of his Easter sermons has these fine words: “As yet, we see not Christ; but we see the Church: therefore let us believe in Christ. The Apostles, on the contrary, saw Christ; but they saw not the Church except by faith. They saw one thing, and they believed another: so, likewise, let us do. Let us believe in the Christ, whom, as yet, we see not; and by keeping ourselves with the Church, which we see, we shall come at length to see Him, whom as yet we cannot see.” (Sermo, ccxxxviii. In diebus Paschalibus, x)

Having thus, O Jesus! the certainty of Thy glorious Resurrection, as well as that of Thy death on the cross, we confess Thee to be the great God, the Creator and sovereign Lord of all things. Thy death humbled, Thy Resurrection exalted Thee: but Thou Thyself wast the author of both the humiliation and the exaltation. Thou saidst to Thine enemies: No man taketh My life away from Me; but I lay it down of Myself; and I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. (John 10:18) None but a God could have such power, none but a God could have exercised it as Thou hast done: we, therefore, are confessing Thy Divinity when we confess Thy Resurrection. We beseech Thee, make worthy of Thine acceptance this humble and delighted homage of our faith! (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Easter Friday.)

Holy Mother Church can never deceive us, nor can she ever be headed by men who make light of or, worse yet, countenance Mortal Sins in the name of “accompaniment” and a false belief that it is neither possible nor desirable even to attempt to obey the moral law perfectly, and it is unthinkable that a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter would seek to support sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance and appoint like-minded men to his hierarchy.

It is also not possible for a true pope to offer praise to the idols of pagan religion and to serve as an instrument of a new world order that mocks and excludes the Social Reign of Christ the King.

How ironic it is that the Abbot of Solesmes wrote about the triumph of Catholic Rome over the gods of Olympus when commenting on today’s Gospel passage from the Gospel of Saint Matthew:

St. Matthew’s description of the Resurrection is shorter than those given by the other Evangelists; his few brief words on Jesus’ appearing to the Apostles in Galilee, are the subject of today’s Gospel. It was in Galilee that our Lord vouchsafed to show Himself not only to the Apostles, but moreover to several other persons. The Evangelist tells us how some of those that were thus favored, readily believed; and how others doubted, before yielding the assent of their faith. He then relates the words wherewith Jesus gave His Apostles the mission to preach the Gospel to all nations; and since He is to die no more, He promises to be with them forever, even to the end of the world. But the Apostles are not to live to the end of the world: how, then, will He fulfill His promise? The Apostles, as we said before, are perpetuated by the Church; the two testimonies—of the Apostles and of the Church—are inseparably linked together; and our Lord Jesus Christ preserves this united testimony from error or interruption. The liturgy of today brings before us a proof of its irresistible power. Peter, Paul, and John preached Jesus’ Resurrection, and established the Christian faith in Rome; five centuries after, the Church, which continued their work, received from an Emperor the gift of the temple, which had once been consecrated to all the false gods, but which St. Peter’s successor dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God, and to that legion of witnesses of the Resurrection, whom we call Martyrs. At the sight of this magnificent edifice, which for three hundred years had been deserted by the pagans, but now is reconciled by the Church, and holds within its walls the Christian people, our neophytes could not refrain from exclaiming: “Oh! truly is Christ risen, who, after being put to death on the cross, thus triumphs over the Cæsars, and over the gods of Olympus!” (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Easter Friday.)

Allelulia! Christ is Risen!

This is the day the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad.

May the Glorious Mysteries of Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary we pray during these days of Easter joy help us to keep focused on the possession of Heaven while we attempt, no matter how feebly, to plant a few seeds for the restoration of a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter and thus of all things in Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon. 

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us! 

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, 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.