Not a Candidate for Inclusion in the Conciliar Pantheon: The Courageous Father Walter Ciszak, S.J.

The old Pantheon that was built by the Roman emperors for the worship of their false idols was transformed in the Eighth Century A.D. into a church in honor of Our Lady, which is known today as the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minevera (Saint Mary over [the ruins of the pantheon of] Minerva).

The pagans of ancient Rome adored their false idols on the grounds of the Pantheon. Many Catholic martyrs in the time between the persecutions begun by Emperor Nero in 67 A.D. and the time of the Edict of Milan in the 313 A.D. were told that they could place a bust of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in such places of false worship if only they burned some grain of incense to the images of their false idols. As is attested to by the blood of over eleven million martyrs, our spiritual ancestors refused to acknowledge the false gods of Rome as being anything other than devils, whom they mocked and reviled to the very faces of their accusers and as they suffered the most cruel sorts of torture imaginable prior to their receiving their crown of martyrdom from the King of Martyrs Himself.

The revolutionaries of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, however, have made their “official reconciliation” with the idols of false religions. This is only logical as their corrupted version of Catholicism is an equally false religion, albeit one that presents itself to a credulous world as being Catholicism when it is nothing of the sort.

Nonetheless, however, men who are considered to be officials of the Catholic Church, including so-called “popes,” have, quite literally, gone out of their way to burn figurative grains of incense in temples of false worship.

“Pope Saint John Paul II,” of course, participated in numerous pagan rituals, including having the diabolical “Mark of Shiva” placed on his forehead during his trip to Delhi, India, on February 2, 1986, kissed the Mohammedan’s blasphemous Koran, praised a voodoo witch doctor in Benin on February 6, 1993, entered into the Rome Synagogue on April 13, 1986, permitting himself to be treated as an inferior and listening patiently to a Talmudic hymn expressing a desire for the first coming of the Messias, was “purified” a an urn of ashes was burned before him an Aztec ritual in Mexico City, Mexico, on August 1, 2002, and gave endless speeches praising the “values” of false religions as instruments to build up his mythical “civilization of love”.    

Indeed, the images are legion of the now “canonized” “Saint John Paul II” engaging in similar acts of false worship during the course of his 9,666 day false “pontificate,” including the Aztec “purification” that took place in the modern basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, a ritual that mocked the simple fact that Our Lady’s apparition to Juan Diego, whom the false “pontiff” was about to “canonize,” converted the Mexican people away from the superstitious idolatry of the Aztecs, who were devoted to the worship of the sun and to cannibalism as part of human sacrifice. And what further needs to be added to what has been written on this site in the past concerning Assisi I, October 27, 1986, and Assisi I (in Rome), January 24, 2002?

Although there have been instances when those "beatified" and/or "canonized" by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II and Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI "canonized" 482 people from the first "canonization" ceremony at which he officiated, on June 20, 1982, to his last extravaganza, which was held two days before his eighty-fourth birthday, May 16, 2004 (see Table of the Canonizations during the reign of John Paul II). He “beatified” 996 people between April 29, 1979, and October 3, 2004. The "heroic virtue" listed for one woman “beatified” by John Paul II in the early-1990s was that she prayed her Rosary every day! This prompted me to tell a then-friend in the conciliar clergy, "Hey, I got a shot at this!" (I was joking.) My now former friend laughed heartily after I had made comment. Saying one's prayers every day is not "heroic." It is our duty.

As is well known, the counterfeit church of conciliarism's ideological manipulation of the "beatification" and "canonization" has sought to raise to the Cranmer tables on which the abominable Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical travesty is staged by its own progenitors and exemplars as a means of placing the stamp of "sanctity" upon rank liars who sought to advance every single tenet of the Modernism in defiance of the various solemn anathemas and papal condemnations that were issued prior to the "election" of "canonized" Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII (see Two For The Price Of One, part one).

A careful distinction needs to be made before proceeding.

There have been truly worthy candidates for beatification and canonization who have been advanced by the conciliarists. The "wheat" of authentic sanctity (such as belonged to Jacinta and Francisco Marto, Father Junipero Serra, Father Miguel Augustin Pro, Venerable Anne Katherine Emmerich, Pauline Jaricot, Kateri Tekakwitha, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Bishop John Neumann, Juan Diego, Padre Pio, Father Maximilian Kolbe, who opposed all forms of naturalism, including both "national" socialism and "international" socialism) will have to be separated from the "chaff" of Modernism (Josemaria Escriva Balaguer y Albas, Mother Teresa, Karol Wojtyla, Angelo Roncalli, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, Antonio Rosmini et al.) by a true pope when the conciliarists are removed by the very hand of God Himself as the fruit of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The inclusion of truly worthy candidates to be considered for canonization has permitted the conciliarists to attempt to promote their own number (Escriva, Roncalli, Wojtyla, Montini, Mother Teresa) to the ranks of the “blessed” and/or “canonized.”

In other words, you see, the inclusion of worthy candidates in the "saint factory" of conciliarism has provided a "cover," if you will, for the inclusion of the progenitors of the conciliar agenda in the canonization process. Although an indulterer at the time, even I knew that the "beatification" of Pope Pius IX and the decrepit Modernist named Angelo Roncalli, who had his corpulent corpus preserved artificially so as to make it appear that it was "incorrupt" to those investigating his "cause" after his death, on the same day, September 3, 2000, was an exercise in Hegelianism. After all, how can one "reconcile" heralding Pope Pius IX and Angelo Roncalli on the same day when the former, Pope Pius IX, condemned the very propositions that were at the foundation of the life's work of the latter, Roncalli?

Wojtyla/John Paul II's successor, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, used his own false "pontificate" to advance the cause of Father Antonio Rosmini even though it was in 1887 that Pope Leo XIII had personally condemned forty of the latter's propositions each of which has become standard "orthodoxy" within the counterfeit church of conciliarism. It is important to dwell on this case for a bit as the conciliar manipulation of the beatification and canonization processes did not start with the late Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who “canonized” nine hundred forty-two (eight hundred thirteen of those were the Martyrs of Otranto, Italy, who were martyred by the Ottoman Turks in 1480, during his wretched time as the universal public face of apostasy from March 13, 2013, to April 21, 2025.

“Cardinal” Ratzinger knew full well what he was doing with Rosmini. The man who became “Pope Benedict XVI” sought to make it possible to “beatify” Rosmini, and by so doing to “bless” the philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned proposition that of dogmatic evolutionism, no matter how much That a man who had forty of his propositions condemned by a true pope was considered by the supposed “restorer of tradition,” Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II,  to be a fit candidate for "beatification" is a telling statement on how far the revolutionaries will go to raise to their "tables" those who made possible the triumph of their Modernist propositions of contradiction and "continuity in discontinuity" that the late Ratzinger/Benedict himself championed as early as 1971. The "beatification" of Father Antonio Rosmini, whose genuine love for the poor and unfortunate must be placed in the context of his philosophical warfare against the very nature of God and His Holy Truths, was just part of a revolutionary process by which the Modernist mind is exalted and its adherents "venerated" as holy men and women of the Catholic Church

However, there are times when the conciliar sect turns its back on genuine saints—men who suffered martyrdom without dying directly from their sufferings—because doing so might offend  the conciliar sect’s “ecumenical relations” with Protestant “ecclesial communities,” one of more of the branches of the Orthodox, or, as is the case with Pope Pius XII, the Jews.

Yes, given all the nefarious persons, including the notorious homosexual Montini and the Communist sympathizer Oscar Romero who have been advanced to the conciliar pantheon of idolaters, it is perhaps understandable why the courageous Father Walter Ciszek’s cause for “canonization” was halted by “saint-making” within the counterfeit church of conciliarism:

 The canonization cause for Jesuit Father Walter Ciszek — a Polish American priest who ministered amid years in Soviet captivity — has been terminated, although Vatican’s decision does not “diminish the enduring spiritual value” of his witness, said a leading advocate for the cause.

n an April 9 letter, Msgr. Ronald C. Bocian — board president of the former Father Walter Ciszek Prayer League — advised fellow league members that the Diocese of Allentown, Pennsylvania, had been informed the cause’s documentation “does not support” advancing the case for beatification or sainthood.

Msgr. Bocian’s letter replicated a statement from the diocese, provided to OSV News April 17, saying the prayer league will now become the Father Walter J. Ciszek Society and “remain committed to honoring his memory, sharing his message, and encouraging devotion to the profound spiritual insights he left to the Church.”

“This development comes after years of careful study and discernment at the level of the Holy See, which bears the responsibility of evaluating each Cause with thoroughness, integrity, and fidelity to the Church’s norms,” said the diocese, which assumed responsibility for the cause following its initiation by the New Jersey-based Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Passaic.

OSV News is awaiting a response to requests for comment from the Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of Saints and Msgr. Bocian, who serves as pastor of Divine Mercy Parish in Father Ciszek’s hometown of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.

Secret ministry in Russia

Born in 1904 to Polish immigrant parents, Father Ciszek was ordained as Jesuit priest in 1937, becoming the first American in the order in the Byzantine Catholic rite, one of the 23 Eastern Catholic churches that, along with the Roman Catholic Church, comprise the universal Catholic Church.

As a seminarian, he had studied in Rome as part of an initiative under Pope Pius XI to equip priests for ministry in Russia. Originally assigned to Poland, he was able to enter Russia on false papers after World War II broke out in 1939 to minister in secret.

Working as an unskilled laborer, Father Ciszek was arrested in 1941 by the secret police as a suspected spy and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in Siberia. While in various prison camps, he managed to celebrate Mass and hear confessions.

After his sentence finished in 1955, he was nonetheless forced to reside in Russia, and worked in a chemical factory — and after decades of no communication was at last able to write to family in the U.S., who had presumed him dead.

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy secured his release and that of an American student, exchanging them for two Soviet agents. Until his death in 1984, Father Ciszek worked at the John XXIII Center at Fordham University, which is now the Center for Eastern Christian Studies at the Jesuit-run University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.

Books recount experience

Father Ciszek recounted his experiences in the books “He Leadeth Me” and “With God in Russia,” co-written with fellow Jesuit Father Daniel Flaherty.

Even as his canonization cause has been relinquished, Father Ciszek’s impact lives on, said the diocese.

“While this news may understandably bring disappointment to the many who have been inspired by Father Ciszek’s example of heroic faith, it does not diminish the enduring spiritual value of his life, witness, and legacy,” the diocese said in its statement.

“We are deeply grateful for the many years of prayer, devotion, and support from the faithful. Father Ciszek’s courage, perseverance, and unwavering trust in God amidst extraordinary suffering has led many souls to God and will continue to touch countless lives,” said the diocese. “Even as the formal canonization process has been stopped, the grace flowing from his witness remains alive.” (Vatican ends canonization cause for Jesuit Father Walter Ciszek.)

SHENANDOAH – After several decades of work, the canonization process for a Shenandoah native has stopped.

Father Walter Ciszek had been under consideration for canonization for decades. In 2012, the Vatican gave formal approval for the canonization process to begin after well over a decade of work at the Diocesean level.

That included gathering testimony of 45 witnesses, Ciszek’s published and unpublished works, and over 4,000 documents from Jesuit archives, Russian archives, and more. It wasn’t enough.

In a letter shared with the Walter Ciszek Prayer League, Monsignor Ronald Bocian of Shenandoah’s Divine Mercy Parish said “the formal canonization process has been stopped.”

“The Diocese has been informed that the documentation relating to his Cause does not support advancing his Cause for Beatification or Sainthood,” Bocian wrote. “The development comes after years of careful study and discernment at the level of the Holy See, which bears the responsibility of evaluating each Cause with thoroughness, integrity, and fidelity to the Church’s norms.”

“While this news may understandably bring disappointment to many who have been inspired by Father Ciszek’s example of heroic faith and have prayed for his Cause, it does not diminish the enduring spiritual value of his life, witness, and legacy,” he continued.

Born in Shenandoah in 1904, Ciszek, a Jesuit, volunteered in Poland in the 1930’s as a young priest until the outbreak of World War II when he fled into the Soviet Union where he was captured and imprisoned, accused of being a spy.

He was released as part of a prisoner swap in the 1960’s negotiated by President John F. Kennedy.

Bocian says the Father Walter Ciszek Prayer League will become the Father Walter Ciszek Society “and remain committed to honoring his memory, sharing his message, and encouraging devotion to the profound spiritual insights he left to the church.” (Canonization process stopped for Shenandoah-native Father Ciszek - The Shenandoah Sentinel.)

Father Walter Ciszek’s “cause” within the counterfeit church of conciliarism, I believe, was stopped because he believed in the apparitions of Our Lady in Garabandal, Spain, between 1961 and 1965.

Before explaining my conclusion in further detail, however, I want to provide readers with a glimpse of the sort of man Father Walter Ciszek was and how he used his very strong will and his desire to be a physically strong as necessary to resolve while in training at the Jesuit college in Woodstock, Maryland, he made us his mind to be a missionary in Russia.

Here are his own words in Chapter One of his book With God in Russia:

THE BEGINNINGS

An Unlikely Priest

Ever since my return to America in October 1963—after twenty-three years inside the Soviet Union, fifteen of them spent in Soviet prisons or the prison camps of Siberia—I have been asked two questions above all: “What was it like?” and “How did you manage to survive?” Because so many have asked, I have finally agreed to write this book.

But I am not much of a storyteller. Moreover, there were thousands of others who shared my hardships and survived; I have always refused to think of my experiences as something special. Out of respect for those others, I will try to set down honestly and plainly, hiding nothing and highlighting nothing, the story of those years. I will try to tell, quite simply, what it was like.

Still, I am not sure that story in itself will answer clearly the harder of those two questions, “How did you manage to survive?” To me, the answer is simple and I can say quite simply: Divine Providence. But how can I explain it?

I don’t just mean that God took care of me. I mean that He called me to, prepared me for, then protected me during those years in Siberia. I am convinced of that; but then, it is my life and I have experienced His hand at every turning. Yet I think for anyone to really understand how I managed to survive, it is necessary first of all to understand, in some small way at least, what sort of man  I was and how I came to be in Russia in the first place.

I think, for instance, that you have to know I was born stubborn. Also, I was tough—not in the polite sense of the word, but in the sense our neighbors used the word those days in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, when they shook their heads and called me “a tough.” The fact is nothing to be proud of, but it shows as honestly as I know how to state it what sort of raw material God had to work with.

I was a bully, the leader of a gang, a street fighter—and most of the fights I picked on purpose, just for devilment.

I had no use for school, except insofar as it had a playground where I could fight or wrestle or play sports—any sport. I refused to admit that there was anything along those lines I couldn’t do as well as—or better than—anyone else. Otherwise, as far as school was concerned, I spent so much time playing hooky that I had to repeat one whole year at St. Casimir’s parish school. Things were so bad, in fact, that while I was still in grammar school my father actually took me to the police station and insisted that they send me to reform school.

And yet my father, Martin, was the kindest of men. He was simply at his wit’s end: talking to me did no good; thrashings only gave me an opportunity to show how tough I was. And with his inherited pride and Old World belief in the family and the family name, I know that it was shame much more than anger which made him take such a step.

Both he and my mother, Mary, were of peasant stock. They had come to America from Poland in the 1890s and settled in Shenandoah where my father went to work in the mines. The family album shows pictures of him as a handsome young miner, but I remember him as a medium-sized man with thick, black hair and a glorious mustache, stocky, and, if not fat, at least not the trim young miner of those tintypes. By the time I was born, on November 4, 1904, the seventh child of thirteen, he had opened a saloon. He wasn’t the world’s best shopkeeper, though; he had too soft a spot in his heart for other newly arrived immigrants.

I don’t think my father ever really understood me. We were both too stubborn to ever really get along. He wanted me to have the education he had never had a chance to have, and my attitude left him bewildered. On the other hand, although his humiliation and shame before the police that day—as they convinced him it would be more of a family disgrace to send me away to a reform school—made a deep impression on me, I would never have admitted it to him. I had inherited too much of his Polish streak of stubbornness.

Still, he was a wonderful father. I remember the day I went to a Boy Scout outing in another town and spent the money he had given me at an amusement park near the camping grounds. I had no money for the train fare home. Instead, I hitched a ride by hanging on to the outside of one of the cars. I was nearly killed against the wall of a tunnel we passed through, and I arrived back home in Shenandoah about 1 A.M., very cold, very tired, and very scared. My father, worried, was still waiting up for me. He lit a fire in the kitchen stove and then, without waking my mother, cooked a meal for me with his own hands and saw me safely into bed. Many years later, in the Siberian prison camps, it was that episode above all others which I remembered when I thought of my father.

If it was from my father that I inherited my toughness, it was from my mother that I received my religious training. She was a small, light-haired woman, very religious herself and strict with us children. She taught us our first prayers and trained us in the faith long before we entered the parish school. Two of my sisters entered the convent, but I could never be outwardly pious. Yet it must have been through my mother’s prayers and example that I made up my mind in the eighth grade, out of a clear blue sky, that I would be a priest.

My father refused to believe it. Priests, in his eyes, were holy men of God; I was anything but that. In the end, it was my mother who finally decided the issue, as mothers often do. She told me that if I wanted to be a priest, I had to be a good one. Since my father still had doubts, I was stubborn and insisted; that September I went off to Orchard Lake, Michigan, to Sts. Cyril and Methodius Seminary, where many other young Poles from our parish had gone before me. But I had to be different. Even though I was in a seminary, I took great pains not to be thought pious. I was openly scornful, in fact, of those who were. At night, when there was no one around, I used to sneak down to the chapel to pray—but nothing or no one could have forced me to admit it.

And I had to be tough. I'd get up at 4:30 in the morning to run 5 miles around the lake on the seminary grounds, or go swimming in November when the lake was little better than frozen. I still couldn’t stand to think that anyone could do something I couldn’t do, so one year during Lent I ate nothing but bread and water for the full forty days—another year I ate no meat at all for the whole year—just to see if I could do it.

Yet contrary to everything we were constantly told and advised, I never asked anyone’s permission to do all this, and I told no one. When our prefect finally noticed what I was doing and warned me I might hurt my health, I told him bluntly that I knew what I was doing. Of course I didn’t; I just had a fixed idea that I would always do “the hardest thing.”

Not just physically. One summer I stayed at school during summer vacation and worked in the fields, forcing myself to bear the loneliness and the separation from family and friends. I loved baseball; I played it at school and then all summer long with the Shenandoah Indians, a home-town team that took on teams from other mining towns. I thought it would be very hard for me to give up playing the game—so, naturally, I gave it up. In my first year of college at Sts. Cyril and Methodius, I just dropped off the team. We were supposed to play an important game in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and my decision caused something of a crisis. But I was as stubborn as ever. I refused to go.

It was while I was in the seminary that I first read a life of St. Stanislaus Kostka. It impressed me tremendously.

I wanted to smash most of the plaster statues that showed him with a sickly sweet look and eyes turned up to heaven; I could see plainly that Kostka was a tough, young Pole who could—and did—walk from Warsaw to Rome through all sorts of weather and show no ill effects whatsoever. He was also a stubborn young Pole who stuck to his guns despite the arguments of his family and the persecution of his brother when he wanted to join the Society of Jesus. I liked that. I thought perhaps I ought to be a Jesuit. That same year, it was a Jesuit who gave us seminarians our annual retreat. I didn’t talk to him, but I thought even more of becoming a Jesuit.

And yet I didn’t want to be one. I was due to start theology in the fall; I'd be ordained in three years. If I joined the Jesuits, it would mean at least seven more years of study. I didn’t like the idea of joining a religious order, and I especially didn’t like what I'd read about the Jesuit hallmark of “perfect obedience.” I tried to argue myself out of it all that summer. Characteristically, I asked no one’s advice. I just prayed and fought with myself—and finally decided, since it was so hard, I would do it. God must have a special Providence for hard-headed people like me.

Then I had to do even that the hard way. I wrote a letter to the Polish Jesuits in Warsaw, telling them I wanted to enter the Society over there. Still, I hadn’t told anyone at the seminary or at home. After a wait that seemed like an eternity, I got an answer from Warsaw. I went to my room and opened it with trembling fingers. The letter was most gracious, but the gist of it was that I would probably find life and conditions in Poland much different than in America, and it suggested that if I wanted to be a Jesuit, I might contact the Jesuit Provincial in New York at Fordham Road.

Was I relieved? No, I was stubborn. I had decided I was going to be a Jesuit, so one morning I caught the train to New York without telling anyone. Somehow, I found my way to 501 Fordham Road, the office of the Jesuit Provincial The brother in charge of the door told me the Provincial wasn’t in. I wouldn’t tell him what I wanted; I just asked when the Provincial would be back. He said the Provincial would return that evening, and I asked if I could see him. The brother shrugged his shoulders, and I left.

I hadn’t eaten anything, so I found a cafeteria, then spent the afternoon walking up and down Fordham Road, suffering from a delayed case of butterflies in my stomach. At six o'clock the Provincial still wasn’t home; I went out and walked around the grounds of the Fordham University,  feeling more nervous all the time.

At 7:30 I returned to the Provincial’s residence and asked if he had returned. The brother told me to take a seat in the parlor. About eight o’clock, Father Kelly, the Provincial, came into the parlor and asked me what it was all about. I told him who I was, and that I wanted to be a Jesuit. He looked at me for a moment, then sat down. He wanted to know about my parents. I told him I was twenty-four years of age and the decision was mine to make. Then I reminded him of St. Stanislaus’ walk from Warsaw to Rome to see the Jesuit Provincial there. Father Kelly just stared at me, so I rushed on, trying to explain why I wanted to be a Jesuit.

I really wasn’t much help, I guess, because I simply kept insisting doggedly that I wanted to join the Society. About the only concrete facts he could get out of me were my marks at the seminary. After a while, he told me to wait, then left the room and sent another priest in to talk it over with me further. He was a wonderful old man whose name I’ve forgotten. He was quite deaf. He had some sort of hearing device and with the aid of much shouting we managed to get through the story again. I remember I kept shouting that I was determined to be a Jesuit.

I also talked to another priest that night, and finally, about eleven o’clock, Father Kelly returned to tell me things would probably work out all right, but that I should go home and wait for his answer. It never occurred to me that when I heard from him the answer might be “no.” I went home and began to pack, happy as I had ever been.

It was more than joy—it was a deep and soul-satisfying peace. It was something more, too, than just the quiet and release from tension that follows the settling of any emotional problem—it was a positive and deep-seated happiness akin to the feeling of belonging or of having reached safe harbor, but deeper than that and a gift of God.

When Father Kelly’s letter did come, it was a notice to report on September 7, 1928, to the Jesuit novitiate at St. Andrew-on-Hudson, Poughkeepsie, New York. Still, I waited to tell my father until the very morning I had to leave. He looked at Father Kelly’s letter for a long time, as if he had trouble comprehending it, then said quite suddenly: “Nothing doing! You’re going back to the seminary.” “No, sir,” I said, “I’m going to St. Andrew’s.”

We argued then like father and son, each as stubborn as the other, until at last my father banged his fist on the table and said, “For the last time, you’re not going!” With that, I banged my fist on the table and shouted, “I am going! I’m the one who’s going, not you, and J am going to St. Andrew’s, even if I have to choose between God and you!”

On that note, I took my bags and walked out of the house without a farewell or the traditional father’s blessing.

Yet, after all my struggle to reach St. Andrew-on-Hudson, I was anything but an ideal novice. I disliked displays of piety, and I looked with disdain on those novices, most of them younger than I, who in their zeal and fervor for this new religious life moderated their external actions to conform with every little rule and regulation. I preferred to keep the corners a little rough. So it wasn’t long before Father Weber, the master of novices, called me into his office one day and told me he thought I ought to leave the Society.

I was stunned. Then my Polish stubborn streak sparked up and I almost shouted, “I will not!” Father Weber was startled in turn. He stood up abruptly and came around his desk toward me; I edged around the desk in the other direction. “What’s going on here?” he said, almost incredulously. “Who do you think you're talking to?”

“J just won’t leave, that’s all,” I said—and with that my stubbornness dissolved into tears. I had fought so hard to be here, I had done so much to get here, I had known such peace at last, and now it was all caving in around my ears.

Father Weber sat me down in a chair and waited for a certain amount of calm to descend upon us both. After that, we had a good long talk. Father Weber pulled no punches, but I could see that he respected me and liked me and, despite my failings, trusted me. He talked about my good qualities and talents, and the necessity for channeling them properly if they were ever really to be put at God’s disposal.

Early in 1929, at one of his daily talks to the novices, Father Weber brought in an important letter which had just come from Rome. It was from Pope Pius XI, “To all Seminarians, especially our Jesuit sons,” calling for men to enter a new Russian center being started at Rome to prepare young clerics for possible future work in Russia.

The Pope went on to explain how the Soviets since 1917 had continually increased their persecution of religion; how all the Catholic bishops had been arrested in Russia and sent to concentration camps; how all the seminaries—Catholic and Orthodox—had been closed or confiscated; how hundreds of parishes were without pastors; how it was forbidden to teach religion to children. Above all, the Holy Father emphasized what a great need of well-trained and especially courageous priests there would be in that immense country. Even as Father Weber read the letter something within me stirred. I knew I had come to the end of a long search. I was convinced that God had at last sought me out and was telling me the answer to my long desire and the reason for all my struggles.

This conviction was so strong that I could hardly wait for the conference to finish. I became impatient and began to get restless. As soon as the conference ended, I went straight to the Master’s room. He was startled to see me all flushed and excited, and he asked if anything was wrong.

“Nothing, Father,” I said quickly, “but there is something I have to talk over with you.” He told me to sit down, then listened to me attentively. “You know, Father,” I blurted out, “when you read the Holy Father’s letter in there just now it was almost like a direct call from God. I felt I had to volunteer for the Russian mission. I knew it from the beginning, and as you kept on reading that feeling grew until at the end I was fully convinced that Russia was my destination. I know, I firmly believe, that God wants me there and I will be there in the future.”

Father Weber looked at me for a long time, and then said slowly, “Well, Walter, you must pray over this. After all, you have just begun the novitiate. Things like this require time and God’s grace. I wouldn’t want to discourage you, so keep this in mind and pray over it. After you’ve taken your vows, perhaps we’ll be able to see more clearly if this is God’s will for you or not.”

Then he sent me off, without a definite answer. Of course, I see now that my hurried declaration could easily have been the enthusiasm of a moment or an overeager and superficial desire for something new and extraordinary.

But as I walked down the corridor from his office, I felt completely sure of myself. No doubt ever entered my mind, either then or at any time thereafter.

I could hardly wait for vow day, which was still almost a year and a half away on September 8, 1930. Before that time, I was sent with the first class of novices to the new Jesuit novitiate of the Maryland-New York Province in Wernersville, Pennsylvania; we were the first group of novices ever to pronounce their vows of the Society in that house. It was a great day for all of us, but for me it meant the period of waiting to volunteer for Russia was over.

Immediately, I wrote to Very Reverend Father General volunteering explicitly for the Russian mission. The time it took for the letter to reach Rome and for the reply to come back across the Atlantic seemed like forever.

But when it finally came, the letter was simple and explicit, and my joy knew no bounds. The General said he was happy to receive my most generous offer to serve on the Russian mission, that he was even happier to be able to accept my offer and to inform me that from then on I would be considered as one designated for the Russian mission. For the time being, though, I was to continue the usual course of studies in the Society, to pray continually for the fulfillment of this dream, and when the time came I would be summoned to Rome.

For two years, therefore, I remained at Wernersville for the period of studies in the humanities known in the Society as the Juniorate. After that, I went to Woodstock College in Woodstock, Maryland, to begin the course in philosophy. Before I left the Juniorate, though, I wrote again to Father General—just so he wouldn’t forget me and hoping that he just might call me to Rome to study philosophy there.

The General’s answer was brief but cordial. He assured me I hadn’t been forgotten and mentioned that conditions in Russia were hard and that working there would not be easy. He therefore exhorted me again to pray constantly and prepare myself for a difficult period of study at the Russicum and the even more difficult work in Russia.

I needed no encouragement. J still kept up, almost religiously, my practice of forty-five minutes of calisthenics every day, a practice I had started as a young “tough.” Although by this time I was finally learning to ask advice and guidance—and to do what I was told—I also continued my practice of going without certain things and of undertaking annoying jobs, just to condition myself to do the harder thing and to strengthen my will. And with this in mind, I wrote my thesis required for the degree in philosophy “On the Training of the Will.”

Toward the end of my second year at Woodstock, I received the overwhelming news that I was to go to Rome that fall to begin the study of theology and to start my work at the Russian college.

I sailed for Rome that summer of 1934, a very happy young man. Like all the Jesuit students of theology in Rome, I lived at the old Collegio Santo Roberto Bellarmino on the Via del Seminario, and studied theology at the Gregorian University just off the Piazza Pilotta. At the same time, I was studying the Russian language, liturgy, and history in the Collegio Russico, or Russicum, on the Via Carlo Cattaneo, not far from the basilica of St. Mary Major.

The years of theological study, for those of us at the Russicum, were pretty hectic. But, as a sort of sideline, I also studied French and German during those years and acquired enough mastery of the languages so that, when I was ordained three years later, I was able to hear confessions in the French and German parishes around Rome.

The greatest hardship for me, in fact, during those years of study was the Oriental liturgy. Those of us assigned to the Russicum had Mass every morning in the Oriental rite, and I couldn’t stand it. But since I had made up my mind to work in Russia, I hung on grimly, trying to learn and appreciate it.

The man who did the most to help me come to love it was a big bear of a fellow named Nestrov. He was a native Russian with a fine bass voice, rich and deep, who loved and served the liturgy as only Russians can. We became close friends, not because of the liturgy, but because of our shared enthusiasm over the dream of going into Russia.

Everyone in the newly founded Russian College, indeed, shared this dream of going into Russia to help the faithful who were now, in Our Lord’s metaphor, like sheep without a shepherd.

It was a very mixed and international group. There was a Belgian, Father Paul Mailleux, who is now head of Fordham University’s John XXIII Center for Ecumenical Studies, formerly called the Russian Center. There were three Englishmen, three Spaniards, two Italians, Nestrov the Russian, a Pole, and a Rumanian. I was the only American at that time, although there had been several before and there were many who came after me.

Yet of them all, there was no one who could match my conviction or Nestrov’s enthusiasm for going into Russia.

The others, in fact, used to kid us about it; we were on fire with the idea. We studied everything we could about Russia, the customs of the people, their habits, the Russian character and culture, the nature of the land itself and its history. We talked of it all the ttme—to the real or feigned dismay of our fellow theologians—hoping, scheming, planning, and dreaming about Russia.

Another almost constant companion was Father Makar, the Pole. “But my mother was a Georgian,” Makar always added, and he was a mischief-maker by profession. A great schemer and practical joker, he could keep the whole crowd laughing for hours, and big, easy-going Nestrov was often the butt of his jokes. Yet the three of us got on so well together that we were nicknamed “The Three Musketeers.”

After three happy but hectic years, I was ordained in Rome on June 24, 1937. Like almost all the men at the Russicum, I was ordained to say Mass in the Oriental rite, although we also had the privilege of saying Mass in the Latin rite whenever it was necessary. And so I said my first Mass as a priest in the Oriental rite, in the basilica of St. Paul, at the altar over his tomb.

My father and mother had died during my years of study, so they never had the consolation, after all they had suffered through with me, of attending the first Mass of their priest-son. None of my brothers or sisters were able to come to Rome either, but they wrote me letters of congratulation and joy at my ordination. In their stead, I was joined on the occasion of my first Mass by Father Vincent A. McCormick, S.J., the American Assistant in Rome to Father General, and by Mrs. Nicholas Brady, the foundress of Wernersville. The three of us had breakfast after Mass and, flushed with the joy of ordination, I chatted happily for hours of my dreams of going to Russia and my conviction that I would be there soon.

Fathers Nestrov and Makar were members of the Polish Province of the Society of Jesus, with headquarters in Warsaw. During their final year of theology after ordination, they were told that it was impossible for anyone to enter Russia at that time, so they would return to Poland to work among the Oriental-rite Catholics there.

Nestrov was especially downcast at the news. Yet I was still convinced that I would go to Russia, and I had great hopes, somehow, of being sent there immediately.

Then one day I received world that Father General wanted to see me. I was startled; I knew that Father General Ledochowski had always taken a personal interest in the Russian mission ever since he had been asked by Pope Pius XI to assign young Jesuit volunteers to the work, but this was the first time I had a chance to talk to him personally.

Father Ledochowski, as I remember him that day, was a small, frail man with a thin, ascetic face, sunken cheeks, high forehead, and the most serene eyes I have ever seen.

He was a man who radiated peace and quiet, impressive in his simplicity and dignity. He had a decisive, almost abrupt, way of speaking, yet he was most charming and easy to talk to. He welcomed me warmly and listened attentively while I spoke of my hopes and my ideals and my dream of working in Russia.

We talked together for over twenty minutes. He told me how much he appreciated my hopes and shared my dream, but for the time being it was impossible to send men into Russia. As he spoke, he got up from his chair and paced the room somewhat restlessly. “Conditions as we know them,” he said, “would make it imprudent to try to send men into Russia now. I know you must be disappointed, but the mission in Albertin, Poland, needs men right now and the work there is very fruitful. The mission is flourishing and is a great source of vocations for the Oriental rite and the Russian College. I would like you to work there, if you would, for the time being. But I want you to keep your dream of going into Russia, and perhaps someday God may grant us both our wishes.”

He could read the disappointment on my face, I guess, and he was very kind. At least, he asked me to keep him informed of my work on the mission at Albertin, spoke fondly once again of our joint hopes that the day would come when I might go to Russia, and gave me his blessing.

I agreed with his decision, of course; I had finally learned something of that spirit of obedience that makes the Jesuit.

But to say I wasn’t disappointed would be far from honest. I had dreamed so long of Russia, I had given up so much and trained so hard, that I couldn’t avoid the emotional let-down when Father General told me that my entrance into Russia might be impossible for some time to come. Yet even then, in that moment of disappointment, I never for a moment doubted that I would one day be in Russia.

My work in Albertin was two parts pastor and one part teacher. I taught ethics to the young Jesuits who studied at our Oriental-rite mission there and catechism to the children in the school. Most of the time, though, I was a horse-and-buggy priest who went around visiting the families of Albertin and the small villages nearby, advising them, chatting with the old grandmothers and the sick, doing the thousand and one things a small-town pastor does anywhere. Since the community at Albertin was small—just three priests besides the Superior, Father Dombrowski—and since I was the newest member to arrive, I inherited all the chores which traditionally fall to the youngest curate.

Albertin itself wasn’t much of a town. In fact, it wasn’t a town at all. The real town was Slonim on the Shchara river, a manufacturing center on the main rail line from Moscow to Warsaw. From the bridge over the Shchara, you went east about 3 miles over a winding dirt road to the village of Albertin. The railroad also ran to Albertin, but the village was just what we would call a whistle stop on this line to Moscow. And about Albertin’s only claim to historical fame was the fact that just beyond it, to the north, was a wide swath cut through the forest known as the Napoleonski Tract—the remains of the road built by Napoleon when he invaded Russia.

I had come to Albertin in November 1938, just after the Munich Conference which dismembered Czechoslovakia and guaranteed “peace in our time,” as Mr. Chamberlain put it. But soon after I arrived, Hitler began his campaign to get the Danzig Corridor. All during that winter the situation deteriorated; by early spring there were even rumors that German soldiers in disguise had infiltrated.

Danzig and were prepared to take the city in a sneak attack. The peasants of Albertin sowed their rye and other spring crops that year uncertain whether or not they would be able to harvest them. By late spring, the talk of war was everywhere.

On August 21, 1939, Ribbentrop and Molotov announced that Germany and Russia had signed a mutual non-aggression pact. Shortly afterward, I received a cable from the American Embassy in Warsaw advising me that war might soon be declared and that I should be prepared to leave Poland. I talked it over with Father Dombrowski and told him I didn’t want to leave. I had come to Poland to work in the Oriental mission; moreover, I had never given up my hopes of someday going into Russia and the war might give me an opportunity to do just that. I wrote back to the Embassy, telling them I was needed at the parish and I would stay where I was needed.

Within a few days, on September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. We listened constantly to the radio and the news was all bad. In a matter of days, German troops had surrounded Warsaw and the city was besieged and bombed. Remnants of the Polish Army began streaming eastward through Slonim and Albertin along the Napoleonski Tract. Warsaw Radio fell silent, and we knew that Poland’s fate was sealed. What was worse, there were rumors that the Russians were massing on the eastern border and would soon enter Poland.

At last, Father Dombrowski decided to send the Jesuit novices home, at least until the situation had stabilized to a point where plans for the future could be made. He himself left to see the bishop at Vilna, to ask what should be done about the mission and the parish. Since I wasn’t a Polish national, but an American citizen, Father Dombrowski decided that I would be left in charge of the mission. Father Grybowski, who was in charge of the Latin-rite parish at the mission, and Father Litvinski, the other curate of the Oriental-rite parish, would remain with families in the village.

In those days we still presumed that the Germans—or the Russians, for that matter—would respect an American passport. If worse came to worst, though, the American Embassy would still know where I was and be able to help me. And so it was that I, the young American, was the only priest at the mission in Albertin on the day the Russians came. The first Russian officer arrived one morning just after breakfast. I was in the courtyard when he rode up on horseback to look over our Jesuit mission. A man of medium height in a dust-stained khaki uniform with the red epaulets of the Russian Army, he greeted me pleasantly and was quite respectful. His eyes seemed tired under the peak of his uniform cap as he explained frankly, and a bit apologetically I thought, that it might be necessary to quarter some of his staff in our buildings for a few days. He seemed so polite, almost friendly, that I began to hope conditions in Albertin might not be too bad under Russian occupation. Unfortunately, that was the last I saw of that particular officer; I suspect he eventually decided Graf Puslovski’s mansion would make a better headquarters for himself and his staff.

That afternoon the column of Russian troops arrived. The young captain in charge was neither pleasant nor offensive, just very matter of-fact about the whole thing. He made it clear he had orders to take over the seminary for quartering his troops. He told me I’d be allowed to occupy my room on the first floor and to take what I wanted of the church goods, library books, or my personal belongings, but the rest of the building and its furnishings would be taken over.

He promised, however, that the church would not be bothered. To make sure, he had a pathway marked off through the courtyard so the people could attend services without having to pass through the army’s quarters. He also gave orders that the entrance into the church from the seminary should be boarded up to prevent any military personnel from entering the church through that door.

The troops moved in to occupy the building. After long days on the march, they hit the seminary like old October revolutionaries storming the Winter Palace. Trucks were backed into the courtyard and the men began to throw things helter-skelter out the library windows into them. Books flew in all directions. The soldiers on the ground, laughing and joking, yelled at those in the windows throwing books; the men in the library replied in kind. Eventually, the books were carted off to be turned into pulp. While all this was going on, to my dismay one of the soldiers threw a rope around the Sacred Heart statue in the courtyard, hitched it to a truck, and toppled the whole thing over. It crashed in pieces, to a loud shout from the troops, then was loaded into the truck and carted away. Watching the scene, I couldn’t tell whether that particular act was done on command or just at the whim of one of the soldiers.

That night was my worst in Albertin. With the troops moving around on the floor above me, I hardly slept at all. Next day, I was summoned for a “personal talk” with the politruk, the Communist Party or secret service agent who accompanied every unit of the Red Army. He wanted to know the whereabouts of the former Polish government officials of Albertin. I knew nothing and said so. In a technique I was to become familiar with later on, the politruk asked me the same question many times over in different forms. He was insistent, arguing that by helping him I would be helping the “people.” “My work,” I replied, “isn’t political, it’s pastoral. As their pastor I help the people spiritually, and also materially when I can.” I told him of cases where we had raised money to help the children of poor families continue their education through high school and beyond. He wasn’t interested. He insisted I should help “the people” everywhere by revealing the names of their enemies and making public what information I had as a priest.

“Now you’re going too far,” I said. “There are confidences entrusted to me as a priest which I have no right to tell anyone. I can’t betray the seal of confession. I’d only be harming myself and ‘the people’ as well by giving out that kind of information, which in any event has nothing to do with ‘the people’ or politics or anything else that concerns you!”

By that time, he was furious and I was disgusted. I made a move to leave, but he stopped me. He told me to sit down. For the remainder of our “talk,” though, he was once more smooth and courteous. After a short while, he led me to the door with the remark that he would send for me again in the near future.

Instead, it was the army captain who sent for me a few days later. Army regulations, he said, prohibited civilians from living in the same quarters with the troops. He “suggested” I move into the little house at the end of the mission garden which had been the original home on the property. I moved that afternoon and was joined that evening by Fathers Grybowski and Litvinski. We were glad to be living together in community again, but after a short while the local Communist committee decided the four-room house was but after a short while the local Communist committee decided the four-room house was too big for just the three bourgeois priests, so they sent in other families to live with us. We priests were confined to one room, two families shared the big dining room, and a third family had a smaller room to itself; we all took turns using the kitchen.

Despite these inconveniences and harassments, however, we managed to keep the parishes functioning almost normally. We were able to celebrate Mass every morning, and on Sunday we had two Masses for the people, although some of the congregation stayed away for fear of Communist reprisals. The soldiers had taken over the seminary chapel next to the main church as a sort of duty room and classroom. At Mass in the morning, we could hear them moving about behind the door and, often enough, as soon as we sang the responses to the litanies in the first part of the Oriental-rite Mass, they would whistle and chant in mimicry, “Gospodi, Gospodi!” (Lord, Lord!). Yet the door from that room into the church remained boarded up according to the captain’s promise, and the soldiers did not physically interfere.

Then one Sunday, after the seven o’clock Mass, I went out to give a short sermon to the people. As I started to speak, I noticed some soldiers lounging in the vestibule of the church. They were standing there laughing, caps on their heads and devilment in their eyes. I got mad. In my anger, I launched into a sermon on the classic text, “The fool hath said in his heart there is no God.” It was probably the most spontaneous sermon I ever preached; every word came right from the heart and flew straight at them. They were stunned momentarily, then bewildered, looking around sheepishly, shuffling their feet as they saw the eyes of the congregation turn to them. They started to go, then stood there, too proud to retreat but ashamed to react, until I had finished. It was a personal triumph of sorts for me, but it was bound to be costly and even then I knew it.

To my surprise, however, the soldiers made no trouble during Mass the next few days. Though I knew they must have resented my words and their humiliation, I began to hope the incident might blow over. Then one morning when I came to the church to say Mass, I found the doors of the tabernacle swinging ajar, the altar cloths strewn about, the Blessed Sacrament gone. I was thunderstruck. When I noticed that the door from the sanctuary to the soldier’s duty room was no longer nailed shut, I knew immediately what had happened, and why.

 I tried to see the captain that afternoon to lodge a complaint, but it was no use. The Latin church was still functioning normally; its attendance, in fact, was greater than ever before. The soldiers seemed to particularly resent Oriental Catholics as members of a church opposed to Russian Orthodoxy, but they hardly bothered the Latin Catholics, and many of our congregation preferred to attend Mass there. Reluctantly, therefore, I decided to close the Oriental-rite church. Before I did so, I went around on a last tour of inspection and found that the troops, unknown to anyone, had been using the attic as in our room of the house down in the garden for the few people who came to attend.

Just about this time, I received another telegram from the American Embassy. This one came from Moscow, where the Embassy had gone after the fall of Warsaw. They advised me that I could either come to Moscow for aid in returning to the United States or go to the American Embassy in Rumania if that were more convenient. I showed the telegram to the other fathers and discussed it with them. They thought I ought to go. The work of the Oriental mission seemed pretty well ruined at the moment; there was little I could do here that the others could not take care of. The NKVD1 agent, through whose hands, of course, the telegram had to pass, also “suggested” that as an American citizen I should leave the country immediately. Despite such urgings, I felt that I had been left in charge of the parish and mission by Father Dombrowski, and until I heard from him I ought to remain. Accordingly, I wrote to the Embassy that same afternoon telling them of my decision to remain in the parish where I had been left in charge. I did not intend to leave my flock.

Not long afterward, I received another surprise. Fathers Nestrov and Makar arrived from the Jesuit theologate in Lvov with a message from Father Dombrowski to the effect that the bishop had decided, for the time being, to close the Oriental mission in Albertin. It was certainly a strange reunion for us “Three Musketeers” there in that little house at the foot of the garden, under the shadow of the Russian occupation troops.

Makar, the tall Georgian, was strangely elated. With his long, wavy hair, hook nose, and flashing black eyes, he seemed a born adventurer, and the trip from Lvov to Albertin had put him on his mettle. Nestrov was another adventurer of sorts, though he didn’t look like one. He was heavyset and practically bald, with a bulbous nose that made him look like a larger version of Tolstoy. But his dream of one day working in Russia drove him on, and that night he was alive with it.

He told me he felt the time had come to put our mutual dream into operation. The Russians had occupied Poland, so we were, in effect, already in Russia. Father Dombrowski had implicitly absolved me of staying in Albertin by closing the mission. Father Grybowski, I admitted, could take care of the parishioners in Albertin with the Latin church. Why shouldn’t this be our chance to slip into the heart of Russia itself? Nestrov and Makar heaped up the arguments; my enthusiasm grew. At last, together, we decided to try it, if our superiors would approve.

As we talked into the early hours of the morning, our plans became more definite. Nestrov and Makar would return to Lvov, then Makar would come back for me. Since our superiors were in Lvov, everything would have to start from there. Meanwhile, I was to set things in order in Albertin as best I could without arousing suspicions that I might be leaving. I still remember my parting words to Nestrov as he left that night: “We’ll be in Russia in the spring!”

In a week Makar was back, good as his word, and the two of us and the two of us slipped out of the house at dusk on the road to Slonim. Trains were no longer running on schedule, and it was impossible to buy a ticket for those that did run, but that was hardly a challenge to my Georgian companion. We hung about the station in Slonim waiting for a train to Moscow and boarded it without tickets. We were already rolling before anyone bothered us; we passed through Albertin without even slowing down. I had only time for one brief, last look at the village. When finally the conductor asked for our tickets, Makar began to berate him for the poor service and the disrupted train schedules. The conductor was somewhat taken aback at first, then insistent. Makar grew more indignant, the conductor more adamant. Baranovichi, he said, was the next stop. We would have to get off there and buy tickets, or he would have us thrown off the train—that was final. The poor conductor had no way of knowing that Baranovichi, the rail juncture with the line to Lvov, was our destination in any event.

Even at Baranovichi, however, there were no tickets to be had. There was a train to Lvov that night, but the coaches were jammed and the Pullman cars reserved for officers. That was good enough for Makar. We went along the siding to the Pullman cars and clambered aboard. An official approached to tell us the car was reserved for officers, but Makar, speaking rapidly in White Russian, succeeded in convincing him that we were members of a White Russian commission on our way to Lvov and that we definitely did not wish to be disturbed that night.

These incidents were typical of Makar. I remember another occasion later in Lvov when he and I were stopped at gunpoint by a member of the NKVD as we returned from a journey late at night. Makar was furious; if he was at all nervous, it was not apparent. He proceeded to tell a long, involved story and scolded the secret service man for accosting two “Party members” in the middle of the night with drawn gun. Finally, out of fright or perhaps bewilderment, the man let us go. The same thing happened now. The official found us a berth, promised we wouldn’t be disturbed, and so we traveled to Lvov in style, arriving well rested after a good night’s sleep.

Conditions at Lvov were not much better than at Albertin. The Jesuits were allowed to use only one section of our theologate building, for the Russians had begun to assign other families to the rest of the building. Again, they were out to make it clear that all buildings were the property of “the people”; they also hoped to impress the people by settling some of them in this residence formerly held by the Church. So Father Bienko, our Superior there, decided from the first that it would be better if Makar, Nestrov, and I could find a private room somewhere. We did find a place about six blocks from the theologate, in an apartment occupied mostly by refugees from Warsaw, many of them Jews.

Father Bienko was an ideal man for the job of Superior in such trying times. He was a tall, thin man in his late fifties, with a thin nose and light hair. But the first thing you noticed about him was his smile, for he smiled often. Under his pleasant exterior, however, he had a very shrewd and tough mind. An excellent theologian, considered by many of his fellow Jesuits one of the best minds in the Province, he proved to be an even better administrator and a sheer genius at adaptability.

Many of the young Jesuit theology students had already been forced to find jobs to help support the community, for the theologate’s funds had been confiscated. Nestrov, Makar, and I also got jobs to support ourselves until we could leave for Russia. I drove a truck for one of the labor gangs that had been pressed into service to haul the furniture and household goods which the Russians confiscated from places about the city and to deliver them to the railroad yards for shipment to Russia. I soon found out there was a double game going on. Most of the men in my crew had relatives in the city, so many of the things we “confiscated” from these people were simply taken to relatives elsewhere in the city or to a hiding place in the country. Other people, too, paid us to deliver their goods not to the Russians, but to relatives. It was risky, but there was so much stuff being confiscated and delivered to the boxcars that no one could check it accurately. The men on the truck, of course, took particular pleasure in outwitting the occupation forces.

No sooner had we settled in Lvov than Nestrov and I approached Father Bienko with our dream of going into Russia to help the communities deprived of their priests.

Makar, for the moment, couldn’t be spared. But we urged that there might never be a better time to make the move than now, in the immediate aftermath of the occupation, when the roads and cities were crowded with refugees. Our plan was simple enough. The Russians were hiring large crowds from the occupied zones to work in the factories around the Urals. Stalin seemed to have no illusions about Hitler; Russian factories were working around the clock.

We proposed to volunteer for work in the area of the Urals. Since, as I have said, Father Bienko was a man of large spiritual vision and practical bent, he agreed to let us go. He told us, however, that we must first have the permission of Metropolitan Shepticki, Archbishop of Lvov for the Oriental rite.

Nestrov made the arrangements and I met him a day or so later at the Archbishop’s palace in the Platz Yuria near St. George’s cathedral. The Archbishop then was an old man, but so revered by his people that the Communists could not attack him openly. He was so crippled he had to be carried in on a chair to meet us, but his eyes were bright and his mind as clear as a bell. He welcomed us warmly and heard us out before he said anything at all.

This shrewd and kindly patriarch knew Russia from personal experience. He began by telling us how much he appreciated our enthusiasm, but he also warned us of the difficulties we would face. Finally, when he saw how keen we were to go, he said: “I’ll tell you what, suppose we try it for a year. I’ll give you permission to try to enter Russia, but you must be very careful and take no chances. Your object must be simply to study the situation and see whether it is really possible to do much priestly work in Russia. Lord knows, the people need you.”

Then he began to tell us in detail things we had heard from others in bits and snatches. He described how the Russians had been rounding up everyone who had served in the government or the police, teachers, lawyers, professional men, members of the nobility— or even those who were a little richer than the average—and had been sending them, according to reports, to work in the Urals. Certainly, he said, those people would accept us as priests if we could reach them. We could also explore further the possibilities of working among the Russians themselves. (Full text of "With God in Russia by Walter J. Ciszek (1-Aug-1986) Paperback".)

The rest of the book tells the story of Father Ciszek’s establishing a mission in Soviet Russia and then his subsequent arrest on the charges of being a “spy” and his being sentenced to hard labor, including a stint at hard labor in Siberia. In each of his “assignments,” though, Father Ciszek was determined to show forth his love for God by working to excel at whatever laboring jobs he was given, and there was even a time when he won a “Worker of the Year” award in one Soviet oblast all the while being able to offer Holy Mass sub rosa as the opportunities came for him to do so.

I have provided this detail so that readers can develop some idea of the devoted servant that Father Walter Ciszek was to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, His Most Blessed Mother, and to Holy Mother our Catholic Church.

Father Ciszek’s twenty-four year forced stay in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic was summarized by the editor of America magazine, Father Thurston Davis, S. J., in a foreword to Father Ciszek’s book in which he highlighted the sense of anticipation that the family of the Society of Jesus here in the United States of America prior to the day that Father Ciszek returned to this country at the then named Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport) in Jamaica, Queens, New York, October 11, 1963, the Feast of the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

In the pages that follow, you will read what might seem to be a strange and remarkable piece of fiction. But it is not fiction. Rather, it is a true story, recorded on one of the proudest pages of contemporary Jesuit history.

Somewhat in the role of an Evangelist, I have the privilege of telling you how that story ended. I was there, and it isn’t often one gets the chance to be around when a man comes back from the dead. I can also tell something of how that story began. Then I must leave it to these pages  themselves to unroll the complete record of the hidden years behind the Iron Curtain and to suggest, perhaps, that a new chapter has yet to be written.

The story began in 1939—a long, complicated, almost incredible tale that ran its course through an entire generation of the lives of the older ones among us.

While this tale was unfolding on the other side of the earth, millions died, a great war was fought, the hydrogen bomb was invented, men began orbiting the earth, babies were born and grew up and married, and four Popes sat on the chair of the Fisherman.

It was my great good fortune to know the central figure of this story some six or seven years before it all began. We were together in the chapel, along the corridors, on the paths that wound around the house where we both took our first vows as Jesuits, on a hilltop in the rolling Pennsylvania Dutch country just west of Reading, Pennsylvania.

I knew him in those far-off days as a trim young athlete, a promising linguist, unsparing in his work, quiet but outgoing in disposition, a young Jesuit unmistakably alight with the ideals of the Society. I remember, too, that he was always able to get things going again when they broke down.

Thirty-odd years ago, my friend went down that hill one June day, and I stayed behind. We never met again.

My telephone rang about 3:45 on the afternoon of October 11, 1963.

The voice on the other end of the wire was that of an old teacher and friend, our former Provincial, Fr. John McMahon, calling from Auriesville, New York. Fr. McMahon had just heard from Fr. John Daley, the Provincial of Maryland, who was visiting Auriesville at the time, that at four o’clock that afternoon the State Department was going to release to the press an extraordinary piece of news.

In exchange for two Russian agents who had been apprehended in this country, the Soviet Union had decided to repatriate two American citizens held for some time in Soviet prisons. That very afternoon the two Americans were about to enplane in London for New York’s Idlewild International Airport.

Fr. McMahon thoughtfully wanted America to get a “scoop” on this story of a generation.

And it really was the story of a generation. It was the story of that very same intrepid young Jesuit who had left our Wernersville novitiate in 1932 to continue—at Woodstock, then later in Rome—his studies for ordination to the priesthood in the Russian rite; who went into Poland as a parish priest in 1939; who was then engulfed in the great wave of World War II; and who—when the wave ebbed back eastward—was sucked into the terra incognita of the Soviet Union and heard from no more.

We thought of all this next morning, October 12th, as we prepared to meet him at Idlewild.

We said our Masses for him at 4:30 that morning in the chapel at Campion House, home of the America staff.

Afterward, I drove to the airport in the pre-dawn twilight were Fathers Robert Graham and Eugene Culhane of our staff.

As we drove past the eerie shadows of the World Fair’s strange new unfinished structures, someone recalled the last postal card that had come from Poland in 1940—followed by an interminable silence.

Another remembered that in 1947 it had been presumed he was dead, and we had offered the customary Masses of the Society for a deceased brother-in-arms when his name had been printed in the official roster of the Society’s departed sons.

We drove on, as we relived again the day when, all of a sudden, and out of the nowhere of northern Siberia, a letter had come—the handwriting looked right enough—then another letter, and later still more.

There had been a request for a suit and for a heavy coat, for a pair of shoes. Another request had come for a set of books.

These letters had all been signed with our friend’s name.

We were almost at Idlewild. We wondered: would it really be he? Could it be someone else who had claimed his name or stolen his papers?

What would he be like, if it were he, when he came down the steps of the plane? What would the years in Siberia, where he had worked so long in the mines, have done to him?

Would he know us? Would he still speak English? Would he be sick in body or in mind?

BOAC flight No. 501 from London was on time. Right on the dot of 6:55 A.M., the big plane trundled up to a stop on the asphalt apron. With the parents of the young man, Marvin Makinen, who was being released along with our friend, we stood there—eyes popping—as the steps were wheeled up to the plane and the plane’s door opened.

The two returned prisoners were the first ones off.

Down the steps they came in a rush—a tall, sunken-cheeked lad of twenty-four, an American Fulbright student arrested on a charge of espionage in the Soviet Union two years earlier; then a short, stocky, full-faced, gray-haired man in his later fifties. The older man wore a forest-green overcoat over a gray suit and a deep blue shirt. Onto his head, as he stepped off the plane, he put a big, floppy brimmed, purple-black Russian felt hat.

It all happened in two winks of your eye.

The two returnees stepped almost automatically into stride with the cordon of New York City policemen who immediately shaped up around them, and they began briskly marching off, like seasoned prisoners, to the Immigration Office.

I thought for a moment that the hefty Russian man must be—he looked for all the world as though he were!—a member of some visiting delegation of Soviet farmers or technicians.

Then we realized. He was marching past us in lock step with the police before it dawned on us. And he had marched off into the Customs Office before it really dawned on him that he was home again, that these were his sisters there to meet him along with a delegation of old Jesuit comrades of twenty-five or thirty years ago.

I refrain from saying anything of those indescribable first moments of meeting and recognition between him and his family. Even the eloquence of Gabe Pressman was not able to persuade State Department officials to allow photographers in to snap the scene.

Yet there are so many memories of that October morning: the hurly-burly in the newsroom, where five movie cameras and forty still photographers jostled our friend under the klieg lights.

Later, there was that long talk at the America residence, when he first began to tell his sisters and his fellow Jesuits about those years in Russia, and ended by emptying out his pockets to show that he still had a few Russian rubles and 74 kopecks in change after buying tea in the Moscow airport.

After Mass, when we sat down to an American breakfast of bacon and eggs, he gave the blessing in Polish. He said the last time he had sat around a table with friends was four days before, when his beloved people of Abakan gave him a memorable Siberian going-away party.

I also recall his telling that he had never had a single day’s illness in all those years.

. . and how he had always somehow been able to continue his priestly work—sometimes celebrating Mass from memory over his suitcase in the barrack where he lived or, at other times, in the depths of the forest on the stump of a tree.

I recall he said he never doubted his powers and his duties as a priest. He never questioned the Faith into which he had been baptized and ordained another Christ.

One doesn’t, as I said, often have the opportunity to be there when a man comes back from the dead. We Jesuit companions of his were so privileged on the morning of October 12th, when our old friend, like some new Columbus, flew in on BOAC flight No. 501 to rediscover America and to take up again the life of a free man.

Those of you who read this book will have that rare privilege, too—to share the experiences of a man returned from the valley of the shadow of death.

He has come back to us from the mines and prison camps of Siberia—his hair nearly white, his hands gnarled from labor as a miner and mechanic, but unbroken, not brainwashed, and with a heart filled with compassion for the people to whom his whole adult life as a priest has been consecrated.

He will have our praise, assuredly, but he does not ask for our praise.

He asks only that we try to grasp the meaning of what, with God’s grace, he has endured—the meaning of a life lived as a witness that the love of Christ knows no frontiers.

So his story ended. Or did it? Indeed, will it ever end?

For it will be told and retold for generations along the long black lines of Jesuits. Somewhere, today—at Poughkeepsie or Wernersville or Woodstock in the halls he walked, in the Midwest or the South or the Far West, in Rome or Canada or England or India or Australia or Japan—there are fresh recruits awaiting the day when they will have their chance to write their chapter of the story that only begins with Fr. Walter Ciszek.

In reading what follows, give or take a word here or there. Go back in history nearly 400 years. Change the word “Tyburn” to “Lubianka.” For the addressee, “Elizabeth,” substitute the current Russian premier. For “English students” substitute “men of the free world.”

Then, as you read this story of Fr. Walter Ciszek, recall Blessed Edmund Campion and the conclusion of that eloquent document of faith called “Campion’s Brag,” written almost 400 years ago to Her Majesty of England...

Many innocent hands are lifted up to heaven for you daily by those English students, whose posterity shall never die, which beyond seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you heaven, or to die upon your pikes.

And touching our Society, be it known to you that we have made a league—all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practices of England—cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned; the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted; so it must be restored.

THURSTON N. DAVIS, S.J.,

editor-in-chief,

America magazine (Full text of "With God in Russia by Walter J. Ciszek (1-Aug-1986) Paperback".)

Father Ciszek explained in his acknowledgements to the text of his book, which was written with the help of Father Daniel Flaherty, S.J., that he had no idea that his case had aroused so much interest in his home country from which he had been away for twenty-four years:

Only on my arrival in America did I become fully aware of the many people whose generous efforts went into effecting my return. In the first place, I find I owe a great debt of gratitude to Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, and their White House staffs, as also to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, for the concern they showed over my case. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Honorable Thaddeus Machrowicz, former Congressman from Michigan, and Matthew S. Szymczak, former Governor of the Federal Reserve, for their efforts on my behalf.

Especial thanks, of course, are due to the Secretary of State, and particularly to Mr. Robert Murphy, Deputy Under Secretary of State, who started the proceedings toward my release, as well as to the Department of State Officers at the American Embassy in Moscow and in Washington who through all the eight years since my case first became known gave of their time and energy to bring about my release.

I owe another special debt of thanks to my fellow Jesuits, Father Daniel E. Power, S.J., and Father Edward W. McCawley, S.J. It was Fr. Power who first brought information about my case to the attention of the State Department, and Fr. McCawley who gave so generously and unsparingly of himself and his time to keep my case alive and help bring it to a successful outcome.

To my sister, Helen Gearhart, I am sincerely and deeply grateful for all her untiring efforts in Washington on my behalf. She and my other sister, Sister Mary Evangeline, O.S.F., were a constant source of encouragement to me by the deep sisterly concern so evident in their many letters and their unfailing confidence during the long years of waiting and sometimes disappointment.

Finally, I want to thank all my other brothers and sisters, my fellow Jesuits and the many other priests, the Bernardine Sisters and many other nuns, the many friends and relatives and all those whose names I do not even yet know, especially the schoolchildren, whose prayers and offerings made possible my eventual return.

May the good effects of all those prayers continue still to “work together unto good” for the many people to whom I devoted so many years in Russia.

Walter J. Ciszek, S.J.  Full text of "With God in Russia by Walter J. Ciszek (1-Aug-1986) Paperback".)

All right, this should give you some idea about the willingness of the late Father Walter Ciszek to suffer willing for Our Lord and His Holy Church in his labor for the sanctification and salvation of souls in Soviet Russia.

Oh, yes, how do I know that Father Ciszek supported the message of Our Lady of Garabandal?

Well, I did not know until 1986, two years after Father Ciszek’s death on December 8, 1964, when I met Mr. Harry Daley, who was a close friend of Nassau County District Attorney Dennis E. Dillon, who served in his post between 1975 and 2005, was then campaign manager for the campaign that Dillon, then a registered Democrat, was undertaking for the governorship of the Right to Life Party of the State of New York along with a political science professed named Thomas A. Droleskey, whose contract to teach at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn, New York, had not been renewed because of his outspoken opposition to the institution’s divesting itself of its Crucifixes in exchange for government granting.

Harry explained to me at length that his friend, Father Walter Ciszek, was fully supportive of the credibility of both the apparitions and Our Lady’s messages conveyed to Conchita Gonzalez, Mary Loli, and Joey Lamongino from 1961 to 1965.

A website devoted to the promotion of the messages of Garabandal contains a very detailed description of what Our Lady said on January 1, 1965, would the “Warning” given to everyone in the world to see the true state of their souls. The Warning would be followed by a major Punishment in a year’s time, which itself would be followed by The Miracle:

As for the WARNING, the initial references date it was on January 1st, 1965 during the apparitions of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Garabandal. On this day, Conchita was alone in the pines, when the Virgin informed her that she would give one last message to the world, which would end the cycle of Garabandal. Then she transmitted a private message, which she promptly communicated to Father Laffineur. It reads as follows:

"The Warning that the Virgin will send us is in the form of punishment, to bring the good ones closer to God and to warn others. What the Warning consists of, I cannot reveal. The Virgin asked me to keep it a secret. Please God that, thanks to this Warning we can amend and commit less sins against it. " 

"Will it cause deaths?" asked Laffineur in writing. 

"If we die" - was the answer, "it will not be due to the fact of the Warning itself, but because of the emotion we will have when we see and feel it". "Simple, precise and very clear words" - says Laffineur. 

"It should have been enough, as Sister Lucy of Fatima should have been, when, in 1938, she wrote to her bishop:" I believe that what they call the northern lights is precisely the sign that the Virgin gave me that the events prophesied are close ". These events have caused more than 26 million deaths". Regarding the nature of the Warning, we also have this explanation from Conchita to Aunt Maximina, which she later consigned in writing: 

"He told me that one day we would suffer a horrible disaster. In all parts of the world. No one will escape. The good ones, to get closer to God; the others, to amend themselves. It would be better to die than to endure, for five minutes that whatever, what awaits us. "

"Its realization, on the other hand, will be a new reason for credibility, announcing it and reaffirming it to everyone is the most fraternal concern we can have for the world", advises Father Laffineur. 

"If I did not know the Punishment that is to come" - continues Conchita, explaining to the young Angelita -, "I would say that there is no greater punishment than the Warning. But it will last a very short time". "It will be horrible to the maximum degree"

 - he explains further. 

"Ah, if I could tell it to all of you as the Virgin told me to me! He is a fruit of our sins. It can happen from one moment to the next; I wait for him every day. If they knew what yes, they would be horrified! ". 

"Why don't you make it public, so that everyone who comes here will know it?" - someone asks him. 

"I'm tired of saying, nobody cares." 

Days later, they return to the subject: 

"Conchita, since you made these confidences to me, I often think of heaven." "Me too" - answers the psychic. "Especially when I go to bed. I am very afraid that it will happen during the night. We are not aware of the extent to which we have offended the Lord. 

The Virgin told me that everyone knows about the existence of hell and heaven. But they think in this only out of fear and not out of love for God. Because of our sins, we ourselves will be the cause of the nature of the Warning. " Further clarifications are found in the responses to a questionnaire of September 14, 1965: 

"The Warning is something that comes directly from God. It will be visible in the whole world, wherever someone is. It will be like the revelation (inside each one) of our sins. They will see it and feel it. both believers and non-believers from all countries ". And more: "It is like a purification for the Miracle. It is like a catastrophe. It will make us think about the dead, that is, that we would rather be dead than suffer the Warning". 

Regarding the effects on each person's heart, Conchita explains: "The Warning will be a correction of the conscience of the world ... The Lord will send you to purify us, so that we can better appreciate the Miracle, by which we are clearly proved. your love ". A lady, after hearing Conchita's explanations, observed: "It is known that a comet is approaching Earth. Is this not the Warning?" "I don't know what a comet is. But if it is something that depends on the will of men, no. If, however, it depends on God, it is possible." "We left for the church" - continues that lady - and Conchita took my arm. 

"I said:" "Conchita, pray for me, I am afraid, very afraid." "Yes, the Warning is terrible! A thousand times worse than earthquakes". The lady pales. "What is the nature of the Warning?" he asks. "It will be like fire. It will not burn our flesh, but we will feel it in body and spirit. All nations and all people will feel it in the same way. No one will escape. And even non-believers will know the fear of God. Even if you get home and close the door and shutters, you will not escape, you will feel and see, despite everything. Yes, it is true that the Virgin told me the name of the phenomenon. This name exists in the dictionary. It starts with A. me not to reveal. " 

Conchita, I'm so scared! Smiling, she took her friend by the arm: 

"Yes, but after the Warning, you will love God much more." A complementary aspect of Conchita's statements is provided to us by Jacinta, in February 1976:

"The Warning will be of very short duration, a few minutes; but that little time will become tremendously long, due to the pain it will cause us ... It will come upon us like a fire from heaven, which will reverberate deeply within each one. In its light we will see the state of our conscience very clearly, we will see what it means to lose God, we will feel the purifying action of a burning flame. In short, it will be like passing through the private judgment while still alive, in the privacy of each one . 

When will the WARNING take place? 

Jacinta González quote, in August 1989, about the Notice: "The Warning is associated with a kind of" invasion "in Rome, in which communism will play a very important role. And that these events would take place before the Warning, which would occur when the situation is at its worst". 

This purification aims to get us in shape for the Miracle; otherwise, how could we resist the superhuman and wonderful experience that we will have at the Miracle? Perhaps it was because he had not previously gone through the Warning that Father Luís Andreu died, hours after contemplating what even the girls have not yet seen. 

What will happen before the Warning ...

Talking about communism today seems almost outdated. Is communism no longer a matter of the past? According to what the Blessed Virgin said to the visionaries of Garabandal, the answer is "no". Communism will come again and will cause great pain and suffering. "When communism returns, then everything will happen." - Quote from Conchita in the German book by Albrecht Weber

"What do you mean, come again? "Yes, when he comes again." "Do you mean that before that, communism will disappear first before that happens?" - 

NOTE: it must be borne in mind that at the time the book was published, communism was still very much alive in many countries in Europe. 

"I don't know, Our Lady simply said" when communism returns again.” 

INTRODUCTION 

In the two nights preceding the Corpus Christi party in 1962, the young seers of Garabandal had several visions; but the visions of these nights were different from the ones they used to have. They heard screams of terror, as future events took place before their eyes. The girls' screams were so terrible that they shocked the crowd there, causing intense fear. One witness, Manolin Diez, said that these screams were not normal, especially in girls 12 or 13 years old. 

The second night was the worst, when the visionaries saw images of the Punishment that God will send, if the world does not change after the Warning and the Miracle. This document will only specify what the girls saw on the first of those two nights, which were called "The Screaming Nights". 

On the first night, they saw the time that will come before the Warning, a time of great suffering for the Church and the world. Conchita was not present with the other three on that first night. But she went into ecstasy at her home and fell to her knees with such force that it started to bleed. She saw the same things as the others, and some of the revelations appear to have been given to her as well. Then, in other visions, she would learn more about this particular subject. 

THE PERSECUTION 

Their faces at the time of the visions attest to the trauma felt by Jacinta, Mari Loli and Mari Cruz, during the first night of the screams. Mari Loli seems to have been the first to talk about it in 1967, when she gave information to a Mexican priest, Padre Gustavo Morelos. Three years later, the same information, held by Maria Saraco, was written and confirmed by Mari Loli with her own signature. The information that was transmitted was as follows: 

"Despite continuing to see Our Lady (during the first night of the screams), we saw a large crowd of people who were suffering intensely and who were crying out in terror. The Blessed Mother explained to us that this great tribulation, which was not the Punishment, would come because a time would have come when the Church seemed to be on the verge of dying. She (the Church) would go through terrible suffering. We asked Our Lady what this great suffering is and she told us that it was the " communism". 

This first revelation about communism would be explained later by the visionaries. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the freedom of the Eastern Bloc countries that took place in the following years, we are left with the idea that communism is over. And that is what the media does. However, not everyone is convinced. A few years ago, in Canada, I spoke with a priest from an Eastern European country who lived under the communist government. He told me that Americans are too naive to think that communism is dead; in your industry today, the same people who were in power during the communist regime are still today. Another person from a country other than Eastern Europe, expressed the same feelings. According to Garabandal, communism will again be a force that will be used with a final attempt at world domination. 

INTERVIEW WITH FR. BENAC

On September 29, 1978, Father Francis Benac, S.J., interviewed Mari Loli at his home in Massachusetts. Here are some of the questions and answers from that interview. 

Father BENAC: Did Our Lady speak of communism? 

MARI LOLI: Our Lady spoke many times about communism. I don't remember how many times, but she said it would be a time when it would seem that communism would involve the whole world. I think it was when she told us that priests would have a hard time celebrating masses and talking about God and divine things. 

Father BENAC: Did Our Lady speak of people who would be put to death? 

MARI LOLI: What Our Lady said was that the priests would have to hide, but I didn't see whether they would be killed or not. She did not say exactly whether they would be killed, but I am sure they would be martyred.

Father BENAC: Your mother told me that one night you were upstairs, with your father, and that you cried for an hour. Then your father said something about it: "I saw something very touching. Loli was crying, while saying:" Oh, are people going to suffer like this? Should people suffer this way? Oh, how you make me suffer! "Do you remember what I said at this moment? 

MARI LOLI: It was related to communism and what was going to happen in the Church and people, because all these things were the repercussions among peopleare of communist ideology will create such confusion that people will not know what is right and what is wrong. 

This last statement by Mari Loli should cause us admiration. It seems that little consideration has been given to the possibility that an evil force has deliberately infiltrated the Church with the intention of destroying it. The other day, I was talking to Harry Daley, author of "Miracle in Garabandal". Harry was a good friend of Father Walter Ciszek, S.J., who spent 15 years in Soviet prisons and labor camps in Siberia, and lived to say it all in his book "With God in Russia". Harry visited Father Ciszek (who believes in Garabandal) and on one of his visits, Father explained how the Communists tried to recruit him, promising him all kinds of benefits, if he worked as their agent in the Church. (The Warning of Garabandal. Also see Our Lady's Prophesies Garabandal.)

Permit me to remind the readership of this website (by the way, how are the eleven of you doing these days) that the Communists’ efforts to recruit Father Ciszek were hardly extraordinary.

Stalin’s NKVD (later KGB) placed well-groomed candidates into Catholic seminaries here in the United States of America and elsewhere in the supposedly “free” world, especially after World War I and during the height of the Great Depression in 1930s:

Mrs. Bella Dodd, who was an important member of Communist Party of the United States of American (CPUSA) before being baptized conditionally into the Faith in 1952 at the hands of Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen, explained how she herself had planned and implemented the infiltration of Communist agents into the Catholic Church in the 1930s and 1940s. The material below was published in Inside the Vatican, which is a publication of Dr. Robert Moynihan, a sedeplenist (the seat is filled), on September 1, 2018:

“In the late 1920s and 1930s, I personally put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to weaken the Catholic Church from within.

“The idea was for these men to be ordained and progress to positions of influence and authority as Monsignors and Bishops…

“Right now they are in the highest places where they are working to bring about change in order to weaken the Church’s effectiveness against Communism.

“These changes will be so drastic that you will not even recognize the Catholic Church.

“Of all the world’s religions, the Catholic Church was the only one feared by the Communists, for it was its only effective opponent.

“The whole idea was to destroy, not the institution of the Church, but rather the faith of the people, and even use the institution of the Church, if possible, to destroy the faith through the promotion of a pseudo-religion.

“Something that resembled Catholicism but was not the real thing.

“Once the faith was destroyed, there would be a guilt complex introduced into the Church… to label the ‘Church of the past’ as being oppressive, authoritarian, full of prejudices, arrogant in claiming to be the sole possessor of truth, and responsible for the divisions of religious bodies throughout the centuries.

“This would be necessary in order to shame Church leaders into an ‘openness to the world,’ and to a more flexible attitude toward all religions and philosophies. The Communists would then exploit this openness in order to undermine the Church.” (taken from Dr. Bella Dodd, lecture at Fordham University in 1953) (Inside the the Vatican Newsflash Letter: Some Enemy Has Done This.)

Researcher Stephanie Block published an article in 2018 containing the testimony of another Communist Party of the United States of America defector, Manning Johnson, that was given to the United States House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American Activities:

“Once the tactic of infiltrating religious organizations was set by the Kremlin, the actual mechanics of implementing the ‘new line’ was a question of following the general experiences of the living church movement in Russia where the Communists discovered that the destruction of religion could proceed much faster through infiltration of the church by Communist agents operating within the church itself.

The Communist leadership in the United States realized that the infiltration tactic in this country would have to adapt itself to American conditions and the religious makeup peculiar to this country. In the earliest stages it was determined that with only small forces available it would be necessary to concentrate Communist agents in the seminaries and divinity schools. The practical conclusion, drawn by the Red leaders was that these institutions would make it possible for a small Communist minority to influence the ideology of future clergymen in the paths most conducive to Communist purposes.”

In general, the idea was to divert the emphasis of clerical thinking from the spiritual to the material and political — by political, of course, is meant politics based on the Communist doctrine of conquest of power. Instead of emphasis towards the spiritual and matters of the soul, the new and heavy emphasis was to deal with those matters which, in the main, led toward the Communist program of “immediate demands.”

The plan was to make the seminaries the neck of a funnel through which thousands of potential clergymen would issue forth, carrying with them, in varying degrees, an ideology and slant which would aid in neutralizing the anti-Communist character of the church and also to use the clergy to spearhead important Communist projects.

This policy was successful beyond even Communist expectations. The combination of Communist clergymen, clergymen with a pro-Communist ideology, plus thousands of clergymen who were sold the principle of considering Communist causes as progressive, within 20 years, furnished the Soviet apparatus with a machine which was used as a religious cover for the overall Communist operation ranging from immediate demands to actually furnishing aid in espionage and outright treason.”

In the early 1930’s the Communists instructed thousands of their members to rejoin their ancestral religious groups and to operate in cells designed to take control of churches for Communist purposes. This method was not only propounded, but was executed with great success among large elements of American church life. Communists operating a double-pronged infiltration, both through elements of Communist-controlled clergy, and Communist-controlled laymen, managed to pervert and weaken entire stratas of religious life in the United States.

Communists in churches and other religious organizations were instructed to utilize the age-old tradition of the sanctity of the church as a cover for their own dastardly deeds. Through Reds in religion, we have a true living example of the old saying: “The Devil doth quote the Scripture.”

The Communists learned that the clergyman under their control served as a useful “respectable face” for most of their front activities. In this way the name of religion was used to spearhead the odious plots hatched by the agents of anti-religious Soviet communism.” (emphasis added) (Stephanie Block, The Marxist Core of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.)

We have seen the results of this infiltration all too clearly as the seeds planted in the 1920s and 1930s produced priests and bishops who trained others and came of age during the “Second” Vatican Council after having engineered the “election” of a fellow traveler, Angelo Roncalli, on October 28, 1958, the Feasts of Saints Simon and Jude. The late Jorge Mario Bergoglio was simply the end product of such global infiltration, and part two of this series will demonstrate that Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV is continuing Bergoglio’s policy of appeasing the Chicoms in the name of “dialogue” and “mutual understanding.”

Now, let me make it clear at this juncture that I am not asking my readers to believe in the apparitions of Our Lady at Garabandal, Spain, although I think that they are worthy of belief, especially since “The Warning” about which Our Lady spoke on January 1, 1965, will be a mercy from God to show us where we stand with Him in the light of His Divine Justice.  

This having been noted, no one has to believe in Garabandal, but the point of this commentary is to note that Father Walter Ciszek believed in the messages of Our Lady of Garabandal and that, I believe, would be enough for the authorities behind the walls of the Occupied Vatican on the West Bank of the Tiber River to stop Father Ciszek’s cause as to “beatify” and/or “canonize” him would be to give credibility to apparitions about which these revolutionaries have never approved and, indeed, run contrary to the conciliar sect’s efforts to appease Bolshevism and, subsequently, Chinese-style Marxism-Leninism, ever since the Metz Accord just before the “Second” Vatican Council began on October 11, 1962, the Feast of the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that forbade any mention of Communism, no less condemnation, at that infamous Robber Council :

In preparation for the Council, Catholic bishops around the world were polled by mail by the Office of the Secretariat to learn their opinions on topics to be considered at the Council. Communism topped the list.

However, as documented in the previous chapter, at the instigation of Cardinal Montini, two months before the opening of the Council, Pope John XXIII approved the signing of the Metz Accord with Moscow officials, whereby the Soviets would permit two representatives from the Russian State Church to attend the Council in exchange for absolute and total silence at the Council on the subject of Communism/Marxism.

With the exceptions of Cardinal Montini, who instructed Pope John to enter into negotiations with the Soviets, Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, who signed the Accord, and Bishop Jan Willebrands, who made the final contacts with the representatives of the Russian State Church, the Church Fathers at the Council were ignorant of the existence and nature of the Metz Agreement and the horrendous betrayal that it represented. (Mrs. Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, pp. 1135-1136)

Why didn’t the last Ecumenical Council condemn Communism? A secret accord made at Metz supplies an answer.  

Those who pass by the convent of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Borny - on the outskirts of the French city of Metz - never imagine that something of transcendental importance occurred in the residence of Fr. Lagarde, the convent’s chaplain. In a hall of this religious residence in August 1962 - two months before Vatican Council II opened - a secret meeting of the greatest importance between two high-ranking personalities took place.

One dignitary was a Cardinal of the Curia, Eugène Tisserant, representing Pope John XXIII; the other was metropolitan Nikodin, who spoke in the name of the Russian Schismatic Church. 

This encounter had consequences that changed the direction of Council, which was already prepared to open. In effect, the meeting at Metz determined a change in the trajectory of the very History of the Church in the 20th century. 

What was the matter of such great importance that was resolved at his meeting? Based on the documents that are known today, there it was established that Communism would not be condemned by Vatican Council II. In 1962, The Vatican and the Schismatic Russian Church came to an agreement. According to its terms, the Russian “Orthodox Church” agreed to send observers to Vatican II under the condition that no condemnation whatsoever of communism should be made there (1). 1. Ulysses Floridi, Moscou et le Vatican, Paris: France-Empire, Paris, 1979, pp. 147-48; Romano Amerio, Iota Unum, K.C., MO: Sarto House, 1996, pp. 75-76; Ricardo de la Cierva, Oscura rebelion en la Iglesia, Barcelona: Plaza & Janes, 1987, pp. 580-81. And why were the consequences of such a pact so far-reaching and important? 

Because in the 20th century a principal enemy of the Catholic Church was Communism. As such, until Vatican II it had been condemned numerous times by the Magisterium. Moreover, in the early ’60s a new condemnation would have been quite damaging, since Communism was passing through a serious crisis, both internally and externally. On one hand, it was losing credibility inside the USSR since the people were becoming increasingly discontent with the horrendous administrative results of 45 years of Communist demagogy. On the other hand, outside the USSR Communism had not been able to persuade the workers and poor of free countries to take up its banner. In fact, up until that time it had never won a free election. Therefore, the leaders of international Communism decided that it was time to begin to change the appearances of the regime in order to retain the power they had and to experiment with new methods of conquest. So in the ‘60s President Nikita Khrushchev suddenly began to smile and talk about dialogue (2). 2. Plinio Correa de Oliveira, Unperceived Ideological Transshipment and Dialogue, New York: Crusade for a Christian Civilization, 1982, pp. 8-15. This would have been a particularly inopportune moment for the Pope or the Council to issue a formal condemnation, which could have either seriously damaged or possibly even destroyed the Communist regime.. 

A half secret act 

Speaking about the liberty at Vatican II to deal with diverse topics, Professor Romano Amerio revealed some previously unpublished facts. “The salient and half secret point that should be noted,” he stated, “is the restriction on the Council’s liberty to which John XXIII had agreed a few months earlier, in making an accord with the Orthodox Church by which the patriarchate of Moscow accepted the papal invitation to send observers to the Council, while the Pope for his part guaranteed the Council would refrain from condemning Communism. The negotiations took place at Metz in August 1962, and all the details of time and place were given at a press conference by Mgr. Paul Joseph Schmitt, the Bishop of that Diocese [newspaper Le Lorrain, 2/9/63]. The negotiations ended in an agreement signed by metropolitan Nikodim for the Orthodox Church and Cardinal Tisserant, the Dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals, for the Holy See.     

“News of the agreement was given in the France Nouvelle, the central bulletin of the French communist party in the edition of January 16-22, 1963 in these terms: ‘Because the world socialist system is showing its superiority in an uncontestable fashion, and is strong through the support of hundreds and hundreds of millions of men, the Church can no longer be content with a crude anti-communism. As part of its dialogue with the Russian Orthodox Church, it has even promised there will be no direct attack on the Communist system at the Council.’ On the Catholic side, the daily La Croix of February 15, 1963 gave notice of the agreement, concluding: “‘As a consequence of this conversation, Msgr. Nikodim agreed that someone should go to Moscow carrying an invitation, on condition that guarantees were given concerning the apolitical attitude of the Council.’ 

“Moscow’s condition, namely that the Council should say nothing about Communism, was not, therefore, a secret, but the isolated publication of it made no impression on general opinion, as it was not taken up by the press at large and circulated, either because of the apathetic and anaesthetized attitude to Communism common in clerical circles or because the Pope took action to impose silence in the matter. Nonetheless, the agreement had a powerful, albeit silent, effect on the course of the Council when requests for a renewal of the condemnation of Communism were rejected in order to observe this agreement to say nothing about it” (3). 3. Romano Amerio, Iota Unum, pp. 65-66. Thus the Council, which made statements on capitalism and colonialism, said nothing specific about the greatest evil of the age, Communism. While the Vatican Monsignors were smiling at the Russian Schismatic representatives, many Bishops were in prison and innumerable faithful were either persecuted or driven underground for their fidelity to the Holy Roman Catholic Church. 

The Kremlin-Vatican negotiations 

This important information about Vatican-Kremlin negotiations is confirmed in an article ‘The mystery of the Rome-Moscow pact’ published in the October 1989 issue of 30 Dias, which quotes statements made by the Bishop of Metz, Paul Joseph Schmitt. In a February 9, 1963 interview with the newspaperRepublicain Lorrain, Mgr. Schmitt said:

“It was in our region that the ‘secret’ meeting of Cardinal Tisserant with archbishop Nikodin occurred. The exact place was the residence of Fr. Lagarde, chaplain for the Little Sister of the Poor in Borny [on the outskirts of Metz]. Here for the first time the arrival of the prelates of the Russian Church was mentioned. After this meeting, the conditions for the presence of the Russian church’s observers were established by Cardinal Willebrands, an assistant of Cardinal Bea. Archbishop Nikodin agreed that an official invitation should be sent to Moscow, with the guarantee of the apolitical character of the Council” (4). 4. 30 Dias, October 1988, pp. 55-56.

The same source also transcribed a letter of Bishop Georges Roches regarding the Pact of Metz:

“That accord was negotiated between the Kremlin and the Vatican at the highest level .… But I can assure you …. that the decision to invite Russian Orthodox observers to Vatican Council II was made personally by His Holiness John XXIII with the encouragement of Cardinal Montini, who was counselor to the Patriarch of Venice when he was Archbishop of Milan…. Cardinal Tisserant received formal orders to negotiate the accord and to make sure that it would be observed during the Council” (5). 5. Ibid. p. 57

In a book published some time after this, German theologian Fr. Bernard Häring - who was secretary-coordinator at the Council for the redaction of Gaudium et Spes - revealed the more profound reason for the ‘pigeon-holing’ of apetition that many conciliar Fathers signed asking Paul VI and the Council to condemn Communism: “When around two dozen Bishops requested a solemn condemnation of Communism,” stated Fr. Häring, “Msgr. Glorieux …. and I were blamed like scapegoats. I have no reason to deny that I did everything possible to avoid this condemnation, which rang out clearly like a political condemnation. I knew that John XXIII had promised Moscow authorities that the Council would not condemn communism in order to assure the participation of observers of the Russian Orthodox church” (6). . . .

1. Catholic doctrine has always emphatically condemned Communism. It would be possible, should it be necessary, to publish a small book composed exclusively of anti-communist pontifical documents. 

2. It would have been natural, therefore, for Vatican Council II, which met in Rome from 1962 to 1965, to have confirmed these condemnations against the greatest enemy of the Church and Christian Civilization in the 20th century. 

3. In addition to this, 213 Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishop solicited Paul VI to have the Council make such a condemnation. Later, 435 Conciliar Fathers repeated the same request. The two petitions were duly delivered within the time limits established by the Internal Guidelines of the Council. Nonetheless, inexplicably, neither petition ever came up for debate. The first was not taken into consideration. As for the second, after the Council had closed, it was alleged that it had been “lost” by Mgr. Achille Glorieux, secretary of the commission that would have been entrusted with the request. 

4. The Council closed without making any express censure of Communism. Why was no censure made? The matter seemed wrapped in an enigmatic fog. Only later did these significant facts on the topic appear. The point of my article is to gather and present information from several different sources for the consideration of my reader. How can the actions of the Catholic Prelates who inspired, ordered, followed and maintained the decisions of the Pact of Metz be explained? I leave the answer to my reader.  (The Council of Metz)

The future Paul VI, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, directly betrayed Catholic priests sent behind the Iron Curtain by Pope Pius XII, effectively sentencing these priests to death or imprisonment:

An elderly gentleman from Paris who worked as an official interpreter for high-level clerics at the Vatican in the early 1950s told this writer that the Soviets blackmailed Montini into revealing the names of priests whom the Vatican had clandestinely sent behind the Iron Curtain to minister to Catholics in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The Soviet secret police were on hand as soon as the priests crossed over the Russian border and the priest infiltrators were either shot or sent to the gulag.

The extent to which Pope Paul VI was subject to blackmail by the enemies of the Church will probably never be known. It may be that, in so far as the Communists and the Socialists were concerned, blackmail was entirely unnecessary given Montini's cradle to grave fascination and affinity for the Left. On the other hand, the Italian Freemasons, M16, the OSS and later the CIA and the Mafia were likely to have used blackmail and extortion against Montini beginning early in his career as a junior diplomat, then as Archbishop of Milan and finally as Pope Paul VI. (Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, p. 1156.)

Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul the Sick engaged in a policy of Communist surrender known as Ostpolik (East politics) wherein he appointed men as "bishops" in Communist countries behind the Iron Curtain who were friendly to, if not actual agents of, the Communist authorities in those countries. These "bishops" had a perverse "apostolic mandate," if you will, given then sub secreto by Montini: never criticize Communism or any Communist officials. In other words, be good stooges for various "people's" and "democratic" republics in exchange for promoting the false "gospel" of conciliarism. (Appendix B has more about Cardinal Mindszenty’s case below.)

As we know, Karol Jozef Wojtyla/John Paul II started the process of selling out the faithful Catholics in Red China to the so-called Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association two years after Joseph Cardinal Kung had been exiled to the United States of America in 1986, a sellout that was advanced by Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI in 2007 (see (A Betrayal Worthy of the Antichrist) that was completed eleven years later by Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Bergoglio the Red Surrenders Faithful Catholics to Their Persecutors, Neville Bergoglio's Appeasement of the Chicom Monsters, and Doubly Betrayed by Jorge and His False Church).

However, there is more to the story of Garabandal than the warnings about Communism as Our Lady also warned about confusion in the Church and said that many bishops and priests would lead the faithful astray, something that applies directly to the conciliar revolutionaries and incline them to disparage Father Ciszek's belief in those warnings as "imcompatible with sanctity" to be included in the conciliar pantheon. 

To compound the matter, Pacifist Bob Prevost is such a naïve stooge of the “left” that he participated in a Communist-sponsored protest in Rome, Italy, against President Ronald Wilson Reagan’s plans to introduce Pershing II Cruise Missiles into Western Europe, oblivious to the fact that Yuri Andropov, who had, as the Soviet Ambassador to Hungary, urged Soviet Premier Nikita Khruhschev to put down the anti-Communist revolution in Hungary in October of 1956 and was in 1983 the First General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,  did not want the peace of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ but a “piece” of every country in the Western world:

(LifeSiteNews) — A newly unearthed photograph taken in Rome in 1983 shows a young Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, participating in a left-leaning mass demonstration against NATO missile deployment.

On April 14 Luca Casarini, an Italian left-wing activist known for his role in the “no-global” movement and, more recently, for his work in migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean, posted an image on his Facebook profile showing a young Father Robert Prevost during a peace march. Several news outlets have since picked up the story.

“You’ve come a long way, brother Robert. But you haven’t changed direction,” Casarini commented in his post.

On October 22, 1983, during a large march for peace held in Rome against the installation of NATO Cruise missiles in Comiso, Sicily, and across Europe, a young Prevost – not long ordained and engaged in studies in canon law – was photographed among a group of members of the Augustinian order carrying a sign reading, “Giovani agostiniani per la pace” (“Young Augustinians for Peace”).

The protest, which drew close to a million participants, took place amid heightened Cold War tensions and widespread mobilization for nuclear disarmament, and was organized by a broad coalition of pacifist groups and political organizations, including the Italian Communist Party (PCI), the Italian Communist Youth Federation (FGCI), and peace committees active at NATO bases.

The black-and-white image, which has recently circulated widely on social media platforms, shows Prevost in the front row of demonstrators. According to sources, the photograph was taken by Gianni Novelli, a Stigmatine priest known for his involvement in the Base Christian Communities and for his leadership within Cipax, the Interconfessional Center for Peace.

Novelli played a prominent role in ecclesial networks associated with non-violence and peace activism, and became a leading figure of the so‑called “Catholic dissent” initiative after the Second Vatican Council. After leaving his religious order, he devoted himself to pacifism in an ecumenical sense.

The Base Christian Communities (in Spanish: comunidades de base), which had emerged in the 1960s and 1970s in Italy and Latin America, played a role in fostering grassroots engagement on left-leaning social and political issues. These communities were later viewed with particular interest by Pope Francis.

The unearthed image was first published a decade later, in 1993, in the Italian magazine Mosaico di pace, within a feature dedicated to Christian commitment to non-violence. At that time, the photograph was presented as part of a broader reflection on the involvement of Catholic groups in peace movements during the Cold War period.

Decades after it was taken, the photograph gained public attention again. According to the same sources, in November 2025, Archbishop Giovanni Ricchiuti, national president of Pax Christi, presented a copy of the image to Pope Leo XIV during an official meeting.

The demonstration in which Prevost participated formed part of a wider movement opposing the deployment of Euromissiles in Europe in the late 1970s and ‘80s. The installation of Cruise missiles at Italy’s Comiso air base had become a focal point for international protest, drawing activists, religious figures, and political groups into coordinated action. The Rome rally represented one of the largest such mobilizations in Italy and in the world during that period.

However, the global mobilization against the missiles was part of a broader international landscape of opposition to the Cold War – often encouraged by the USSR, which included pro‑peace propaganda aimed at undermining the U.S. nuclear strategy directed against Russia.

It is perfectly possible Prevost may have taken part more for peace and nuclear disarmament rather than for the organizer – the communists. However, it still appears naïve on his part largely because the organizers were part of the Italian Communist Party (notoriously a cell of the USSR, directly financed with Kremlin funds).

In particular, the Italian Communist Party operated – as historians now widely acknowledge – as a Soviet propaganda outpost. The pacifism promoted by the Russians also served the purpose of internal disruption and of slowing the deterrence efforts of the NATO bloc.

The photo can also be found among the images preserved in the historical archive of the Italian Communist Party. Alongside the Augustinians (see here), members of several other religious orders – such as Franciscans and Jesuits – also took part in the event. The demonstration, held in those days also in other important European cities such as London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Bonn, brought together people of all religions and political orientations, though it was clearly oriented in an anti‑NATO direction.

The Magisterium of the Catholic Church teaches that socialism in all its forms, including communism, is infallibly condemned. As Pope Pius XI stated in his 1937 encyclical Divini Redemptoris: “Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever. Those who permit themselves to be deceived into lending their aid towards the triumph of Communism in their own country will be the first to fall victims of their error.”

Luca Casarini was personally invited by Pope Francis to take part in the Synod on Synodality held at the Vatican from October 4 to 29, 2023, as one of the lay guests with the right to speak but not to vote. His presence was both highly symbolic and controversial. (1983 photo shows future Pope Leo marching in communist-organized peace rally in Rome.)

It is necessary to make an important distinction: anyone was free to disagree with President Reagan’s insistence on placing the Pershing II Cruise missiles in Western Europe forty-three years ago.

However, to believe, as the young “Father” Robert Leo Prevost did, that a “peace demonstration” was going to produce “peace” is to demonstrate that one does not believe that the peace of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is not of this world nor that all conflicts in this world are the result of Original Sin and the Actual Sins of men, the effects of which can be ameliorated only by the sanctifying offices of the Catholic Church.

Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV may not be a card-carrying Communist, but, aping his wretched predecessor, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, believes religiously in every bit of Communist-inspired ideology (globalism, environmentalism, feminism, statism, class warfare politics) and thus shows himself repeatedly as one thinks that it is possible to achieve something approaching doing everything they could to recruit priests for their cause believed in a Marian a New World Order utopianism of the quasi-Marxist and/or Judeo-Masonic variety through “dialogue,” “coexistence,” and “universal brotherhood in which membership in the Catholic Church is merely optional, the Social Reign of Christ the King is forbidden.

There can be no place in the conciliar pantheon of “saints” for a holy priest who labored physically as a prisoner in the Soviet Union while laboring more importantly for the sanctification and salvation of soul must be stopped because he knew from personal experience the evils of Communism and its agents’ efforts to infiltrate the Church, and there can certainly be no place for a priest who believed that Our Lady herself was warning us about Communism.

We, though, can certainly pray to Father Walter Ciszek to help us to be as faithful in our own daily duties to Our Lord, Our Lady, and to Holy Mother Church as he was so that we might plant a few seeds for the day in which a true pope will be restored to the Throne of Saint Peter and this time of apostasy, sacrilege, betrayal, and idolatry will end.

Our Lady of Garabandal, pray for us.

 

Appendix A

On the Transferred Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist

Today, Saturday, April 25, 2026, is the Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist. 

Dom Prosper Gueranger provided us with a detailed hagiography of the Lion, Saint Mark the Evangelist, reminder us that is truly the case that the Gospel according to Saint Mark is truly the Gospel of our first pope, Saint Peter:

The Cycle of holy mother Church brings before us today, the Lion, who, together with the Man, the Ox and the Eagle, stands before the Throne of God. (Ezechiel 1:10) It was on this day, that Mark ascended from earth to heaven, radiant with his triple aureole of Evangelist, Apostle, and Martyr.

As the preaching made to Israel had its four great representatives, — Isaias, Jeremias, Ezechiel, and Daniel; so, likewise, would God have the New Covenant to be embodied in the four Gospels, which were to make known to the world the Life and teachings of his divine Son. The Holy Fathers tell us, that the Gospels are like the four streams which watered the Garden of pleasure, (Genesis 2:10) and that this Garden was a figure of the future Church. The first of the Evangelists, — the first to register the actions and words of our Redeemer, — is Matthew, whose star will rise in September; the second is Mark, whose brightness gladdens us today; the third is Luke, whose rays will shine upon us in October; the fourth is John, whom we have already seen in Bethlehem, at the Crib of our Emmanuel.

Mark was the beloved disciple of Peter; he was the brilliant satellite of the Sun of the Church. He wrote his Gospel at Rome, under the eyes of the Prince of the Apostles. The Church was already in possession of the history given by Matthew; but the Faithful of Rome wished their own Apostle to narrate what he had witnessed. Peter refused to write it himself, but he bade his disciple take up his pen, and the Holy Ghost guided the hand of the new Evangelist. Mark follows the account given by Matthew; he abridges it, and yet he occasionally adds a word, or an incident, which plainly prove to us that Peter, who had seen and heard all, was his living and venerated authority. One would have almost expected, that the new Evangelist would pass over in silence the history of his master’s fall, or,, at least, have said as little as possible about it but no, — the Gospel written by Mark is more detailed on Peter’s denial than is that of Matthew; and as we read it, we cannot help feeling, that the tears, elicited by Jesus’ look, when in the house of Caiphas, were flowing down the Apostle’s cheeks, as he described the sad event. Mark’s work being finished, Peter examined it and gave it his sanction the several Churches joyfully received this second account of the mysteries of the world’s redemption, and the name of Mark was made known throughout the whole earth.

Matthew begins his Gospel with the human genealogy of the Son of God, and has thus realized the prophetic type of the Man; Mark fulfills that of the Lion, for he commences with the preaching of John the Baptist, whose office as precursor of the Messias, had been foretold by Isaias, where he spoke of the voice of one crying in the wilderness, — as the Lion that makes the desert echo with his roar.

Mark having written his Gospel, was next to labor as an Apostle. Peter sent him, first, to Aquileia, where he founded an important Church but this was not enough for an Evangelist. When the time designed by God came, and Egypt, — the source of countless errors, — was to receive the truth, and the haughty and noisy Alexandria was to be raised to the dignity of the second Church of Christendom — the second See of Peter — Mark was sent by his master to effect this great work. By his preaching, the word of salvation took root, grew up, and produced fruit in that most infidel of nations; and the authority of Peter was thus marked, though in different degrees, in the three great Cities of the Empire: Rome, Alexandria and Antioch.

St Mark may be called the first founder of the Monastic life, by his instituting, in Alexandria itself, what were called the Therapeutes. To him, also, may be justly attributed, the origin of that celebrated Christian school, of Alexandria, which was so flourishing, even in the 2nd Century.

But glorious as were these works of Peter’s disciple, — the Evangelist and Apostle Mark was also to receive the dignity of Martyr. The success of his preaching excited against him the fury of the idolaters. They were keeping a feast in honor of Serapis; and this gave them an opportunity which they were not likely to lose. They seized Mark, treated him most cruelly, and cast him into prison. It was there that our Risen Lord appeared to him, during the night, and addressed him in these words, which afterwards formed the Arms of the Republic of Venice “Peace be to thee, Mark, my Evangelist!” To which the disciple answered: “Lord” — for such were his feelings of delight and gratitude, that he could say but that one word, as it was with Magdalene, when she saw Jesus on the morning of the Resurrection. On the following day, Mark was put to death by the pagans. He had fulfilled his mission on earth, and heaven opened to receive the Lion, who was to occupy near the throne of the Ancient of days the place allotted to him, as shown to the Prophet of Patmos, in his sublime vision. (Apocalypse 4)

In the 9th Century, the West was enriched with the Relics of St. Mark. They were taken to Venice; and, under the protection of the sacred Lion, there began for that City a long period of glory. Faith in so great a Patron achieved wonders; and from the midst of islets and lagoons there sprang into existence a City of beauty and power. Byzantine Art raised up the imposing and gorgeous Church, which was the palladium of the Queen of the Seas; and the new Republic stamped its coinage with the Lion of St. Mark. Happy would it have been for Venice, had she persevered in her loyalty to Rome, and in the ancient severity of her morals! . . .

Thou, O Mark, art the mystic Lion, who, with the Man, the Ox and the Eagle, art yoked to the chariot whereon the King of kings pursues his triumphant course through the earth. Ezechiel, the prophet of the Ancient Testament, and John, the prophet of the New Law, saw thee standing nigh the throne of Jehovah. How magnificent is thy glory! Thou art the historian of the Word made Flesh, and thou publishest to all generations his claims to the love and adoration of mankind. The Church reveres thy writings, and bids us receive them as inspired by the Holy Ghost.

It was thou that, on the glad day of Easter, didst announce to us the Resurrection of our Lord: pray for us, O holy Evangelist, that this divine mystery may work its effect within us; and that our hearts, like thine own, may be firm in their love of our Risen Jesus, that so we may faithfully follow in him that new life which he gave us by his Resurrection. Ask him to give us his peace, as he did to his Apostles when he showed himself to them in the Cenacle, and as he did to thee when he appeared to thee in thy prison.

Thou wast the beloved disciple of Peter; Rome was honored by thy presence: pray for the successor of Peter, thy master; pray for the Church of Rome, against which the wildest storm is now venting its fury. Pray to the Lion of the Tribe of Juda: he seems to sleep; and yet we know that he has but to show himself, and the victory is gained.

Apostle of Egypt! what has become of thy flourishing Church of Alexandria, Peter’s second see, the hallowed scene of thy martyrdom? Its very ruins have perished. The scorching blast of heresy made Egypt a waste, and God, in his anger, let loose upon her the torrent of Mahometanism. Twelve centuries have passed since then, and she is still a slave to error and tyranny: is it to be thus with her till the coming of the Judge? Pray, we beseech thee, for the countries thou didst so zealously evangelize, but whose deserts are now the image of her loss of faith.

And can Venice be forgotten by thee, who art her dearest patron? Her people still call themselves thine for the faith; bless her with prosperity; obtain for her that she may be purified by her trials, and return to the God who had chastised her in his justice. A nation that is loyal to the Church must prosper: let Venice, then, return to her former fidelity to Rome, and who knows but that the sovereign Ruler of the world, being appeased by thy powerful intercession, may make thy Venice what she was before she rebelled against the Holy See, and tarnished the glories she won at Lepanto! (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of Saint Mark, April 25.)

Appendix B

Pope Pius XII Defended Catholics Being Persecuted by Communist Regimes

Contrast Pietro Parolin’s mild statement of regret about “Cardinal” Zen’s arrest with the indignation of Pope Pius XII upon learning the news of the arrest of the Primage of Hungary, Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty by the Communist authorities there:

ROME, Dec. 27 — Pope Pius was said today to have been profoundly grieved and shocked at news of the arrest of Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty, Primate of Hungary. Confirmation of the arrest with no details was received by the papal Secretary of State late tonight. (Pope Pius is Profoundly Shocked by the Arrest of Cardinal Mindszenty and also Cardinal Mindzsenty Seized by Red Regime in Hungary. That last link is an actual headline from The New York Times!)

Cardinal Midszenty’s show trial prompted His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, to deliver an allocution on February 14, 1949, the Feast of Saint Valentine, that was published in total by The New York Times:

Venerable Brethren, we have convoked this extraordinary consistory today in order to unfold to you our soul, which is crushed with most bitter grief. You will readily understand the reason of our sorrow: it concerns a most serious outrage which inflicts a deep wound not only on your distinguished colleague and on the church, but also on every upholder of the dignity and liberty of man. As soon as ever we knew that our beloved son, Joseph Cardinal Midszenty, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, Archbishop of Estergrom, was cast into prison due to religion we sent a loving message to the Hungarian hierarchy in which we publicly and solemnly protest, our duty demanded, against the injury done to the church.

At present, when things have come to such a pass that this most worthy prelate has been reduced to supreme indignity and condemned like a criminal to life imprisonment, we cannot but repeat this solemn protest in your presence. We are prompted to do this primarily on behalf of the moral rights of religion which this valiant prelate tirelessly propounded and defended so strenuously and courageously. Besides, unanimous consensus of free peoples, expressed in speech and writings even by leaders of nations and by those who do not belong to the Catholic Church has been given the fullest light of publicity.

But, as you are aware, the full light of publicity did not shine over the trial of this prelate who deserved so well of all, in defending the religion of his ancestors and in the restoration of Christian morals. In fact, from the beginning the news that arrived caused alarm. People outside Hungary who asked permission to be present at the trial were refused permission if they seemed likely to judge impartiality or to give a sincere report: This led them to believe, and all upright and honest men as well, that those who were conducting the trial in Budapest seemed to be afraid to allow all to see what was taking place.

Justice, which is worthy of the name, does not begin with prejudices and is not based on a decision previously taken, but it gladly admits of free discussion and gives everyone due facility for thinking, believing and speaking.

But although the facts have set not been reliably made known, or reported clearly and completely, we cannot omit mentioning the judgment which all civilized people have passed on this trial. Referring particularly to the speed with which it was conducted; thus suggesting a ready reason for suspicion; of accusations captiously and deceitfully contrived; and to the physical condition of the Cardinal, which is indeed inexplicable except as a result of a secret influence which may not be publicly revealed, to prove this there is the fact which suddenly made of a man, until then exceptionally energetic by nature and by way of life, a feeble being and of vacillating mind, so that his behavior appeared, an accusation not against himself but against his very accusers and condemners.

In all this matter one thing alone stands out clearly: The principal object of the trial was to disrupt the Catholic Church in Hungary and precisely for the purpose set forth in sacred scripture: “I shall strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock shall be dispersed (Matt. XXVI, 31.)

While this sorrow in our heart we deplore this very sad event and entrust it in a sense to public opinion and the tribunal of history for the final judgment, we are doing what the outraged rights of the church and the dignity of the human person demand.

We deem it especially our duty to brand as completely false the assertion made in the course of the trial that the whole question at issue was that this Apostolic See, in furtherance of a plan for political domination of nations, gave instructions to oppose the Republic of Hungary and its rulers: thus all responsibility would fall on the same Apostolic See.

Everybody knows that the Catholic Church does not act through worldly motives, and that she accepts any and every form of civil government provided it not be inconsistent with divine and human rights. But when it does contradict these rights, Bishops and the faithful themselves are bound, by their own conscience to resist unjust laws.

In the midst of this grievous anguish, however, venerable brethren, the “Father of Mercies” (cf. II. Cor 1, 3) has not left us without consolations from above which have served to mitigate our sorrow. It is consoling above all to witness the tenacious faith of the Catholics of Hungary who are doing all they can, though faced with serious obstacles and difficulties, to defend their age-old religion and to keep alive and fresh the glorious tradition of their ancestors. Solace comes to us from the unflinching confidence we cherish in our paternal heart that the Hungarian episcopate, acting in complete harmony of principle of practice, will labor with every resource at their command to strengthen the unity of the faithful and buoy them up  with that hope which can neither be extinguished nor dimmed by sad or unjust happenings of this life, because it has its source in heaven, and is fed by a grace divine.

From you, venerable brethren, similar heavenly solace has come to us. For we have seen you gathered close about us in this crisis, to share our sorrow and unite your prayers to ours. We have been heartened likewise by the other Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops of whole Catholic world, who along with their clergy and people have express by fervid letter and telegrams their reprobation for the outrage offered to the church, and promised us their public and private prayers.

We earnestly desire that these prayers should continue to rise before the throne of God. For as often as the church is tossed by such tempests as cannot be quelled by human means, one must  appeal with confidence to the Divine Redeemer, who alone can calm the swelling waves and restore them to peace and tranquility. Through the most powerful intercession of the Virgin Mother of God, let us all pray fervently that those who suffer persecution, imprisonment and hardship, may be consoled with the necessary help of divine grace and fortified with the strength of Christian virtue; that those who rashly dare to trample upon the liberty of the church and the rights of human conscience, may at length understand that no civil society can endure when religion has been suppressed and God, as it were, driven into exile. It is only the sacred principles of religion that can moderated within the limits of reason the duties and the rights of citizens, can consolidate the foundations of the state, and make men’s lives conform to the salutary norms and morality, restoring them to order and virtue.

The words of the greatest Roman orator: “High priests, you defend the city more securely by religion than by its surrounding walls” (De Nat Deor. III, 40), when applied to Christian precepts and faith is infinitely more true and certain. Let all those into whose hands public government has been entrusted, recognize this truth and let due liberty be everywhere restored to the church that untrammeled she may be able to enlighten the minds of men with her salutary doctrine. Rightly instruct youth and lead them to virtue, restore to families their sacred character, and permeate with her influence the whole life of men. Civil society has nothing to fear from this activity but rather will reap the greatest advantages. It is then, venerable brethren, that social questions will be solved with justice and equity; the conditions of the poor will be ameliorated, as is just, and they will be restored to a state befitting the dignity of man; fraternal charity will bring peace to men’s minds and better days and better days as we fondly hope and pray, will happily ensue for all peoples and races.

These are the words we wished to speak in this illustrious assembly to you who are so closely associated with us in the government of the universal church and assist us with your zeal, your prudence and your wisdom. (Pope Pius XII, Allocution on the Cardinal Mindszenty, as found at: New York Times, February 15, 1949. Let me, Thomas Droleskey, add at this juncture that I followed events of Cardinal Mindszenty’s being released from prison during the Hungarian Revolution October of 1956 and his then having to take refuge in the American Embassy in Budapest. This was big news, and it was the news, not the lives of the saints, unfortunately, that was discussed at our dinner table each night. Additionally, I had the privilege of serving as the altar boy for Monsignor Bela Varga, who was the Speaker of the Hungarian Assembly from 1945 to 1947, who had worked with His Eminence for many years before he, Varga, fled to the United States in 1947, when he has the chaplain aboard the S.S. France on a Caribbean cruise from December 20, 1963, to January 4, 1965, and I was taught by no less than three Hungarian refugees in college and graduate school, including Dr. Stephen Kertesz, who resigned his post as the Hungarian Ambassador to Italy following the arrest of Cardinal Mindszenty. Monsignor Bela Varga gave an interview on March 22, 1979, to a professor at Columbia University. Those conversant in the Hungarian language can listen to this interview at: Oral history with Monsignor Bela Varga.)

While admitting full well that that the arrest of “Cardinal” Zen is not quite the same thing that happened to Cardinal Mindszenty as Zen was participating in a “pro-democracy” rally, it is nevertheless true that Pietro Parolin’s very impassive response to Zen’s arrest and Bergoglio’s silence about it stand in sharp contrast to Pope Pius XII’s consistent denunciations of the Communist persecution of Catholic prelates and clergy during the last thirteen years of his pontificate during the beginning of the Cold War. Pope Pius XII did not mince words, and he did not seek to curry any favor with Communist authorities while making all the proper distinctions between respecting those governments that respect the liberties of Holy Mother Church and those, such as Communist regimes, who do not.

Pope Pius XII was equally outspoken following the arrest and subsequent imprisonment of the Primate of Poland, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, in 1953, and the arrest, trial, and imprisonment of Joseph Cardinal Kung three years later. (A summary of the sufferings of Cardinals Mindszenty and Wyszynski, can be found at: Mindszenty and Wyszynski.)

Flushing the Memory of the Catholic Martyrs of Red China Down the Orwellian Memory Hole

Pope Pius XII firmly opposed the Communist persecution of Catholics by the Red Chinese authorities even more the formation of the so-called Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. He noted the following in Ad Sinarum Gentes, October 7, 1954:

23. We want to repeat here the words that We have written on the same argument in the letter already cited: “The Church does not single out a particular people, an individual nation, but loves all men, whatever be their nation or race, with that supernatural charity of Christ, which should necessarily unite all as brothers, one to the other.

24. “Hence it cannot be affirmed that she serves the interests of any particular power. Nor likewise can she be expected to countenance that particular churches be set up in each nation, thus destroying that unity established by the Divine Founder, and unhappily separating them from this Apostolic See where Peter, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, continues to live in his successors until the end of time.

25. “Whatever Christian community were to do this, would lose its vitality as the branch cut from the vine (Cf. John 15. 6) and could not bring forth salutary fruit” (AAS, 44: p. 135).

26. We earnestly exhort “in the heart of Christ” (Phil. 1. 8) those faithful of whom We have mournfully written above to come back to the path of repentance and salvation. Let them remember that, when it is necessary, one must render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and with greater reason, one must render to God what is God’s (Cf. Luke 20. 25). When men demand things contrary to the Divine Will, then it is necessary to put into practice the maxim of St. Peter: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5. 29). Let them also remember that it is impossible to serve two masters, if these order things opposed to one another (Cf. Matt. 6. 24). Also at times it is impossible to please both Jesus Christ and men (Cf. Gal. 1. 10). But if it sometimes happens that he who wishes to remain faithful to the Divine Redeemer even unto death must suffer great harm, let him bear it with a strong and serene soul.

27. On the other hand, We wish to congratulate repeatedly those who, suffering severe difficulties, have been outstanding in their loyalty to God and to the Catholic Church, and so have been “counted worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus” (Acts 5. 41). With a paternal heart We encourage them to continue brave and intrepid along the road they have taken, keeping in mind the words of Jesus Christ: “And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather be afraid of him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell . . . But as for you, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Therefore do not be afraid . . . Therefore everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I in turn will disown him before my Father in heaven” (Matt. 10. 28, 30-33). (Pope Pius XII, Ad Sinarum Gentes, October 7, 1954.)

What did this matter to Jorge Mario Bergoglio?

What does this matter to Robert Francis Prevost?

Why, nothing at all, of course.

The late Jorge Mario Bergoglio wanted his “bishops” and priests/presbyters to be collaborators with Communist regimes. Bergoglio was an apologist for everything that Bishop James Walsh and Bishop Ignatius Kung opposed by sacrificing their liberty and against which Bishop Francis Ford gave up his life after being worn out by Communist torturers.

It is often the case in the history of Holy Mother Church during times of persecutions that her martyrs suffer together. Such continues to be the case in Red China today just as much as it was sixty-two years ago during the Chicom show trials that sentenced Bishops James Edward Walsh and Ignatius Kung to prison. How sad it is the evangelizing efforts and sufferings of these two great Catholic heroes have been considered by Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and Jorge Mario Bergoglio as part of a “memory of the past” that needs to be “purified.”

The official biography of Bishop Ignatius Kung found on the Cardinal Kung Foundation website provides us with a glimpse of the sort of Catholic heroism that means nothing to Jorge Mario Bergoglio:

Bishop Kung had been Bishop of Shanghai and Apostolic Administrator of two other dioceses for only five years before he was arrested by the Chinese government. In just 5 short years, Bishop Kung became one of the most feared enemies of the Chinese Communists - a man who commanded both the attention and devotion of the country's then three million Roman Catholics and the highest respect of his brother bishops in China, and inspired thousands to offer their lives up to God. In defiance of the communist created and sanctioned Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, Bishop Kung personally supervised the Legion of Mary, a religious organization of the laity dedicated to the veneration of the Blessed Mother Mary. As the result, many members of the Legion of Mary chose to risk arrest in the name of their God, of their Church and of their bishop. Hundreds of Legion of Mary members, including many students, were arrested and sentenced to 10, 15, or 20 years or more of hard labor.

In the midst of persecutions, Bishop Kung declared 1952 the Marian Year in Shanghai. During that year, there was to be uninterrupted 24 hours-daily recitation of the rosary in front of a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, which toured all the parishes of Shanghai. The Holy Statue finally arrived at Christ the King Church where a major arrest of the priests had just taken place only a month ago. Bishop Kung visited that church and personally led the rosary while hundreds of the armed police looked on. At the end of the rosary, leading the congregation, Bishop Kung prayed: "Holy Mother, we do not ask you for a miracle. We do not beg you to stop the persecutions. But we beg you to support us who are very weak."

Knowing that he and his priests would soon be arrested, Bishop Kung trained hundreds of catechists to pass on the Roman Catholic faith in the diocese to future generations.

The heroic efforts of these catechists, their martyrdom and that of many faithful and clergy contributed to the vibrant underground Roman Catholic Church in China today. Bishop Kung's place in the hearts of his parishioners was very well summed up by the Shanghai youth group in a 1953 New Year youth rally when they said: "Bishop Kung, in darkness, you light up our path. You guide us on our treacherous journey. You sustain our faith and the traditions of the Church. You are the foundation rock of our Church in Shanghai."

On September 8, 1955, the press around the world reported in shock the overnight arrest of Bishop Kung along with more than 200 priests and Church leaders in Shanghai. Months after his arrest, he was taken out to a mob "struggle session" in the old Dog Racing stadium in Shanghai. Thousands were ordered to attend and to hear the Bishop's public confession of his "crimes." With his hands tied behind his back, wearing a Chinese pajama suit, the 5-foot tall bishop was pushed forward to the microphone to confess. To the shock of the security police, they heard a righteous loud cry of "Long live Christ the King, Long live the Pope" from the Bishop. The crowd responded immediately, "Long live Christ the King, Long live Bishop Kung". Bishop Kung was quickly dragged away to the police car and disappeared from the world until he was brought to trial in 1960. Bishop Kung was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The night before he was brought to trial, the Chief Prosecutor asked once again for his cooperation to lead the independent church movement and to establish the Chinese Patriotic Association. His answer was: "I am a Roman Catholic Bishop. If I denounce the Holy Father, not only would I not be a Bishop, I would not even be a Catholic. You can cut off my head, but you can never take away my duties."

Bishop Kung vanished behind bars for thirty years. During those thirty years, he spent many long periods in isolation. Numerous requests to visit Bishop Kung in prison by international religious and human rights organizations and senior foreign government officials were rejected. He was not permitted to receive visitors, including his relatives, letters, or money to buy essentials, which are rights of other prisoners.

The efforts for his release by his family, led by his nephew, Joseph Kung, by human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Red Cross, and the United States Government, never ceased. In 1985, he was released from jail to serve another term of 10 years of house arrest under the custody of those Patriotic Association bishops who betrayed him and betrayed the Pope and who usurped his diocese. In an article immediately after his release from jail, the New York Times said that the ambiguous wording of the Chinese news agency suggested that the authorities, not the bishop, might have relented. After two and one-half years of house arrest, he was officially released. However, his charge of being a counterrevolutionary was never exonerated. In 1988, his nephew, Joseph Kung, went to China twice and obtained permission to escort him to America for receiving proper medical care.

Shortly before Bishop Kung was released from jail, he was permitted to join a banquet organized by the Shanghai government to welcome His eminence Cardinal Jaime Sin, Archbishop of Manila, Philippines on a friendship visit. This was the first time that Bishop Kung had met a visiting bishop from the universal Church since his imprisonment. Cardinal Sin and Bishop Kung were seated on opposite ends of the table separated by more than 20 Communists, and had no chance to exchange words privately. During the dinner, Cardinal Sin suggested that each person should sing a song to celebrate. When the time came for Bishop Kung to sing, in the presence of the Chinese government officials and the Patriotic Association bishops, he looked directly at Cardinal Sin and sang "Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam" (You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church), a song of faith proclaiming the supreme authority of the Pope. Bishop Kung conveyed to Cardinal Sin that in all his years of captivity he remained faithful to God, to his Church and to the Pope.

After the banquet, Aloysius Jin, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association's Bishop of Shanghai, rebuked Cardinal Kung, "What are you trying to do? Showing your position?" Cardinal Kung quietly answered, "It is not necessary to show my position. My position has never changed."

Cardinal Sin immediately carried Cardinal Kung's message to the Holy Father and announced to the world: this man of God never faltered in his love for his Church or his people despite unimaginable suffering, isolation and pain. (Biography of Cardinal Kung.)

Bishop Kung's nephew, Joseph Kung, who is now eighty-nine years of age, was kind enough to have invited us to a luncheon at his house in Stamford, Connecticut, in June of 2003, I believe, and he showed us the room where his courageous uncle had died. Joseph also showed us a diary in which Bishop Kung wrote the Ordinary of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition while in prison in Red China. His jailers kept taking away the book from him, but Bishop Kung always seemed to find the paper that he needed to write the Ordinary of the Mass in exquisite handwriting. Bishop Kung won this contest of wills as he was aided by Our Lady's intercession in his behalf. The jailers finally relented and let him continue his work without any further efforts to confiscate it. Bishop Kung was dedicated to the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is always mocking, including in a children's book in 2016 (see Jorge's Wall of Unbelief.)

Now, leaving aside the fact that Jaimie Sin was no "cardinal," Bishop Ignatius Kung suffered for his fealty to the Throne of Saint Peter. He had no way of knowing that a revolution that had much in common with Marxism had created a counter church with false liturgical rites as he was imprisoned, and he was so grateful to the third in the current line of antipopes that he never understood what had happened while he was held incommunicado for over thirty years. Bishop Kung, however, was courageous in his steadfast defense of the Catholic Faith and of Papal Primacy in the face of vicious Communist persecution against him. He lived for Christ the King just as much as had Padre Miguel Agustin Pro, S.J., and the Cristeros in Mexico (as well as the Spanish Cristeros who died at the hands of Communists, many of whom had the support of American celebrities, including author Ernest Hemmingway, between 1936 and 1939). He did not accord the schismatic and heretical rump church created by the Red Chinese government, the so-called Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, as having any legitimacy whatsoever. He was a true son of Holy Mother Church who always denounced falsehood when he saw it, never failing to call it by its proper name.

A “reconciliation” with the Red Chinese butchers, however, has been a goal of the conciliar revolutionaries for over fifty years now.

Indeed, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul the Sick tried such a reconciliation surrender as early as January 6, 1967, the Feast of the Epiphany of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, when used the fortieth anniversary of the consecration of the first bishops to serve China to remind the Chinese people of the Catholic Church’s love for them. While he took note generally of the sufferings of the faithful Catholics in Red China, he also made it clear that he wanted to extend his Ostpolitik that made the Catholic hierarchy of Eastern Europe answerable to their Communist minders all the way to Red China itself. What follows is a computer translation of the relevant passages Montini/Paul VI’s sermon dealing with China:

Yes, you know. We have chosen this moment, this place, this assembly and this feast to remember, with celebratory joy and with antiseptic hope, a double anniversary: ​​that of the consecration of the first six Chinese bishops, which took place forty years ago, on October 28, 1926, in this same basilica, by the hand of Our predecessor of venerated and great memory, Pius XI, and that of the canonical institution, normal of the sacred Hierarchy in China, decreed twenty years ago, in 1946, by another Our no less venerated and great predecessor, Pius XII.

Why celebrate these anniversaries? Because the two facts, which We want to remember with religious and collected solemnity, are great facts, they are historical facts, they are facts full of human and spiritual significance, and because they are facts that postulate their regular and happy following, which instead meets in these last few years have had serious and painful difficulties. The facts are known to you. Religious freedom in mainland China faces serious obstacles; Our communications are completely prevented; the Ecumenical Council did not see any member of that Hierarchy present; all the Missionaries were expelled; the Catholic Church, this same Apostolic See is accused of being contrary to the Chinese people. Now all this has no reason to exist; and we could prove it with many arguments. The Catholic Church, everyone knows, he has always looked upon China with immense sympathy; a long and dramatic history of her relations with the Chinese people says with what esteem, with what dedication she wished to know him, without any temporal interest of her own; she wished to serve him, trying to help him develop his intrinsic moral riches and offering the best she possesses to contribute to the education, assistance and prestige of the people themselves. It is well known how in that resurgent country Catholic life - especially by virtue of the events we are commemorating - has completely renounced being and appearing a paracolonial phenomenon, and how it is and wants to be an authentic expression of the Chinese soul, which he can find in the Christian faith the respect for his noble traditions and the fullness of his deep spiritual aspirations.

What then would we want? We say it simply: resume contacts, as we already maintain them with that portion of the Chinese people with whom we have friendly relations. Indeed, we must recognize that among the many Chinese residing outside the continental state, the Catholic Church is pleased to include, in the Far East and in every part of the world, many excellent and faithful children, and fervent and thriving communities, well assisted by Chinese Bishops and Clergy. Chinese; the Chinese students present at this rite, like the other Chinese Catholics, who also attend it, are for us a dear sign of the persistent vitality of the Chinese Church and are a source of great comfort and great hope.

However, we would now like to resume contact with the Chinese people of the continent; contacts not interrupted voluntarily by Us, to tell all those Chinese Catholics, who have remained faithful to the Catholic Church, that We have never forgotten them, and that we will never give up the hope of rebirth, indeed of the development of the Catholic religion in that Nation. Reconnect to let the Chinese youth know with what trepidation and affection We consider your present exaltation towards the ideals of a new, industrious, prosperous and concordant life. And we would also like to discuss peace with those who preside over Chinese life today on the Continent, knowing how this supreme human and civil ideal is intimately congenial with the spirit of the Chinese people.

These are Our wishes, Our vows. But we know the difficulties of the present hour. However, they do not prevent us from making Our thoughts for China particularly vigilant, loving and caring. And that's what we're doing. If anything, it is practically not given to us to do this, not only is it allowed to us, but it is more strongly imposed on us: to remember and pray. This is what we are doing: we remember and pray. This is why we are gathered here to commemorate two facts in the religious history of China, which seem symbolic and decisive to us. And all present We invite, indeed all those who are in communion with Us, to remember and pray. ("Homily" of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul VI, January 6, 1967.)

Montini/Paul VI made it clear that he did not consider the Communist regime of Red China to be illegitimate and welcomed the opportunity to establish “friendly” relations in the name of “peace.” However, the only kind of “peace” that Communists desire is total capitulation to whatever they want at any given time. As I told my students during my college teaching days, “The Soviets say they want peace, which is true. They want a piece of Virginia, a piece of New York, a piece of California, etc.” Peace for Communist regimes means total surrender.

Contrast Montini/Paul VI’s with Pope Pius XI’s absolute ban of cooperating with Communist regimes, a prohibition that was reaffirmed by the Holy Office in 1949 under Pope Pius XII:

See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived! Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever. Those who permit themselves to be deceived into lending their aid towards the triumph of Communism in their own country, will be the first to fall victims of their error. And the greater the antiquity and grandeur of the Christian civilization in the regions where Communism successfully penetrates, so much more devastating will be the hatred displayed by the godless. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937.)

See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived! Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever. Those who permit themselves to be deceived into lending their aid towards the triumph of Communism in their own country, will be the first to fall victims of their error. And the greater the antiquity and grandeur of the Christian civilization in the regions where Communism successfully penetrates, so much more devastating will be the hatred displayed by the godless. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937.)

This Sacred Supreme Congregation has been asked:  

1. whether it is lawful to join Communist Parties or to favour them;
2. whether it is lawful to publish, disseminate, or read books, periodicals, newspapers or leaflets which support the teaching or action of Communists, or to write in them;
3. whether the faithful who knowingly and freely perform the acts specified in questions 1 and 2 may be admitted to the Sacraments;
4. whether the faithful who profess the materialistic and anti-Christian doctrine of the Communists, and particularly those who defend or propagate this doctrine, contract ipso facto excommunication specially reserved to the Apostolic See as apostates from the Catholic faith.

The Most Eminent and Most Reverend Fathers entrusted with the supervision of matters concerning the safeguarding of Faith and morals, having previously heard the opinion of the Reverend Lords Consultors, decreed in the plenary session held on Tuesday (instead of Wednesday), June 28, 1949, that the answers should be as follows:

To 1. in the negative: because Communism is materialistic and anti-Christian; and the leaders of the Communists, although they sometimes profess in words that they do not oppose religion, do in fact show themselves, both in their teaching and in their actions, to be the enemies of God, of the true religion and of the Church of Christ; to 2. in the negative: they are prohibited ipso iure (cf. Can. 1399 of the Codex Iuris Canonici); to 3. in the negative, in accordance with the ordinary principles concerning the refusal of the Sacraments to those who are not disposed; to 4. in the affirmative.

And the following Thursday, on the 30th day of the same month and year, Our Most Holy Lord Pius XII, Pope by the Divine Providence, in the ordinary audience, granted to the Most Eminent and Most Reverend Assessor of the Sacred Office, approved of the decision of the Most Eminent Fathers which had been reported to Him, and ordered the same to be promulgated officially in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis.

Given at Rome, on July 1st, 1949. (As found at Decree Against Communism.)

Pope Pius XII issued his last encyclical letter, Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958, to condemn what Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul VI, Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and Jorge Mario Bergoglio have never condemned, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association:

8. In these days, however, We have to draw attention to the fact that the Church in your lands in recent years has been brought to still worse straits. In the midst of so many great sorrows it brings Us great comfort to note that in the daily attacks which you have met neither unflinching faith nor the most ardent love of the Divine Redeemer and of His Church has been wanting. You have borne witness to this faith and love in innumerable ways, of which only a small part is known to men, but for all of which you will someday receive an eternal reward from God.

9. Nevertheless We regard it as Our duty to declare openly, with a heart filled to its depths with sorrow and anxiety, that affairs in China are, by deceit and cunning endeavor, changing so much for the worse that the false doctrine already condemned by Us seems to be approaching its final stages and to be causing its most serious damage.

10. For by particularly subtle activity an association has been created among you to which has been attached the title of "patriotic," and Catholics are being forced by every means to take part in it. This association - as has often been proclaimed - was formed ostensibly to join the clergy and the faithful in love of their religion and their country, with these objectives in view: that they might foster patriotic sentiments; that they might advance the cause of international peace; that they might accept that species of socialism which has been introduced among you and, having accepted it, support and spread it; that, finally, they might actively cooperate with civil authorities in defending what they describe as political and religious freedom. And yet - despite these sweeping generalizations about defense of peace and the fatherland, which can certainly deceive the unsuspecting - it is perfectly clear that this association is simply an attempt to execute certain well defined and ruinous policies.

11. For under an appearance of patriotism, which in reality is just a fraud, this association aims primarily at making Catholics gradually embrace the tenets of atheistic materialism, by which God Himself is denied and religious principles are rejected.

12. Under the guise of defending peace the same association receives and spreads false rumors and accusations by which many of the clergy, including venerable bishops and even the Holy See itself, are claimed to admit to and promote schemes for earthly domination or to give ready and willing consent to exploitation of the people, as if they, with preconceived opinions, are acting with hostile intent against the Chinese nation.

13. While they declare that it is essential that every kind of freedom exist in religious matters and that this makes mutual relations between the ecclesiastical and civil powers easier, this association in reality aims at setting aside and neglecting the rights of the Church and effecting its complete subjection to civil authorities.

14. Hence all its members are forced to approve those unjust prescriptions by which missionaries are cast into exile, and by which bishops, priests, religious men, nuns, and the faithful in considerable numbers are thrust into prison; to consent to those measures by which the jurisdiction of many legitimate pastors is persistently obstructed; to defend wicked principles totally opposed to the unity, universality, and hierarchical constitution of the Church; to admit those first steps by which the clergy and faithful are undermined in the obedience due to legitimate bishops; and to separate Catholic communities from the Apostolic See.

15. In order to spread these wicked principles more efficiently and to fix them in everyone's mind, this association - which, as We have said, boasts of its patriotism - uses a variety of means including violence and oppression, numerous lengthy publications, and group meetings and congresses.

16. In these meetings, the unwilling are forced to take part by incitement, threats, and deceit. If any bold spirit strives to defend truth, his voice is easily smothered and overcome and he is branded with a mark of infamy as an enemy of his native land and of the new society.

17. There should also be noted those courses of instruction by which pupils are forced to imbibe and embrace this false doctrine. Priests, religious men and women, ecclesiastical students, and faithful of all ages are forced to attend these courses. An almost endless series of lectures and discussions, lasting for weeks and months, so weaken and benumb the strength of mind and will that by a kind of psychic coercion an assent is extracted which contains almost no human element, an assent which is not freely asked for as should be the case.

18. In addition to these there are the methods by which minds are upset - by every device, in private and in public, by traps, deceits, grave fear, by so-called forced confessions, by custody in a place where citizens are forcibly "reeducated," and those "Peoples' Courts" to which even venerable bishops are ignominiously dragged for trial.

19. Against methods of acting such as these, which violate the principal rights of the human person and trample on the sacred liberty of the sons of God, all Christians from every part of the world, indeed all men of good sense cannot refrain from raising their voices with Us in real horror and from uttering a protest deploring the deranged conscience of their fellow men. (Pope Pius XII, Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958.)

The conciliar revolutionaries have not only ignored these truths, they have actively sought to disparage them by always seeking a “reconciliation” with the enemies of Christ the King and His true Church—and thus the enemies of human salvation—on the enemies’ terms.

Always.

Unfailingly.

This total capitulation to the enemies characterizes false ecumenism as one concession after another is made to Protestant sects and to various schismatic and heretical Orthodox churches, and it particularly characterizes conciliarism’s relations with Talmudists. The lords of conciliarism are only too willing to deny Christ the King before men after having denied his Social Reign over men and their nations both in theory and in practice, and they are ever so eager to avoid “offending” Jews, Mohammedans, Jainists, Taoists, Shintoists, Animists, Buddhists, Hindus, Yazidis, Theosophists and outright atheists by hiding Christian symbolism when in their presence and speaking in Judeo-Masonic terms about “God” while also esteeming their symbols of idolatry and terming their places of devil worship” as “sacred” and “holy.”

Pope Pius XII urged the suffering Catholics in Red China to maintain the Holy Faith unblemished, and what he wrote to them sixty-eight years ago applies to us now. We must maintain the Holy Faith unblemished and without making any compromise with the nonexistent legitimacy of Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV and his false religious sect, the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

Pope Pius XII was equally firm in his denunciations of Communist aggression against Catholics in Eastern Europe in 1956 during the uprisings again that took place in Poland and Hungary in 1956, writing the following in the immediate aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution's liberation of Josef Cardinal Mindszenty in late-October of 1956:

We are most pleased to learn that the Consecrated Shepherds of the Catholic world and the rest of the clergy and faithful have responded with generosity and enthusiasm to the paternal entreaty of Our recent Encyclical Letter by supplicating Heaven in public prayers. And so We give unceasing thanks to God from Our heart that He has heard so many prayers, especially of innocent boys and girls, and a new dawn of peace based on justice seems to be breaking at long last for the people of Poland and Hungary.

2. With no less joy have We learned that Our beloved sons, Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, Stefan Wyszynski, Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw, and Jozef Mindszenty, Archbishop of Esztergom, who had both been expelled from their Sees, are acknowledged to be innocent men, unjustly accused of crime, and as such have already been restored to their positions of honor and responsibility and welcomed in triumph by rejoicing multitudes.

3. We are confident that this event will prove a happy omen for the restoration and pacification of these two countries on a basis of sounder principle and nobler law, and, above all, with proper respect for God's rights and those of His Church.

4. Wherefore We call again and again upon all the Catholics of those countries to unite themselves about their lawful shepherds with massed force and drawn ranks, and thus apply themselves diligently to the advancement and strengthening of this holy cause. For it is a cause which cannot be abandoned or neglected without making true peace an impossibility.

5. But even while Our heart still fears on this account, We behold the threat of another frightening crisis. As you know, Venerable Brothers, the flames of another war are being fanned menacingly in the Near East, not far from that holy land where angels descended from Heaven and hovered over the crib of the Divine Child, announcing peace to men of good will. (Luke 2. 14).

6. What else can We do, who embrace all peoples with a father's affection, but raise suppliant prayers to the Father of Mercies and God of all comfort (cfr. 11 Cor. 1. 3), and urge all of you to join in them with Us? For "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but powerful before God." (11 Cor. 10. 4)

7. We trust solely in Him Who can illuminate the minds of men with His heavenly light and incline their incited wills to those more temperate counsels by which right order among nations may be established, to their common advantage and with certainty that the legitimate rights of all interested parties are being secured.

8. May all men, especially those who hold the destinies of nations in their hands, remember that war brings no lasting benefit, but a host of misfortunes and disasters. Differences among men are not resolved by arms, bloodshed, or destruction, but only by reason, law, prudence, and justice.

9. When wise men who are motivated by a desire for lasting peace meet to discuss such differences, they should certainly feel obliged to enter upon the ways of justice rather than the rash road of violence if they reflect upon the grave dangers of a war which may start as a tiny spark, but can burst into an enormous conflagration.

10. Amidst these dangerous crises We wish especially to convince the heads of governments. We cannot possibly doubt their realization that no other interest motivates Us but the common good and prosperity of all, which can never be achieved by the massacre of one's brothers. 

11. And since, as We have said, We place Our hope above all in the providence and mercy of God. We repeatedly, urge you, Venerable Brothers, not to cease encouraging and promoting this zealous crusade of prayer. Through it -- with the intercession of His Mother, the Virgin Mary -- may Almighty God in His goodness grant an end to the threat of war, a happy solution to the conflicting claims of nations, and assurance everywhere, to the common benefit of all, of those rights granted the Church by her Divine Founder. Thus may "the whole human family, which has been rent asunder by sin's wound, be brought under the sway of His most sweet rule." (Prayer for the Feast of Christ the King) (Pope Pius XII, Laetamur Admodum, November 1, 1956.)

Although his joy was quickly turned into sorrow following the Soviet invasion of Hungary after he issued Laetamar Admodum, Pope Pius XII was truly relieved that two imprisoned bishops, Stefan Wyszynski, Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw and the Primate of Poland, and Jozef Mindszenty, the Primate of Hungary had been returned to their sees. Bergoglio is now accepting rump "bishops" as legitimate governors of Catholic sees in Red China, which makes perfect sense if one understands the fact that he thinks that Justin Welby is truly the "archbishop of Canterbury." A true pope, Pope Pius XII, gave no quarter to falsity. A false "pope" embraces falsity with enthusiasm as he believes that the only thing that is "false" is "old-fashioned" Catholicism.

It was only four days afer he issued Laetamar Admodum that Pope Pius XII forcefully condemned the Soviet invasion of Hungary that resulted in Cardinal Mindszenty’s taking refuge in the American Embassy in Budapest for the next decade prior to his betrayal at the hands of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul the Sick:

Venerable Brethren, Greetings and Apostolic Benediction.

In the Encyclical Letter which We recently wrote you, Consecrated Shepherds of the Catholic world, We expressed Our hope that a new day of peace based on justice and liberty might be dawning upon the noble people of Hungary. For conditions in that country seemed to be improving.

2. But tidings have reached Us lately which fill Our heart with pain and sorrow. There is being shed again in the cities, towns, and villages of Hungary the blood of citizens who long with all their hearts for their rightful freedom. National institutions which had just been restored have been overthrown again and violently destroyed. A blood-drenched people have been reduced once more to slavery by the armed might of foreigners.

3. We cannot help but deplore and condemn (for so Our consciousness of Our office bids Us) these unhappy events which fill all Catholics and all free peoples with deepest sorrow and indignation. May those whose commands have caused these tragic events come to realize that the rightful freedom of a people cannot be extinguished by the shedding of human blood..

4. We who watch over all peoples with a father's concern assert that any violence and any bloodshed which anyone unjustly causes is never to be tolerated. On the contrary, We exhort all people and all classes of society to that peace which finds its basis and nurture in justice, liberty, and love.

5. The words which "the Lord said to Cain. . . 'The voice of thy brother's blood crieth to me from the earth'," (Gen. 4, 10) are relevant today. For so the blood of the Hungarian people cries out to God. And even though God often punishes private individuals for their sins only after death, nonetheless, as history teaches, He occasionally punishes in this mortal life rulers of people and their nations when they have dealt unjustly with others. For He is a just judge.

6. May our merciful Redeemer, We suppliantly pray, move the hearts of those upon whose decisions these matters depend, that an end may be put to injustice and a finish to violence, that all nations, being at peace with one another, may be united in peaceful and tranquil harmony.

7. Meanwhile, We implore a most merciful God on behalf especially of all those who have been tragically slain in the course of these unhappy events. May they find eternal life and unending peace in heaven. We desire that all Christians join Us in praying to God for them.

8. And as We address these words to you, We lovingly impart Our Apostolic Benediction to each and every one of you, Venerable Brethren, and to your flocks, and in a very special way to Our beloved Hungarian people. May it be a pledge of heavenly graces and a witness to Our paternal love. (Pope Pius XII, Datis Nuperimme, November 5, 1956.)

No, true popes never speak like leftists. True popes speak as Catholics, and there has not been a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter, since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958.

Here is how Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul VI dealt with Cardinal Mindszenty:

The Prisoner, as it happened, was wrapped too soon because Mindszenty's story, which had seemed to be fini, had scarcely begun. By 1956 Stalin was dead and Khrushchev was making some unusual noises. In October the Hungarians rose in revolt. Mindszenty had no clue of what was happening on the street; his guards told him that the rabble outside the prison was shouting for his blood. A few days later he was released and indeed a mob of locals set upon him. But instead of ripping his flesh they grabbed at the liberated hero to kiss his clothes. When he returned to Budapest the deposed Reds quivered over this ghost who would not stay buried, but in a radio broadcast he counseled against revenge. The Soviets were not so forgiving, and tanks rumbled to crush this unpleasant incident. A marked man, Mindszenty sought asylum in the American embassy as his last resort. Now a second long Purgatory had begun. Pius spoke out repeatedly against this latest example of Soviet terror but the West, heedless of its own liberation rhetoric, was deaf.

When The Prisoner was released, the Church was still the implacable foe of communism. Frail Pius stood as a Colossus against both right and left totalitarianism. When Pius departed this world there ensued a moral void in the Vatican that has never been filled. By the early 1960s both the Western governments and the Novus Ordo popes decided that accommodation with the Communists was preferable to the archaic notions of Pius and Mindszenty. John XXIII and successor Paul VI welcomed a breath of fresh air into the Church, and that odor included cooperation with the Reds. The new Ostpolitik, managed by Paul's Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli, hadn't room for Christian warriors of Mindszenty's stamp. The position of the Hungarian government was strengthened when Casaroli entered negotiations with the appalling regime of Janos Kadar. As the Cold War thawed, the freeze was put on Mindszenty. The American government made it understood that he was no longer welcome at the embassy. Worse still, Paul sent a functionary to persuade Mindszenty to leave, but only after signing a document full of stipulations that favored the Reds and essentially blaming himself for his ordeal. The confession that the Communists could not torture out of him was being forced on him by the Pope!

Driven from his native land against his wishes, Mindszenty celebrated Mass in Rome with Paul on October 23, 1971. The Pope told him, "You are and remain archbishop of Esztergom and primate of Hungary." It was the Judas kiss. For two years Mindszenty traveled, a living testament to truth, a man who had been scourged, humiliated, imprisoned and finally banished for the Church's sake. In the fall of 1973, as he prepared to publish his Memoirs, revealing the entire story to the world, he suffered the final betrayal. Paul, fearful that the truth would upset the new spirit of coexistence with the Marxists, "asked" Mindszenty to resign his office. When Mindszenty refused, Paul declared his See vacant, handing the Communists a smashing victory.

If Mindszenty's story is that of the rise and fall of the West's resistance to communism it is also the chronicle of Catholicism's self-emasculation. In the 1950s a man such as Mindszenty could be portrayed as a hero of Western culture even though both American and English history is rife with hatred toward the Church. When the political mood changed to one of coexistence and detente rather than containment, Mindszenty became an albatross to the appeasers and so the Pilates of government were desperate to wash their hands of him. Still, politicians are not expected to act on principle, and therefore the Church's role in Mindszenty's agony is far more damning.

Since movies, for good or ill, have a pervasive influence on American culture, perhaps a serious film that told Mindszenty's whole story could have some effect on the somnolent Catholics in the West. Guilty of Treason and The Prisoner are artifacts of their day. An updated film that follows the prelate through his embassy exile and his pathetic end would be a heart-wrenching drama. But knowing what we know now, the Communists, despicable as they are, would no longer be the primary villains. (Shooting the Cardinal: Film and Betrayal in the Mindszenty Case)

As we know, of course, no true pope of the Catholic Church sold out Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty.

A conciliar revolutionary did so, And it has been three other such revolutionaries who have conspired to sellout the the suffering Catholics of Red China over the course of the past forty years ever since Bishop Kung was released from prison in 1986 and then left his homeland two years later. Yes, even the supposed anti-Communist, Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, helped to pave the way for this sellout, which was advanced by Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict and finalized by  Jorge Mario Bergoglio, whose own successor in the conciliar seat of apostasy and betrayal, Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV, has ratified this sellout once and for all.

No, true popes never speak like leftists. True popes speak as Catholics, and there has not been a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter, since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958.