Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV: A True Son of Conciliarism's Reconcilation with False Religions

A secular commentator recently published a commentary in the New York Post about Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV’s “living in another dimension” when quoting a July 25, 2025, message  that the American-Peruvian Apostate released about the “rights” of migrants, whose ongoing invasion by immigration and conquest by procreation has madee once proudly Catholic Europe a vast playground for the descendants of those who sought conquer the continent for the false, blasphemous, pedophilic "prophet” named Mohammed during the First and Second Millennia before they were stopped at the Battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571, and then at the Gates of Vienna on September 12, 1683, after various before then, including at the hands of Charles Martel in Tours, France, on October 10, 732.

Here are  few excerpts from the secular writer’s commentary:

As Muslim migration roils Europe, some Catholic bishops are starting to notice.

“For decades, the Islamization of Europe has been progressing through mass immigration,” Polish Bishop Antoni Długosz said July 13, adding that illegal immigrants “create serious problems in the countries they arrive in.”

Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan spoke more bluntly in March: “We’re witnessing an invasion. They are not refugees. This is an invasion, a mass Islamization of Europe.”

Yet Pope Leo XIV lives in a different dimension.

“In a world darkened by war and injustice . . . migrants and refugees stand as messengers of hope,” Leo said July 25. “Their courage and tenacity bear heroic testimony to a faith that sees beyond what our eyes can see and gives them the strength to defy death on the various contemporary migration routes.”

An Interjection:

Here is the full context of the Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV’s July 25, 2025, message:

This link between migration and hope is clearly evident in many contemporary experiences of migration. Many migrants, refugees and displaced persons are privileged witnesses of hope. Indeed, they demonstrate this daily through their resilience and trust in God, as they face adversity while seeking a future in which they glimpse that integral human development and happiness are possible. Moreover, we can see the itinerant experience of the people of Israel repeated in their own lives: “O God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, the earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain at the presence of God, the God of Sinai, at the presence of God, the God of Israel. Rain in abundance, O God, you showered abroad; you restored your heritage when it languished; your flock found a dwelling in it; in your goodness, O God, you provided for the needy” (Ps 68:7-10).

In a world darkened by war and injustice, even when all seems lost, migrants and refugees stand as messengers of hope. Their courage and tenacity bear heroic testimony to a faith that sees beyond what our eyes can see and gives them the strength to defy death on the various contemporary migration routes. Here too we can find a clear analogy with the experience of the people of Israel wandering in the desert, who faced every danger while trusting in the Lord’s protection: “he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence; he will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, or the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday” (Ps 91:3-6).

Migrants and refugees remind the Church of her pilgrim dimension, perpetually journeying towards her final homeland, sustained by a hope that is a theological virtue. Each time the Church gives in to the temptation of “sedentarization” and ceases to be a civitas peregrine, God’s people journeying towards the heavenly homeland (cf. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Books XIV-XVI), she ceases to be “in the world” and becomes “of the world” (cf. Jn 15:19). This temptation was already present in the early Christian communities, so much so that the Apostle Paul had to remind the Church of Philippi that “our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself” (Phil 3:20-21).

In a special way, Catholic migrants and refugees can become missionaries of hope in the countries that welcome them, forging new paths of faith where the message of Jesus Christ has not yet arrived or initiating interreligious dialogue based on everyday life and the search for common values. With their spiritual enthusiasm and vitality, they can help revitalize ecclesial communities that have become rigid and weighed down, where spiritual desertification is advancing at an alarming rate. Their presence, then, should be recognized and appreciated as a true divine blessing, an opportunity to open oneself to the grace of God, who gives new energy and hope to his Church: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb 13:2).

The first element of evangelization, as Saint Paul VI emphasized, is that of witness: “All Christians are called to this witness, and in this way they can be real evangelizers. We are thinking especially of the responsibility incumbent on migrants in the country that receives them” (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 21). This is a true missio migrantium, a mission carried out by migrants, for which adequate preparation and ongoing support must be ensured through effective inter-ecclesial cooperation.

At the same time, the communities that welcome them can also be a living witness to hope, one that is understood as the promise of a present and a future where the dignity of all as children of God is recognized. In this way, migrants and refugees are recognized as brothers and sisters, part of a family in which they can express their talents and participate fully in community life.

On this Jubilee, when the Church prays for all migrants and refugees, I wish to entrust all those who are on the journey, as well as those who are working to accompany them, to the maternal protection of the Virgin Mary, comfort of migrants, so that she may keep hope alive in their hearts and sustain them in their commitment to building a world that increasingly resembles the Kingdom of God, the true homeland that awaits us at the end of our journey. (Message of Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV the Holy Father for the 111^th World Day of Migrants and Refugees 2025.)

Before returning to the commentary in the New York Post, suffice it to note that Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV does not think that it is necessary for nations to be united by the ties of the true Faith, to say nothing of linguistic and cultural unity, as the conciliar worldview rejects the immutable Catholic teaching that all men must submit themselves in humility and docility to the entirety of the Sacred Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has revealed exclusively to His true Church for Its infallible explication and eternal safekeeping.

Moreover, the conciliar “popes” and many of their “bishops” welcomed Mohammedans for “returning God to Europe” even Mohammedans, along with Talmudists, of course, do not believe in the Most Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinty made man in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

For example, the late Jean-Louis Tauran said the following eighteen years ago while welcoming the “benefits” of the hordes of Mohammedans who have taken full advantage of Europe’s collective demographic suicide by means of contraception, sterilization, abortion, and, in recent decades, the public celebration, protection, and promotion of the sin of Sodom and its various mutations as a matter of human “rights” and public policy:

A senior Vatican cardinal has thanked Muslims for bringing God back into the public sphere in Europe and said believers of different faiths had no option but to engage in interreligious dialogue.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Catholic Church’s department for interfaith contacts, said religion was now talked and written about more than ever before in today’s Europe.

“It’s thanks to the Muslims,” he said in a speech printed in Friday’s L’Osservatore Romano, the official daily of the Vatican. “Muslims, having become a significant minority in Europe, were the ones who demanded space for God in society.”

Vatican officials have long bemoaned the secularisation of Europe, where church attendance has dwindled dramatically in recent decades, and urged a return to its historically Christian roots. But Tauran said no society had only one faith.

“We live in multicultural and multireligious societies, that’s obvious,” he told a meeting of Catholic theologians in Naples. “There is no civilisation that is religiously pure.”

Tauran’s positive speech on interfaith dialogue came after a remark by Pope Benedict prompted media speculation that the Vatican was losing interest in it. Some Jewish leaders reacted with expressions of concern and the Vatican denied any change.

The “return of God” is clearly seen in Tauran’s native France, where Europe’s largest Muslim minority has brought faith questions such as women’s headscarves into the political debate after decades when they were considered strictly private issues.

“GOD IS AT WORK IN ALL”

Tauran said religions were “condemned to dialogue,” a practice he called “the search for understanding between two subjects, with the help of reason, in view of a common interpretation of their agreement and disagreement.”

That seemed to clarify Benedict’s statement on Sunday that interfaith dialogue was “not possible in the strict sense of the word”. Church officials said a strict definition would include the option that one side is ultimately convinced by the other.

Dialogue participants could not give up their religious convictions, Tauran said, but should be open to learning about the positive aspects of each others’ faith.

“Every religion has its own identity, but I agree to consider that God is at work in all, in the souls of those who search for him sincerely,” he said. “Interreligious dialogue rallies all who are on the path to God or to the Absolute.”

The uncertainty about the Vatican view coincided with increasing contacts among world religions.

Early this month, the Vatican held a pioneering conference with a delegation from the “Common Word” group of Muslim scholars who invited Christian churches to a new dialogue.

A week later, Saudi King Abdullah gathered world leaders at the United Nations as part of a dialogue he launched with a conference of faith leaders in Madrid last July.

Christianity and Islam are the world’s two largest faiths, with two billion and 1.3 billion followers respectively. The latest interfaith efforts are meant to counter growing tensions between these two after the Sept. 11 attacks.

An Indian prelate, speaking after the Mumbai attacks began, said in Rome that a lack of courage to meet across faith lines was often behind religious violence in his country.

Archbishop Felix Machado of Nashik diocese, just east of Mumbai, told Italian priests the violence was caused by “inequality, a lack of justice and understanding and, above all, a lack of courage to dialogue,” the Vatican daily reported. (Vatican thanks Muslims for returning God to Europe.)

Thus, “Pope Leo’s” remarks four weeks ago, offered on the Feast of Saint James the Greater—the Moorslayer, of all things, represented nothing other than a perfectly seamless continuation of an apostate “reconciliation” with infidelity by denying the Incarnation and the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ before men is to teach that the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Holy Trinity, is pleased with all religions when the truth is that He hates—as in loathes—each and every false religion.

False religions belong to the devil, and anyone who does not recognize this has been condemned by binding precepts of the First Commandment in favor of a Judeo-Masonic spirit of religious egalitarianism was that denounced firmly by Pope Leo XIII in Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892:

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

This point has been made so many times before on this website that it might seem superfluous and redundant to do so again, but I believe the more that error is repeated the more that truth must be advanced and defended.

The author of the New York Post article went on to note that the father of what he thinks is the Catholic Church’s benign view of Mohammedanism is Louis Massignon, a Frenchman who believed it was his mission to unite the "Abrahamic religions.” Massignon worked for a “reconciliation” with Mohammedanism about the same time as Marc Sagnier’s Sillon was condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, for its efforts to “reconcile” Catholicism with the anti-Theistic principles of the French Revolution:

Leo’s comments express more than blissful sentimentality. They reveal the Vatican’s role in encouraging open borders and exempting migrants from accountability.

In Europe’s case, that involves deliberate blindness to the violent, totalitarian nature of Islam and many of its followers.

This Catholic approach toward Islam reflects the ideas of Louis Massignon, a French scholar from the early 20th century. Massignon described Islam as “the faith of Abraham revived with Muhammad,” and asserted that Muslims “have the right to equality among the monotheisms descended from Abraham.”

French Catholic scholar Alain Besançon described the results.

“An entire literature favorable to Islam has grown up in Europe, much of it the work of Catholic priests under the sway of Massignon’s ideas,” he wrote.

Besançon attributed that posture to “an underlying dissatisfaction with modernity, and with our liberal, capitalist, individualistic arrangements,” a dissatisfaction that the Vatican embodies.

“Alarmed by the ebbing of religious faith in the Christian West, and particularly in Europe,” Massignon’s advocates “cannot but admire Muslim devoutness,” Besançon wrote.

“Surely, they reason, it is better to believe in something than to believe in nothing, and since these Muslims believe in something, they must believe in the same thing we do.”

The Catholic Church officially embraced Massignon’s ideas at the Second Vatican Council in two documents. One, Nostra Aetate, focused on the church’s relationship with Judaism but additionally addressed Islam:

“The Church regards with esteem the Muslims. They adore the one God . . . they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet.”

The other, Lumen Gentium, declared that “the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place among these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God.”

That passage made the Catholic catechism.

But what Besançon called “indulgent ecumenicism” toward Islam goes beyond words. During John Paul II’s papacy, the church embraced outright appeasement.

Catholic bishops sold underutilized churches and schools to Muslim groups; many of the churches became mosques.

In October 2006, the Capuchin Franciscan friars agreed to help the Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy (UCOII) build a mosque in Genoa next to a monastery. The friars even helped build the mosque’s foundation.

But the UCOII — affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood — advocates “an extremist version of the Quran, where Christians, Jews and Westerners are criminalized, as well as women and other Muslims who don’t submit to their rule,” Magdi Allam, a convert to Catholicism from Islam, reported for Milan’s Corriere della Sera.

In 2006, the group also demanded Islamic schools, banks and clerical review of textbooks. Its president, Mohamed Nour Dachan, refused to sign a document pledging Muslims to accept Italy’s constitution, denounce terrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Seven months earlier, a Vatican cardinal even suggested that Muslim students receive Islamic religious instruction in the hour reserved for Catholic instruction in Italian schools.

“If there are 100 Muslim children in a school, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be taught their religion,” said the late Cardinal Renato Martino, then the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. “If we said ‘no’ until we saw equivalent treatment for the Christian minorities in Muslim countries, I would say that we were placing ourselves on their level.”

In 2008, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales asked Catholic schools to reserve prayer rooms for Muslim students and to adapt bathroom facilities for ritual cleansing before prayer. But the worst example of appeasement took place in Belgium.

As part of a campaign to force the government to grant amnesty, Belgium’s Catholic bishops turned their churches into homes for Muslim migrants, making them squatters.

In May 2006, more than 30 Belgian churches served such a purpose. About 300 Africans occupied Antwerp’s Magdalena Chapel. Other churches held as many as 700 squatters.

At Our Lady of Succor Church in Brussels, squatters lived in small tents donated by Catholic relief agencies, conducted Muslim services, erected computer tables near the pulpit and even set fires on the floor.

Friar Herwig Arts described a scene at Antwerp’s Jesuit chapel: migrants “removed the tabernacle [and] installed a television set and radios, depriving us of the opportunity to pray in our own chapel and say Mass.”

He went on, “For me, the place has been desecrated. I feel I cannot enter it anymore.”

Belgium’s bishops were not amused. Arts was chided by Belgium’s leading clergy. “Solidarity cannot be limited to one’s own nation, said the late Cardinal Godfried Danneels, then the country’s leading prelate. Monsingor Luc van Looy, then the bishop of Ghent, even said “illegal fugitives” were “entitled to a good place in our society. Arts has been silent on the topic ever since.

But two decades later, Kazakhstan’s Bishop Schneider refuses to stay silent: “This is a global political agenda by the powerful of the world to destroy Europe.”

Leo thus faces an existential challenge, one that blissful sentimentality cannot answer: Will he allow a church that played a pivotal role in creating European civilization to perform a more decisive part in destroying it? (Pope Leo must stand up to Muslim immigrants seeking to remake Europe.)

It is utter fantasy to think that any conciliar “pope” is going to “stand up” to Mohammedan immigrants nor to denounce the use of “sharia law” in the courts of one formerly Catholic country another, including Austria most recently:

VIENNA (LifeSiteNews) — A court in Vienna has ruled that Sharia law may be applied in civil legal disputes between two parties in Austria.

The Vienna Regional Court for Civil Matters was concerned with a case between two Muslim men who had previously agreed to be judged by Islamic law in case of dispute.

This means that in the event of a dispute, the arbitration court – which rules according to Islamic law – can be convened. The dispute occurred, and the court ruled against one of the men and ordered him to pay a €320,000 ($372,000) fine.

However, the man sentenced to pay the penalty did not accept the ruling. He argued that the application of the law was arbitrary, as Sharia law could be interpreted in different ways. He furthermore claimed that invoking Sharia law violated the fundamental values of Austrian law.

The Vienna Regional Court ruled that the arbitration tribunal’s decision was valid. The court argued that the ruling did not contradict Austria’s fundamental values.

Islamic legal provisions, the regional court emphasized, could be “effectively agreed upon in an arbitration agreement” for property claims.

“There are no indications of a violation of public order or a possible arbitrary decision in this case, which is why none of the grounds for annulment that must be examined ex officio are present,” the court stated.

Conservative politicians and activists expressed their concern and outrage regarding the controversial decision.

Michael Schilchegger, constitutional spokesman for the Freedom Party (FPÖ), said the ruling fosters “Islamic parallel societies” and a weakens those “forces that do not want to submit to Islam.”

“If Austrian courts now also recognize arbitration awards based on ‘Sharia law,’ they are submitting to the will of fanatical Islamists,” he warned. He announced future legislative proposals to make it impossible for Austrian courts to recognize Sharia law in civil lawsuits.

Sharia law has “nothing to do with Austria and the principles of our constitution, and that’s how it should stay,” said Integration Minister Claudia Plakolm (ÖVP), who is part of Austria’s government coalition.

By the end of the year, the Ministry of Justice should draw up proposals “so that Sharia law cannot be applied in the future, for example in the area of civil marriage,” said Plakolm, who is confident “that we will receive the relevant proposals in a timely manner.”

Austrian anti-immigration activist and political commentator Martin Sellner said on X: “Under the guise of ‘private agreements,’ Sharia is entering the Austrian legal system.”

“Even though criminal aspects are excluded, this precedent opens the door to the gradual recognition of foreign legal systems,” he warned.

“For us, this means: remigration and the restoration of cultural sovereignty are more urgent than ever,” he concluded.

In recent years, uncontrolled mass migration has led to a significant increase in the Muslim population of Austria. According to a recent statistic, Islam is already the dominant religion in elementary and middle schools in Vienna. Approximately 41 percent of students in this age group are Muslim in Austria’s capital, while Christians only make up 34.5 percent (17.5 percent Catholic and 14.5 percent Orthodox).

Sharia law has also been recognized in other Western countries, such as the Canadian province of Ontario, where civil legal disputes may also be decided by Islamic law. (Vienna court says Sharia law may be used in civil disputes, sparking outrage.)

Yes, the Mohammedan migrants have brought great "hope" to Europe, haven't they?

No, of course not.

The following website contends a comprehensive list of all Mohammedan terrorist attacks in Europe and elsewhere in he world since September 11, 2001:List of Islamic Terror Attacks in Europe. Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV is as oblivious to the existence of this list as was his venal predecessor, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and he is as equally mute as the late Argentine Apostate about the sort of "hope" that illegal immigrants from Central and South America brought to the lives of Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, Jocelyn Nungarary, or scores of others slaughteerd by these "hearlds of hope." No, the conciliar "popes" and their "bishops" have existed in a delusional world that is detached from the reality of the fact Mohammedanism is a religion of violence of its very perverse nature and that those of its adherents who commit violent acts are simply being faithful to their blasphemous "holy book," the Koran, and to the bloodthirsty example of their false prophet, Mohammed. 

Mohammedanism is not worthy of any kind of respect. Neither is its blasphemous book, the Koran, which is just as offensive to God as is every single Protestant version of the Bible, each of which is filled with distortions that do not represent but indeed pervert the Sacred Word of God that was written under the direct inspiration of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost.

It is with this in mind that the open letter of Mohammedan converts to late Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 2014  is important to include in this commentary even though they did not realize that they were dealing with an open heretic whowas the head of his own false religion: 

Most Holy Father, 

Many of us have tried to contact you, on many occasions and for several years, and we have never received the slightest acknowledgement of our letters or requests for meetings. You do not like to beat around the bush, and neither do we, so allow us to say frankly that we do not understand your teaching about Islam, as we read in paragraphs 252 and 253 of Evangelii Gaudium, because it does not account for the fact that Islam came AFTER Christ, and so is, and can only be, an Antichrist (see 1 Jn 2.22), and one of the most dangerous because it presents itself as the fulfillment of Revelation (of which Jesus would have been only a prophet). If Islam is a good religion in itself, as you seem to teach, why did we become Catholic? Do not your words question the soundness of the choice we made at the risk of our lives? Islam prescribes death for apostates (Quran 4.89, 8.7-11), do you know? How is it possible to compare Islamic violence with so-called Christian violence?  “What is the relationship between Christ and Satan? What union is there between light and darkness? What association between the faithful and the unfaithful?” (2 Cor 6: 14-17) In accordance with His teaching (Lk 14:26), we preferred Him, the Christ, to our own life. Are we not in a good position to talk to you about Islam?

In fact, as long as Islam wants us to be its enemy, we are, and all our protestations of friendship cannot change anything. As a proper Antichrist, Islam exists only as an enemy of all: “Between us and you there is enmity and hatred forever, until you believe in Allah alone!” (Qur’an 60.4) For the Qur’an, Christians “are only impurity” (Quran 9.28),” “the worst of Creation” (Qur’an 98.6), all condemned to Hell (Qur’an 4.48), so Allah must exterminate them (Quran 9.30). We must not be deceived by the Quranic verses deemed tolerant, because they have all been repealed by the verse of the Sword (Quran 9.5). Where the Gospel proclaims the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection for the salvation of all, and the fulfillment of the Covenant initiated with the Hebrews, Allah has nothing to offer but war and murder of the “infidels” in exchange for his paradise: “They fight on the way of Allah, they kill and are killed.” (Quran 9:11) We do not confuse Islam with Muslims, but if for you “dialogue” means the voice of peace, for Islam it’s only another way to make war. Also, as it was in the face of Nazism and communism, naiveté in the face of Islam is suicidal and very dangerous. How can you speak of peace and endorse Islam, as you seem to do:  “To wring from our hearts the disease that plagues our lives (…) Let those who are Christians do it with the Bible and those who are Muslims do it with the Quran. “(Rome, January 20, 2014)? That the Pope seems to propose the Quran as a way of salvation, is that not cause for worry? Should we return to Islam?

We beg you not to seek in Islam an ally in your fight against the powers that want to dominate and enslave the world, since they share the same totalitarian logic based on the rejection of the kingship of Christ (Lk 4.7). We know that the Beast of the Apocalypse, seeking to devour the Woman and her Child, has many heads. Allah defends such alliances by the way (Quran 5.51)! Moreover, the prophets have always reproached Israel for its willingness to ally with foreign powers, to the detriment of the complete confidence they should’ve had in God. Certainly, the temptation is strong to think that speaking in an Islamophilic tone will prevent more suffering for Christians in those countries that have become Muslim, but apart from the fact that Jesus has never indicated any other way than that of the Cross, so that we must find our joy therein and not flee with all the damned, we do not doubt that only the proclamation of the Truth brings with it not only salvation, but freedom as well (John 8.32). Our duty is to bear witness to the truth “in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4.2), and our glory is to be able to say with St. Paul: “I did not want to know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2.2)

As to Your Holiness’s stance on Islam: even as President Erdogan, among others, asks his countrymen not to integrate into their host countries, and while Saudi Arabia and all the petrol monarchies do not welcome any refugee, expressions (among others) of the project of conquest and Islamization of Europe, officially proclaimed by the OIC and other Islamic organizations for decades; you, Most Holy Father, preach the welcoming of migrants regardless of the fact that they are Muslims, something forbidden by Apostolic command: “If anyone comes to you but refuses this Gospel, do not receive him among you nor greet him. Whoever greets him participates in his evil works.” (2 John 1.10-11); “If anyone preaches to you a different Gospel, let him be accursed!” (Galatians 1.8-9)

Just as “For I was hungry, and you gave me no food.” (Mt 25:42) cannot mean that Jesus would have liked to be a parasite, so “I was a stranger and you welcomed Me”cannot mean “I was an invader and you welcomed Me”, but rather “I needed your hospitality for a while, and you granted it to me”. The word ξένος (xenos) in the New Testament does not only have the meaning of stranger but of guest as well (Rm 16.23; 1 Co 16.5-6, Col 4.10; 3 Jn 1.5). And when YHWH in the Old Testament commands to treat foreigners well because the Hebrews have themselves been foreigners in Egypt, it is on the condition that the foreigner assimilates so well to the chosen people that he accepts their religion and practices their cult… Never is there mention of welcoming a foreigner who would keep his religion and its customs! Also, we do not understand that you are pleading for Muslims to practice their religion in Europe. The meaning of Scripture should not be supplied by the proponents of globalism, but in fidelity to Tradition. The Good Shepherd hunts the wolf, He does not let it enter the sheepfold.

The pro-Islam speech of Your Holiness leads us to deplore the fact that Muslims are not invited to leave Islam, and that many ex-Muslims, such as Magdi Allam, are even leaving the Church, disgusted by her cowardice, wounded by equivocal gestures, confused by the lack of evangelization, scandalized by the praise given to Islam … Thus ignorant souls are misled, and Christians are not preparing for a confrontation with Islam, to which St. John Paul II has called them (Ecclesia in Europa, No. 57). We are under the impression that you do not take your brother Bishop Nona Amel,  Chaldean-Catholic Archbishop of Mosul in exile, seriously, when he tells us: “Our present sufferings are the prelude to those that you, Europeans and Western Christians, will suffer in the near future. I have lost my diocese. The headquarters of my archdiocese and my apostolate have been occupied by radical Islamists who want us to convert or die. (…) You are welcoming into your country an ever increasing number of Muslims. You are in danger as well. You must make strong and courageous decisions (…). You think that all men are equal, but Islam does not say that all men are equal. (…) If you do not understand this very quickly, you will become the victims of the enemy that you have invited into your home.” (August 9, 2014) “. This is a matter of life and death, and any complacency towards Islam is treasonous. We do not wish the West to continue with Islamization, nor that your actions contribute to it. Where then would we go to seek refuge?

Allow us to ask Your Holiness to quickly convene a synod on the dangers of Islam. What remains of the Church where Islam has installed itself? If she still has civil rights, it is in dhimmitude, on the condition that she does not evangelize, thus denying her very essence. In the interest of justice and truth, the Church must bring to light why the arguments put forward by Islam to blaspheme the Christian faith are false. If the Church had the courage to do that, we do not doubt that millions, Muslims as well as other men and women seeking the true God, would convert. As you said: “He who does not pray to Christ, prays to the Devil.” (14.03.13) If people knew they were going to Hell, they would give their lives to Christ. (cf. Quran 3.55)

With the deepest love for Christ who, through you, leads His Church, we, converts from Islam, supported by many of our brothers in the Faith, especially the Christians of the East, and by our friends, ask Your Holiness to confirm our conversion to Jesus Christ, true God and true man, the only Savior, with a frank and right discourse on Islam, and, assuring you of our prayers in the heart of the Immaculate, we ask your apostolic blessing.

List of names of signatories and their email (certainly not all ex-Muslims will sign this Letter for fear of possible reprisals). (Open Letter to "Pope Francis".)

This was a very courageous statement. Unfortunately, however, those who drafted it did not realize that the leaders of the counterfeit church of conciliarism consider conversion to the Catholic Faith to be a personal choice of individuals who discern that it is “right” for them to do so, not because they believe that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ commanded the Apostles to seek the conversion of all men to the true Faith until He comes in glory at the end of time.

How do I know this?

Well, consider the case of Magdi Cristiano Allam, who was received into what he thought was the Catholic Church by none other than “Pope Benedict XVI” at the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo’s putative Easter Vigil Mass on Saturday, March 22, 2008:

VATICAN CITY (RNS) A high-profile Italian Muslim who converted to Catholicism and was baptized by Pope Benedict XVI announced on Monday (March 25) that he will leave the church to protest its soft stance against Islam.

Egyptian-born Magdi Cristiano Allam, 61, a prominent journalist and outspoken critic of Islam, publicly entered the Catholic Church on March 22, 2008 during an Easter Vigil service, receiving baptism directly from Benedict.

After his conversion, Allam founded a small right-wing political party that lost badly in Italy’s general elections last April.

Writing on Monday in the right-wing daily Il Giornale, Allam explained that he considers his conversion to Catholicism finished “in combination with the end of (Benedict’s) pontificate.”

“The ‘papolatry’ that has inflamed the euphoria for Francis I and has quickly archived Benedict XVI was the last straw in an overall framework of uncertainty and doubts about the Church,” he wrote.

On Friday, Francis pledged to “intensify dialogue among the various religions,” particularly Islam.

Allam, who has called Islam an “intrinsically violent ideology,” said his main reason for leaving the church was its perceived “religious relativism, in particular the legitimization of Islam as a true religion.”

“Europe will end up being subjugated to Islam,” he warned in Il Giornale, unless it “finds the courage to denounce Islam as incompatible with our civilization and fundamental human rights,” and to “banish the Quran for inciting hatred, violence and death towards non-Muslims.” Europeans also need to “condemn Sharia as a crime against humanity” and to “stop the spread of mosques.”

Allam said he would remain a Christian but that he didn’t “believe in the church anymore.”

Allam’s surprise conversion was orchestrated by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, currently head of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, who “personally accompanied” the Muslim intellectual’s approach to the Catholic faith.

At the time, the Vatican’s chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, stressed that the conversion was the result of Allam’s “personal journey” and was not intended as a direct message to Muslims.

A leading Muslim intellectual involved in interfaith dialogue with the Vatican, Aref Ali Nayed, criticized the public conversion ceremony as a “triumphalist way to score points,” and said it raised “serious doubts” about the Catholic Church’s policy toward Islam. (Magdi Allam, Muslim Convert, Leaves Catholic Church, Says It’s Too Weak Against Islam.)

Even Magdi Cristiano Allam’s conversion on March 22, 2008, to what he thought was Catholicism was termed by “Father” Federico Lombadi asa “personal journey” rather than a rejection of a completely false, blasphemous religion, Mohammedanism.

It was less than seven months after what appeared to be the completion of his “personal journey” that Magdi Allam wrote his own open letter, which was addressed to the man who received him into what he, Allam, believed to be the Catholic Church, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Muslim-born journalist baptized by Pope Benedict XVI at Easter asked the pope to tell his top aide for relations with Muslims that Islam is not an intrinsically good religion and that Islamic terrorism is not the result of a minority gone astray.

As the Vatican was preparing to host the first meeting of the Catholic-Muslim Forum Nov. 4-6, Magdi Allam, a longtime critic of the Muslim faith of his parents, issued an open letter to Pope Benedict that included criticism of Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

In the letter, posted on his Web site Oct. 20, Allam said he wanted to tell the pope of his concern for "the serious religious and ethical straying that has infiltrated and spread within the heart of the church."

He told the pope that it "is vital for the common good of the Catholic Church, the general interest of Christianity and of Western civilization itself" that the pope make a pronouncement in "a clear and binding way" on the question of whether Islam is a valid religion.

The Catholic Church's dialogue with Islam is based on the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions ("Nostra Aetate"), which urged esteem for Muslims because "they adore the one God," strive to follow his will, recognize Jesus as a prophet, honor his mother, Mary, "value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting."

The council called on Catholics and Muslims "to work sincerely for mutual understanding" and for social justice, moral values, peace and freedom.

Allam told Pope Benedict he specifically objected to Cardinal Tauran telling a conference in August that Islam itself promotes peace but that "'some believers' have 'betrayed their faith,'" using it as a pretext for violence.

"The objective reality, I tell you with all sincerity and animated by a constructive intent, is exactly the opposite of what Cardinal Tauran imagines," Allam told the pope. "Islamic extremism and terrorism are the mature fruit" of following "the sayings of the Quran and the thought and action of Mohammed."

Allam said he was writing with the "deference of a sincere believer" in Christianity and as a "strenuous protagonist, witness and builder of Christian civilization."

After Pope Benedict baptized Allam March 22 during the Easter Vigil and Allam used his newspaper column and interviews to condemn Islam, the Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said that when the Catholic Church welcomes a new member it does not mean it accepts his opinions on every subject.

Baptism is a recognition that the person entering the church "has freely and sincerely accepted the Christian faith in its fundamental articles" as expressed in the creed, Father Lombardi had said.

"Of course, believers are free to maintain their own ideas on a vast range of questions and problems on which legitimate pluralism exists among Christians," he said. (Magdi Allam Writes Open Letter to "Pope Benedict" )

"Of course, believers are free to maintain their own ideas on a vast range of questions and problems on which legitimate pluralism exists among Christians"?

“Father” Lombardi meant to say that there is a "legitimate pluralism" as to whether Mohammedanism is a violent religion of its very false, diabolical nature, which was about as absurd as his statement in April of 2009 that there was such a thing as “therapeutic abortion” that was seen as morally licit in some circumstances according to Catholic moral theology (So Long to the Fifth Commandment.)

Once again, the late Jean-Louis Tauran was only the voice of a message that belonged to the late "Pope Benedict" and "Pope Francis" themselves, and Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV speaks una voce dicentes with them and with Karol Joszef Wojtyla/John Paul II.

Remember, if you will, that the lateJoseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI personally esteemed the blasphemous Koran on two separate occasions in 2008, including at the “John Paul II Cultural Center” in Washington, District of Columbia, on Thursday, April 17, 2008, and a few weeks thereafter at the Apostolic Palace as he termed the Koran “that dear book.”

Perhaps more significantly, he assumed the Mohammedan “prayer” position at the Blue Mosque on November 30, 2006, the Feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle, and entered into two other mosques while visiting Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Zionist State of Israel eight months later.

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI entered into the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, taking off his shoes so as to symbolize that he was in a "holy place" and then turned in the direction of Mecca at the behest of his Mohammedan "host," who instructed him to assume the Mohammedan prayer position as they "prayed" together. God is offended by honor being given to such a false religion as the souls of His faithful Catholics are scandalized and bewildered and confused as a consequence.

Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV is only doing what his predecessors who have sat in the conciliar seat of apostasy and betrayal have done before him.

All this is the logical result of the Protestant Revolution’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King five hundred years ago that made possible the rise and the triumph of the anti-Incarnational civil state of Judeo-Masonry that trumpets pluralism but is mean to lead to the intolerant totalitarianism of Antichrist himself.

Moreover, Mohammedans have received assistance from Talmudists on various occasions when it suited their purposes to destabilize Catholic kingdoms and/or to overthrow them entirely. As William Thomas Walsh noted, this was particularly the case on the Iberian Peninsula as Talmudists helped to bring the Saracens into Spain. Despite occasional persecutions launched by the latter against the former, the Saracens rewarded the Jews on many occasions: 

In medieval Spain the Jews came nearer to building a New Jerusalem than at any time or place since their dispersion after the Crucifixion. Had they succeeded – and several times they came perilously near success – they might conceivably have managed, with Mohammedan aid, to destroy the Christian civilization of Europe. Their ultimate failure was caused chiefly by the life work of Isabel. 

The date of their first migrations to the peninsula is disputed. But the evidence appears to indicate that they arrived not long after Saint James the Greater first preached the gospel of Christianity in Saragossa in 42 A. D. Some of those expelled from Rome by Claudius may have settled in Spain. Certain it is that they spread through the country very early in the Christian era, and multiplied so rapidly that their presence constituted a serious problem for the Arian (unorthodox Christian) Visigoths. They were not at first persecuted by the Christians; but after the discovery that they were plotting to bring the Arabs from Africa for the overthrow of the Gothic kingdom, they were condemned to slavery by one of the councils of Toledo. Nevertheless by the beginning of the eighth century they were numerous in all the chief cities, enjoyed power and wealth, and even obtained though bribery certain privileges denied to Christians.

That they played an important part in bringing the Saracens from Africa in 709 is certain. In the invading army there were many African Jews. Everywhere the Spanish Jews opened the gates of cities to the conquerors, and the Moslems rewarded them by turning over to them the government of Granada, Seville and Cordoba. “Without any love for the soil where lived, without any of those affections that ennoble a people, and finally withoput sentiments of generosity,” says Amador de los Rios, “they apired only to feed their avarice and to accomplish the ruin of the Goths; taking the opportunity to manifest their rancor, and boasting of the hatreds that they had hoarded up so many centuries.” This is a severe indictment and it would be most unfair to place all the blame for the Mussulmen invasion at the door of the Jews. Neither their intrigues not the Moorish arms could nave prevailed, perhaps, if the Christian Visigoth monarchy had not fallen first into heresy and then into decadence. King Witiza led an unsavory life, published an edict permitting priests to marry, and so far flouted the Christian beliefs of his subjects that he denied the authority of the Pope. His successor, Roderigo, violated the daughter of Count Julian, who thereupon crossed into Africa and joined the Jews in prevailing upon the Moors to conquer Spain. The sons of Witiza, persecuted by Roderigo, also joined the enemy. And at the critical moment of the battle of Jerez de la Frontery, Bishop Oppas, who had a grudge against Roderigo, went over to the Saracens and gave them the victory.

In the new Moslem state the Jews found themselves highly esteemed. It was under the caliphs that they attained the height of their prosperity. They studied and taught in the Arab universities excelling particularly in astrology and medicine. Through their connection with Asiatic Jews, they were able to get the best drugs and spices; and through their wealth, acquired chiefly through usury, barter and the huge traffic in slaves, they obtained leisure for the pursuit and diffusion of culture. They expounded the philosophy of Aristotle, which flourished among the Arabs, before the Stagirite was known in Christian Europe.

In Granada the Jews became so numerous that is was called “the city of the Jews.” But Saracens persecuted them at times, On December 30, 1066, the Moslems of Granada, infuriated by their exploitations, arose against them and slew 4,000. One of the caliphs expelled all Jews from Granada.

The gradual reconquest of the peninsula by the Christians did not at first trouble their marvelous prosperity. When Saint Fernando took Seville in 1224, he gave the Jews four Moorish mosques to convert into synagogues; he allowed them one of the pleasantest sections for their homes, and imposed to conditions except to refrain from proselytising among Christians and from insulting the Christian religion. The Jews observed neither of these conditions. Yet several of the later kings, usually those of lukewarm faith or those especially in need of money, showed them high favor. Alfonso VIII made one of them his treasurer.  (William Thomas Walsh, Isabella of Spain: The Last Crusader, published originally by Robert McBride and Company in 1930 and republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1987, pp. 195-197.)

One must understand that, despite all the times they attack each other, Mohammedans and Talmudists are but tools of the adversary who have a fundamentally abiding hatred for Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and to this end that they seek, sometimes in different ways but sometimes jointly sub rosa. The souls of the unbaptized are captive to the devil by means of Original Sin, which enshrouds them in blindness and, together with their own Actual Sins, inspires them to hate Our Lord, His Holy Church and, in all too many cases, even truth on the merely natural level.

Mohammedanism is a false, blasphemous religion that has no right from God to exist. It is based on a rejection of the Most Holy Trinity and was founder by a pederast who wanted to justify his own deviancy, including polygamy, in the name of a false god, who he believed demanded the extermination of infidels.

A book that was published  in 2007, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, which was edited by Andrew G. Bostom, M.D., provided documentation, drawn from primary Mohammedan documents and historical accounts of actual events, as to how Mohammedanism has been a religion of bloodshed and the persecution of “infidels” from the time that Mohammed arrived in Medina in the year 622 A.D., thereby embarking upon the first “Jihad” against non-Moslems:

September 622 [A.D.] marks a defining event in Islam—the hijra. Muhammed and a coterie of followers persecuted by fellow Banu Qurayza tribesmen fled from Mecca to Yathrib, later known as Medina. The Muslim sources described Yathrib as having been a Jewish city founded by a Palestinian diaspora population that had survived the revolt against the Romans. The Jews of the north Arabian peninsula were highly productive oasis farmers. These Jews were eventually joined by itinerant Arab tribes from southern Arabia who settled adjacent to them and transitioned to a sedentary existence.

Following Muhammad’s arrival, he reordered Medinian society. The Jewish tribes were isolated, some were then expelled, and the remainder attacked and exterminated. Muhammad distributed among his followers as “booty” the vanquished Jews property—plantations, fields, and houses—using this “booty” to established a well-equipped cavalry corps. For examine within a year after the massacre (in 627) of the Jewish tribe, the Banu Qurayza, Muhammad, according to a summary of sacralized Muslim sources, waited for some act of aggression on the parts of the Jews of Khaybar, whose fertile lands and villages he had destined for his followers to furnish an excuse for an attack.

But no such opportunity offering, he resolved in the autumn of the year (i.e., 628) on a sudden and unprovoked invasion of their territory. Ali (later, the fourth “Rightly Guided Caliph,” especially revered by Shi’ite Muslims) asked Muhammad why the Jews of Khaybar were being attacked, since they were peaceful farmers, tending their oasis, and was told by Muhammad he must compel them to submit to Islamic laws. The renowned twentieth-century scholar of Islam David Margoliouth observed aptly:

Now the fact that a community was idolatrous, or Jewish, or anything but Mohammedan, warranted a murderous attack upon it.

Muhammad’s subsequent interactions with the Christians of northern Africa followed a similar pattern, noted by the scholar of Islam’s origins Richard Bell. The “relationship” with the Christians ended as that with the Jews (ended)—in war,” because Islam as presented by Muhammad was a divine truth, and unless Christians accepted this formulation, which acceped this formulation, which included Muhammad’s authority, “conflict was inevitable, and there could have been no real peace while he [Muhammad] lived.”

The modern Muslim scholar Ali Dashti’s biography Muhammad 23 Years” A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad has also chronicled Muhammad’s “changed course” at Medina, where the Muslim prophet begins to “issue orders for war” in multiple and repeated Koranic revelations (sura [chapter] 9 being composed almost entirely of such war proclamations—permanent injunctions against pagans, Jews, and Christians). Prior to enumerating the numerous assassinations Muhammad ordered, Ali Dashti observes:

Islam was gradually transformed from a purely spiritual mission into a militant and punitive organization whose progress depended on booty from raids and [tax] revenue. . . The Prophet’s steps in the decade after hejra [emigration from Mecca to Medina] were directed to the end of establishing and consolidating a religion-based state. Some of the deeds done on his command [were] killings of prisoners and political assassinations.

Thus Muhammad himself waged a series of pro-jihad campaigns to subdue the Jews, Christians, and pagans of Arabia. As numerous modern-day pronouncements by leading Muslim theologians confirm (see, for example, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi’s “The Prophet Muhammad as a Jihad Model”), Muhammadan jurisconsults and theologians from eighth to ninth centuries onward, based on their interpretation of Koranic verses, and long chapters in the “hadith,” or acts and sayings of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, especially those recorded by al-Bukhari (d. 869) and Muslim (d. 874).

Ibn Kaldun (d. 1406), jurist, renowned philosopher, historian and sociologist, summarized these consensus opinions form five centuries of prior Muslim jurisprudence with regard to the uniquely Islamic institution of Jihad:

In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the [Muslim] mission and [the obligation to] convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. . . . The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense. . . . Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.

Classical Islam jurists such as Ibn Khaldum also formulated the concepts of Dar al Islam and Dar al Harb (Arabic for “The House of Islam and the House of War”). Armand Abel, the leading twentieth-century expert on the Muslim conception of Dar al Harb, summarizes as it follows:

Together with the duty of the “war in the way of God” (or jihad), this universalistic aspiration would lead the Moslems to see the world as being divided fundamentally into two parts. On the one hand there was that part of the world where Islam prevailed, where salvation had been announced, where the religion that ought to reign was practiced; this was Dar al Islam. On the other hand, there was the part which still awaited the establishment of the saving religion and which constituted, by definition, the object of the holy war. This was the Dar al Harb. The latter, in the view of Moslem jurists, was not populated by people who had a natural right not to practice Islam, but rather by people destined to become Moslems who, through impiousness, refused to accept this great benefit. Since they were destined sooner or later to be converted at the approach of the victorious armies of the Prophet’s successor, or else killed for their rebelliousness, they were the rebel subjects of the Caliph. Their kings were nothing but odious tyrants who, by opposing the progress of the saving religion together with their armies, were following a Satanic inspiration and rising up against the designs of Providence. And so no respite should be granted them, no truce; perpetual war should their lot, waged in the course of the winter and summer ghazu [razzias]. If the sovereign of the country thus attacked desired peace, it was possible for him, just like for any tributary or community, to pay the tribute for himself and for his subjects. Thus the [Byzantine] Empress Irene [d. 803] “purchased peace at the price of her humiliation,” according to the formula stated in the dhimma contract itself, by paying 70,000 pounds in gold annually to the Caliph of Baghdad. Many other princes agreed in this way to come tributaries—often after long struggles—and to see their dominions pass from the status of dar al Harb to that of dar al Sulh. In this way, those of their subjects who lived within the boundaries of the territory ruled by the Caliphate were spared the uncertainty of being exposed arbitrarily, without any guarantee, to the military operations of the summer ghazu and the winter ghazu: indeed, anything within the reach of the Moslem armies as they advanced, being property of impious men and rebels, were mercilessly consigned to the lot specified in the Koranic verse about the sword, and their women and children were treated like things. (Andrew G. Bostom, M.D., “Prefect to the Paperback Edition,” The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York, 2008, pp. ii-iv.)

Bostom went on to describe how non-Muslims are viewed by faithful, believing Mohammedans:

As described by the great twentieth-century scholar of Islamic law Joseph Schaact, 

A non-Muslim who is not protected by a treaty is called harbi, “in a state of war,” “enemy alien; his life and property are completely unprotected by law. (Andrew G. Bostom, M.D., “Prefect to the Paperback Edition,” The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York, 2008, p. v.)

Far from being a “religion of peace,” Mohammedanism is by its very demonic nature a religion of war and aggression against all “infidels.”

It is nevertheless the case that the past two presidents of the United States of America, George Walker Bush and Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, have referred to this false, blasphemous religion as a “religion of peace,” and Jorge Mario Bergoglio has gone so far as to ignore all Mohammedan attempts to invade France, Italy, and Austria or their persecution of Catholics in Mohammedan-dominated nations, both in the Iberian Peninsula before they were expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 and contemporaneously throughout the world. The truth is otherwise:

While descending the slopes of the Pyrenees the Arabs also overran Aquitaine. In 732, having conquered Duke Eudes, they entered Bordeaux, where they burned down all the churches, and advanced as far as the gates of Poitiers, setting fire to the Basilica of Saint Hillary Outside the Walls. Then they set out for the capital of Gaulish Christendom, that is, Tours, their objective being both spiritual and material to strike a blow against the prestige of Saint Martin and to lay hold of the riches of the shrine. Bu they did not reach their goal: one Saturday in October [October 10, 732], the Frankish commander Charles Martel stopped them not far from Poitiers.

Besides, they found the Mediterranean regions more attractive. Around 734 or 735, they stormed and took Arles and Avignon. From the coast of Provence and Italy, their sailors preceded the cavalry or substituted for them. In 846 they disembarked at the mouth of the Tiber, seized Ostia, went up the river, refrained from attacking the wall of Rome, but pillaged the basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul, which at that time were both outside the walls. This alarm prompted, as a countermeasure, the construction of a new Roman enclosure encompassing Saint Peter’s and rejoining the old one at the Castel Santagnelo, the old mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian. In 849 the Muslims attempted a new landing at Ostia; then, every year from around 857 on, they threatened the Roman seaboard. (Andrew G. Bostom, M.D., “Prefect to the Paperback Edition,” The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York, 2008, p. 421. Appendix C contains material about the false prophet Mohammed’s commitment to violence as a bedrock foundation of his false religion.)

Thus, you see, Talmudists and Mohammedans, both of whom have souls that are captive to the devil by means of Original Sin and are thus inflamed to commit more and more Actual Sins to accomplish their goals even though they are not aware of this fact, are committed to the subjugation, if not the elimination, of each other. There can never be any kind of longstanding absent of conflict when the souls of men are in constant conflict with God, His Holy Will, and His Holy Laws, which admit of no exceptions at any time for any reason.

Neither the Mohammedans nor the Talmudists are “men of good will.” Each is prone to hatred and violence. Both of these false religions are instruments of Antichrist, who is using them to destroy all false religions in preparation for the final battle between himself and Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We can have no sympathies for false religion of Mohammedanism nor of Talmudic Judaism, but we can and must pray for the conversion of all those who suffer from the injustices that one merciless band of barbarians imposes upon the other. The merciless will always attack the heartless, and the heartless will always show no mercy to the merciless.  ssed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

The Europe of Modernity and the conciliar sect of Modernism are thus as one in order to appease men no matter how much they offend Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and to reject the great patrimony of how Catholic kings and prices defended Christendom from Mohammedan invasions, starting, as mentioned before, with Charles Martel’s defense of France at the Battle of Tours (Poitier) on October 10, 732:

The Muslims in northern Spain had easily overrun Septimania, had set up a capital at Narbonne which they called Arbuna, giving its largely Arian inhabitants honorable terms, and quickly pacified the south and for some years threatened Frankish territories. Duke Odo of Aquitaine, also known as Eudes the Great, had decisively defeated a major invasion force in 721 at the Battle of Toulouse, but Arab raids continued, in 725 reaching as far as the city of Autun in Burgundy. Threatened by both the Arabs in the south and by the Franks in the north, in 730 Eudes allied himself with Uthman ibn Naissa, called "Munuza" by the Franks, the Berber emir in what would later become Catalonia. As a gage, Uthman was given Eudes's daughter Lampade in marriage to seal the alliance, and Arab raids across the Pyrenees, Eudes' southern border, ceased [1].

However, the next year, Uthman rebelled against the governor of al-Andalus, Abd er Rahman. Abd er Rahman quickly crushed the revolt, and next directed his attention against the traitor's former ally, Eudes. According to one unidentified Arab, "That army went through all places like a desolating storm." Duke Eudes (called King by some), collected his army at Bordeaux, but was defeated, and Bordeaux was plundered. The slaughter of Christians at the River Garonne was evidently horrific; Isidorus Pacensis commented that "solus Deus numerum morientium vel pereuntium recognoscat", 'God alone knows the number of the slain' (Chronicon). The Muslim horsemen then utterly devastated that portion of Gaul, their own histories saying the "faithful pierced through the mountains, tramples over rough and level ground, plunders far into the country of the Franks, and smites all with the sword, insomuch that when Eudo came to battle with them at the River Garonne, and fled." Eudes appealed to the Franks for assistance, which Charles Martel only granted after Eudes agreed to submit to Frankish authority.

In 732, the Arab advance force was proceeding north toward the River Loire having already outpaced their supply train and a large part of their army. Essentially, having easily destroyed all resistance in that part of Gaul, the invading army had split off into several raiding parties, simply looting and destroying, while the main body advanced more slowly. A military explanation for why Eudes was defeated so easily at Bordeaux, after having won 11 years earlier at Battle of Toulouse, was simple. At Toulouse, Eudes managed a basic surprise attack against an overconfident and unprepared foe, all of whose defensive works were aimed inward, while he attacked from the outside. The Arab cavalary never got a chance to mobilize and meet him in open battle. At Bordeaux, they did, and resulted in absolute devastation of Eudes army, almost all of whom were killed, with minimal losses to the Muslims. Eudes forces, like other European troops of that era, lacked stirrups, and therefore had no armoured cavalry. Virtually all of their troops were infantry. The Muslim heavy cavalry broke the Christian infantry in their first charge, and then simply slaughtered them at will as they broke and ran. The invading force then went on to devastate southern Gaul, preparing it for complete conquest. One of the major raiding parties advanced on Tours. A possible motive, according to the second continuator of Fredegar, was the riches of the Abbey of Saint Martin of Tours, the most prestigious and holiest shrine in western Europe at the time. Upon hearing this, Austrasia Mayor of the Palace Charles Martel, collected his army of an estimated 15-75,000 veterans, and marched south avoiding the old Roman roads hoping to take the Muslims by surprise.

Location

Despite the great importance of this battle, its exact location remains unknown. Most historians assume that the two armies met each other where the rivers Clain and Vienne join between Tours and Poitiers.

The battle

Charles chose to begin the battle in a defensive, phalanx-like formation. According to the Arabian sources they drew up in a large square. Certainly, given the disparity between the armies, in that the Franks were mostly infantry, all without armour, against mounted and Arab armored or mailed horsemen, (the Berbers were less heavily protected) Charles Martel fought a brilliant defensive battle. In a place and time of his choosing, he met a far superior force, and defeated it.

For six days, the two armies watched each other with just minor skirmishes. The Muslims waited for their full strength to arrive, which it did, but they were still uneasy. No good general, and Abd er Rahman was one, liked to let his opponent pick the ground and conditions for battle -- and Martel had done both. Creasy says, and his theory is probably best, that the Muslims best strategic choice would have been to simply decline battle, depart with their loot, garrisoning the captured towns in southern Gaul, and return when they could force Martel to a battleground more to their liking, one that maximized the huge advantage they had of the first true "knights" mailed and amoured horsemen -- the Franks, without stirrups in wide use, had to depend on unarmoured foot soldiers. Martel gambled everything that Abd er Rahman would in the end feel compelled to battle, and to go on and loot Tours. Neither of them wanted to attack. The Franks were well dressed for the cold, and had the terrain advantage. The Arabs were not as prepared for the intense cold, but did not want to attack what they thought might be a numerically superior Frankish army. (most historians believe it was not) Essentially, the Arabs wanted the Franks to come out in the open, while the Franks, formed in a tightly packed defensive formation, wanted them to come uphill, into the trees, (negating at once some of the advantages of their cavalry). It became a waiting game, which Martel won. The fight commenced on the seventh day, as Abd er Rahman did not want to postpone the battle indefinitely.

Abd er Rahman trusted the tactical superiority of his cavalry, and had them charge repeatedly. This time the faith the Muslims had in their cavalry, armed with their long lances and swords which had brought them victory in previous battles, was not justified.

In one of the rare instances where medieval infantry stood up against cavalry charges, the disciplined Frankish soldiers withstood the assaults, though according to Arab sources, the Arab cavalry several times broke into the interior of the Frankish square. But despite this, Franks did not break, and it is probably best expressed by a translation of an Arab account of the battle from the Medieval Source Book: "And in the shock of the battle the men of the North seemed like North a sea that cannot be moved. Firmly they stood, one close to another, forming as it were a bulwark of ice; and with great blows of their swords they hewed down the Arabs. Drawn up in a band around their chief, the people of the Austrasians carried all before them. Their tireless hands drove their swords down to the breasts of the foe."

It might have been different, however, had the Muslim forces remained under control. According to Muslim accounts of the battle, in the midst of the fighting on the second day, scouts from the Franks began to raid the camp and supply train (including slaves and other plunder). A large portion of the army broke off and raced back to their camp to save their plunder. What appeared to be a retreat soon became one. While attempting to restore order to his men, who had managed to break into the defensive square, Abd er Rahman was surrounded by Franks and killed.

According to a Frankish source, the battle lasted one day. Frankish histories claim that when the rumor went through the Arab army that Frankish cavalry threatened the booty they had taken from Bordeaux, (Charles supposedly had sent scouts to cause chaos in the Muslim base camp, and free as many of the slaves as possible, hoping to draw off part of his foe, it succeeded beyond his wildest dreams), many of the Muslim Cavalry returned to their camp. This, to the rest of the Muslim army, appeared to be a full-scale retreat, and soon it was one. Both histories agree that while attempting to stop the retreat, Abd er Rahman became surrounded, which led to his death, and the Muslims returned to their camp.

The next day, when the Muslims did not renew the battle, the Franks feared an ambush. Only after extensive reconnaissance by Frankish soldiers of the Muslim camp was it discovered that the Muslims had retreated during the night.

Aftermath

The Arab army retreated south over the Pyrenees. Charles earned his nickname Martel, meaning hammer, in this battle. He continued to drive the Muslims from France in subsequent years. After Eudes died, who had been forced to acknowledge, albeit reservedly, the suzerainty of Charles in 719, his son wished independence. Though Charles wished to unite the duchy directly to himself and went there to elicit the proper homage of the Aquitainians, the nobility proclaimed Odo's son, Hunold, whose dukedom Charles recognised when the Arabs invaded Provence the next year. Hunold, who originally resisted acknowledging Charles as overlord, had no choice when the Muslims returned.

In 736 the Caliphate launched another massive invasion -- this time by sea. This naval Arab invasion was headed by Abdul Rahman's son. It landed in Narbonne in 736 and took Arles. Charles, the conflict with Hunold put aside, descended on the Provençal strongholds of the Muslims. In 736, he retook Montfrin and Avignon, and Arles and Aix-en-Provence with the help of Liutprand, King of the Lombards. Nîmes, Agde, and Béziers, held by Isalm since 725, fell to him and their fortresses destroyed. He smashed a Muslim force at the River Berre, and prepared to meet their primary invasion force at Narbonne. He defeated a mighty host outside of that city, using for the first time, heavy cavalry of his own, which he used in coordination with his planax. He crushed the Muslim army, though outnumbered, but failed to take the city. Provence, however, he successfully rid of its foreign occupiers.

Notable about these campaigns was Charles' incorporation, for the first time, of heavy cavalry with stirrups to augment his phalanx. His ability to coordinate infantry and cavalry veterans was unequaled in that era and enabled him to face superior numbers of invaders, and decisively defeat them again and again. Some historians believe Narbonne in particular was as imporant a victory for Christian Europe as Tours. Charles was that rarest of commonities in the dark ages: a brilliant stategic general, who also was a tactical commander par excellance, able in the crush and heat of battle to adapt his plans to his foes forces and movement -- and amazingly, defeated them repeatedly, especially when, as at Tours, they were far superior in men and weaponry, and at Berre and Narbonne, when they were superior in numbers of brave fighting men. Charles had the last quality which defines genuine greatness in a military commander: he foresaw the dangers of his foes, and prepared for them with care; he used ground, time, place, and fierce loyalty of his troops to offset his foes superior weaponry and tactics; third, he adapted, again and again, to the enemy on the battlefield, cooly shifting to compensate for the foreseen and unforeseeable.

The importance of these campaigns, Tours and the later campaigns of 736-7 in putting an end to Muslim bases in Gaul, and any immediate ability to expand Islamic influence in Europe, cannot be overstated. Gibbons and his generation of historians, and the majority of modern experts agree with them that they were unquestionably decisive in world history. Despite these victories, the Arabs remained in control of Narbonne and Septimania for another 27 years, but could not expand further than that. The treaties reached earlier with the local population stood firm and were further consolidated in 734 when the governor of Narbonne, Yusuf ibn 'Abd al-Rahman al-Fihri, concluded agreements with several towns on common defense arrangements against the encroachments of Charles Martel, who had systematically brought the south to heel as he extended his domains. He believed, and rightly so, that it was vital to keep the Muslims in Iberia, and not allow them a foothold in Gaul itself. Though he won the battle of Narbonne when the army there came out to meet him, Charles failed in his attempt to take Narbonne by siege in 737, when the city was jointly defended by its Muslim Arab and Christian Visigoth citizens. It was left to his son, Pippin the short, to force the city's surrender, in 759, and to drive the Arabs completely back to Iberia, and bring Narbonne into the Frankish Domains. His Grandson, Charlamagne, became the first Christian ruler to actually begin what would be called the Reconquista from Europe proper. In the east of the peninsula the Frankish emperors established the Marca Hispanica across the Pyrenees in part of what today is Catalonia, reconquering Girona in 785 and Barcelona in 801. This formed a buffer zone against Islam across the Pyrenees. (From https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/tours.html.)

The Mohammedans did have a stronghold in Spain for seven centuries until King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled them in 1492 but Catholics fought against this false religion on the Iberian Peninsula and prevented further advances by the grace of God and the maternal intercession of His Most Blessed Mother:

For those interested in true history, therefore, here is description of how the Mohammedans dealt with the bodies of the Catholics they had defeated in battle in Eleventh Century Spain at a time with Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, was fighting so valiantly to liberate Spain from the Moors during the time of King Alfonso VI:

Yusuf kept his men busy the night of his victory, instructing them to cut off the heads of the Christian dead and stack them in great, bloody heaps. After thus having dishonored the vanquished, he had some of his pious warriors stand atop these ghastly mounds to call the rest to morning prayers, “in the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.” [Menendez Pidal, The Cid and his Spain, p. 221]

Yusuf was disturbed in his triumphant revelry by the news that his son had died in Africa. The is son had been sick upon Yusuf's departure for Spain, but had been expected to recover and someday become Yusuf's heir. Rather than follow-up on his victory, Yusuf determined to return to Africa. Before his departure, he ordered that the severed heads be stacked into carts and sent off to all the major Moorish cities in Spain to signify that there was no longer anything to fear from King Alfonso VI. He left Spain, but 3,000 of his handpicked horsemen remained with Motamid of Seville, who had proven himself in battle. He, like all the other Andalusian princes, would no longer continue to pay tribute to the defeated humiliated King Alfonso. (James Fitzhenry, God's Own Champion: The True Story of the Knight of Vivar, Vitality Publications, Saint Mary’s, Kansas, 2008, pp. 89-90.)

Yusuf's command to King Alfonso before the battle of Sagrajas was to “accept Islam, surrender and pay tribute, or fight.” In this he did nothing more than repeat the words of Islam's founder, for unlike many of the Spanish Moors, he was true to the Islamist concept of perpetual jihad against the unbeliever.

Islam is a religion largely spread by the sword. The ideology of jihad against the infidel has been a vital part of Islam from the very beginning, as “like Muhammad's mission (Qur'an 34:28), it is a universal injunction that will endure until the only religion remaining is that of Allah (Qur'an 2:189).[Bat Ye'or, Eurabia, The Euro-Arabian Axis, p. 32]

To Yusuf, and those like him, “The world of infidels is considered as one entity, called dar al-harb, the region of war – until, through jihad, it comes under Islamic rule. The hostilities between the region of Islam (dar al-Islam) and the region of war (dar al-harb) must continue as long as unbelief exists.” [Ibid., p.32]

“the jihad conception classifies infidels under three categories: 1.) those who oppose the Islamic call with arms; 2) those who have surrendered to Islamic domination, exchanging their land for peace; they become “dhimmis,” “protected” from the ongoing jihad war against non-Muslims by a treaty of subjection and protection . . .” [Ibid., p.32]

Peaceful coexistence was not the usual state when dealing with an Islamic neighbor. To the Muslim, the only reason for peace with the infidel would be to gain time to acquire the strength necessary to defeat and subject the enemy, or to temporarily grant “peace” in exchange for money or tribute. To the true believer, nothing else made sense. It is so, even to this day. 

King Alfonso had learned first hand what it was to confront a faithful practitioner of the Mulim jihad. Although he had sustained a major reverse, he was not one to go down without a colossal fight. During that long winter he recovered from his wounds, and laid plans for the future. Many responded to his summons, and when spring came he marshaled his forces. (James Fitzhenry, God's Own Champion: The True Story of the Knight of Vivar, Vitality Publications, Saint Marys, Kansas, 2008, pp. 92-93)

Saint James, known as Santiago Matamoras—Saint James the Moorslayer—in Spain, desires us to work hard to save our souls and to view all of the events of the world through the supernatural eyes of the Holy Faith. It is indeed very interesting that the Mexican city in the State of Tamualipas just across the Rio Grande River from Brownsville, Texas, through thousands of illegal immigrants, including Mohammedan “refugees”—aka terrorists—continue to pass into the United States of America as a some rogue Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents contine the previous administration's illegal "catch and release" policy, Matamoras, is named after Santiago Matamoras. 

Yes, the “open borders” policies desired by Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV, a man who denounces "global climate change" and his endless elegies of praise in behalf of Mohammedanism are diabolically-inspired attacks upon the work of Santiago Matamoras in Spain, and that is something you are not going to hear from any naturalist of the false opposite of the naturalist “right.” This is why it is a pretty good idea to say the following prayer to Saint James the Greater as found in The Raccolta:

O glorious Apostle, Saint James, who by reason of thy fervent and generous heart wast chosen by Jesus to be a witness of His glory on Mount Tabor, and of His agony in Gethsemane; thou, whose very name is a symbol of warfare and victory: obtain for us strength and consolation in the unending warfare of this life, that, having constantly and generously followed Jesus, we may be victors in the strife anddeserve to receive the victor's crown in heaven. Amen. (As found in (The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences, approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, pp. 345-347)

King Saint Ferdinand III was born in 1199, precisely one hundred years after the death of his famous ancestor, Rodrigo Diaz—El Cid, and God favored him with many important victories over political rivals in other Spanish kingdoms and, of course, against the Moors themselves. It was King Saint Ferdinand III who captured Cordoba in 1236 for Christ the King and His true Church.

In all conflicts, however, the only thing that mattered to King Saint Ferdinand III was to do the will of God and to restrain his own passions so that everything he did would be of God. He sought only the honor and glory of God, not his own.

Moreover, he sought to establish a just rule of law after he had conquered Seville on December 22, 1248, that was modeled on the one had had promulgated in Toledo. As one can see in the text quoted below, Saint Ferdinand III, whose feast is observed on May 30, which is the date on which I received my first Holy Communion in 1959 at Saint Aloysius Church in Great Neck, New York, from the hands of Father Robert E. Mason, sought to give honor and glory to the Most Blessed Trinity above all else. He was quite a contrast to the naturalists of the false opposites of the “right” and the “left” today whose minds are but a jumble of erroneous ideas and beliefs and whose souls are readily inclined to surrender to passionate, unrestrained anger and bitterness:

In addition to these plans, the King was simultaneously working, helped by his son Don Alfonso and his twelve councilors, on the great undertaking of unifying the laws. He wanted the Code of Laws of Seville to be finished when the kingdom representatives met.

He prayed much during those days and nights in which he studied, discussed and drew up the immortal document. One of the last discussions dealt with the style that should be used in writing the Code. The King, who was usually more concerned with the content than the language, until then had used the familiar style of daily conversation. His son Don Alfonso and his secretary Father Remondo insisted, however, that this code of law should be written with a great majesty proportional to the importance of the conquered city. “Also, Lord, know that in Rome the popes and the great princes use a higher form of language,” said the secretary.

The King smiles at their insistence, but since he like to follow the advice of prudent men, and the good Don Remondo was very prudent, he pleased him by using the serious and solemn “we.”

The King and his notary were both sitting at their work table, the latter with his pen in his hand ready to write. After a few moments of silent prayer during which he often made a great Sign of the Cross, the noble King of Castile and Leon began to dictate:

“In the name of Him Who is the true and everlasting God, Who in one God with the Son and with the Holy Ghost, and one Lord in Three Persons and one in substance; and Who gave us His glory; and if we believe this of Him and in His Son and in the Holy Ghost, then we believe in the true, everlasting god, and we adore the Three Persons, the unity in essence and the equality in the divinity; and in the name of this Trinity with which we begin and end all of the good deeds we perform, we call upon Him to be the beginning and the end of this our work. Amen.”

Don Ferdinand remained suspended for some time in ecstasy, unable to tear his soul from Him Who captivated it whenever He was invoked. Returning to his senses, he continued:

“All those who see this document should remember the great benefits, the great graces, the great favors, the great honors and the great happiness granted by Him Who is the beginning and source of all good, to all Christendom and especially to Castile and Leon in the days and the time of Don Ferdinand, who, by the grace of God, is King of Castile, of Toledo, of Leon, of Galicia, of Seville and of Jaen. All should understand and know that the many benefits He gave and showed to us Christians and against Moors are not because of our merits but because of His great kindness and His great mercy, and because of the intercession of the prayers and merits of Holy Mary, whose servant we are, and because,  and because of the help she gave us with her blessed Son, and because of prayers and merits of St. James, whose lieutenant we are and whose standard we carry, and who always helped us to conquer and to do good, and who showed his favor to us and all our sons and our noblemen and our vassals, and all of the people of Spain, He made and ordered and ordained that we who are His knights, and through our labors and with the help and advice of Don Alfonso our first son, and Don Alfonso our brother, and our other sons, and with the help and advice of the other noblemen and our loyal vassals of Castile and Leon we conquered all of Andalusia for the service of God and the expansion of Christianity more generously and completely than it was conquered by any other king or man; and though He honored and showed great favor in the other conquests of Andalusia, we believe He showed us His grace and His favor more abundantly and more generously in the conquest of Seville, which we accomplished with His help and with His power, as Seville is greater and more noble than the other cities of Spain. And because of this, we, the King Don Ferdinand, servant and knight of Christ, because we received so many benefits and so many favors and in so many ways from Him Who is all good, we want, by right and reason, to share those benefits that God granted us with our vassals and with the prelates who inhabited Seville for us; and because of this, we, the King Don Ferdinand, joined by the Queen Dona Joan, our wife, and our sons Don Fadrique and Don Henry, we grant and give this Code of Law and these freedoms expressed in this document.”

He then proceeded to dictate the Code, copied from that of Toledo, which was celebrated by all for the many freedoms it granted. It first declares the rights of those who are knights and grants honors to those having a horse worth fifty marks giving them freedom from the King's service for at least eight months during the year. It continues by stating the privileges that would be enjoyed by those living in the suburb of the Francos, allowing then ample freedom to buy and sell without paying duties and exempting them from standing guard duty which, during those times without permanent armies, the citizens were obliged to serve. Further, they could not be obliged to lend money to the King by force, they were granted the honor of knighthood, and had the duty of forming an army for him on the same conditions as the men from Toledo.

It covers the area of the men of sea, first creating the post of mayor to be held by a man knowledgeable in the matters related the sailors' trade. Their litigation and common offenses were to be judged by the mayors of Seville, but if those involved did not agree with the sentence, the mayor has “to look for six good men knowledgeable in the Code of 'sea laws' and review the litigation with them, notifying the plaintiff of what they believed to be right; and if the plaintiff does not like the judgment agreed upon by the mayor and those six good men, let his appeal to us.” Afterward, it made the same concessions to the sailors as it had to those in the suburb of Francos in respect to selling, buying and trading.

After giving them the honor of knighthood, the code determined the conditions of their service, which reads as follows: “The are obliged to serve the King with their ships and their weapons for three months. If the King needs them for a longer tour, he shall pay them.” This obligation of forming an army on the sea spared them the obligation of serving on land, with the exception that it should be for the town's benefit, in which case they were required to serve with the others. As see, the ships were equivalent to horses in the King's mind, and his son and successor used the same criteria when he says, “The ships are the riding animals of those who go by sea just as the horses are for those who go by land.” It also granted them the right to have a butcher's shop in their suburb with the duties paid by the King.

And lastly, it orders all of the inhabitants of Seville, knights, merchants, and sailors, to pay him ten percent from the gardens and farms on the surrounding lands of the Guadalquiver “as this . . . is our right. And we order that from the bread and the wine and the cattle and from all the other things, you pay your due obligation to the Church as it is done in Toledo.” The code ends by threatening he who dares decrease the freedoms of that code of law with “provoking the wrath of God and my own,” and ordering him to “pay to us and to whoever reigns after us one hundred marks of gold.” (Sister Maria del Carmen Fernandez de Castro Cabeza A.C.J., The Life of the Very Noble King of Castile and Leon Saint Fernando III, pp. 267-270.)

Catholic nobility in the face of direct attacks upon the Holy Faith and its place as the rightful governor of all men everywhere in all that pertains the good of souls is mocked, scorned, reviled or, at best, ignored by the conciliar revolutionaries.

Thus, Mohammedan immigrants represent “hope” according to the conciliar revolutionaries even though Pope Saint Pius V called upon the whole Christian world to pray Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary for the defeat of the Mohammedan fleet in the Battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571.

William Thomas Walsh provided a stirring account of King Philip II's endeavor to preserve Christendom from yet another attempt by Mohammedans to conquer a land with force that had been conquered by the power of Christ the King's Holy Cross at it was held high by the missionaries who spread throughout pagan and barbaric lands during the First Millennium to win by example what the Mohammedans sought to wrest by the sword:

'Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array?"

The Turkish fleet, about that time, was setting out from Constantinople, with instructions to find and destroy the Christian navies and to complete the conquest of Cyprus. Before Ali Pasha left the Bosphorus with forty great galleys, four Christian prisoners were crucified, and others skinned alive, as sacrifices to Mohammed for victory. While an army of 70,000 began the siege of Dolcino, on the coast of Albania, the fleet proceeded to Chios (April eighth) where it was joined by forty more vessels under Mohammed-Bey, governor of Negroponte. A second armada was preparing to follow from Constantinople, and Aluch Ali was cruising from Algiers with twenty more. Before the end of April the Grand Turk had almost 300 heavy warships, with a huge army of crack Janizaries and Spahis on board, on the way to Cyprus, where, on May nineteenth, Mustapha resumed the siege of Famagosta, which had held out heroically for nearly a year under the Venetian general Bragadino.

Mustapha loosed all his fury upon this city for three months. The Italian women fought in the breaches with their men. The children carried dirt and ammunition. Hunger at last got the better of them, and, in August, Bragadino agreed to surrender, if the Turks would spare their lives. Mustapha agreed; but as soon as the Christians had laid down their arms, he had them tortured and butchered, women and children with the men. The valiant Bragadino was skinned alive. There were other atrocities too horrible to mention. Mustapha went sailing off to range the Mediterranean in quest of the Christian fleet, with the stuffed skin of Bragadino swinging from his yardarm,

It seems incredible that with such dangers hanging over their other eastern possessions, and even their own shores, the Venetians should have haggled over the details of the League treaty for fully two months after the Pope had signed it. Pius agreed with the Spanish envoys, who were more tractable, that the demands of Venice were unreasonable (the nuncio blamed politicians among the Senators, and merchants with interests in the Levant), but he begged the King of Spain to send Don Juan to Italy as soon as possible, so that the fleet might sail. Yet Philip, although he had been assembling troops and ships since the first of the year, and had ordered his galleys armed on a war basis when the chief points of dispute were settled on April twelfth, refused to let his brother leave Spain until the treaty was signed. Up to the last minute he expected the Venetians to forsake the League. 1 He decided also that his nephews, Rudolph and Ernest, who were about to return home, must travel with Don Juan as far as Genoa. As both the Princes were ill during April, and Ernest continued so until June, the sailing of the Generalissimo seemed uncertain indeed.

At last, however, the treaty was signed, on May twentieth. 2 The news reached Madrid on the Feast of Corpus Christi, and the nuncio hastened to San Lorenzo, to notify the King. Philip was attending a solemn procession in honor of the Blessed Sacrament. It was a day he had long anticipated, for the monastery portion of the Escorial was finished, and he was formally handing it over to the Jeronymite friars he had chosen as its custodians. He would not grant Castagna an audience until the next day; but he had the Cardinal of Siguenza tell him of his pleasure over the good news, and say that Don Juan would start at once. Philip was waiting for confirmation of the news from his own commissioners. This arrived on the morning of June sixth. 3 He then gave his orders. The Prince left Madrid at three o'clock the same afternoon, reaching Guadalajara, thirty-five miles away, the same night. He was at Barcelona on the fifteenth. Don Juan of Austria was riding to the sea at last.

The Archdukes lagged behind, for Ernest was ill again. It was June twenty-fifth before they arrived. The flagship had to be repaired, and there was further wait for Ernest. Meanwhile some irritating instructions came from Antonio Perez. There was a temperamental antipathy between the suave politician who now handled nearly all the King’s correspondence and possessed the confidence that Philip gave so generously when he did give it, and the impulsive, headstrong young soldier. Perez wrote that it was His Majesty's wish that he be addressed by every one as "Your Excellency" instead of "Your Highness," the term usually employed for members of the royal family. This reminder that he was still a bastard cut Don Juan to the soul. Even the royal ambassador at Rome wrote that in Italy people would naturally call him "Su Alteza," since "Su Excellencia" was used there by people of very low degree.

Philip refused to change his instructions. He foresaw, perhaps, that if Don Juan became famous, there would be a demand that he be considered heir to the throne. And it remained to be demonstrated whether Don Juan would develop the qualities which the rule of an Empire demanded. Moreover, since Queen Anna was already pregnant and seemed likely to accomplish the chief duty for which she had been brought to Spain, he had hopes again of a legitimate heir. Pope Pius and nearly all the other notable persons of Italy called the Prince "Your Highness" from the start, however, and could not be persuaded to change by any intimations from Madrid.

It was July twentieth when Don Juan weighed anchor at Barcelona, July twenty-sixth when he reached Genoa. The greatest enthusiasm greeted him At one function there were fifty-two noted beauties to receive him On all sides his charm and gallantry, his handsome face and fine figure, his manners and his dancing, made him a hero of society. At Genoa he parted with the Austrian princes, who passed on their way to Milan. Meeting his old friend Alexander of Parma, he proceeded with him to Naples.

The Pope was pleased with what he heard of his Generalissimo, and wanted him to come to Rome. King Philip refused to allow this. Pope Pius was compelled, therefore, to send the banner of the Crusade and the Admiral's truncheon, which he blessed, to Naples, where, on August second, an immense crowd gathered to hear Mass, and to see Don Juan seated in a throne on the steps of the high altar in Santa Chiara, a noble figure in steel armor, spangled with gold, his shoulders draped with the decoration of the Golden Fleece, even his hair golden in the soft multicolored light of the old church. After Mass Cardinal Granvelle, as viceroy of Naples and a Prince of the Church, presented to him the truncheon and the azure banner on which was emblazoned the figure of Christ crucified, with the arms of the Pope, King Philip, Venice, and Don Juan at His feet.

"Take, O illustrious Prince," said Granvelle, "the insignia of the true Word Made Flesh. Take the living symbol of the holy Faith whose defender you will be in this enterprise. He gives you glorious victory over the impious enemy, and by your hand shall his pride be laid in the dust." "Amen!" A mighty shout like that of Clermont burst from the people. "Amen!" 4

On August twenty-third, when Don Juan arrived at Messina, the harbor was a cluttered forest of masts, the ancient town swarming with men of all nations. By September first, when the whole fleet was assembled, there were 208 galleys in all, 90 of Spain and her dependencies, 106 of Venice and 12 of the Pope; besides nearly 100 brigantines, frigates and transports, mostly furnished by Spain; with some 50,000 sailors and galley slaves, and 31,000 soldiers: 19,000 of them paid by King Philip (including Germans and Italians), 8,000 Venetians, 2,000 Papal troops, and 2,000 volunteers, chiefly from Spain. 

The Spanish galleys were by far the best built, best equipped and best handled, and would bear the brunt of any fighting. The Venetian ships showed up so badly in a review that Don Juan inspected some of them, and found, to his disgust, that they were not even sufficiently manned. Some had hardly any crews. Others lacked fighting men. He distributed among the worst of them about 4,000 of the famous Spanish and Italian infantry. Then he held a Council of War, attended by seventy officers. Some favored a merely defensive campaign, since the Turks evidently outnumbered them, and the risk would be great, especially as the time for autumn tempests was at hand. Others said that if the Turk galleys were more numerous, they were not as efficient; and "something always had to be left to luck." Don Juan himself apparently hesitated, thinking of the King’s instructions. 5

The Papal influence was all in favor of fighting, whatever the odds. The invincible spirit of the old saint in the Vatican was perhaps the decisive factor. When Bishop Odescalchi, his nuncio, came to bless the fleet and to give a large portion of the True Cross for distribution among the crews, each vessel having a grain of the Precious Wood, he also brought to Don Juan the solemn assurance of Pope Pius V that, if he offered battle, God would give him the victory. If they were defeated, the Pope promised "to go to war himself with his gray hairs, to put idle youth to shame." But with courage they could not fail. Had not several revelations, including two prophecies by Saint Isidore of Sevilla, described such a battle and victory as seemed imminent, won by a youth closely resembling Don Juan?

At the Holy Father's suggestion, Don Juan adopted a modus operandi seldom if ever taught in naval academies. No women were allowed aboard the ships. Blasphemy was to be punished with death. While waiting for a good wind and the return of his scouting squadron with news of where the Turks were, the Generalissimo fasted for three days. All his officers and crews did likewise. Contemporary accounts agree that not one of the 81,000 sailors and soldiers failed to confess and to receive Holy Communion. Even the galley slaves were unshackled from their long benches and led in droves ashore, to confess to the numerous priests who toiled day and night at the Jesuit College helping the chaplains of the galleys.

Saint Francis Borgia and his Society played an important part in the preparation for the voyage. Six Spanish-speaking Jesuits were chaplains of the Spanish fleet. Of the three chaplains on board the Real, two were Jesuits. While Borgia was on his way to Spain with the Pope's nephew to perpetuate the League and to try to settle all differences between the Holy See and Spain, his followers, with Dominicans, Franciscans, Capuchins and others, were going among rough men, some of them offscourings and sweepings of the vilest cities, some criminals condemned to the galleys for foul crimes, urging them to lift up their hearts and cast all sin out of God’s fleet and God's army.

When the last of the Venetians had arrived, the Armada began to put to sea, September fifteenth, in the order agreed upon. Doria led the vanguard with 54 galleys of the right wing, flying green banners. Don Juan followed next morning with the batalla or center, under azure banners, with the blue standard of Our Lady of Guadalupe over the Real. (The Pope’s Standard of the League was reserved for battle.) Marcantonio Colonna, on the flagship of the Pope, was on his right. Veniero, a cantankerous old Venetian sea-dog, at his left. The third squadron of the Venetian Barbarigo followed, with yellow banners: and the Marques of Santa Cruz (Don Alvaro de Bazan) brought up the rear with thirty Spanish galleys and some of Italy, all under white flags.

It was a sight to remember—the papal nuncio, a flaming figure in scarlet from head to foot, standing on the mole with hand uplifted to bless each ship as it passed, the crusaders kneeling on the decks, the knights and men-at-arms glittering with steel, the sailors in red suits and caps, the rowers with dark naked backs glistening with sweat, the brown sails bellying out to catch the first breeze; and on the lofty prow of the flagship, Don Juan in golden armor, like an avenging angel under the outflung blue banner of her who had trodden on the serpent's head. Thus they passed into the open Mediterranean and formed in ranks, two by two. The six great Venetian galeasses, each a bristling fort with 44 heavy guns, led the way into the sapphire-studded morning light. The galeasses kept a full mile ahead, to open the fray with a heavy bombardment. Two by two the whole Armada followed, almost in battle order, according to a plan carefully worked out by old paralyzed Don Garcia de Toledo. 6 The plan was somewhat modified, apparently, to leave spaces between the squadrons, so that Santa Cruz could intervene where his help might be needed. "In this disposition," says Cabrera, "Gianandrea Doria took the leading part, with certain contradictions from those who sought thereby to gain reputation in what they knew least about." 7

Was Don Juan the target of this innuendo of the usually well-informed chronicler? He was certainly the least experienced and most cocksure of the generals. He quarrelled with most of them. He had come to despise Requesens on the voyage from Barcelona to Genoa, when he found him always at his elbow, even at meal times; for Don Luis had had instructions from the King to keep the young hero constantly under supervision. 8 Cardinal Pacheco also had a watchful eye on him. Cardinal Espinosa, whom he heartily detested, had no high opinion of him, nor had Granvelle. Neither the King nor his ministers had much co nfi dence in the capacity of Don Juan for real leadership. The Morisco campaign had shown more courage in him than judgment, and Philip had no intention of leaving the fate of so costly a fleet and the lives of 81,000 men in the hands of an impetuous and inexperienced youth. He wrote his brother that he must attach particular weight to the opinion of Gianandrea Doria; and that he must not risk a battle without the unanimous consent of Doria, Requesens, and Santa Cruz. 9

The wisdom of these precautions was demonstrated on October first, when the fleet was becalmed off the coast of Albania. A quarrel had broken out on one of the Venetian ships, where Don Juan had placed Spanish soldiers. Captain Curcio Anticocio and three of his soldiers were involved, and old Veniero in a rage ordered them hanged on a lateen yard. When Don Juan saw the four bodies in ghastly relief against the sky he was almost beside himself with anger, and would probably have thrown himself upon the seventy-year old Venetian if Colonna, Doria and Requesens had not restrained and calmed him. The Spanish soldiers were all for giving battle immediately to the Venetians. Doubtless, with such a fiery leader as Don Juan, they would have ruined the expedition, if wiser and more moderate heads had not been ready, through the foresight of the King, to intervene. As itwas, Don Juan refused to let Veniero come anymore to his Council. 1

A brief stop at Corfu restored the morale of the fleet. The Turks had been there, and had left the usual mementoes: charred ruins of churches and houses, broken and defiled crucifixes, mangled bodies of priests, women and children, feasted on by dogs and vultures. The sight was enough to remind the Christians of the object of their quest. Informed by scouts that the Turkish fleet had withdrawn to the Gulf of Corinth, preparatory to making their return to Constantinople before the autumn storms began, they set off in pursuit. Ali Pasha was then at Preveza. According to some captured corsairs, Aluch Ali, the best of the Moslem navigators, had returned with his 73 galleys to Algiers. This news seemed to indicate that the odds in favor of the enemy would not be overwhelming.

Don Juan left Corfu on September twenty-eighth. While the Turkish fleet was skirting the southern shore of Aetolia, making for the Gulf of Corinth (or Lepanto) the Christian Armada, using oars because the wind was contrary, nosed through the waters of the Ionian Sea, with the Albanian shore off the port bows, past Nicopolis and that stretch of sea lying off Actium where the spirit of the East had fled from the spirit of the West in the jaded galleys of Antony and Cleopatra, and around the coast of Santa Maura to Cephalonia, with the narrow isle of Ithaca hugged under its lee shore, still fragrant with the memory of Penelope and the unconquerable fortitude of Odysseus.

It was October fifth when the fleet cast anchor among the Curzolares. That day a brigantine from Candia came by with news of the fall of Famagosta, and the horrible atrocities perpetuated by Mustapha upon the helpless Christians who had surrendered. A quiver of rage passed through the floating city of armed men. Nothing could have been better timed to make them fight like holy madmen.

The wind was east, the sky overcast, the sea gray with fog. All day Saturday and well into the night, the fleet remained inactive, not knowing that the wind which kept them there had brought the Turkish fleet across the Gulf of Patras to the Albanian shore, and that Aluch Ali, with all his Algerian galleys, was still with them With the falling of the starless night a dead silence settled over the sea.

About two o'clock in the morning of Sunday, the seventh, there came up a fresh steady wind from the west, across the Ionian Sea, sweeping the stars and the wide bay clear of the wraiths of fog. Don Juan, lying sleepless in the cabin of his Real, saw that he was in the middle of what seemed a huge lake, flooded with moonlight. He gave the word, the great anchors were weighed and the sails unfurled, the whips cracked over the straining backs of the galley slaves, the great ships hove through the choppy water, as if racing the dawn to the Albanian coast. When the sun came flaming up over the Gulf of Lepanto, Doria's lookout, in the vanguard, sighted a squadron of the enemy about twelve miles away, returning from a scouting trip to Santa Maura. The signal flag agreed upon was on the masthead of the royal frigate, where Doria was on watch.

"We must conquer or die here," said Don Juan, exultantly, and ordered a green banner displayed as a sign for all to get in battle array. The multiple banks of oars on the six great Venetian galeasses plunged into the sea, driving the massive hulks to their positions, two of them a mile in front of each of the three sections of the battle-line.

The Venetian Barbarigo, with sixty-four galleys, veered as closely as possible to the Aetolian shore, to prevent an encircling movement by the enemy on the north. Don Juan commanded the center or batalla of sixty-three galleys, with Colonna and Veniero on either side of him, and Requesens in the ship behind him Doria's squadron of sixty took the right wing, nearest the open sea, the most dangerous post of all. Thirty-five vessels were held in reserve in the rear under the Marques of Santa Cruz, with orders to give help wherever it might be needed. Thus the great fleet advanced into the Gulf of Patras, in a long arc extending over a league-and-a-half of sea and gradually stiffening into a straighter line as the enemy came in sight.

The Turks, having a total of 286 galleys (for HascenBey had just arrived with 22 extra ones from Tripoli) against 208, had decided to fight, and were clearing their decks for action. Mohammed Siroco with 55 galleys opposed Barbarigo. Ali Pasha and Pertew with 96 faced the batalla of Don Juan. Aluch Ali with 73 took the side nearest the open sea, opposite Gianandrea Doria. There was also a squadron of reserve in the rear. The wind had shifted to the east, bringing on the Turks with bellied sails, while the Christians had to use their oars. Toward noon it almost died away. Four hours passed while both fleets made their preparations for combat.

Doria meanwhile came back in a swift frigate to consult with Don Juan and the others. According to one account he was averse, at the start, to giving battle to an enemy with so large a preponderance of heavy ships. He wanted a council of war, at least. But Don Juan cried, "It is time to fight now, not to talk"; and so it was agreed. Cabrera says Doria not only drew up the final battle-order of the fleet, but suggested that the Generalissimo have the espolones cut away from the bows of his galleys. These were sharp spurs, fourteen feet long, which could crash through the side of an enemy ship, doing great damage when propelled by the arms of a hundred galley-slaves. It was obvious that in fighting at close quarters, hand-to-hand, ship locked to ship, they would be useless. Without them, too, Don Juan could place his bow guns lower, and hit the Turkish hulks nearer the waterline. The plan was adopted. One after another down the long line the espolones splashed into the calm sea.

The young Admiral, now in his golden armor, went in a fast frigate from ship to ship, holding up an iron crucifix for all to see. "Hey, valorous soldiers!" he cried. "Here's the chance you wanted. I have done my part. Do you now humble the pride of the enemy and win glory in this holy fight. Live or die, be conquerors; if you die, you go to Heaven." 11 The sight of the gallant young figure and the sound of his fresh voice had an extraordinary effect. A mighty shout answered him from each ship. There passed across the sparkling sea a long broken cheer as the Pope's banner of the League, with the image of Christ Crucified catching the glint of the high sun, rose above the Real beside the blue flag of Our Lady of Guadalupe. On the forward mast of his flagship Don Juan had hung a crucifix which alone of all his effects survived the fire in his house at Alcala.

As the Turks advanced in a great half-moon he knelt on the prow and in a loud voice begged the blessing of God on the Christian arms, while priests and monks throughout the fleet held up crucifixes before the kneeling sailors and soldiers. The sun was now directly overhead. The clear water, almost unrippled, flashed back a tremulous replica in vivid colors of a thousand standards, streamers, pennons and gonfalons, the cold brilliant glitter of weapons and armor, the gold and silver of armaments, all wavering kaleidoscopically between the blue sea and the dazzling sky. A hush like that which comes just before the consecration of the Mass fell over the whole Armada. The Turkish side replied with the usual blood-curdling chorus of screams, hoots, jibes and groans, the clashing of cimeters on shields, the blaring of horns and trumpets. The Christians waited in silence.

At that moment the wind, which had thus far favored the Turks, shifted to the west, and sped the Christian galleys on to the shock. Ali Pasha, in the Moslem center, opened the battle with a cannon shot. Don Juan answered, with another. As the Turkish oarsmen churned the sea, the six great galeasses of Venice opened fire with their 264 guns. This bombardment was not as devastating as had been expected, but it had the effect of breaking the enemy's line. The Turkish right was racing now to gain the open water between the Venetians and the Aetolian shore. Five ships closed upon the galley of Barbarigo, while the Moorish archers let fly clouds of poisoned arrows, which they preferred to firearms and used with more deadly effect. Ship to ship they were lashed now, fighting hand-to-hand. Huge Barbarigo fought like a lion, until, taking his shield from his face to shout an order, he was pierced through the eye with an arrow.

It was the Christian right that stood the heaviest attack. Doria was held in fear and respect by the Moslems. Moreover, he occupied the most dangerous post, where strategy and good sailing counted. If there was a match for him among the mariners of the Mediterranean, it was Aluch Ali, the Italian apostate. As the Turkish left tried to gain the open sea, to attack by poop and prow, Doria extended his line farther to the right, leaving a space between his squadron and the batalla. Aluch Ali swiftly changed his course and came crashing through the open space with his best ships, while his slower sailing galleys took the Genoese on the side toward the open sea. Doria, heavily outnumbered, fought a magnificent engagement. On ten of his vessels, nearly all the soldiers were killed in the first hour of the conflict. The handful of survivors fought on, desperately holding their ships in the hope of succor.

Santa Cruz reserve, however, had gone to the aid of some of the Venetians on the left, and the whole batalla was locked in a mortal conflict with the Turkish center. As soon as Ali Pasha saw where the holy flags flew over the galley of Don Juan, he drove straight for it. The two enormous hulks crashed prow to prow. Ali's ship was higher and heavier, and manned with 500 picked Janizaries.

The wisdom of Doria's advice to cut away the espolones was now apparent; while the Turk's artillery fired through the rigging of the Real, Don Juan's poured death into the ranks of the Janizaries as the ships grappled. Hand-to-hand they fought from one deck to the other, for two hours. Seven Turkish ships stood by to help the Sultana. As fast as the Janizaries fell on the decks, they were replaced by others from the hulks of reserve. Twice the horde of yelling Turks penetrated the Real to the mainmast, and twice the Spaniards thrust them back. But Don Juan, with heavy losses, had only two ships of reserves. Fighting gallantly in a little ring of chosen Spanish cavaliers, he was wounded in the foot. His situation was extremely perilous, in fact, when Santa Cruz, having saved the Venetians, came to his aid and rushed 200 reserves aboard.

Heartened by this fresh blood, the Spanish threw themselves on Ali and his Janizaries so furiously that they hurled them back into their own ship. Three times the Christians charged, and three times the Turks cast them out over decks now red and slippery with blood, piled with heaps of dead men, ghastly mangled trunks, severed arms and legs still quivering. The two fleets were locked in the embrace of death, ships lashed by twos and threes in water already streaked with crimson from floating bodies and limbs. The din of musketry, screams of rage and pain, clash of steel on steel, thunder of artillery, falling of spars and lashing of bloody waters between rocking timbers resounded horribly all through the Sunday afternoon. Splendid and terrible deeds were done. Old Veniero, seventy years old, fought sword in hand at the head of his men. Cervantes arose from his bed of fever to fight and to lose his left hand. Young Alexander of Parma boarded a Turkish galley alone, and survived the experience.

The moment was critical, and the issue still in doubt, when the magnificent Ali Pasha, defending his ship from the last Christian onslaught, was laid low by a ball from a Spanish arquebus. His body was dragged to the feet of Don Juan. A Spanish soldier triumphantly pounced upon it and shore away the head. One version says that Don Juan reproved him for this brutality. Another, more likely, says that the Prince impaled the head on the end of a long pike and held it up for all to see. Hoarse shouts of victory burst from the Christians on the Real, as they brushed the disheartened Turks into the sea and hoisted the banner of Christ Crucified to the enemy masthead. There was not a single hole in this flag, though the spars and masts were riddled, and the mainmast bristled with arrows like a porcupine. From ship to ship the shout of triumph was taken up, with the word that Ali was dead and the Christians had won. A panic seized the enemy, and he took to flight.

As the sun sank over Cephalonia, Doria's right wing was still furiously engaged with the Algerians. Gianandrea was red from head to foot with blood, but escaped without a scratch. When Aluch Ali saw that the Moslem fleet was getting the worse of it, he skilfully withdrew between the right and the center of the Christians. In the rear of Doria's fleet he came upon a galley of the Knights of Malta, whom he especially hated. He pounced upon it from the stern, slew all the knights and the crew, and took possession of the vessel; but when Santa Cruz attacked him, he abandoned his prize, and fled with 40 of his best ships toward the open sea and the crimson sunset. Doria's fleet pursued him until night and the coming of a storm forced him to desist.

The Christians took refuge in the port of Petala, and there counted their casualties, which were comparatively light, and their booty, which was exceedingly rich. They had lost 8,000 slain, including 2,000 Spanish, 800 of the Pope's men, and 5,200 Venetians. The Turks had lost 224 vessels, 130 captured and more than 90 sunk or burned; at least 25,000 of their men had been slain, and 5,000 captured; 10,000 of their Christian captives were set free. 12 Don Juan at once sent ten galleys to Spain to inform the King, and dispatched the Count of Priego to Rome. But Pius V had speedier means of communication than galleys. On the afternoon of Sunday, October seventh, he was walking in the Vatican with his treasurer, Donato Cesis. The evening before he had sent out orders to all convents in Rome and nearby to double their prayers for the victory of the Christian fleet, but now he was listening to a recital of some of his financial difficulties. Suddenly he stepped aside, opened a window, and stood watching the sky as if astonished. Then, turning with a radiant face to the treasurer, he said, "Go with God. This is not the time for business, but to give thanks to Jesus Christ, for our fleet has just conquered."

He then hurried to his chapel to prostrate himself in thanksgiving. Afterwards he went out, and everybody noticed his youthful step and joyous countenance. The first news of the battle, through human agencies, reached Rome by way of Venice on the night of October twenty-first, just two weeks after the event. Saint Pius went to St. Peter's in a procession, singing the Te Deum Laudamus. There was great joy in Rome. The Holy Father commemorated the victory by designating October seventh as the Feast of the Holy Rosary, and by adding "Help of Christians" to the titles of Our Lady in the Litany of Loreto.

It took ten more days for the news to reach Madrid. King Philip was not "in his closet with the fleece about his neck," nor did he hold a crystal phial of poison with "colors like the moon" anywhere except in Chesterton's poem He was in the chapel at the Escorial, listening to the monks sing Vespers, on Hallowe'en, when he heard outside an unwonted commotion, as of some one entering in great haste. Presently there came waddling in, very much out of breath, a fat gentleman of the royal household named Don Pedro Manuel. Leaning over the railing, with little ceremony, he told the King excitedly that Angulo the courier had just arrived with news of a great victory won by Senor Don Juan.

Philip's face did not change its grave and serene expression, nor did he raise his voice, as he said, characteristically, "Sosegaos. Calm yourself. Come around into the choir, so you can tell it better."

On hearing what had occurred, he went quietly back to his seat and prayed until Vespers were over. Then he betook himself to his own gallery to prostrate himself, giving thanks to Almighty God. Finally he announced the news. While the monks joyfully formed a procession, he allowed himself to receive the congratulations of courtiers and ambassadors. He ordered Mass said next morning for the souls of those who died at Lepanto.

He then went back to Madrid, to take part in the general procession next day, on the Feast of All Saints. With all the court, ambassadors and prelates and priests in gorgeous vestments of silk and gold, he walked from the church of Saint Philip to the church of Santa Maria, where Solemn High Mass was sung amid a blaze of lights and with exquisite music, by Cardinal Alexandrino, who had arrived only a few days before with Saint Francis Borgia. All sang the psalm, Domine in virtute tua laetabitur rex. Some verses and responses composed by Cardinal Alexandrino were sung so exquisitely, and the words were so appropriate, that every one, including the King, wept with joy.

The King was so affected that he ordered the psalm and the versicles of the Cardinal written out for him. In the quiet of his study he read them over. The twentieth Psalm must have seemed especially appropriate:

"In thy strength, O Lord, the king shall joy: and in thy salvation he shall rejoice, exceedingly. Thou hast given him his heart's desire; and hast not withholden from him the will of his lips. For thou hast prevented him with blessings of sweetness: thou hast set upon his head a crown of precious stones. He asked life of thee: and thou hast given him length of days for ever and ever. His glory is great in thy salvation: glory and great beauty shalt thou lay upon him. For thou shalt give him to be a blessing for ever and ever; thou shalt make him joyful in gladness with thy countenance. For the king hopeth in the Lord: and through the mercy of the Most High he shall not be moved.

"Let thy hand be found by all thy enemies: Let thy right hand find out all them that hate thee; thou shalt make them as an oven of fire, in the time of thine anger: the Lord shall trouble them in his wrath, and fire shall devour them. Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth: and their seed from among the children of men. For they have intended evils against thee: they have devised counsel which they have not been able to establish." (William Thomas Walsh, Teresa of Avila, published originally in 1943 by the Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and republished by TAN Books and Publishers, Inc., Rockford, Illinois, 1987, pp. 513-525.)

The Battle of Lepanto was a victory for Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary, for Pope Saint Pius V's indomitable fortitude, and for King Philip II's calmness and resolve in the midst of the one of the greatest dangers that Christendom had faced from the Mohammedans, who have, not so incidentally, won by immigration and the obsequiousness of the conciliar revolutionaries towards them what they lost at the Battle of Lepanto: effective control of large parts of Europe.

Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., explained that the Mohammedans were intent on taking advantages of the divisions brought about by Father Martin Luther's revolution against the Divine Plan that God instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church:

Soliman II, the greatest of the Sultans, taking advantage of the confusion caused in the West by Luther, had filled the sixteenth century with terror by his exploits. He left to his son, Selim II the prospect of being able at length to carry out the ambition of his race: to subjugate Rome and Vienna, the Pope and the Emperor, to the power of the Crescent. The Turkish fleet had already mastered the greater part of the Mediterranean, and was threatening Italy when, on the 7th of October, 1571, it came into action, in the Gulf of Lepanto, with the pontifical galleys supported by the fleets of Spain and Venice. It was Sunday; throughout the world the confraternities of the Rosary were engaged in their work of intercession. Supernaturally enlightened, St. Pius V watched from the Vatican the battle undertaken by the leader he had chosen, Don John of Austria, against the three hundred vessels of Islam. The illustrious Pontiff, whose life’s work was now completed, did not survive to celebrate the anniversary of the triumph; but he perpetuated the memory of it by an annual commemoration of our Lady of Victory. His successor, Gregory XIII, altered this title to our Lady of the Rosary, and appointed the first Sunday of October for the new Feast, authorizing its celebration in those churches which possessed an altar under that invocation.

A century and a half later, this limited concession was made general. As Innocent XI in memory of the deliverance of Vienna by Sobieski, had extended the Feast of the most holy Name of Mary to the whole Church; so, in 1716, Clement XI inscribed the Feast of the Rosary on the universal Calendar, in gratitude for the victory gained by Prince Eugene at Peterwardein, on the 5th of August, under the auspices of Our Lady of the Snow. This victory was followed by the raising of the siege of Corfu, and completed a year later by the taking of Belgrade. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)

Yes, it was but less than one hundred twelve years after the Battle of Lepanto that Polish King Jan Sobieski used Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary to defeat the Turks at the Battle of the Gates of Vienna. That same Rosary would be used by Austrians in the 1950s to pray for the withdrawal of the forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that occupied half of their country, marking only the second time that Soviet forces had withdrawn voluntarily from a country before the events of 1989-1991 (the other time was in late-1946 when Soviet forces withdrew from the Azerbaijan region of northern Iran). Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary continues to vanquish the demons that plague the gates of our very souls, which is why we must be assiduous in a fervent and recollected recitation of at least one set of its mysteries each and every day of our lives without fail.

Our Lady hates what her Divine Son hates. She hates all evil. Although she, as the Mother of Mercy (Mater Misericordia), has compassion on us erring sinners, she hates sin. She wants us to detest all sin and evil, having experienced in the very depths of her Immaculate Heart and soul the horror of what each one of our sins did to her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death. She was sent to three shepherd children in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, nearly one hundred seven years ago as a final effort on the part of her Divine Son to save erring sinners from Hell, explaining to Lucia dos Santos on July 13, 1917, that she desired to have instituted in a most particular way devotion to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart by the practice of the Five First Saturdays. Our Lord, Who gave us His Most Blessed Mother to be our Mother as He was dying as a result of our sins on the wood of the Holy Cross, has sent His Blessed Mother to us in these our own very days to rescue us from sins and lukewarmness and indifference and all of the errors of Modernity in the world, represented by the anti-Incarnational errors of Russia, and of Modernism (which is why the conciliarists have been demonically feverish in helping to deconstruct the Third Secret of Fatima).

The readings in Matins for the Feast of the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin  Mary, October 7, teach us about the origins and the power of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary:

When the heresy of the Albigenses was making head against God in the County of Toulouse, and striking deeper roots every day, the holy Dominic, who had but just laid the foundations of the Order of Friars Preachers, threw his whole strength into the travail of plucking these blasphemies up. That he might be fitter for the work, he cried for help with his whole soul to that Blessed Maiden, whose glory the falsehoods of the heretics so insolently assailed, and to whom it hath been granted to trample down every heresy throughout the whole earth. It is said that he had from her a word, bidding him preach up the saying of the Rosary among the people, as a strong help against heresy and sin, and it is wonderful with how stout an heart and how good a success he did the work laid upon him. This Rose-garden (or Rosary) is a certain form of prayer, wherein we say one-hundred-and-fifty times the salutation of the Angel, and the Lord's Prayer between every ten times, and, each of the fifteen times that we say the Lord's Prayer, and repeat tenfold the salutation, think of one of fifteen great events in the history of our Redemption. From that time forth this form of godly prayer was extraordinarily spread about by holy Dominic, and waxed common. That this same Dominic was the founder and prime mover thereof hath been said by Popes in divers letters of the Apostolic See.

From this healthy exercise have grown up numberless good fruits in the Christian Commonwealth. Among these deserveth well to be named that great victory over the Sultan of Turkey, which the most holy Pope Pius V, and the Christian Princes whom he had roused, won at Lepanto, (on the 7th day of October, the first Lord's Day in the month, in the year of our Lord 1571) The day whereon this victory was gained was the very one whereon the Guildbrethren of the most holy Rosary, throughout the whole world, were used to offer their accustomed prayers and appointed supplications, and the event therefore was not unnaturally connected therewith. This being the avowed opinion of Gregory XIII, he ordered that in all Churches where there was, or should be, an Altar of the Rosary, a Feast, in the form of a Greater Double, should be kept for ever upon the first Lord's Day of the month of October, to give unceasing thanks to the Blessed Virgin, under her style of (Queen of) the (Most Holy) Rosary, for that extraordinary mercy of God. Other Popes also have granted almost numberless Indulgences to those who say the Rosary, and to those who join its Guilds.

n the year 1716, Charles VI, Elect-Emperor of the Romans, won a famous victory over countless hordes of Turks, near Timisoara, in the kingdom of Hungary, upon the day when the Feast of the Dedication of the Church of St Mary of the Snows was being kept, and almost at the very moment when the Guild-brethren of the most holy Rosary were moving through the streets of Rome in public and solemn procession, amid vast multitudes, all filled with the deepest enthusiasm, calling vehemently upon God for the defeat of the Turks, and entreating the Virgin Mother of God to bring the might of her succour to the help of the Christians. A few days later, (upon the Octave of the Feast of the Assumption,) the Turks raised the siege of Corfu. These mercies Clement XI devoutly ascribed to the helpful prayers of the Blessed Virgin, and that the memory and the sweetness of such a blessing might for all time coming endure gloriously, he extended to the whole Church the observance of the Feast of the most holy Rosary, for the same day and of the same rank, (as it had already been in the places before mentioned.) Benedict XIII commanded the record of all these things to be given a place in the Service-book of the Church of Rome; and Leo XIII, in the most troublous times of the Church and the cruel storm of long pressing evils, by fresh Apostolic letters vehemently urged upon all the faithful throughout the earth the often saying of the Rosary of (the Blessed Virgin) Mary, raised the dignity of the yearly festival, added to the Litany of Loretto the Invocation Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, and granted to the whole Church a special Office for this solemn occasion. Let us all then be earnest in honouring the most holy Mother of God in this form which she liketh so well, that even as the entreaties of Christ's faithful people, approaching her in her Garden of Roses, have so often won her to scatter and destroy their earthly foes, so she may gain for them the victory over their hellish foes likewise. (Matins, Divine Office, Feast of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.)

We must be earnest in our efforts to use Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary and devotion to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, and through that Heart, which we pierced by our sins with Seven Swords of Sorrow, to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus to make reparation for our own sins and those of the whole world.

We must make sacrifices to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for the conversion of sinners.

We must be truly sorry for our own sins and to grow to despise them so much that we lose all attachment even to our least venial sins, which is, after all, one of the conditions for gaining a Plenary Indulgence (and those who are totally consecrated to Jesus through Mary, either according to the formula of Saint Louis de Montfort or Father Maximilian Kolbe, recognize that whatever merits they gain, including Plenary Indulgences, as a result of their prayers and actions are not theirs, that they belong totally to Our Lady to be disposed of as she sees fit to make use of them). We must also understand that even the slightest attachment to heresy and error, including those being propagate by Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV at this time, is displeasing to God and makes our souls less capable of seeing the world clearly through the eyes of the true Faith and of choosing the good in accordance with that same Holy Faith.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph,  pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

Saint Bartholomew, pray for us.

Appendix A

Dom Prosper Gueranger on the Feast of Saint Bartholomew

A witness of the Son of God, one of the princes who announced his glory to the nations, lights up this day with his apostolic flame. While his brethren of the sacred College followed the human race into all the lands whither the migration of nations had led it, Bartholomew appeared as the herald of the Lord, at the very starting point, the mountains of Armenia whence the sons of Noe spread over the earth. There had the figurative Ark rested; humanity, everywhere else a wanderer, was there seated in stillness, remembering the dove with its olive branch, and awaiting the consummation of the alliance signified by the rainbow which had there for the first time glittered in the clouds. Behold, blessed tidings awake in those valleys the echoes of ancient traditions: tidings of peace, making the universal deluge of sin subside before the Wood of salvation. The serenity announced by the dove of old was now far outdone. Love was to take the place of punishment. The ambassador of heaven showed God to the sons of Adam, as the most beautiful of their own brethren. The noble nights whence formerly flowed the rivers of Paradise were about to see the renewal of the covenant annulled in Eden, and the celebration, amid the joy of heaven and earth, of the divine nuptials so long expected the union of the Word with regenerated humanity.

Personally, what was this Apostle whose ministry borrowed such solemnity from the scene of his apostolic labors? Under the name, or surname of Bartholomew, (Son of Tholmai) the only mark of recognition given him by the first three Gospels, are we to see, as many have thought, that Nathaniel, whose presentation to Jesus by Philip forms so sweet a scene of St. John’s Gospel? (John 1:45-51) – a man full of uprightness, innocence and simplicity who was worthy to have had the dove for his precursor, and for whom the Man-God had choice graces and caresses from the very beginning.

Be this as it may, the lot which fell to our Saint among the twelve, points to the special confidence of the divine Heart; the heroism of the terrible martyrdom which sealed his apostolate reveals his fidelity; the dignity preserved by the nation he grated on Christ, in all the countries where it has been transplanted, witnesses to the excellence of the sap first infused into its branches. When, two centuries and a half later, Gregory the Illuminator so successfully cultivated the soil of Armenia, he did but quicken the seed sown by the Apostle, which the trials never wanting to that generous land had retarded for a time but could not stifle.

How strangely sad that evil men, nurtured in this turmoil of endless invasions, should have been able to rouse and perpetuate a mistrust of Rome among a race whom wars and tortures and dispersion could not tear from the love of Christ our Savior! Yet, thanks be to God! the movement towards return, more than once begun and then abandoned, seems now to be steadily advancing; the chosen sons of this illustrious nation are laboring perseveringly for so desirable a union by dispelling the prejudices of her people; by revealing to our lands the treasures of her literature so truly Christian, and the magnificence of her liturgy; and above all by praying and devoting themselves to the monastic state under the standard of the Father of western monks. (Mekhitarists, Armenian monks of St. Benedict) Together with these holders of the true national tradition, let us pray to Bartholomew their Apostle; to the disciple Thaddeus (One of the 72, Matthew 10:3) who also shared in the first evangelization; to Ripsima the heroic virgin, who from the Roman territory led her thirty-five companions to the conquest of a new land; and to all the martyrs whose blood cemented the building upon the only foundation set by our Lord. Like these great forerunners, may the leader of the second apostolate, Gregory the Illuminator, who wished to see Peter in the person of St. Sylvester, and receive the blessing of the Roman Pontiff—may the holy kings the patriarchs and doctors of Armenia, become once more her chosen guides, and lead her back entirely and irrevocably to the one Fold of the one Shepherd!

We learn from Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. Lib. v. c. l.) and from St. Jerome (De Script. Eccl. c. xxxvi.) that before going to Armenia, his final destination, St. Bartholomew evangelized the Indies, where Pantænus a century later found a copy of St. Matthew’s Gospel in Hebrew characters, left there by him. St. Denis records a profound saying of the glorious Apostle, which he thus quotes and comments: “The blessed Bartholomew says of Theology, that it is at once abundant and succinct; of the Gospel, that it is vast in extent and at the same time concise; thus excellently giving us to understand that the beneficent Cause of all beings reveals or manifests himself by many words or by few, or even without any words at all, as being beyond and above all language or thought. For he is above all by his superior essence; and they alone reach him in his truth, without the veils wherewith he surrounds himself, who, passing beyond matter and spirit and rising above the summit of the holiest heights, leave behind them all reflections and echoes of God, all the language of heaven, to enter into the darkness wherein he dwelleth, as the Scripture says, who is above all.” (Dion. De mystica theolog. c. i. §3)

The city of Rome celebrates the feast of St. Bartholomew tomorrow, as do also the Greeks who commemorate on the 25th of August a translation of the Apostle’s relics. It is owing, in fact, to the various translations of his holy body and to the difficulty of ascertaining the date of his martyrdom that different days have been adopted for his feast by different churches both in the East and in the West. The 24th of this month, consecrated by the use of most of the Latin churches, is the day assigned in the most ancient martyrologies, including that of St. Jerome. In the 13th century, Innocent III, having been consulted as to the divergence, answered that local custom was to be observed. (Decretal. lib. iii. tit. xlvi, c. 2. Consilium)

The Church gives us the following notice of the Apostle of Armenia.

The Apostle Bartholomew was a native of Galilee. It fell to his lot to preach the Gospel in hither India; and he announced to those nations the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of St. Matthew. But after converting many souls to Jesus Christ in that province and undergoing much labor and suffering he went into Eastern Armenia.

Here he converted to the Christian faith the king Polymius and his queen and twelve cities. This caused the pagan priests of that nation to be exceedingly jealous of him, and they stirred up Astyages the brother of King Polymius against the Apostle, so that he commanded him to be flayed alive and finally beheaded. In this cruel martyrdom he gave up his soul to God.

His body was buried at Albanapolis, the town of Eastern Armenia where he was martyred; but it was afterwards taken to the island of Lispari, and thence to Beneventum. Finally it was translated to Rome by the Emperor Otho III and placed on the island of Tiber in a Church dedicated to God under his invocation. His feast is kept at Rome on the 8th of the Kalends of September and during the eight following days that Basilica is much frequented by the faithful. (Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Saint Bartholomew, August 24.)

On this day of thy feast, O holy Apostle, the Church prays in her Collect for the Mass, for grace to love what thou didst believe and to preach what thou didst teach. (Collect of the Day) Not that the Bride of the Son of God could ever fail either in faith or love; but she knows only too well that, though her Head is ever in the light, and her heart ever united to the Spouse in the Holy Spirit who sanctifies her, nevertheless her several members, the particular churches of which she is composed, may detach themselves from their center of life and wander away in darkness. O thou who didst choose our West as the place of thy rest; thou whose precious relics Rome glories in possessing, bring back to Peter the nations thou didst evangelize; fulfill the now reviving hopes of universal union; second the efforts made by the Vicar of the Man-God to gather again under the shepherd’s crook those scattered flocks whose pastures have become parched by schism. May thine own Armenia be the first to complete a return which she began long ago: may she trust the Mother-Church and no more follow the sowers of discord. All being reunited, may we together enjoy the treasures of our concordant traditions, and go to God, even at the cost of being despoiled of all things, by the course so grand and yet so simple taught us by thy example and by thy sublime theology. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of Saint Bartholomew, August 24.)

Appendix B

The Life of Saint Bartholomew, From The Golden Legend

Bartholomew is expounded the son of abovehanging the waters, or son of overhanging the sea. He is said of bar, that is as much to say as son, and tholos, which is as much to say as sovereignty, and of moys, that is to say water. And hereof is said Bartholomew, as a son hanging over the waters. That is of God, which enhanceth the minds of doctors on high, for to shed and bespring beneath the waters of doctrine. And it is a name of Syriac and not of Hebrew. And the first three suspendings that he had, ought to be noted: He was suspended or taken up from the love of the world, and he was suspended, that is to say ententive, in heavenly love, and he was suspended, that is to say wrapped, in the grace and in the aid of God. Not by his merits his life shone, but by the aid of God. Of the second came the deepness of his wisdom, of which deepness of wisdom Denis saith, in his mystical theology: The divine Bartholomew, of whom is much divinity and right little, and that the gospel is broad and great, and also it is short. And after the entent of S. Denis, Bartholomew will show that all things may be affirmed and showed of God under one consideration, and by another consideration may be more properly denied.

Of S. Bartholomew the Apostle.

S. Bartholomew, the apostle, went into India, which is in the end of the world. And therein he entered into a temple where an idol was which was named Astaroth, and he, as a pilgrim, abode there. In that idol dwelt a fiend that said that he could heal all manner sicknesses, but he lied, for he could not make them whole, but might better them but for a while. And the temple was full of sick people, and could have no answer of that idol, wherefore they went in to another city whereas another idol was worshipped named Berith, and they demanded him wherefore Astaroth gave to them no answer. And Berith said: Your god is bound with chains of fire that he neither dare draw breath ne speak after that Bartholomew, the apostle of God, entered into the temple. And they said to him: Who is that Bartholomew? And the devil said: He is the friend of God Almighty, and he is come into this province for to avoid all the gods of India. And then they said: Tell us some tokens and signs that we may know him and find him. And the devil said to them: He hath his hairs black and crisp, his skin white, eyes great, his nostrils even and straipht, his beard long and hoar a little, and of a straight and seemly stature. He is clad in a white coat, and a white mantle, which in every corner hath gems of purple and precious stones therein. And it is sith twenty-six years that his clothes never waxed old ne foul. He prayeth and worshippeth God on his knees a hundred times a day, and a hundred times by night. The angels go with him, which never suffer him to be weary ne to be an hungered, he is always of like semblant, glad and joyous. He seeth all things tofore, he knoweth all things, he speaketh all manner languages, and understandeth them, and he knoweth well what I say to you. And when ye seek him, if he will he may show himself to you, and if him list not, not shall ye find him. And I pray you, when ye find him, that ye pray him that he come not hither, that his angels do not to me as they have done to my fellow. Then they went and sought him diligently and busily two days, and found him not

On a day, one that was beset with a devil cried, and said: Apostle of God, Bartholomew, thy prayers burn me. And the apostle said: Hold thou thy peace and come thence. And anon he was delivered. And when Polemius, king of that region, heard this thing, which had a daughter lunatic, he sent to the apostle, praying that he would come to him and heal his daughter. And when the apostle was come to him and saw that she was bound with chains, and bit all them that went to her, he commanded to unbind her. And the ministers durst not go to her. And he said: I hold the devil fast bound that was in her, and therefore be not afeard; and then anon she was unbound and delivered. And then would have presented to the apostle camels charged with gold and silver and precious stones, but he could not be found in no manner. And on the morrow following, the apostle appeared to the king, alone in his chamber, and said to him: Wherefore soughtest thou me yesterday with gold and silver and precious stones? Those things be necessary to them that covet things worldly, but I desire no things terrien ne carnal. Then S. Bartholomew began to say many things, and inform the king of our redemption, and among other things how Jesu Christ vanquished the devil by marvellous and convenable puissance, justice, and wisdom. For it was convenable that he that overcame the son made of the earth, that was Adam, while he was yet a virgin, should be overcome of the son of the virgin. He overcame him then mightily, when he threw him puissantly out of his lordship which had thrown out by force our forefather. And thus, as he that overcometh some tyrant, sendeth his fellows tofore for to set up his sign over all, and to cast out tyrants, in like wise Jesu Christ sent his messengers over all for to take away the honour and the worshipping of the devil righteously. For it is right that he that vanquished man by eating, and held him, that he should be overcome by a man fasting, and hold man no longer. For it is rightful that he which by the art of the devil was despised, that by the art of Jesu Christ he should be vanquished. And like as the falcon taketh the bird, right so took he Jesu Christ in desert because he fasted, and would assay if he had hunger; and if he had hunger, that he might have deceived him by meat, and if he had no hunger, then knew he well without doubt that he was God. But he might not know him, for he had hunger, and consented nothing to him ne to his temptations.

And when he had preached the sacraments of the faith, he said to the king that, if he would receive baptism, he would show him his god bounden with chains. And the day following, when the bishops sacrificed within the palace of the king, the devils began to cry and say: Cease, ye cursed wretches, to do sacrifice to us, lest ye suffer worse than I that am bounden with chains of fire by the angels of Jesu Christ, whom the Jews crucified and supposed to have brought to death. Which death, that is our queen, he hath imprisoned, and hath bound our prince in chains of fire. And anon then they set cords on the image for to pull down and overthrow the idol, but they might not. The apostle then commanded the devil that he should issue and go out and break the idol all to pieces, and he issued out and destroyed and brake all the idols of the temple. And anon the apostle made his prayer, saying: O God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, which hast given to us such power that we enlumine the blind, and cleanse the lepers, I desire and require that this multitude might be healed, and they all answered, Amen. And forthwith all the sick people were cured and healed. And then the apostle did do hallow and dedicate that temple, and commanded the devil to go in to the desert. Then the angel of our Lord appeared there, and flew round about the temple, and ensigned and graved with his finger the sign of the cross in four corners of the temple, saying: Our Lord saith this: Like as I have you cured and made you clean of all your sickness, so let this temple be made clean of all filth and ordure. but I shall show him of all filth and ordure. But I shall show him to you that dwelleth therein tofore, to whom the apostle hath commanded to go in to desert. And doubt ye not to see him, but make in your forehead such a sign as I have graven in these stones. And then he showed to them an Ethiopian more black than thunder, the face sharp, the beard long, his hairs hanging unto his feet, his eyes flaming as hot fire, and cast out sparkles of fire, and casting out of his mouth flames of sulphur, and his hands bound with chains of fire behind his back. And then the angel said to him: Because that thou hast heard that the apostle hath commanded, and hast broken all the idols of the temple, I shall unbind thee; go in to such a place whereas dwelleth no man, and be thou there unto the day of judgment. And when he was unbound he went his way with a great braying and howling, and the angel of our Lord mounted up to heaven in the sight of them all. And then was the king baptized, with his wife and his children and all his people, and left his realm and was made disciple of the apostle.

Then all the bishops of the idols assembled them together and went to Astrages the king, and brother to Polemius, and complained of the loss of their gods and of the destruction of their temples, and of the conversion of his brother made by art magic. Astrages was wroth and sent a thousand men armed to take the apostle, and when he was brought tofore him, the king said to him: Art thou not he that hast perverted my brother? And the apostle answered to him: I have not perverted him, but I have converted him; and the king said to him: Like as thou hast made my brother forsake his god and believe in thy God, so shall I make thee forsake thy God, and thou shalt sacrifice to my god. And the apostle said : I have bound the god that thy brother adored, and showed him bound, and constrained him to break his false image, and if thou mayst do so to my God, thou mayst well draw me to thine idol, and if not, I shall all to-break thy gods, and then believe thou in my God. And as he said these words, it was told the king that his god Baldach was overthrown and all to-broken, and when the king heard that, he brake and all to-rent his purple in which he was clad, and commanded that the apostle should be beaten with staves, and that he should be flayed quick, and so it was done. Then the christians took away the body and buried it honourably. Then the king Astrages and the bishops of the temples were ravished with fiends and died, and the king Polemius was ordained bishop, and accomplished the oflfice of a bishop twenty-two years much louably, and after that rested in peace full of virtues.

There be divers opinions of the manner of his passion. For the blessed Dorotheus saith that he was crucified, and saith also: Bartholomew preached to men of India, and delivered to them the gospel after Matthew in their proper tongue. He died in Alban, a city of great Armenia, crucified the head downward. S. Theoderus saith that he was flayed, and it is read in many books that he was beheaded only. And this contrariety may be assoiled in this manner, that some say that he was crucified and was taken down ere he died, and for to have greater torment he was flayed and at the last beheaded.

In the year of our Lord three hundred and thirty-one, Saracens assailed Sicily, and destroyed the isle of Lipari whereas the body of S. Bartholomew lieth, and brake up the sepulchre and threw the bones hither and thither. And it is said that his body came in such wise from India thither into that isle. When the paynims saw that this body and his sepulchre were greatly honoured for the miracles that befell, they had thereof great despite, and laid them in a tomb of lead, and threw them into the sea, and by the will of God they came into this isle. And when the Saracens had departed and thrown the bones here and there, and were departed thence, the apostle appeared to a monk and said to him: Arise up, and go and gather together my bones that be departed. And he said to him: By what reason shall I gather together thy bones, and what honour ought we to do to them, when thou sufferest us to be destroyed? And the apostle said to him: Our Lord hath spared this people here a long while by my merits, but for their sins that they have sinned, which cry vengeance unto heaven, I have not con get pardon ne forgiveness for them. And then the monk said: How shall I among so many bones find thine? And the apostle said to him: Thou shalt gather them by night, and them that thou shalt find shining thou shalt take up. And the monk went, and found them all as he had said, and took them up, and brought them with him in to a ship, and sailed with them to Benevento, which is chief city of Apulia, and thus were they transported thither. And it is said now that they be at Rome, howbeit they of Benevento say they have the body.

There was a woman that brought a vessel full of oil for to put in the lamp of S. Bartholomew, and how well she inclined the vessel for to pour out the oil, there would none issue out, how well she touched with her finger the oil clear. And then one cried and said: I trow this oil be not agreeable to the apostle that it should be in his lamp, wherefore they put it in another lamp and it issued anon.

When that the emperor Frederick destroyed Benevento, and he had commanded that all the churches that there should be destroyed, and enforced them to bear away the goods from that city into another place, there was a man which found men all white shining, and him seemed that they spake together of some secret thing, and he marvelled strongly who they were and demanded them, and then one of them answered and said: This is Bartholomew, the apostle, with the other saints which had churches in this city, that speak and ordain together in what manner and by what pain this emperor should be justified, that hath cast them out of their tabernacles. And they have now confirmed among them by firm sentence that he, without tarrying, shall go to the judgment of God for to answer thereupon. And anon the emperor died an evil death.

It is in a book read of the miracles of saints that, a certain master hallowed solemnly the feast of S. Bartholomew, and the devil in the form of a maid appeared to this master that preached. And when he saw her, he bade her to come and dine with him, and when they were set at the table she enforced her much for to draw him to her love. And then S. Bartholomew came to the gate and prayed that he might come in for the love of S. Bartholomew, and she would not, but sent him bread, and he would none take, but prayed the master by his message that he should say what thing that he supposed was most proper in a man. And he answered: To laugh. And the maid said: Nay, it is sin in which a man is conceived, born and liveth in sin. And S. Bartholomew answered that he had well said, but she had more profoundly answered. And the pilgrim demanded after at the master, where the place was contaimng the space of a foot where had God made greatest miracle. And he said, the sign of the cross, in which God had made many miracles. And she said: Nay, it is the head of a man, in which the little world is. And the apostle allowed the sentence of that one and of that other, and then he demanded the third time: How far it was from the sovereign siege or seat in heaven unto the lowest and deepest place of hell. And the master said that he wist not; and she said: I know it well, for I fell down from that one to that other, and it behoveth that I show it to thee. And the devil fell down into hell with a great bruit and howling, and then they sent for the pilgrim, and he was vanished and gone and away and they could not find him. And in like wise nigh according to this is read of S. Andrew.

The blessed Ambrose saith thus in the preface that he made of this apostle in abridging his legend: Jesu Christ, thou hast vouchsafed to show to thy disciples, preaching, many things of thy divine Trinity in marvellous manner, and thy majesty, among whom thou hast sent the blessed Bartholomew honour by right great prerogative in to a far country. And how be it that he was all far from human conversation, nevertheless he deserved by the increasing of his predications to mark and think in thy sign the beginning of that people. Ah! by what louings is the marvellous apostle to be honoured. And when the hearts of the people of his neighbours sufficed not to him to receive his seed, he through-pierced like in fleeing in to the last countries of the lands of India, and entered in to the temple where there was great company of sick people without number, and made the devil so mute that he gat no remembrance to them that adored him, and the maid that was lunatic by torment of the devil he did unbind and delivered her all whole to her father. Oh, how great was this miracle of holiness, when he made the fiend, enemy to the lineage human, to break and destroy his own idol, and to bring it to nought. Oh, how worthy is he to be numbered to the heavenly company to whom the angel appeared, to praise the faith of him by his miracles, and came from the sovereign hall and showed to all the people the devil chained, and right foul, and the sign of the cross impressed in the stone bearing health. And the king and the queen were baptized, with the people of their cities. And at the last the tyrant brother of Polemius, new in faith by the relation of the bishops of the temple, made the blessed apostle, constant in the faith, to be beaten, flayed, and receive right foul death. And as he denounced the mischief of death, he had and bare with him, in to the glory of heaven, victory of his glorious strife.

And the blessed Theodore, abbot and noble doctor, saith of this apostle in this manner among other things. The blessed apostle Bartholomew preached first in Licaonia, and after in India, and at the last in Alban, a city of great Armenia, and there he was first flayed and afterward his head smitten off, and there he was buried. And when he was sent of our Lord to preach, as I suppose, he heard how our Lord said to him: Go, my disciple, to preach, void out of this country, and go fight and be capax of perils. I have first accomplished and finished the works of my father, and am first witness, fill thou the vessel that is necessary and follow thy master, love thy lord, give thy blood for his blood, and thy flesh for his flesh, and suffer that which he had suffered, let thine armour be debonairty in thy sweatings, and suffer sweetly among wicked people and be patient among them that perish thee. And the apostle recoiled not, but as a true servant and obeissant to his master went forth joying, and as a light of God illumining in darkness the work of holy church, like as the blessed S. Austin witnesseth in his book, that, like a tiller of Jesu Christ, he profiteth in spiritual tilling. S. Peter the apostle taught the nations, but S. Bartholomew did great miracles. Peter was crucified the head downward, and Bartholomew was flayed quick, and had his head smitten off. And they twain increased greatly the church by the gifts of the Holy Ghost. And right as a harp giveth a right sweet sound of many strings, in like wise all the apostles gave sweet melody of the unity divine, and were established by the king of kings. And they departed among them all the world, and the place of Armenia was the place of Bartholomew, that is from Ejulath unto Gabaoth. There thou mayst see him, with the plough of his tongue, ear the fields unreasonable, sowing in the deepness of the heart the word of the faith, and in planting the vines of our Lord and trees of paradise. And to every each setting medicinally the remedies of the passions, rooting out pernicious thorns, cutting down trees of felony, and setting about hedges of doctrine. But what reward yielded the tyrants to their curate? They gave to him dishonour for honour, cursing for benediction, pains for gifts, tribulation for rest, and right bitter death for restful life. And sith that he had suffered many torments, he was of them discoriate and flayed quick, and died not, and yet for all that he had them not in despite that slew him, but admonished them by miracles, and taught them by demonstrances, that did him harm. But there was nothing that might refrain their bestial thoughts, ne withdraw them from harm. What did they afterwards? They enforced them against the holy body, and the malades and sick men refused their mediciner and healer, the city refused him that enlumined their blindness, governed them that were in peril, and gave life to them that were dead. And how cast they him out? Certainly, they threw the body into the sea in a chest of lead, and that chest came from the region of Armenia with the chests of four other martyrs, for they did also miracles and were thrown with him into the sea. And the four went before a great space of the sea, and did service to the apostles like as servants in a manner, so far that they came into the parts of Sicily in an isle that is named Lipari, like as it was showed to a bishop of Ostia which then was present. And these right rich treasures came to a right poor woman. And these right precious margarets came to one not noble, the bright shining light came to one right heavy. And then the other four came in to other lands, and left the holy apostle in that isle, and he left the other behind him. And that one which was named Papian went into a city of Sicily, and he sent another, named Lucian, into the city of Messina. And the other twain were sent into the land of Calabria, S. Gregory into the city of Columna, and Achate into a city named Chale, where yet at this day they shine by their merits. And then was the body of the apostle received with hymns, louings, and candles honourably, and there was made and builded a fair church in the honour of him. And the mountain of Vulcan is nigh to that isle, and was to it much grievous because it received fire, the which mountain was withdrawn by the merits of this holy saint from that isle seven miles, without to be seen of any body, and was suspended toward the sea. And yet appeareth it at this day to them that see it, as it were a figure of fire fleeing away. Now then, therefore, I salute thee, Bartholomew, blessed of blessed saints, which art the shining light of holy church, fisher of fishes reasonable, hurter of the devil which hurted the world by his theft. Enjoy thee, sun of the world, enlumining all earthly things, mouth of God, fiery tongue pronouncing wisdom, fountain springing goodly, full of health, which hallowest the sea by thy goings and ways not removable, which makest the earth red with thy blood, which repairest in heaviness, shining in the middle of the divine company clear in the resplendishour of glory. And enjoy thee in the gladness of joy insatiable. Amen. And this is that Theodore saith of him. (Blessed Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, The Life of Saint Bartholomew.)

Appendix C

Reprising Facts about Mohammed, the First "Radical Muslim"

It was in Medina that Muhammad attained power and transformed Islam from a relatively benign form of monotheism into an militant expansionary political ideology that persists to this day. In Medina we see a very different Muhammad and a very different concept of Islam and a very different Allah. Here Muhammad gradually became radicalized in accordance with the commands of God and became a political ruler and military commander. The Allah of Medina guided his prophet to become a warlord, seeking military conquests. In Medina, Muhammad used the threat of the sword to compel people to embrace Islam. Gone was message of verse 2:256: Let There Be In Compulsion In Religion. It was replaced by such teachings as 9:5, 9:29:

(1) Fight the unbelievers until religion is for Allah only:

"And fight them until there is no more fitnah (disbelief and polytheism, i.e. worshiping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah alone (in the whole world). But if they cease (worshiping others besides Allah) then certainly, Allah is All-Seer of what they do." (Sura 8.39).

(2) No more choice in religion

• As for him who opposes the messenger, after the guidance has been pointed out to him, and follows other than the believers' way, we will direct him in the direction he has chosen, and commit him to Hell; what a miserable destiny! [4:115]
• Then should they turn back (meaning: apostized), seize them and kill them wherever you find them; and do not take from them any companion or supporter (Quran, Chapter 4: 89)

(3) No more patience with unbelievers. Now must curse them:

• [22.72] When Our Clear Signs are rehearsed to them, thou wilt notice a denial on the faces of the Unbelievers! they nearly attack with violence those who rehearse Our Signs to them. Say, "Shall I tell you of something (far) worse than these Signs? It is the Fire (of Hell)! Allah has promised it to the Unbelievers! and evil is that destination!"
• [33:57] Surely, those who oppose GOD and His messenger, GOD afflicts them with a curse in this life, and in the Hereafter; He has prepared for them a shameful retribution.

(4) Tolerance no more; coerce the kafirs:

• "In order that Allah may separate the pure from the impure, put all the impure ones [i.e. non-Muslims] one on top of another in a heap and cast them into hell. They will have been the ones to have lost." (Sura 8.37)
• Certainly! Allâh will admit those who believe (in the Oneness of Allâh Islâmic Monotheism) and do righteous good deeds, to Gardens under which rivers flow (Paradise), while those who disbelieve enjoy themselves and eat as cattle eat, and the Fire will be their abode. 47:12

(5) No more pacifism. Time to terrorize, torture, murder:

The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom (5:33)

"Allah revealed His will to the angels, saying: 'I shall be with you. Give courage to the believers. I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers!' That was because they defied Allah and His apostle. He that defies Allah and his apostle shall be sternly punished by Allah." (Sura 8.12-13)

(6) No tolerance for critics. Just kill them:

9.061 Among them are men who molest the Prophet and say, "He is (all) ear." Say, "He listens to what is best for you: he believes in Allah, has faith in the Believers, and is a Mercy to those of you who believe." But those who molest the Messenger will have a grievous penalty. (In the link 'leaving Islam' you will find many events where Muhammad had numerous critics murdered )

(7) Do not associate even with your parents and siblings if they reject Islam:

9.023 O ye who believe! take not for protectors your fathers and your brothers if they love infidelity above Faith: if any of you do so, they do wrong

(8) Time to cursed who reject Islam for eternity

• 9:73 O Prophet! Strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites! Be harsh with them. Their ultimate abode is hell, a hapless journey's end.
• 22:19 These twain (the believers and the disbelievers) are two opponents who contend concerning their Lord. But as for those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them; boiling fluid will be poured down on their heads [103, Medina ]
• 22:20 Whereby that which is in their bellies, and their skins too, will be melted; [103, Medina ]
• 22:21 And for them are hooked rods of iron. [103, Medina ]
• 22:22 Whenever, in their anguish, they would go forth from thence they are driven back therein and (it is said unto them): Taste the doom of burning.

Muhammad's 13 years of preaching in Mecca was out and out a failure, mastering only 100-dd followers. Had he continued walking the same path in Medina, Islam would have died a natural death, probably in his life-time itself. But the militant radicalization of Muhammad that changed Islam into a plundering Mafia enterprise, offering its prospective followers a share of the loot and captured women, as well as forcing those who would reject Islam to embrace it on the pain of death, that Islam became a lasting and expanding successful religious enterprise as it continues today.

In Medina Muhammad re-invented Allah and turned Him into a criminal Godfather Whom Muhammad would use to hand over earthly political power to him, and utilize His supposed teachings as religious and legal justification for his evil criminality. That is how Islam turned itself into a successful cult.

Abrogation: The complete and ultimate radicalization of Islam and its followers

Most Muslims are like ordinary people, and the Mecca part of the Quranic revelations could offer them a peace basis of religious life. But Allah did not leave that option open to them. The radical Muhammad of Medina faced a huge problem with the initial non-militant teachings of the Quran. Had his followers appealed to those nonviolent teachings of the Quran, his desire for plunder, power and dominion could not be realized. And Allah, ever ready to satisfy Muhammad's every desire, came to his rescue by abrogating the entire Mecca teachings of the Quran:

• Quran 2:106. “Whatever a Verse (revelation) do We {Allah} abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring a better one or similar to it. Know you not that Allah is able to do all things?
• Quran 16:101 “And when We change (one) communication for (another) communication, and Allah knows best what He reveals.”

This abrogation doctrine nullifies the earlier teachings, namely the pacifist Meccan revelations by the radicalized and militant later revelations of Medina, which turns Islam into an absolutely radical and militant religious faith. It gave Muslims no option to appeal to the apparently peaceful verses revealed in Mecca. For a detailed listing of the verses of the Quran that were canceled by the doctrine of abrogation, go to http://www.islamreform.net/new-page-27.htm.

Through the process of abrogation, 71 Suras of the Quran out of 114 in total, i.e. 62.28% of the suras of the Quran, have become null and void (Abu Ja'afar al Nakhass' al Nasikh wal Mansukh'). Therefore, only 43 later Surahs revealed in Medina stand valid. And this valid part of Islam teaches Muslims only deceit, torture, murder, assassination, massacre, genocide, pillage, robbery, enslavement and rape as divinely sanction halal (legal) acts that would earn Muslims a ticket to Islamic paradise, as long as those are perpetrated upon kafirs.

In sum, Muhammad initiated Islam as a relatively benign and nonviolent religious faith, but as he grew in power, he radicalized it into an evil ideology whose sole purpose is to conquer the world for Allah. The Quran became a declaration of war against the kafirs. This war is permanent until ALL kafirs have converted to Islam, or are in dhimmitude (institutionalized discrimination akin to second class slavery status) or have been murdered.

From a humble preacher, Muhammad, after turning into a radical, went on order more than 60 raids and invasion, some involving massacres, and he personally participated in 27 of those. The worst sufferer of Muhammad's militant radicalization was the Jews of the Arab Peninsula, who suffered whole-sale exile, execution and enslavement. Some of the most chilling utterances of Muhammad concerning the Jews are:

...the Apostle of Allah said, “Kill any Jew that falls into your power.” (Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, p. 553)

Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Umar: Allah's Apostle said, "You (i.e. Muslims) will fight with the Jews till some of them will hide behind stones. The stones will (betray them) saying, 'O 'Abdullah (i.e. slave of Allah)! There is a Jew hiding behind me; so kill him.” (Bukhari 4:52:176)

And the radicalization of Muhammad saw its climax in the Massacre of Banu Quraiza, where he ordered the beheading of 600 to 900 men, and personally initiated the slaughter by beheading 2 Jewish leaders. To read about this very great Banu Quraiza tragedy, go to: http://www.islamreform.net/new-page-209.htm

Therefore, the so-called self-radicalization of Muslims is nothing but their following the teachings and commands of the holy Quran and emulating the examples of Prophet Muhammad, the only perfect man ever to appear on the earth.  (Mohammed,  the First Radical Muslim.)

Appendix D

Hilaire Belloc on the Enduring Heresy of Mohammed and Its Relationship to Calvinism

Mohammedanism was a heresy: that is the essential point to grasp before going any further. It began as a heresy, not as a new religion. It was not a pagan contrast with the Church; it was not an alien enemy. It was a perversion of Christian doctrine. It vitality and endurance soon gave it the appearance of a new religion, but those who were contemporary with its rise saw it for what it was not a denial, but an adaptation and a misuse, of the Christian thing. It differed from most (not from all) heresies in this, that it did not arise within the bounds of the Christian Church. The chief heresiarch, Mohammed himself, was not, like most heresiarchs, a man of Catholic birth and doctrine to begin with. He sprang from pagans. But that which he taught was in the main Catholic doctrine, oversimplified. It was the great Catholic world on the frontiers of which he lived, whose influence was all around him and whose territories he had known by travel which inspired his convictions. He came of, and mixed with, the degraded idolaters of the Arabian wilderness, the conquest of which had never seemed worth the Romans' while. . . .

But the central point where this new heresy struck home with a mortal blow against Catholic tradition was a full denial of the Incarnation.

Mohammed did not merely take the first steps toward that denial, as the Arians and their followers had done; he advanced a clear affirmation, full and complete, against the whole doctrine of an incarnate God. He taught that Our Lord was the greatest of all the prophets, but still only a prophet: a man like other men. He eliminated the Trinity altogether. With that denial of the Incarnation went the whole sacramental structure. He refused to know anything of the Eucharist, with its Real Presence; he stopped the sacrifice of the Mass, and therefore the institution of a special priesthood. In other words, he, like so many other lesser heresiarchs, founded his heresy on simplification. Catholic doctrine was true (he seemed to say), but it had become encumbered with false accretions; it had become complicated by needless man-made additions, including the idea that its founder was Divine, and the growth of a parasitical caste of priests who battened on a late, imagined, system of Sacraments which they alone could administer.

All those corrupt accretions must be swept away. There is thus a very great deal in common between the enthusiasm with which Mohammed's teaching attacked the priesthood, the Mass and the sacraments, and the enthusiasm with which Calvinism, the central motive force of the Reformation, did the same. As we all know, the new teaching relaxed the marriage laws but in practice this did not affect the mass of his followers who still remained monogamous. It made divorce as easy as possible, for the sacramental idea of marriage disappeared. It insisted upon the equality of men, and it necessarily had that further factor in which it resembled Calvinism: the sense of predestination, the sense of fate; of what the followers of John Knox were always calling "the immutable decrees of God." (The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed.)