w/c 27/07/25

ORDO

Dies	27 SUN	28 MON	29 TUE	30 WED	31 THU	01 FRI	02 SAT	03 SUN
Officium	Dominica VII Post Pentecosten	Ss. Nazarii et Celsi Martyrum, Victoris I Papæ et Martyris ac Innocentii I Papæ et Confessoris	S. Marthæ Virginis	S. Abdon et Sennen Martyrum	S. Ignatii Confessoris	S. Petri ad Vincula	S. Alfonsi Mariæ de Ligorio Episc. Conf. et Eccles. Doct.	Dominica VIII Post Pentecosten
CLASSIS	Semiduplex	Semiduplex	Semiduplex	Simplex	Duplex majus	Duplex majus	Duplex	Semiduplex
Color*	Viridis	Rubeum	Albus	Rubeum	Albus	Albus	Albus	Viridis
MISSA	Omnes gentes	Intret	Me exspectavérunt	Intret	In nómine	Nunc scio	Spíritus Dómini	Suscépimus, Deus
Orationes	2a. S. Pantaleonis M 3a. A cunctis	2a. A cunctis 3a. Pro papa vel ad libitum	2a. Ss. Felicis, Simplicii, Faustini et Beatricis Mm 3a. A cunctis	2a. A cunctis 3a. de S. Maria vel ad libitum	NA	2a. Ss. Martyrum Machabæorum	2a. S. Stephani Papæ Martyris	2a. De Inventione S. Stephani Protomartyris 3a. A cunctis
NOTAE	Gl. Cr. Pref. de Trinitatis	Gl. Pref. de Communis	Gl. Pref. de Communis	Gl. Pref. de Communis	Gl. Cr. Pref. de Communis	Gl. Cr. Pref. de Apostolis	Gl. Cr. Pref. de Communis	Gl. Cr. Pref. de Trinitatis
Nota Bene/Vel/Votiva		Missae votivae vel Requiem permittuntur.	Missae votivae vel Requiem permittuntur.	Missae votivae vel Requiem permittuntur.

Fructus Fidei

Fructus Fidei—the fruit of faith—is the visible sign of a life truly transformed by grace, manifest in good works, holy desires, and persevering virtue. It is the proof that faith is not merely believed, but lived. 🔝

From the Primus

HE ✠Jerome OSJV, Titular Archbishop of Selsey

Carissimi, Beloved in Christ,

Amid the gathering clouds of confusion and compromise that encircle both Church and society, we address you with a word of encouragement and exhortation, taking as our motto and meditation the ancient truth: Fructus Fidei—the fruit of faith.

This phrase, brief though it is, cuts through the arid superficiality of contemporary religion and recalls us to the living sap of our Christian calling. Faith, we are reminded, is no mere assent to a proposition nor a passive reception of inherited culture. True faith is living, active, transformative—a divine seed which, when nurtured by grace, bears fruit in the soul, in the Church, and in the world. “By their fruits you shall know them” (Matt. 7:16). In this short motto lies a whole theology of renewal.

I. The Crisis of Fruitless Faith
In recent weeks, we have observed with sorrow the spectacle of churches—Catholic and Protestant alike—publicly affirming doctrines contrary to Christ, desecrating the sacraments with sacrilegious Communions, and blessing sin under the guise of compassion. Meanwhile, governments pass laws that strip the unborn of their final legal protections and pave the way for the state-sanctioned destruction of the sick and elderly. The language of rights has been severed from the foundation of dignitas humana, and words like “love” and “justice” are wielded not in the service of truth, but in defence of self-will and ideological tyranny.

These are not isolated errors but the bitter harvest of a faith long unrooted from tradition, untended by penance, and choked by the weeds of relativism. As St. James writes, “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). And what is the ultimate fruit of a dead faith? Apostasy.

II. Faith Must Bear Fruit in Holiness
Yet the Christian is not called to despair, but to vigilance and fidelity. The Fructus Fidei we speak of is no abstract ideal. It is the fruit borne by martyrs, by saints, by every faithful soul who surrenders in humility and perseveres in hope. It is the transformation of the heart, the ordering of the passions, the embrace of suffering, the rejection of sin, the charity that seeks not its own. It is the quiet heroism of the father who provides and prays, the mother who raises her children in the fear of the Lord, the young man or woman who resists the culture of death and commits to purity of life.

This fruit does not flourish in the barren soil of compromise. It demands the cultivation of the traditional disciplines of the Christian life: frequent confession, daily prayer, spiritual reading, and above all, attendance at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—especially in its venerable Roman Rite, which nourished centuries of saints and which we, by divine Providence, are privileged to preserve and propagate.

III. Apostolic Work and Missionary Charity
We give thanks, too, for the visible fruits of faith being borne by our missions. From the favelas of Davao to the chapels of North America and the apostolic embers in Europe, the witness of Traditional Catholic life is again kindling light in places darkened by confusion. Our collaboration with like-minded clergy of sound doctrine and sacramental fidelity shows the spiritual fecundity of tradition when unchained from ecclesiastical fear or political paralysis.

Yet let us be clear: this growth is not ours. “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase” (1 Cor. 3:6). And God gives the increase where He finds fides formata caritate—faith formed by charity, rooted in humility, purified by sacrifice.

IV. The False Fruits of the World
Too many today seek to redefine fruitfulness in the image of worldly success: numbers, influence, applause. But Our Lord did not promise us popularity; He promised us a Cross. The devil can mimic growth—indeed, he delights in offering synthetic consolations and counterfeit consolations. But he cannot produce sanctity. Any work, no matter how “inclusive,” “compassionate,” or “progressive” it may seem, that denies the truth of sin and the necessity of repentance, bears no fruit unto eternal life.

Let us therefore be on our guard. As Our Lord warns: “Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt. 7:19). And let us not confuse leaves for fruit—noise for holiness, sentiment for virtue, visibility for grace.

V. A Call to the Laity
We exhort you, beloved faithful, not merely to admire tradition, but to live it. The time of spectatorship is over. The season demands warriors, witnesses, and saints. Begin where you are: catechise your children, sanctify your home, learn the Catechism, dress modestly, speak the truth in love, and withdraw your support—financial or moral—from institutions that promote evil or error. Refuse to be co-opted by popular causes which, however noble their slogans, bear no resemblance to Christ crucified.

And above all, pray: pray with your lips, your hearts, and your hands. Pray the Rosary daily. Offer penance. Fast for the conversion of souls. This is how the vineyard is tilled. This is how faith bears fruit.

VI. The Harvest to Come
We do not know the hour of reckoning, but we know it will come. In a time of shaking, only that which is rooted will remain. “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few” (Matt. 9:37). Let it not be said that in our time, faith withered on the vine because we would not suffer for the Truth.

May the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose faith bore the Fruit of salvation, intercede for us. May the holy martyrs inspire us. And may the Holy Ghost find in us fertile soil, that we may bring forth fruit a hundredfold.

With my Apostolic blessing, and in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 🔝

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Recent Epistles & Conferences

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Liturgical Notes

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The Time after Pentecost in the Tridentine Rite
The Time after Pentecost in the Tridentine liturgical calendar, sometimes called the “Season after Pentecost,” corresponds to what is now known in the modern Roman Rite as “Ordinary Time.” Yet unlike the postconciliar terminology, the Tridentine designation is not “ordinary” in tone or theology. It is profoundly mystical, drawing the Church into a deepening participation in the life of the Holy Ghost poured out upon the Mystical Body at Pentecost.

A Season of Fulfilment and Mission
The Time after Pentecost is the longest of the liturgical seasons, extending from the Monday after the Octave of Pentecost to the final Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent. It represents the age of the Church — the time between the descent of the Holy Ghost and the Second Coming of Christ. Where Advent looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, and Easter celebrated His triumph, the Time after Pentecost lives out His indwelling. It is the season of sanctification, corresponding to the Holy Ghost in the economy of salvation, just as Advent and Christmas reflect the Father’s sending, and Lent and Easter the Son’s redeeming work.

Dom Prosper Guéranger writes that “the mystery of Pentecost embraces the whole duration of the Church’s existence” — a mystery of fruitfulness, guidance, and spiritual warfare. It is not a neutral stretch of ‘green vestments’ but a continuation of the supernatural drama of the Church militant, sustained by the fire of divine charity.

The Green of Growth — But Also of Struggle
Liturgically, green dominates this time, symbolising hope and spiritual renewal. Yet the Masses of the Sundays after Pentecost contain numerous reminders that the Christian life is not passive growth but an active battle. Readings from St. Paul’s epistles dominate, especially exhortations to moral purity, perseverance, and readiness for the day of judgment. The Gospels often feature Christ’s miracles, parables of the Kingdom, or calls to vigilance — all designed to awaken souls from spiritual sloth.

Fr. Pius Parsch notes that “the Sundays after Pentecost are dominated by two great thoughts: the growth of the Church and the interior life of the Christian.” These twin aspects — ecclesial expansion and individual sanctity — are ever present in the collects and readings, pointing to the fruit of Pentecost as the Church’s leavening power in the world.

The Numbering and Shape of the Season
In the Tridentine Missal, Sundays are numbered “after Pentecost,” beginning with the Sunday immediately following the octave day (Trinity Sunday stands apart). The exact number of these Sundays varies depending on the date of Easter. Since the final Sundays are taken from the “Sundays after Epiphany” not used earlier in the year, the readings and prayers of the last Sundays are drawn from both ends of the temporal cycle. This produces a subtle eschatological tone in the final weeks — especially from the 24th Sunday after Pentecost onward — anticipating the Second Coming and the Last Judgment.

In this way, the Time after Pentecost includes both the lived reality of the Church’s mission and the urgency of her final consummation. The Kingdom is already present, but not yet fully manifest.

The Role of Feasts and the Saints
The richness of the season is also punctuated by numerous feasts: of Our Lady (e.g., the Visitation, the Assumption), of the angels (e.g., St. Michael), of apostles and martyrs, confessors and virgins. Unlike Advent or Lent, which are penitential in tone, the Time after Pentecost includes joyful celebrations that model Christian holiness in diverse vocations. The saints are the mature fruit of Pentecost, witnesses to the Spirit’s indwelling.

As Dom Guéranger says, this season “is the longest of all in the liturgical year: its length admits of its being considered as the image of eternity.” It teaches that the gifts of the Holy Ghost are not given for a moment, but for a lifetime of growth in grace — and for the eternal life to come.

Conclusion: A Time of Interiorisation and Apostolic Zeal
The Time after Pentecost is not a liturgical afterthought, but the climax of the year — the age of the Church, the time in which we now live. Every soul is invited to be a continuation of the Incarnation through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. The sacraments, the Mass, and the feasts of the saints all nourish this divine life, which began in Baptism and is ordered to glory.

Thus, the Time after Pentecost is not simply the Church’s “green season,” but her most fruitful and missionary phase — a time of living in the Spirit, bearing His fruits, and hastening toward the return of the King. 🔝

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The Liturgy of the Seventh Sunday Post Pentecost

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost in the traditional Roman Rite continues the Church’s meditation on Christian life as the fruitful working of divine grace. This Sunday’s liturgy presents a stark warning against hypocrisy and false appearances, calling the faithful to a life rooted in truth, charity, and obedience to God’s law.

The Introit: God’s Justice and Peace
The Mass opens with the Introit from Psalm 46: “Omnes gentes, plaudite manibus: jubilate Deo in voce exsultationis…”—“All ye nations, clap your hands: shout unto God with the voice of joy.” Dom Prosper Guéranger notes that this joyful psalm, often associated with the Ascension, “invites all nations to adore the King of the world; for Jesus, the conqueror of death, is ascended into heaven”¹. Used here, it reaffirms the victory of Christ already reigning from His throne, even amid the trials of His Church on earth.

The Epistle: Fruits Worthy of Repentance (Romans 6:19–23)
St. Paul continues his instruction on Christian sanctity, contrasting the servitude of sin with the liberty of grace: “What fruit therefore had you then in those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of them is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end life everlasting.” The Apostle insists that sanctification is not merely a change of status but a transformation that must bear visible fruit.

Dom Guéranger reflects: “There is no choosing here; it is one or the other. Sin and its eternal death, or grace and its life everlasting”². The Christian vocation is thus inseparable from moral transformation, not just the profession of faith.

The Gradual and Alleluia: God’s Providence and Praise
The Gradual and Alleluia are drawn from Psalm 33: “Venite, filii, audite me: timorem Domini docebo vos…”—“Come, children, hearken to me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord.” This passage evokes the figure of the wise master, Christ Himself, calling His disciples to a reverent fear that leads to virtue.

Fr. Leonard Goffine writes that this text, along with the Gospel, teaches us to “fear God not merely as Judge, but as loving Father, who chastises every son whom He receives”³. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, not servile dread, but reverent submission to truth.

The Gospel: By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them (Matthew 7:15–21)
In the Gospel, Our Lord warns: “Beware of false prophets… By their fruits you shall know them.” This is a call to spiritual discernment and a rebuke of hypocrisy. A tree that does not bring forth good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.

St. Augustine, preaching on this text, warns that *“many are found to say good things, but do not do them. They are trees with leaves, not fruit. The tree must not only be clothed in words, but must bear fruit in deeds”*⁴.

Dom Guéranger likewise remarks: “The tree is known by its fruit; the Christian by his works. Faith without works is dead, as the Apostle James says. The Gospel thus completes the teaching of the Epistle: the Christian must live as a new creature, sanctified in truth and action”⁵.

Fr. Goffine is equally blunt: “Not all who speak piously or quote Scripture are to be believed. The fruit of one’s life—humility, chastity, love of truth—this is the true sign of divine inspiration”⁶.

The Offertory and Secret: Hope in God’s Mercy
The Offertory verse, “In te speravi, Domine…” (Ps 30:15–16), expresses trust in divine providence. The Church, offering the sacred gifts, places her hope not in human strength but in the mercy of God.

The Secret prayer reinforces this spiritual logic: “May these offerings, O Lord, cleanse us from our sins, and by sanctifying Thy servants in body and mind, prepare them for the celebration of this sacrifice”⁷.

The Communion: Seeking the Kingdom
The Communion antiphon comes from the Sermon on the Mount: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33). This verse serves as the key to Christian ordering of life: God first, and all else will follow.

As Dom Guéranger comments, “This verse is the conclusion to the Gospel’s call to discernment and spiritual integrity. The disciple must not merely reject evil, but actively seek divine justice”⁸.

Conclusion: The Demands of Discipleship
The liturgy of this Sunday exhorts the faithful to inspect the garden of their souls. Are we yielding good fruit? Or are we merely bearing leaves, as did the barren fig tree that Christ cursed (cf. Mark 11:13–14)? For “not every one that saith to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of My Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

This is no empty warning but a sober summons to authentic conversion. The Christian life is not a matter of appearances or mere verbal assent but of grace-bearing action. The true disciple, as the liturgy makes clear, is one whose whole life is a living fruit of divine justice. 🔝

1. Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year: Time After Pentecost, vol. 4, trans. Dom Laurence Shepherd (Dublin: Gill & Son, 1901), p. 110.
2. Ibid., p. 112.
3. Fr. Leonard Goffine, The Church’s Year, trans. Rev. Gerald M. T. Brennan (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1918), p. 512.
4. St. Augustine, Sermon on the Mount, Book II, Chapter 24, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 6, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), p. 44.
5. Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, p. 115.
6. Goffine, The Church’s Year, p. 513.
7. Missale Romanum (1962), Secreta, Dominica VII post Pentecosten.
8. Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, p. 116.

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Missalettes (Sunday VII Post Pentecost)

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Spiritual Reflection: Fructus Fidei — The Fruit of Faith

The liturgy of the Seventh Sunday Post Pentecost strikes a note of holy urgency. It does not flatter us. It challenges us. The Apostle Paul warns that sin leads to shame and death, while Christ commands: “By their fruits you shall know them.” These are not abstract moralisms but concrete demands upon every Christian soul. The Gospel does not allow for neutral ground. There are only two trees—one bearing fruit unto life, the other withered or poisonous, destined for fire.

This Sunday’s liturgy places a mirror before us. It asks not what we profess, but who we are becoming. Have we become fruitful trees in God’s garden—or simply ornamental? Do we give the appearance of religion while bearing little to nourish others, or have we let grace cultivate in us the fruit of the Spirit?

St. Paul’s image of being slaves to righteousness (Rom. 6:19–23) may jar modern ears, but it teaches a critical truth: freedom in Christ is not lawlessness, but liberation to serve God in love. As laity, this means conforming our daily life—our words, choices, habits—to the demands of grace. It means our Christianity must be visible in our speech, our time, our homes, and our manner of dealing with others.

Too often we imagine spiritual fruit as some grand, rare achievement: missionary work, dramatic conversions, heroic suffering. But fruit begins in the hidden soil of obedience. A father who prays with his children, a mother who makes the home a sanctuary of peace, a student who guards purity, a tradesman who refuses dishonest gain—these are fruit-bearing acts. So is patient forgiveness, secret charity, humble repentance. These make the Christian known—not by name only, but by witness.

The Church gives us the Offertory prayer—In te speravi, Domine—to remind us that even as we strive to bear fruit, our trust must remain fixed in God. The growth comes from Him. Our task is to remain grafted into Christ, to cooperate with grace, and to weed out the sins and distractions that stifle growth.

And so we return to the motto: Fructus Fidei. The fruit of faith is not mere assent but transformation. It is Christ living in us. This week, we are called to examine our lives not by how much we know or say, but by what we are doing. And where we find barren branches, we must not despair—but ask the Lord of the vineyard to prune, water, and make us fruitful again.

For in the end, the tree that bears fruit is not only spared—it is cherished. It becomes a blessing to others and a sign of the kingdom already breaking in. 🔝

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A sermon for Sunday

by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

O God, whose providence in the ordering of all things never fails; we humbly beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things as are profitable for us.

In today’s collect we acknowledge that the divine providence never fails in ordering all things. Mindful of this we ask God to put away from us all hurtful things and to give us those things as are profitable for us. The collects are one of the greatest attributes of the traditional Roman rite. They are concise and to the point, as well as expressing profound theological concepts, in particular the need to continually remind ourselves that we are dependent for our salvation on the grace of God. This has often been criticised in recent times as encouraging people to have a low self esteem, for this is an age in which they are encouraged to think of themselves more highly than they ought. It is now said that these ancient prayers were the product of a society in which civilisation seemed to be in a state of collapse, as the Roman Empire fell in the west before the barbarian incursions and the so called Dark Ages began. But this fact, far from being irrelevant to our present situation, has many parallels to it, for we too are living in a time when our civilisation seems to be in a similar decline, and there is no more reason to be optimistic about the state of the world now than it was then. We need to take to heart the words of these ancient collects, and learn to trust not in ourselves, but in God, whose never failing providence orders all things.

But is it realistic to speak of God’s providence over all things never failing when there is so much evidence of evil and suffering in the world? How can this be reconciled with a belief that all things are ultimately part of the outworking of divine providence?

A Jewish midrash (commentary on a biblical text) said that Abraham’s faith that led him to leave his country and kindred could be compared to a “man who was travelling from place to place when he saw the palace in flames. He wondered, “Is it possible that the palace lacks an owner?” The owner of the palace looked out and said, “I am the owner of the palace.” So Abraham our father said, “Is it possible that the world lacks a ruler?” The Holy One, blessed be he, looked out and said to him, “I am the ruler, the sovereign of the universe.”

In other words, Abraham sees a palace. He sees the world has order and therefore it has a creator. But the palace is in flames, for the world is full of disorder, violence and injustice. Where then is the owner of the palace? If God created man in his own image, why does he allow the human race to destroy the world through lust for power and violence? What is the explanation of this contradiction?

There have classically been two different answers to this question. The first is to deny the reality of God and ultimate goodness. It is to say that because there are so clearly flames of violence and disorder in the world there is no palace, no ultimate goodness. The world is simply an arena of chance and necessity in which the strong triumph over the weak. There is therefore no justice and no judge. This is the materialist view. It explains everything at one level, but it explains nothing at a deeper level. For if there were no ultimate goodness to compare it with, how can we be sure that so much of what we experience in the world is evil, just as if there were no creatures with eyes we would not know what light was, for darkness is the absence of light, just as evil is the absence of good.

The second view is to deny the reality of evil. It is to say that because the world is clearly a palace with order and beauty there are therefore no real flames and that evil is ultimately an illusion. This is the pantheist view, which says that since creation is divine, nothing is really wrong. It is only our limited human experience that causes us to see some things as evil. But this seems to deny our moral sense that there is something really wrong about so much that is in this world. There is so much evil that it hardly makes sense to tell someone who is suffering that it is all ultimately unreal, that because there is a palace there are therefore no flames.

By contrast to the materialist view which denies the reality of God, and the pantheist view which denies the reality of evil, the faith of Abraham was that both are real. The world is really a palace, but the palace is also in flames. God and ultimate goodness are real, and yet evil and suffering are also real. There is in this life an insoluble tension between what is and what ought to be. Since God is real, we have reason to hope for the future, but since evil and suffering are also real we cannot be complacent about the present. Hence, Abraham was led to leave his country and his kindred. He could not rest content with his existing life, but he was also not despairing, for he hoped against hope that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed. In other words, the victory of the strong over the weak, the reality that the palace is in flames, is not inevitable, for in spite of everything there is still hope in the promises of God.

St. John of Damascus later drew a distinction between God’s antecedent or absolute will and his consequent or conditioned will. Absolutely God wills only that which is good, but there are circumstances in which what God in general wills may not take place since that would mean willing something evil or unjust. But what God does actually or consequently will in any given situation always comes to pass. This is how the Church has sought to reconcile the conviction that God wills all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth with the reality that so many reject that offer and bring damnation upon themselves.

A helpful way of trying to understand the outworking of divine providence in the face of so much apparent disorder and randomness is to think about how the Christian Church calculates the date of Easter each year. Superficially, this may look completely random, given all the variations between different possible dates over a cycle of many years. But in fact it is actually the consequence of clearly worked out rules that dictate exactly when Easter should fall in any given year. It may initially look completely random, but in reality it is not.

In the same way we can become so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of suffering and injustice in the world that we are tempted to see everything as simply random and meaningless. It is only when we look at things more closely that we start to recognise that there is an invisible hand at work, even though we struggled for much of our lives to recognise any ultimate purpose or plan.

God in Christ has taken the weight of evil upon himself and somehow subsumed it into good. There is no ground for complacency for we still live in a world filled with violence and suffering. But we know that despite all the trials and tribulations of this life, nothing can ultimately separate us from the love of God.

Recognising that God’ s providence is ultimately prevailing over all things, let us make our own the words of today’s collect, beseeching him to put away from us all hurtful things and to give us those things as are profitable for us. 🔝

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This week’s Feasts

Reflection on the Feast of St Martha, Virgin July 29

In the traditional calendar, St Martha is honoured not merely as the industrious hostess of Bethany, but as a woman of profound faith and quiet strength. Though often remembered for her busyness—“troubled about many things” (Luke 10:41)—Martha is also the one who makes one of the clearest confessions of Christ’s divinity in the Gospels: “I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (John 11:27).

This feast invites us to look beyond superficial contrasts between Martha and Mary. Martha’s service was not faulted in itself, but rather because she allowed anxiety to cloud her attention to the “one thing necessary.” Her sanctity lies precisely in learning to unite action with contemplation, duty with devotion.

Tradition in the West also honours her later life in Gaul, where she evangelised with her siblings and, according to legend, overcame the fearsome Tarasque, a dragon-like beast—symbolic of her triumph over the devil through faith and prayer. Thus, Martha the anxious hostess becomes Martha the fearless virgin and apostle.

Conclusion
St Martha teaches that holiness is not limited to the cloistered or contemplative. The active life, when ordered to Christ and suffused with faith, becomes a path to sanctity. She reminds us that service, when rooted in love and trust, prepares the heart to receive the Lord. In her, duty becomes devotion, and faith casts out fear. 🔝

Reflection on the Feast of St Ignatius of Loyola July 31

St Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, is one of the towering figures of post-Reformation Catholic renewal. His feast day marks not only the death of a saint, but the birth of a spiritual revolution—one that responded to a wounded world with discipline, devotion, and discernment. Though born into Spanish nobility and trained as a soldier, Ignatius would become a warrior for Christ, exchanging earthly ambition for heavenly glory.

From the Sword to the Cross
Born in 1491, Iñigo López de Loyola was a courtier and soldier, enamoured with worldly honour. But a cannonball at the Battle of Pamplona shattered his leg—and with it, his former life. During his painful recovery, with no access to chivalric romances, he read the Lives of the Saints and a Life of Christ. A new fire ignited: “If Dominic could do it… if Francis could do it… why not I?”

His conversion was not a sentimental awakening, but a radical surrender. He gave up his sword at the altar of Our Lady of Montserrat, donned a pilgrim’s robe, and began a life of asceticism and prayer. In the cave at Manresa, through intense mystical experiences and discernment, he composed the foundations of his Spiritual Exercises—a manual for sanctity, forged in solitude.

The Spiritual Exercises: A School of the Soul
The Exercises remain one of the Church’s most potent tools of conversion. Unlike vague spiritual musings, they are precise, methodical, and aimed at a single end: that the soul might learn to “seek and find the will of God in the ordering of one’s life for the salvation of the soul.” In an age adrift in confusion, Ignatius taught that holiness begins with clarity—of purpose, of conscience, of desire.

This spirituality is profoundly Christocentric: meditating on the life of Christ, one learns to discern the “two standards”—Christ or the world, the Cross or the sword of pride. The soul is trained to act “ad majorem Dei gloriam”—for the greater glory of God—in all things.

The Jesuits: A Militant Mission for the Church
With papal approval in 1540, the Society of Jesus became the spearhead of the Catholic response to the Reformation and the modern world. Unlike monastic orders, the Jesuits took no choir stalls but instead pledged themselves to mobility, education, and the missions. Wherever the Church was in danger, the Jesuits went—armed not with swords, but with scholarship, zeal, and the Spiritual Exercises.

They became confessors to kings, educators of youth, defenders of the faith, and evangelists to distant lands. Within a generation, they had founded schools and colleges across Europe, brought thousands back to the Church, and risked their lives in lands where Christ’s name was unknown.

St Ignatius’ motto, “Go, set the world on fire,” was no mere metaphor. His sons did precisely that—igniting hearts with truth, order, and sanctity in a world veering toward chaos.

Humility, Obedience, and Holy Indifference
At the core of Ignatian spirituality lies the principle of holy indifference: a radical openness to God’s will. One seeks neither health nor sickness, wealth nor poverty, honour nor shame—but only that which serves God’s glory and one’s salvation. It is a call to complete dispossession, in imitation of the poverty and obedience of Christ.

This indifference is not apathy, but spiritual maturity. It demands total interior freedom—freedom from the tyranny of ego, emotion, and worldly expectation. It also undergirds the famous Jesuit obedience: not slavishness, but the harmony of a soul attuned to the divine will through its legitimate superiors.

A Saint for the Counter-Revolution
In every age of crisis, St Ignatius speaks afresh. His call is not to vague piety but to spiritual militancy. He is a saint for those tempted by acedia, distraction, or despair—a commander urging each soul to discern, choose, and act. He reminds us that sanctity is not a side-effect of religious feeling, but the fruit of sustained combat: against sin, the flesh, and the lies of the enemy.

In an era of relativism, Ignatius teaches clarity; in a culture of comfort, he teaches discipline; in a Church often timid, he teaches boldness.

Conclusion
The Feast of St Ignatius is a call to arms—not of violence, but of virtue. It reminds us that the Church’s strength lies in saints who are entirely God’s, consumed with His glory, and fearless in their obedience. May we, like Ignatius, lay down our swords at the altar, take up the Cross, and say: “Take, Lord, receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will…”

“Ad majorem Dei gloriam.”—To the greater glory of God.
This was Ignatius’ mission. May it be ours. 🔝

Reflection on the Feast of St Peter in Chains August 1

The Feast of Sancti Petri ad Vincula, or St Peter in Chains, commemorates the miraculous deliverance of the Apostle Peter from prison, as recorded in Acts 12. While the Church venerates St Peter’s martyrdom on June 29, this distinct feast celebrates not his death but his liberation—a liberation wrought by divine intervention, revealing much about the nature of God’s providence, the communion of the Church, and the mission of Peter as a shepherd strengthened in weakness.

The Chains as a Sign of Apostolic Authority and Divine Providence
Tradition holds that the basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome houses the very chains that bound the Prince of the Apostles in Jerusalem, brought to the city by the Empress Eudoxia in the 5th century. When these chains were laid beside those which had previously held Peter in the Mamertine prison in Rome, the two miraculously fused into one—an enduring symbol of Peter’s unity of witness in both East and West, and of the continuity of apostolic authority even in suffering.

These physical chains became spiritual symbols. Peter’s captivity, like so many trials faced by Christians, was not the absence of God but a theatre for His intervention. Peter slept peacefully between two soldiers on the eve of his execution—so confident was he in Christ’s promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church. His deliverance was not merely for his own sake, but for the sake of the flock that still needed the shepherd.

The Power of Prayer and the Mystery of the Church
The narrative in Acts tells us that “prayer was made without ceasing by the Church unto God for him” (Acts 12:5). This phrase is the heart of the feast. Peter’s deliverance was not a private miracle but a communal intercession. His freedom came through the united prayer of the faithful. It is a vivid image of the Church as the Mystical Body, suffering and striving together, not only bound to Christ but bound to one another in love.

Here, the chains are paradoxically signs of both imprisonment and communion. As the epistles of Paul often affirm, “the word of God is not bound” (2 Tim. 2:9), and neither is the apostolic mission chained by persecution. Peter’s chains are like Christ’s Cross—what seems an instrument of defeat becomes a sign of divine triumph.

Freedom and Mission
After the angel awakens Peter and leads him past the guards and through the iron gate, we are told “he went out and followed him…and wist not that it was true” (Acts 12:9). Such is the nature of divine intervention: often disorienting, wondrous, and only understood fully after the fact. But Peter follows. The liberated apostle becomes again the rock on which Christ builds His Church—not by human strength, but by his obedience, faith, and humility.

This feast reminds every Christian that the chains which bind us—whether fear, sin, persecution, or worldly pressure—are not stronger than the angel of the Lord who comes to lead us into freedom. But like Peter, we must rise when roused, gird ourselves with the grace of God, and follow even when the path is unclear.

A Call to Courage in an Age of Chains
In our age, where truth is often silenced, and the faithful find themselves metaphorically shackled by laws, ideologies, and cultural disdain, this feast is a call to renewed courage. Peter in Chains speaks to every bishop, priest, and lay faithful tempted to compromise or retreat. Just as Peter was released to strengthen the brethren, so too must we, once liberated by grace, be sent out to confirm our brothers in the faith.

And if the chains are not taken away—if, like Peter at the end, we are called to glorify God in martyrdom—then even our suffering, offered in union with Christ, becomes fruitful. The Church does not fear chains; she transforms them.

Conclusion
Let us therefore venerate St Peter in Chains not merely as a miracle of deliverance, but as a sign of hope for the Church under pressure, a testimony to the power of prayer, and a call to faithful endurance in trials. The same Peter who once faltered now stands firm; the same Church which once prayed for his release must now pray for all shepherds in chains—spiritual or literal—that they may be loosed for the sake of the Gospel.

“Et ecce angelus Domini… arise quickly. And the chains fell from his hands.” (Acts 12:7)
So may they fall again—in our time. 🔝

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Forgotten Rubrics: Grace Before Meals

It was once unthinkable for a Catholic family to eat without first giving thanks to God. Yet today, the simple practice of Grace before Meals is all but forgotten, even among those who attend Mass regularly. In truth, this small devotion is a profound act of faith: a public acknowledgment that all sustenance comes from God, and that even the most ordinary act—eating—is sanctified by gratitude.

The traditional formula, often recited in Latin, is more than a quaint custom:
Before Meals
✠ Benedic, Domine, nos et haec tua dona quae de tua largitate sumus sumpturi. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
(Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.)

After Meals
✠ Agimus tibi gratias, omnipotens Deus, pro universis beneficiis tuis. Qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
(We give Thee thanks, almighty God, for all Thy benefits, who livest and reignest forever and ever. Amen.)

In many places, this was followed by the invocation:
✠ Fidelium animae, per misericordiam Dei, requiescant in pace.
(May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.)

More than polite words, this grace was part of the Church’s sanctification of time. Just as the day was ordered by the Angelus and the Divine Office, so meals were encircled with prayer. The family table became a domestic altar, the food consumed an echo of the Eucharistic feast.

To revive this forgotten rubric is not only to return to a Catholic habit, but to bear witness in a world increasingly forgetful of God. Even in restaurants or public settings, the Sign of the Cross and a whispered prayer is a quiet but courageous act of Christian identity.

Let us not be ashamed to give thanks. Grace before meals is not merely a formality—it is an act of love, humility, and remembrance. 🔝

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The Apathy of Apostasy: False Compassion and the Collapse of Faith
by the Archbishop of Selsey

In every age, apostasy begins not with rage but with neglect—with the silent retreat from truth and the gentle substitution of half-truths in its place. Ours is not a culture storming the gates of heaven in overt rebellion; it is a culture that yawns in the face of eternity, gripped by apathy, consumed with counterfeit compassion, and paralysed by fear. Nowhere is this spiritual disintegration more evident than in the modern Western world, where false moralities reign and the name of Christ is either silenced or sentimentalised.

False Compassion and the Moral Imagination
The dominant social causes of our time—climate absolutism, transgender affirmation, uncritical pro-Palestinian activism, and racialised equity politics—are often justified in the name of “compassion.” Yet this is a compassion divorced from truth. It champions victims but not virtue, emotion over moral reasoning, and feeling over facts. This is what Pope Benedict XVI called the dictatorship of relativism, which “does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.”¹

Modern “compassion” not only permits but promotes self-destruction, whether by enabling irreversible gender surgeries in the name of identity, or excusing Hamas terrorism under the banner of “resistance.” Even blatant violence—acts like October 7—is rationalised by appeals to history, victimhood, or systemic oppression. It is no longer enough to care for the suffering; one must adopt their narrative, no matter how morally incoherent.

St Thomas Aquinas warned that misordered love leads to vice.² Today’s misplaced compassion is precisely that: love detached from God, disconnected from reason, and manipulated by ideologies. In this paradigm, there is no longer any need for redemption, because there is no sin—only structural injustice and emotional pain. Christianity is thus reduced to sentimentalism, where Christ becomes a symbol of inclusion rather than the Saviour from sin.

Fear, Conformity, and the Paralysis of Conscience
At the same time, a creeping fear has settled over the public conscience. Even those who sense something is wrong in the culture remain silent. They fear being labelled hateful, racist, transphobic, Islamophobic—each term designed not to encourage dialogue but to end it. And so they accept the new dogmas, not out of conviction, but out of survival.

This fear is particularly potent among Christians who lack a firm foundation in the Faith. For decades, the Church in the West has failed to form its faithful in doctrinal clarity and spiritual courage. In place of fortitude, it has offered dialogue; in place of truth, ambiguity; in place of mission, accommodation. The Gospel of Christ crucified, risen, and returning has been replaced with a gospel of social niceness. And as Christ fades from the centre of Christian life, so too does the courage that faith inspires.

St Paul warned of such a time: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine… and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will be turned unto fables” (2 Tim 4:3–4). Many today—clergy and laity alike—have exchanged the faith once delivered to the saints for a pseudo-gospel that promises worldly respectability at the cost of spiritual death.

The Rise of the Social Gospel Without Christ
This new gospel is not new. It is the old modernism repackaged. It retains Christian vocabulary—justice, peace, inclusion—but strips it of supernatural meaning. As Pope St Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, the modernist “makes a ruin of the foundation and the supernatural order.”³

Thus, Christian involvement in society becomes horizontal, never vertical. The Church becomes an NGO. Worship becomes therapy. Evangelisation becomes activism. Jesus is no longer proclaimed as the one Mediator between God and man, but rather as an inspiring social reformer whose teachings—selectively quoted—validate progressive moral causes. Meanwhile, the actual need for repentance, sacramental grace, and salvation is forgotten. As Archbishop Fulton Sheen put it, “They have the compassion of Christ without His Cross.”⁴

This explains why Christians can so easily become activists for causes diametrically opposed to Christ’s teachings. One sees young Christians waving the Palestinian flag alongside Islamic slogans, apparently unaware or unbothered by Hamas’ violent, antisemitic, and anti-Christian platform. One sees Catholic schools celebrating “Trans Awareness Week,” blind to the deep contradiction between transgender ideology and Christian anthropology.

Demographic Collapse and Cultural Amnesia
Meanwhile, the West faces not only a spiritual crisis but a civilisational one. The demographic shift resulting from decades of mass immigration—particularly from Islamic regions—has reached a point where the political and cultural future of Europe is under serious question.⁵ In Britain, France, Germany, and Sweden, entire districts are functionally post-European, governed de facto by imported religious and cultural norms, not shared democratic ones. Yet to point this out is considered impolite—worse, “xenophobic.”

Here again, we witness the paralysis of conscience. Westerners who feel uneasy about the erosion of their own civilisation dare not say so, for fear of cancellation or criminalisation. Two-tier policing—where Christian street preachers are arrested, but Islamic protesters are indulged—is met with a shrug. The secular mind is no longer capable of defending its own culture, because it no longer believes it has one worth defending.

This resignation is spiritual in origin. A culture that has forgotten Christ cannot explain its own moral code, nor defend its inheritance. Christianity gave the West its laws, institutions, and concepts of dignity, liberty, and personhood. When faith is lost, these fruits wither. The future will belong not to the most tolerant, but to the most committed. And without Christ, the West is not committed to anything but its own decline.

How Can They Be Persuaded?

a) To recognise their compassion is misplaced:
We must appeal first to the conscience and to reason. False compassion should be confronted by its fruits. Where has gender ideology led? To suicide, sterility, and confusion. Where has uncritical support of radicalised causes led? To increased antisemitism, civil unrest, and global instability. Point to victims of “compassionate” lies—detransitioners, persecuted Christians, disillusioned ex-activists.

Then contrast false compassion with true charity, which seeks the good of the other in light of eternal truth. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend,” says Proverbs (27:6). Real love dares to tell the truth, because real love wants souls in heaven, not just people to feel good on earth.

b) To recognise and counter the dangers ahead:
This requires restoring a supernatural worldview. People must rediscover that they are not made for this world, and that history is not random, but providential. Christians must be taught again that the battle is spiritual: “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers…” (Eph 6:12). We are not called to be safe or liked, but faithful.

This means confronting secular idols: the cult of “tolerance,” the myth of neutrality, the worship of public approval. We must reintroduce Christ as Lord—not just of hearts, but of history, culture, and nations. This is the heart of the Social Kingship of Christ, as taught in Quas Primas by Pope Pius XI.⁶

Finally, we must offer hope—not the hope of politics or policy, but the theological virtue rooted in Christ’s victory over sin and death. The world is dark because it has lost its light. We must become light again—not through compromise, but through conversion.

Conclusion: Return to Christ, or Be Swept Away
The apathy of apostasy is not merely the fault of “the world.” It is the fruit of a Church that has stopped proclaiming Christ with clarity and courage. We are not called to help people feel comfortable in hell. We are called to help them get to heaven.

If we do not call out false compassion, the collapse of faith will continue. If we do not awaken the paralysed conscience, the cultural demise will accelerate. If we do not restore Christ to the centre, our moral vocabulary will be hijacked until there is nothing left to save.

The time is now for Christian witness that is neither sentimental nor silent. Let us preach Christ, crucified and risen—not as a symbol, but as a Saviour. Let us recover the Gospel in full, that the world may yet be saved—not by allyship, but by repentance; not by activism, but by grace. 🔝

¹ Pope Benedict XVI, Homily at the Opening of the Conclave, April 18, 2005.
² St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q.26, Art.1.
³ Pope St Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 1907, §3.
⁴ Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ, Image Books, 1958, p. 75.
⁵ Pew Research Center, Europe’s Growing Muslim Population, November 2017.
⁶ Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, 1925, §12–20.

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CURRENT AFFAIRS

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The Spectacle of Neglect: UN Refusal to Deliver Aid in Gaza Exposed

While the international press accuses Israel of starving Gazan civilians, reality tells a very different story. On July 24, 2025, the Israel Defense Forces invited dozens of foreign journalists to the Kerem Shalom crossing, offering them a firsthand look at hundreds of trucks laden with humanitarian aid, approved by Israel, sitting untouched inside Gaza. The reason for this paralysis? The United Nations has refused to distribute the aid.

This public briefing came after weeks of allegations that Israel was enforcing a siege upon Gaza in its war against Hamas, the Islamist regime that has ruled the enclave since 2007. But as Foreign Ministry officials stated on site, the crisis is not caused by Israeli obstruction, but by the UN’s own refusal to act:

“Hamas and the UN prevent the aid from reaching civilians in Gaza. The world deserves to know the truth.”¹

Photographs released by the Israeli Foreign Ministry show massive stockpiles of food and medical supplies rotting in Gaza, despite the urgent warnings issued by the UN itself about widespread hunger and the threat of famine.

A Standoff With the Truth
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)—a U.S.- and Israeli-backed agency—has offered to take on distribution, having already delivered tens of millions of meals directly to Gazan civilians while bypassing Hamas control.² Yet on July 23, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric rejected GHF’s offer, claiming their presence would cause “an increased risk of people being shot or trampled while trying to get food.”³

But critics point out the contradiction: if the UN believes famine is imminent, and food is available, why not at least cooperate with those willing to help? John Acree, interim director of the GHF, stated plainly:

“We’ve been sounding the alarm for weeks on the need for more aid in Gaza while we’ve seen aid by the UN and other organizations being piled near the borders but not being delivered.”⁴

Hamas Profits While Civilians Starve
A report by The Washington Post on July 21 added damning context.⁵ According to a Western intelligence source cited in the piece, Hamas has been profiteering from aid shipments, seizing supplies in warehouses and reselling them at inflated prices. This exploitation is not incidental; it is a deliberate war strategy. Hamas, the report claims, is “counting on the humanitarian crisis to bring the war to an end.”

Indeed, on July 23, Hamas fired a rocket at a GHF aid depot and has a documented history of attacking and even killing aid workers to maintain its monopoly on humanitarian distribution.⁶ This underscores the real reason the terror group opposes GHF: if it loses control of the aid economy, it loses control of Gaza.

International Response and Media Pressure
U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee responded to the Kerem Shalom media event on X (formerly Twitter), stating:

“This is important for the world to see. The UN has criticized the US & Israel for the food actually delivered, but it’s the UN who has had massive amounts sitting on pallets rotting! Let’s hope the press will tell the truth about the UN.”⁷

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) was equally scathing. Enia Krivine, Senior Director for FDD’s Israel Program, declared:

“By refusing to work with GHF, the United Nations is shamefully throwing a lifeline to Hamas.”⁸
Likewise, Joe Truzman of FDD’s Long War Journal noted that while GHF cannot meet all the demand alone, the UN’s refusal to cooperate means Gazans suffer needlessly.⁹

A Crisis of Moral Clarity
This is not merely a logistical failure. It is a bureaucratic, ideological, and moral collapse. The UN, tasked with humanitarian protection, is effectively abdicating its role in order to preserve institutional pride and avoid collaborating with Israel or U.S.-funded groups. Meanwhile, children go hungry, and a terrorist regime grows stronger.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “the good to be accomplished by an action must never be achieved by means of an evil act” (CCC §1756). Yet here, by refusing to upset the status quo or confront Hamas’s exploitation, the UN tolerates moral evil—aiding indirectly in the prolongation of suffering. The Church’s social doctrine insists on subsidiarity and solidarity: the principle that when higher institutions fail, lower ones must act, and the common good must be placed above bureaucratic procedure.¹⁰

St. Ambrose wrote, *“The bread that you withhold belongs to the hungry; the clothing you lock away belongs to the naked; the money you hide is the redemption and freedom of the poor.”*¹¹ In this case, the aid withheld belongs to the starving children of Gaza—not to the ideology of global technocrats or the terror strategy of Hamas.

If the world is to retain any moral compass, it must demand that the delivery of food not be subject to politics, and that those able to distribute it—regardless of affiliation—be empowered to do so. Otherwise, humanitarianism becomes little more than a cover for complicity. 🔝

¹ Israel Foreign Ministry statement, quoted in Avi Woolf, “IDF Shows World The Aid UN Refuses To Deliver,” July 24, 2025.
² “UN Refuses to Cooperatively Distribute Aid as Reported Hunger Grows in Gaza,” Flash Brief, Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), July 24, 2025.
³ UN daily press briefing, July 23, 2025. Statement by Stéphane Dujarric.
⁴ John Acree quoted in FDD Flash Brief, July 24, 2025.
⁵ The Washington Post, “Hamas Profits as Gaza Aid Crisis Worsens,” July 21, 2025.
⁶ Ibid.; corroborated by IDF incident reports and GHF field communications, July 2024–July 2025.
⁷ Mike Huckabee, @GovMikeHuckabee, X/Twitter post, July 24, 2025.
⁸ FDD Flash Brief, July 24, 2025.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, §186–188.
¹¹ St. Ambrose, De Nabuthe Jezraelita, c. 390 AD.

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No Peace Without Truth: The Moral Catastrophe of Supporting Hamas

In the aftermath of every flare-up in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a familiar chorus returns to the streets of the West: “Free Palestine.” But slogans are not solutions, and moral clarity is not achieved through volume. The tragedy of Gaza is real, profound, and agonising—but those who simplistically cast Israel as the sole villain and call for the reinstatement of Hamas as the governing power betray both history and justice. It is time to confront a deeply uncomfortable truth: the most immediate obstacle to Palestinian liberation is not occupation, but theocratic tyranny.

Twenty Years of Tyranny
Hamas came to power in 2007, not through democratic strength, but through internecine violence. After a short-lived political alliance with Fatah, Hamas turned its weapons inward, staging a bloody coup in Gaza and executing dozens of rivals in the streets. Since then, it has governed not as a servant of its people, but as a revolutionary cult devoted to eternal war. Its rule has not brought development, stability, or peace—but fear, indoctrination, and ruin.

One of Hamas’s most abhorrent legacies is its institutionalised use of child soldiers. Through its “summer camps,” schools, and media outlets, the regime glorifies martyrdom, trains teenagers in paramilitary tactics, and encourages children to view their own deaths as religious victories. This is not education. It is weaponised childhood. International law, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, expressly forbids the recruitment of minors into armed conflict. Yet this practice is neither hidden nor denied. It is advertised—featured in parades, posters, and televised broadcasts².

A Strategy of Human Shields and Human Sacrifice
The suffering of civilians in Gaza is real, but it is not accidental. It is engineered. Hamas deliberately operates within densely populated areas, launching rockets from hospital courtyards, storing weapons in schools, and building command centres beneath apartment blocks and UN facilities¹,⁸. This tactic, condemned even by the United Nations, is not only a violation of the laws of war—it is a cynical calculation: that dead Palestinian civilians will serve Hamas’s cause more effectively than living ones.

The regime’s abuse of humanitarian aid is likewise systematic. Rather than invest in desalination plants, power grids, or medical infrastructure, Hamas has poured international assistance into weapons, explosives, and reinforced bunkers. In times of relative peace, it has failed to govern; in times of war, it ensures maximum civilian exposure. The people of Gaza are not just victims of war. They are victims of a regime that exploits their pain as a political currency.

Terrorism as Theology
Hamas is not simply a nationalist movement with rough edges. It is a theological entity with a genocidal vision. Its 1988 charter, still operative, draws not on international law or human rights but on a radical interpretation of Islamic eschatology. It openly calls for the destruction of Israel and the extermination of Jews³. This is not hyperbole; it is embedded in the movement’s founding identity.

To that end, Hamas has repeatedly celebrated global terrorist atrocities, including 9/11, the 7/7 London bombings, and the Bali nightclub massacre⁴. Its ideological kinship with Al-Qaeda and ISIS is not incidental—it is fundamental. It differs from them not in goals, but in geography. Where ISIS sought a global caliphate, Hamas seeks a local apocalypse. Its war is total. Its enemy is not merely Zionism, but the entire liberal democratic order.

Gaza Held Hostage
The people of Gaza have suffered immensely—but to claim they are suffering only because of Israeli policy is to whitewash the role of their rulers. Every time Israel has withdrawn—from Gaza in 2005, from parts of Lebanon in 2000, and from Palestinian cities under the Oslo Accords—its concessions have been answered not with peace, but with escalation. Rocket fire, suicide bombings, and tunnel invasions have followed every olive branch. Each round of violence has further radicalised Gaza’s infrastructure, impoverished its people, and entrenched Hamas’s control⁷.

The result is a captive population, not just in the physical sense but in the existential one. Hamas has crushed independent journalism, imprisoned dissidents, and executed collaborators without trial. No opposition party may organise. No free press exists. The idea of civil society—essential to any national liberation movement—has been eradicated.

What Peace Requires
Calls for ceasefire or negotiated settlement are only meaningful if the parties involved can be trusted to uphold them. Before Israel withdraws from any territory, there must first be a peace framework grounded in enforceable commitments. This would require a multilateral agreement—brokered by the United Nations and implemented by international peacekeepers—with strict guarantees: demilitarisation, border security, aid transparency, and civilian protection.

But let us be clear: it is not Israel that would be hardest to police. It is Hamas. Unlike Israel, Hamas is not a state; it is not bound by international law; it does not wear uniforms or operate openly. It rejects the authority of the UN and has no interest in democratic oversight. Any peacekeeping force inserted into Gaza would face extraordinary difficulty: distinguishing civilians from combatants, gaining access to tunnel networks, and enforcing arms embargoes against a hostile, clandestine resistance. In Lebanon, Hezbollah flagrantly violated ceasefires under the noses of UNIFIL peacekeepers⁵. In Bosnia and Rwanda, the UN failed to prevent genocide at the hands of militias operating outside the state⁶. In Gaza, the risks would be even greater.

The Moral Clarity We Lack
The reason Israel remains defensive in the face of international pressure is simple: the world refuses to reckon with the nature of its adversary. Every state has a right to exist in security. But Israel is expected to tolerate what no other nation would: a neighbouring regime that calls for its destruction, trains children to die in its war, and hides behind civilians while it attacks.

Those who claim to champion the oppressed must begin by defending truth. Hamas is not the voice of Palestine. It is the strangler of Palestinian hope. To demand a “Free Palestine” without demanding freedom from Hamas is to perpetuate the very cycle of ruin one claims to oppose.

There can be no peace without truth—and the first truth is this: Hamas is not the liberator of Gaza. It is its captor. 🔝

¹ UN Human Rights Office, Report of civilian shielding and use of UN facilities by Hamas, OHCHR, 2023
² UNICEF / Human Rights Watch, Documented use of children as combatants in Gaza, 2016–2023
³ Hamas Charter (1988), Articles 6–7, 13, 15, and 32
⁴ Reuters / BBC Monitoring, Hamas celebration of 9/11 and 7/7 attacks recorded in public statements and street rallies
⁵ The Guardian / UNIFIL Reports, Hezbollah violations of ceasefire under UNIFIL supervision in southern Lebanon
⁶ UN Peacekeeping Archives, Failures of enforcement in Rwanda and Bosnia
⁷ International Crisis Group / RAND Corporation, Reports on Hamas governance structure and diversion of aid in Gaza, 2015–2023
⁸ IDF / UNRWA investigations, Evidence of Hamas storing weapons in schools and hospitals; UNRWA condemnations, 2021

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Digital Deception and Measured Reform: Pope Leo XIV and the False “15 Reforms” Claim

A recent wave of social media misinformation has once again illustrated the dangers of artificial intelligence in the dissemination of religious disinformation. On 19 July 2025, a viral video—purporting to reveal “15 major reforms” enacted by Pope Leo XIV to “change the Catholic Church forever”—was widely shared across platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. The claims ranged from changes to papal infallibility and the Mass to doctrinal revisions on sexual morality. However, these assertions were swiftly and thoroughly debunked.

The independent fact-checking organisation Snopes determined that the entire list was fabricated. No such reforms had been announced or implemented, nor had any reliable source corroborated the video’s claims¹. According to Snopes, the video originated from an anonymous content creator using artificial intelligence and text-to-speech narration to simulate Vatican reporting. It is an instructive case in how the combination of AI, religious illiteracy, and viral sensationalism can rapidly distort public understanding.

In reality, Pope Leo XIV has not introduced sweeping structural reforms. Rather, his early papacy has been characterised by a posture of measured continuity, administrative clarity, and spiritual recalibration—especially in response to the fragmentation left in the wake of his predecessor’s pontificate.

As covered by The Catholic Review, Pope Leo has opted for “quiet, thoughtful” gestures over headline-generating actions². While many observers speculated that he would either dismantle or extend the reforms of Pope Francis, Leo has instead chosen a path of “stability with direction”—allowing existing dicasteries and episcopal appointments to function while gently redirecting their spiritual orientation. In this sense, his pontificate mirrors the early acts of Benedict XVI: not a restorationist counter-revolution, but a patient redirection of the barque of Peter.

His first notable decisions—such as the financial transparency campaign launched in late June³, and his appointments to the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue and the Pontifical Academy for Life—point not to revolution, but to reform through renewal. Notably, Pope Leo has taken steps to revisit the recommendations of the 2020 CDF consultation on Summorum Pontificum, now verified as having been suppressed by curial authorities during the issuance of Traditionis Custodes, the document that dramatically curtailed the Traditional Latin Mass⁴.

Liturgically, Leo XIV has emphasized the recovery of silence, reverence, and mystery. In a recent private address reported by The Catholic Herald, he praised the contemplative spirit of Eastern Catholic liturgies and encouraged Roman pastors to move away from “spectacle” and toward Eucharistic awe⁵. Though his public statements have remained careful and irenic, this emphasis on interior renewal aligns with a broader trend toward liturgical sobriety and doctrinal clarity observed in several recent papal messages.

These early moves contrast starkly with the manufactured list of changes promoted in the viral video. The purported reforms—including ending priestly celibacy, revising the canon on abortion, and creating a new category of sacraments—are not only non-existent but theologically incoherent. No official Vatican source, no episcopal conference, and no reputable Catholic journalist has validated any part of the video’s claims.

This episode reveals a wider vulnerability in the digital age: even within the Catholic world, doctrinal confusion and algorithmic manipulation can conspire to create counterfeit narratives. The faithful are urged to remain vigilant, discerning, and loyal to verified sources and sound doctrine.

The pontificate of Pope Leo XIV is still in its infancy. Whether it ultimately results in substantial doctrinal correction, administrative housecleaning, or deeper spiritual reorientation remains to be seen. What is already evident, however, is that the most significant “reforms” are not occurring in TikTok videos but in the slow and careful restoration of order, reverence, and truth at the heart of the Church. 🔝

¹ Snopes, “Did Pope Leo XIV Announce 15 Major Reforms to Change the Catholic Church?”, 24 July 2025.
² Catholic Review, “Quietly, Without Flashiness, a Disarming Pope Leo Strives Toward Unity,” May 2025.
³ Nuntiatoria LXI, “Veritas Vincit: Transparency, Tradition, and the Early Priorities of Leo XIV,” 4 July 2025.
⁴ Diane Montagna, “Leaked Vatican Report Confirms Pro-TLM Majority in 2020 CDF Consultation,” The Remnant, 10 July 2025.
⁵ The Catholic Herald, “Why Pope Leo XIV’s Gentle Criticism of Western Liturgy Is a Wake-Up Call,” June 2025.

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Pope Leo XIV and the Undoing of Papal Primacy

Traditional Catholics warn of doctrinal rupture as pope relativises the See of Peter in new ecumenical address…

Pope Leo XIV has reignited controversy over Catholic ecclesiology by suggesting that no episcopal see—including Rome—should claim primacy over others, in a prepared address to Orthodox and Catholic pilgrims delivered at Castel Gandolfo on July 17. The pope’s remarks, part of an ecumenical celebration aimed at fostering unity between East and West, have been hailed by progressives and non-Catholic observers as a watershed moment. But traditional Catholics are denouncing the speech as a direct contradiction of Vatican I and a capitulation to Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology.

“Rome, Constantinople, and all the other Sees are not called to vie for primacy,” the pope stated, invoking Mark 9:33–37 and comparing episcopal claims to primacy with the apostles’ dispute over who among them was greatest. “Unity among those who believe in Christ is one of the signs of God’s gift of consolation,” he continued, citing Isaiah 66:13. He described the gathering as “one of the abundant fruits of the ecumenical movement aimed at restoring full unity among all Christ’s disciples.”

The speech, delivered in English—Leo’s native tongue—was not impromptu but a carefully prepared address circulated by the Holy See Press Office. This removes any ambiguity regarding translation or off-the-cuff pastoral improvisation. The language chosen was precise, and the intention unmistakable.

Traditional Catholic commentators reacted swiftly. Many interpreted the pope’s words not as a fraternal call to unity, but as a theological flattening of divinely instituted hierarchy. Chris Jackson, writing on Substack, observed: “The First Vatican Council defined that the Roman Pontiff possesses not merely a primacy of honour, but of jurisdiction over the entire Church, and that this primacy was given to Peter alone and passed to his successors in Rome. That’s de fide. It’s not optional.”¹

Jackson denounced the address as a preference for “diplomacy over doctrine,” lamenting that rather than reaffirming Rome’s divinely instituted primacy, the pope was “relativizing it” and transforming the Petrine office into “a kind of apostolic roundtable.” The sedevacantist platform Novus Ordo Watch likewise castigated the pontiff for what it termed “a bombshell,” noting that Leo’s language mirrored the rhetoric of sixteenth-century Protestant polemicists who denied Roman primacy on historical grounds.²

At the heart of the controversy is not merely tone or posture, but doctrine. The dogmatic constitution Pastor Aeternus of the First Vatican Council affirms that the Pope possesses “a primacy of ordinary power over all other Churches,” and that this is “a doctrine of divine revelation,” to be held by all the faithful.³ The council further declares that this primacy pertains to “the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole Church.”

Some defenders of the pope’s phrasing have sought to analogise the pontiff’s authority to that of a constitutional monarch, governing through ministers but not intervening directly in every affair. Yet this model—though pedagogically appealing—requires precision.

It is true that bishops are not vicars of the pope but of Christ. As Pope Pius XII affirms in Mystici Corporis Christi, they possess their ordinary power “by divine institution,” not papal delegation.⁴ However, this episcopal authority is given within the visible, hierarchical communion of the Church, and it remains subordinate to the supreme jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff, who governs the entire Church as Vicar of Christ. Vatican I teaches that the pope has “immediate” jurisdiction in every diocese—not by convenience or delegation, but by divine right.⁵

Thus, while bishops are true shepherds of their particular churches, they must remain in communion with Peter to exercise their office validly and licitly. Their authority is not autonomous, but part of the divinely instituted structure in which the successor of Peter is the principle of unity. St Thomas Aquinas states plainly: “The power of the pope, who is the vicar of Christ, extends to the whole Church; whereas other pastors have power only over their own flocks.”⁶

Yet this supremacy of the pope is not autocracy. Catholic doctrine equally affirms that the Roman Pontiff must exercise his authority in a manner consonant with the charity, humility, and pastoral solicitude of Christ Himself. Though his jurisdiction is universal and supreme, it is always to be directed toward preserving communion, promoting truth, and ensuring the salvation of souls. He is not a despot over the bishops but a father among brothers—bound by divine law to govern in truth and love. Pope Leo XIII wrote:

“The supreme ruler of the Church cannot govern as he pleases, but is bound to govern according to the laws and doctrines of the Church. The purpose of his office is to preserve the deposit of faith and the unity of the Church, not to replace or reconfigure it.”⁷

This principle is echoed in Lumen Gentium, which affirms that bishops “are not to be regarded as vicars of the Roman Pontiff” but “exercise their authority in communion with him, for the building up of the Body of Christ.”⁸ In short, universal jurisdiction is not a license for absolutism, but a sacred charge to preserve the unity of the Church in the bond of charity.

Observers sympathetic to ecumenical goals, however, welcomed the speech. Fr Lorenzo Murrone, a Lutheran pastor and classical scholar based in Rome, commended the pope’s recognition of “the apostolic structures of the early Church.” He remarked that “the ancient Church was not gathered under one head but divided into individual dioceses,” and that “as long as the old conciliar definitions remain operative in Catholic dogma, the division will persist.”

While Murrone praised Leo’s tone, he confessed confusion over the implications. “How far is Leo willing—or able—to go?” he asked. “Papal infallibility and supremacy are as indispensable to Roman Catholicism as repugnant to both Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism.”

Indeed, the Vatican has been laying groundwork for such gestures. In June 2024, the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity issued a 151-page document titled The Bishop of Rome: Primacy and Synodality in Ecumenical Dialogues and Responses to the Encyclical Ut Unum Sint.⁹ The text cautions against “anachronistic projection” of later papal doctrines onto the early Church and acknowledges that the dogmatic definitions of the papacy “have proved to be a significant obstacle for other Christians.”

The document cites with approval a 2006 address by Pope Benedict XVI, who declared: “As far as the doctrine of the primacy is concerned, Rome must not require more of the East than was formulated and lived during the first millennium.”¹⁰ It even quotes the Lutheran Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, in which Melanchthon concedes that a primacy of jurisdiction iure humano (by human law) might be acceptable “if the pope would allow the Gospel.”¹¹

Leo’s address also follows on from his inaugural homily, where he notably pointed to Christ—not Peter—as the rock of the Church, and referred to non-Catholic communions as “sister Christian churches”—a designation previously criticised by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as theologically imprecise.¹²

Taken together, these developments point to more than ecumenical diplomacy. They suggest a redefinition of papal identity, stripped of juridical supremacy and reimagined as a moral symbol or coordinating presence among equal patriarchates. But such a vision is difficult to reconcile with the unambiguous definitions of the First Vatican Council or the universal magisterium. Traditionalists argue that it not only undermines Rome’s claim to authority but reopens the door to ecclesial relativism and doctrinal confusion.

What remains unclear is whether Leo XIV intends to press further—seeking structural changes to the papacy—or whether his speech was a symbolic gesture, intended to warm relations without formally altering doctrine. Either way, the result is the same: a papacy increasingly perceived not as the visible source of unity, but as one voice among many.

As the pontificate of Leo XIV continues, Catholics are left to ask whether this pope is a steward of the Petrine office—or its quiet dismantler. 🔝

¹ Pastor Aeternus, First Vatican Council, 1870, Ch. III.
² Novus Ordo Watch, “Leo XIV Drops Bombshell on Papal Primacy,” July 18, 2025.
³ Pastor Aeternus, ibid.
⁴ Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi (1943), §38.
⁵ Pastor Aeternus, ibid.
⁶ St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Suppl. Q.8, a.6.
⁷ Leo XIII, Epistola Tua, 1885.
⁸ Lumen Gentium, §27.
⁹ Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, The Bishop of Rome: Primacy and Synodality, June 2024.
¹⁰ Benedict XVI, Address to Patriarch Bartholomew, Nov. 30, 2006.
¹¹ Philip Melanchthon, Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, 1537.
¹² Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus (2000), §17.

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Theological Purge in Detroit?
Archbishop Weisenburger Fires Ralph Martin and Eduardo Echeverria—Implications for Seminary Freedom and the Future of Evangelization

On July 23, 2025, Archbishop Edward Weisenburger of Detroit dismissed Dr. Ralph Martin and Dr. Eduardo Echeverria from their faculty positions at Sacred Heart Major Seminary without formal explanation. Though both men are internationally respected for their fidelity to the Church’s teaching and their roles in evangelization and theological scholarship, they were removed during the second summer session, reportedly with little warning.

Dr. Martin, director of graduate theology programs in evangelization, was informed that the archbishop had “concerns about [his] theological perspectives.” No clarification was given. Dr. Echeverria signed a non-disclosure agreement and was likewise not told the reasons for his removal¹.

The action has provoked immediate backlash from Catholics across the spectrum. Traditionalist outlets such as Crisis Magazine condemned the move as episcopal overreach, while online commentators accused the archbishop of waging a “militant Bergoglian purge” against doctrinal clarity and Catholic orthodoxy². Supporters of the decision, including Mike Lewis of Where Peter Is, defended the firings as necessary in light of the professors’ long-standing critiques of Pope Francis³.

Who Are the Dismissed Professors?
Dr. Ralph Martin is one of the best-known figures in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. As president of Renewal Ministries, his evangelization work spans over 30 countries, and his long-running programme The Choices We Face has brought Catholic teaching into countless homes for decades. A doctorate holder from the Angelicum, Martin has consistently promoted the New Evangelization, in continuity with Evangelii Nuntiandi, Catechesi Tradendae, and Redemptoris Missio. He is also known for challenging ambiguous trends within the Church—particularly on the issues of salvation, universalism, and the limits of interreligious dialogue.

Dr. Eduardo Echeverria, professor of philosophy and systematic theology, has been a crucial figure in defending dogmatic development and the integrity of doctrinal tradition. His recent work, Are We Together? A Roman Catholic Analyzes Evangelical Protestants, seeks to uphold the uniqueness and necessity of Catholic truth claims while engaging charitably with Protestant critiques. He is also a recognized scholar of hermeneutics, dogma, and post-conciliar theology.

The Context Under Archbishop Weisenburger
Since taking office in March 2025 following the retirement of Archbishop Allen Vigneron, Weisenburger has taken a decisive turn away from his predecessor’s cautiously conservative path. He has already banned ad orientem celebrations of the Novus Ordo Mass in the archdiocese and prohibited the public celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass in diocesan parishes⁴.

Observers now view the dismissal of Martin and Echeverria as part of a broader program of ideological realignment—one that prioritizes synodality, “pastoral accompaniment,” and a minimization of doctrinal friction with the secular world. Critics argue that this is an attempt to silence voices committed to the perennial Magisterium, especially those who have publicly resisted aspects of Pope Francis’s controversial initiatives, including Fiducia Supplicans and Traditionis Custodes.

Implications for Seminary Formation
This case highlights the growing tension between episcopal authority and the freedom of theological inquiry in seminaries. Sacred Heart has long been regarded as a bastion of faithful formation, aligned with John Paul II’s Pastores Dabo Vobis and the renewal of Catholic identity in priestly training. The removal of two of its most distinguished professors signals a potential departure from intellectual rigor rooted in magisterial fidelity toward an environment more aligned with ideological conformity.

Such actions raise serious questions:

• Can a seminary genuinely form priests in the truth if public defenders of doctrinal orthodoxy are excluded?
• Is it tenable to promote evangelization while punishing those most effective in carrying it out?
• Will Catholic institutions become inhospitable to faithful intellectuals precisely because they speak clearly and without euphemism?

Historical Parallels
This is not the first time prominent theologians have been removed under the pretext of “pastoral concerns.” One is reminded of the removal of Fr. Brian Harrison from his teaching role in Puerto Rico, despite his adherence to the Magisterium. In the 1970s, figures like Fr. Charles Curran and Hans Küng also experienced dismissals—but for the opposite reason: their views contradicted Church doctrine. The striking reversal now is that firings are targeting defenders of doctrine rather than dissenters.

In 2021, Professor John Senior’s prophetic words echoed loudly: “When orthodoxy becomes controversial, the faithful will be cast out of the temple.” Today, that prophecy appears fulfilled.

Conclusion
At stake is not merely the careers of two professors—but the integrity of Catholic education and the liberty to proclaim truth in an age that increasingly prizes ambiguity. If Sacred Heart and institutions like it become environments hostile to faithfulness, it will not be a question of who is next, but whether such seminaries will remain authentically Catholic at all. 🔝

1. National Catholic Register, “Shake-Up in Detroit: New Archbishop Fires Ralph Martin and Eduardo Echeverria”, July 23, 2025.
2. X.com, Lepanto Institute, tweet posted July 23, 2025.
3. National Catholic Register, ibid.
4. Catholic World News, “Detroit Archbishop Bans Latin Mass, Ad Orientem Celebrations”, June 2025.

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A Fraternal Rebuke: French Archbishop Condemns Reinstatement of Convicted Rapist as Diocesan Chancellor

The case of Fr. Dominique Spina reignites outrage over clerical abuse, episcopal accountability, and the tension between mercy and justice in the French Church.

The Archdiocese of Toulouse has become the epicentre of a new scandal after the appointment of a convicted sex offender to the office of diocesan chancellor. Archbishop Guy de Kerimel defended his June nomination of Fr. Dominique Spina—convicted in 2006 of raping a teenage boy while serving as a school chaplain—as a merciful and pragmatic decision. But another French bishop, Hervé Giraud of Viviers, has now issued what he terms a “fraternal correction,” calling the appointment “unacceptable and untenable.”¹

Spina’s appointment, effective from September 1, drew immediate backlash when it was disclosed he had previously served prison time for multiple counts of rape committed in the 1990s. The victim, 16 at the time, was a student at the Catholic school of Notre-Dame de Bétharram, an institution already marred by a broader abuse scandal spanning decades.²

While Archbishop de Kerimel maintained that the appointment does not involve public ministry and is “not a promotion,”³ Giraud challenged the theological and pastoral reasoning behind the decision. In a public statement on July 21 and a subsequent interview with La Vie, Giraud stated that “after so many years of awareness, how could a guilty priest, even one who had served his sentence, still be appointed to such a position which requires a ‘reputation of integrity’?”⁴

He continued: “If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it… the appointment is unacceptable to victims of sexual violence and untenable for the Church’s witness.”⁵

Fr. Spina was sentenced in 2006 to five years in prison—four of which he served—for the rape of a teenage seminarian between 1993 and 1994. After his release, he was incardinated into the Archdiocese of Toulouse, where he was, controversially, allowed to serve in a parish setting, including responsibilities involving children. It was only after a 2016 exposé by Mediapart that Spina was removed from public ministry.⁶

Despite this, Archbishop de Kerimel—who succeeded Archbishop Robert Le Gall in 2022—defended the decision to appoint Spina as chancellor by appealing to the Christian mandate of forgiveness and personal transformation:

“Rape is a crime… but not to show mercy is to lock the abuser into a social death… I think we can say [Spina has] an unimpaired reputation today, if we believe… that a person’s conversion is possible.”⁷

Critics argue that such reasoning bypasses the canonical requirement that a chancellor possess “unimpaired reputation” (Canon 482 §1) and overlooks the scandal caused by failing to centre the Church’s responsibility to victims. Archbishop Giraud alluded to this dynamic in his July 22 remarks:

“Our institution is slow… We will have to progress in the way we ‘correct’ ourselves fraternally… What worries me most is that not only clergy but also lay faithful are unable to understand the point of view of all those who have suffered.”⁸

This is not the first time the French hierarchy has been criticised for its handling of abuse cases. In 2022, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard admitted to abusing a 14-year-old girl in the 1980s.⁹ Other prominent figures—Abbé Pierre, Fr. Georges Finet, Fr. Marie-Dominique Philippe, and Jean Vanier—have also been posthumously accused of abuse.¹⁰

The appointment of Fr. Spina as chancellor not only risks undermining trust in ecclesial leadership but also highlights what many believe to be a persistent institutional failure: prioritising clerical rehabilitation over ecclesial credibility and victim justice.

The storm surrounding Toulouse will likely intensify if other bishops remain silent. For now, Archbishop Giraud stands alone in issuing what may be the first genuinely fraternal correction of its kind in the French episcopate since the abuse crisis erupted anew. 🔝

1. La Vie, “Mgr Hervé Giraud dénonce la nomination d’un prêtre condamné pour viol comme chancelier,” 22 July 2025.
2. Mediapart, “Le retour discret d’un prêtre condamné pour viol dans le diocèse de Toulouse,” 1 April 2016.
3. Famille Chrétienne, “Mgr de Kerimel défend sa décision: ‘Refuser la miséricorde, c’est rétablir une peine de mort sociale,’” 5 June 2025.
4. La Vie, ibid.
5. Bluesky post by Mgr Hervé Giraud, 21 July 2025.
6. Mediapart, ibid.
7. Famille Chrétienne, ibid.
8. La Vie, ibid.
9. Le Monde, “Le cardinal Ricard reconnaît des faits de pédocriminalité,” 7 November 2022.
10. La Croix, “Jean Vanier, une figure spirituelle éclaboussée par des abus,” 22 February 2020.

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Public Outcry in Germany: Petition Urging Removal of Cardinal Woelki Surpasses 60,000 Signatures

German Catholics appeal to Pope Leo XIV, accusing the Cologne archbishop of moral corruption and failure to address clerical abuse, while the archdiocese dismisses the charges as baseless.

A growing petition launched in Germany is calling for the removal of Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, Archbishop of Cologne, citing his alleged moral failure and loss of credibility after years of scandal concerning the mishandling of clerical sexual abuse cases. As of early June, over 60,130 people had signed the petition, which is addressed directly to Pope Leo XIV.¹

Initiated by a priest from Munich, the petition argues that Woelki is guilty of “moral corruption” and has **“lost all credibility in the public sphere and the Church at large.”**² It cites as cause for canonical removal the cardinal’s decision to pay €26,000 (approx. $29,700) to settle a criminal investigation related to perjury in an abuse case, after which proceedings against him were discontinued by civil prosecutors.³

The petition invokes Canon 401 §2 of the Code of Canon Law, which states that a diocesan bishop who becomes “less able to fulfill his office because of ill health or some other grave cause” is urged to offer his resignation. The petition argues that Woelki’s loss of public trust and repeated failures in accountability meet this threshold for a “grave cause.”⁴

Woelki’s Legacy of Controversy
Cardinal Woelki has faced mounting criticism since 2020 for allegedly shielding abusive clergy and for obstructing transparency in handling abuse cases in Cologne. In 2021, Pope Francis granted him a sabbatical, stating there had been “serious errors in communication” though no canonical wrongdoing was found.⁵ Woelki later offered his resignation, which Pope Francis declined in 2022, a move that sparked division within the German Church and among abuse survivors.

Much of the backlash stems from a 2021 abuse report commissioned by the Archdiocese of Cologne from the law firm Gercke Wollschläger, which documented over 200 failures by Church officials, though it controversially cleared Woelki himself.⁶ Critics, including survivors, accused the cardinal of using the report to scapegoat subordinates while preserving his own position.

Public Pressure and Canonical Complaint
This new petition, launched in May 2025, marks the most concerted lay-driven effort yet to secure Woelki’s removal. The organizers state that his continued presence “gravely hinders the witness of the Church” and has **“widened the rift between the hierarchy and the faithful.”**⁷

The canonical complaint attached to the petition was submitted to Rome along with the signatures and supporting documents. However, the Archdiocese of Cologne responded on July 21 by dismissing the complaint as “obviously baseless.” In an official statement, the archdiocese argued the petition was based on “false assumptions and claims”, noting that the legal settlement involved no criminal conviction or canonical offense.⁸

“The petitioners did not present evidence of failures in abuse reporting or of any breach of Church law that would justify removal,” the diocesan press office said. “The proceedings cited were settled without admission of guilt and do not alter the canonical status of the cardinal.”⁹

They further insisted that civil settlements—even those related to misconduct claims—“cannot be retrofitted into canonical grounds” unless a judicial finding or doctrinal error is established.

A Test for the New Pontificate
The petition arrives just months into the papacy of Pope Leo XIV, widely seen as facing early tests of his commitment to transparency and episcopal accountability. While the Holy See has yet to respond publicly to the petition, Vatican-watchers say how Leo XIV handles the case may set the tone for his broader reform agenda.

If Pope Leo were to act on the petition, it would mark a rare example of a bishop’s removal in response to public and lay pressure, though canon law permits such action in grave cases where the bishop has lost the trust of the faithful.

For now, the petition continues to circulate, with survivors’ groups and clergy among its signatories. Regardless of outcome, it reflects a deep yearning for justice and renewal within the German Church—a Church still grappling with its past, and unsure of how to move forward under leaders compromised by scandal. 🔝

1. Catholic News Agency, “Petition to Pope Leo XIV to remove German cardinal gains over 60K signatures,” 6 June 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Domradio.de, “Kardinal Woelki zahlt 26.000 Euro – Verfahren eingestellt,” April 2025.
4. Code of Canon Law, Canon 401 §2.
5. National Catholic Reporter, “Pope grants sabbatical to German Cardinal Woelki,” 24 September 2021.
6. Catholic News Agency, “Cardinal Woelki faces backlash over Cologne abuse report,” 2021.
7. CNA Deutsch, “Ein Hirt ohne Herde: Petition fordert Absetzung von Kardinal Woelki,” 5 June 2025.
8. Catholic News Agency, “Cologne archdiocese calls canonical complaint baseless as abuse survivors accuse cardinal,” 21 July 2025.
9. Ibid.

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Hands Off the Crozier: Clericalism, Silence, and the Scandal of Inaction Under Pope Leo XIV

“For judgment shall begin at the house of God” (1 Peter 4:17)

In the weeks since Pope Leo XIV’s assumption of the Petrine office, the faithful have watched with both anticipation and trepidation as the new pontiff’s tone, gestures, and early appointments have been interpreted through conflicting lenses. Traditionalists hoped for a doctrinal restoration. Progressives clung to the inertia of synodality. But amid these speculations, a deeper and far more devastating pattern is emerging—an apparent unwillingness to confront, decisively and transparently, the crisis of sexual abuse within the clergy.

The Mercy That Mutates into Indifference
In July 2025, a storm of reports from Germany and France reignited global outrage over predator priests still in ministry, high-profile cover-ups, and a Vatican curia seemingly unmoved by the cries of victims. Among the most shocking cases is that of Fr. Dominique Spina, convicted in 2005 for raping a teenage boy. Rather than being laicized, he was promoted by Archbishop Guy de Kerimel of Toulouse to serve as diocesan chancellor. When challenged, the archbishop defended his decision as an act of “mercy.”¹

Yet this ‘mercy’ has mutated into mockery. The victim, who had turned to Spina as a spiritual guide, was groomed and abused at a vulnerable age. That Leo XIV has remained publicly silent, even as Catholic media and laity express outrage, signals not pastoral prudence but a fatal detachment—one which threatens to unravel what little trust remains in the hierarchy.

Victims’ Pleas and a Deafening Vatican Silence
In Germany, the victim support organization Eckiger Tisch decried the Vatican’s refusal to grant compensation to Melanie F., a girl raped repeatedly by her foster father, Fr. Hans Ue, and forced into two abortions. They have appealed directly to Pope Leo to allow lay oversight in the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, stating that the DDF’s 18 priests are insufficient to handle the global scale of abuse cases.² Thus far, there has been no public response.

The Pope has also ignored calls to open Vatican archives to independent investigators—despite their containing decades of documentation implicating thousands of clergy.³ “Talk is cheap. Show me,” said Chris O’Leary, a survivor who appeared on the BBC.⁴

Predators Shielded by Proximity and Patronage
One of the gravest concerns relates not to past crimes, but to the continued proximity of known abusers to positions of ecclesiastical comfort and power. Fr. Carlo Alberto Capella, convicted of possessing and distributing child pornography, resides within the Vatican diplomatic residence—just meters from where Pope Leo himself lives.⁵

Likewise, Fr. Richard McGrath, once head of Providence Catholic High School, was credibly accused of misconduct involving minors. Yet the Augustinian order—Leo’s own—left his name off its list of accused clerics. Only after sustained media pressure did the order acknowledge the breadth of the scandal.⁶ Such omissions are not administrative oversights. They are acts of concealment.

The Scandal in Peru: A Test the Pope Has Already Failed
Leo XIV’s own record in Peru, as bishop of Chiclayo, provides little reassurance. There, three women reported abuse by clergy as minors. The Vatican closed the case swiftly after a shallow investigation during which the accused were not suspended from public ministry. Fr. Eleuterio Vásquez continued his pastoral work.⁷

To make matters worse, the Pope then appointed another priest, Fr. Julio Ramírez, to counsel the victims—who reportedly told them not to expect harsh Vatican action since there had been “no penetration.”⁸

Clericalism as a Theological Cancer
The underlying disease is not only administrative incompetence but clericalism—what Joseph Ratzinger once called “a perversion of the priesthood” in which a protective caste mentality supplants the Gospel of accountability and holiness.⁹

Leo XIV’s failure to act decisively against predators—some of whom now dwell within his own household—is not merely a pastoral oversight. It is the external manifestation of an interior priority: to shield the institution, preserve the prestige of clerical office, and avoid public scandal, even if it means betraying the victims once more.

The Pope’s silence sends a chilling message: that priestly dignity outweighs the justice owed to the broken. Such silence is not neutral. It is scandalous. As Msgr. Gene Gomulka has argued, Leo’s passivity echoes his promotion of Cardinal McElroy despite a record of abuse cover-ups, and his toleration of figures like Archbishop George Lucas, implicated in cover-ups and lawsuits across multiple dioceses.¹⁰

Reform Must Begin With Justice, Not Optics
True restoration in the Church cannot proceed on the basis of optics, gestures, and slogans. It begins with justice. And justice demands action—public, verifiable, penitential.

The faithful are right to be scandalized. It is not disloyal to demand accountability. As Our Lord declared, “It must needs be that scandals come: but woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh” (Mt 18:7). The Church is not a refuge for wolves in cassocks, but the bride of Christ, whose shepherds must lay down their lives for the sheep—not protect their own.

Pope Leo XIV may draw crowds to Castel Gandolfo. But unless he cleanses the Church of these defiling crimes—beginning with those closest to his person—his papacy will not be remembered for doctrinal precision or liturgical gestures, but for the souls left unprotected while predators prospered under the roof of Peter. 🔝

¹ The Pillar, “Pope’s Silence on Predator Priest Promotion Sparks Questions,” July 11, 2025.
² Eckiger Tisch Press Release, July 2025.
³ Ibid.
⁴ BBC World Service, interview with Chris O’Leary, July 2025.
⁵ InfoVaticana, “Capella’s Return to Vatican Life Raises Questions,” July 2025.
⁶ Chicago Sun Times, “Augustinians Omit Names from Abuse List,” July 2025.
⁷ The New York Times, “Peruvian Victims Say Leo Ignored Their Case,” March 2025.
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ Joseph Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report, 1985.
¹⁰ The Stream, Interview with Msgr. Gene Gomulka, July 2025.

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Between Heaven and Earth: Old Roman Mission Work in Davao City

by Fr Paulo Cobangbang CDC, Old Roman Philippine Territory

Missionary life is often marked by motion—by land, sea, or air. The priest goes where he is sent: offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, administering the sacraments, preaching, teaching, consoling souls, and tending to the needs of the faithful. Such is the life of Old Roman clergy, who, despite many trials, carry the apostolic flame into places near and far.

Central to this mission is collaboration for the restoration of the Traditional Latin Mass and the perennial Roman Catholic faith, untouched by the modernism unleashed by the Second Vatican Council. This is the raison d’être of Old Roman clergy: to be Traditionis Custodes in the truest sense—guardians of Tradition, sowers of doctrine, and examples of piety.

One recent and ongoing expression of this work is the missionary collaboration in Davao City, a major urban centre on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, where Fr Paolo Miguel Cobangbang, CDC, and Fr Marcel Maria Vianney, CDC, have been working alongside Fr Jorge Michael Angga of the Priestly Society of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori (Traditional Redemptorists), under the jurisdiction of Bishop Sherman Pius Moseley. Both Fr Paolo and Fr Marcel are members of the Congregation of the Divine Charity, the umbrella religious institute of the Old Roman Apostolate overseeing religious and apostolic life.

The Story of the Parish and Its Pastor
St Michael the Archangel Parish is located in Tibuloy, Toril District, Davao City. Originally a small chapel serving faithful who had formerly attended Latin Masses offered by the SSPX or diocesan clergy, the parish grew under the pastorship of Fr Jorge Michael Angga—a former diocesan priest ordained by Archbishop Fernando Capalla in 2007. Confronted with the theological incoherence of the Novus Ordo Church, Fr Angga studied the Fathers, Doctors, and pre-conciliar magisterium—especially St Thomas Aquinas and St Robert Bellarmine—and concluded that fidelity to the Truth required a decisive break with the modernist errors afflicting the contemporary hierarchy.

He issued a manifesto affirming the supremacy of the Traditional Latin Mass, rejecting the modernist heresies of the postconciliar Church, and denying the current Pope’s ability to effectively lead the Church. Sanctions followed swiftly. Though offered bribes of promotion and comfort, Fr Angga refused to recant, and likens his old diocesan life to a chicken laying golden eggs—eventually butchered when he chose to follow Christ fully.

After a period with the SSPX, Fr Angga established St Michael’s Parish on his family’s land at the foot of Mount Apo. Eventually incardinated into the Old Roman-aligned Traditional Redemptorists under Bishop Moseley, the parish flourished. Today, its distinct blue church stands alongside a humble seminary, rectory, library, refectory, and social hall—all built through the cooperative spirit of Bayanihan, a hallmark of Filipino solidarity.

The Davao Mission: A Living Witness
Since June 2024, Fr Cobangbang, CDC—joined occasionally by Fr Marcel, CDC—has been making pastoral visits to Davao, offering the sacraments, teaching seminarians, training servers, and forming the faithful in liturgy, Scripture, Thomistic philosophy, and music. Their work has been rooted in friendship and mutual respect with Fr Angga, who had previously served as National Spiritual Director of the Catholic Faith Defenders and is well known in traditional apologetics circles.

The parish seminary currently has one resident seminarian and another expected this year. Despite its modest scale, the community is vibrant. Parish life revolves around daily Mass, community catechesis, and a growing sense of shared apostolic mission.

Notable Events and Encounters

Among the memorable highlights:

• In February 2025, Fr Cobangbang, CDC, gave a lively youth conference inspired by St Louis de Montfort, focusing on the virtues of Diligence, Perseverance, Fortitude, Wisdom, and Angelic Purity—illustrated with humour and pop-culture references to connect with the young.
• In March 2025, he delivered a well-attended Lenten conference on Catholic prophecy and the End Times, anchoring his reflections in sound doctrine and cautioning against panic or superstition. Our Lady’s role as Mediatrix and her calls to repentance and Eucharistic devotion were especially emphasised.
• In one touching moment, he assisted at the baptism of an adult convert named Sunshine—a woman from a pagan Cordilleran background who had been living in Taiwan. Baptized by immersion during a rainy night, she became a vivid reminder of the Church’s mission to the margins.
• Most recently, from June 19 to July 6, 2025, the priests celebrated what is believed to be the first Solemn High Mass in Davao since Vatican II, for the Feast of the Sacred Heart. Fr Angga was celebrant, with Fr Cobangbang, CDC, as deacon and Fr Marcel, CDC, as subdeacon. The event strengthened the community’s liturgical life and was followed by joyful fellowship on Samal Island.

Reflections: What Davao Teaches the Old Roman Apostolate

Three key lessons emerge from this mission:

1. The Harvest Is Plentiful, But the Labourers Are Few
   The damage of modernism has left many Catholics uncatechized and spiritually adrift. Even with the growing presence of traditional communities like the Old Romans and the SSPX in Davao, much work remains. Missionary priests like Fr Cobangbang and Fr Marcel bring not only the sacraments but the intellectual and spiritual formation necessary to reignite faith.
2. The Necessity of Old Roman Collaboration
   Fr Angga’s invitation to Old Roman clergy from outside his jurisdiction is a witness to fraternal charity and ecclesial realism. Historical examples abound of Old Roman priests aiding SSPX missions in the past; such collaboration is not only possible but fruitful. Mutual recognition and practical partnership are vital in the face of a common foe: the modernist dismantling of Catholic tradition.
3. The Power of a Self-Sustaining Parish
   St Michael’s Parish models parish stewardship. The faithful produce altar breads, beeswax candles, vestments, and even wine—all within the community. The priest is not merely a “facilitator” (as in many synodal Novus Ordo settings) but a true shepherd. The laity, in turn, become stewards of the parish, not substitutes for the priesthood.

A Final Word
The missionary does not rest. His only rest is the joy of doing the will of God. Fr Cobangbang, CDC, and Fr Marcel, CDC, intend to return to Davao regularly, as long as they are needed and the means are provided. If you would like to support their mission, please contact the Archbishop of Selsey at abp@selsey.org, using the subject line “Davao Missions: Fr Cobangbang”. Contributions will be accounted for and deeply appreciated, and benefactors are remembered in the daily Masses and Offices of the missionaries.

May the mustard seed grow into a tree, and may the Old Roman flame continue to shine between heaven and earth. 🔝

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“God’s First”: St. Thomas More’s Skull May Be Exhumed Ahead of 500th Anniversary

St. Dunstan’s Church in Canterbury confirms plans to preserve and potentially enshrine the martyr’s relic, in an ecumenical effort bridging five centuries of English religious history.

St. Thomas More’s skull — preserved in secret for centuries following his execution for treason in 1535 — may soon be exhumed from the Roper family vault at St. Dunstan’s Church in Canterbury, where it has rested since being retrieved by his daughter. The Anglican parish’s Parochial Church Council (PCC) announced on July 6, 2025, that it had voted to pursue the exhumation and conservation of the relic in preparation for the 500th anniversary of More’s martyrdom in 2035.¹

“It is unusual to have any relics in an Anglican church, especially those of a Catholic saint,” said Sue Palmer, churchwarden at St. Dunstan’s. “The PCC views this as an opportunity for ecumenical outreach and cooperation.”²

The project, estimated to cost £50,000, will involve consultation with osteoarchaeologists, relic preservation experts, and both Anglican and Catholic authorities.³

A Witness Buried, A Conscience Unyielding

St. Thomas More (1478–1535), Lord Chancellor of England and author of Utopia, was executed on 6 July 1535 after refusing to accept King Henry VIII’s claim to supremacy over the Church in England. His final declaration, “I die the king’s good servant, but God’s first,” has become a byword for Catholic fidelity.

After More was beheaded, his head was displayed on a pike atop London Bridge, a grim warning to others. It was later rescued by his daughter, Margaret Roper, and interred in the Roper family vault beneath the Roper Chapel at St. Dunstan’s. The site has since drawn pilgrims and visitors from around the world.⁴

Preservation and Pilgrimage
Palmer explained that the proposal aims not only at preservation but accessibility:

“We could just put it back in the vault, maybe in a reliquary… or we could place it in a carved stone pillar above ground in the Roper chapel, which is what many of our visitors have requested.”⁵

The skull was last examined in 1997, when it was found to be fragmented and encased in a broken lead container. Its current condition is unknown. Church officials stress that all plans are subject to ecclesiastical legal approval from the Commissary General (the diocesan legal authority) and relevant heritage and archaeological bodies.⁶

Ecumenical and Global Implications
Though canonised by Pope Pius XI in 1935 and revered as the Patron Saint of Statesmen and Politicians, More’s appeal transcends confessional lines. Anglicans, Catholics, and even secular scholars have long recognised his courage, intellect, and integrity.

Palmer noted that the spotlight of 2035 will shine not just on the relic, but on the Church’s duty to steward it faithfully:

“We won’t be able to keep him to ourselves… Ecumenically and globally we have a responsibility both to the relic and to Christians and scholars throughout the world. Judging by the comments in our visitors’ book, having the relic deteriorating in a vault is not good enough.”⁷

What Happens Next
The PCC confirmed it will now submit a formal application for exhumation. If approved, the process will involve careful drying, analysis, and long-term conservation — possibly culminating in a visible shrine or reliquary that can be venerated by pilgrims from across the world.

St. Dunstan’s Church, though Anglican, has in recent years embraced its role as custodian of England’s Catholic martyr relic. It may soon become the centre of global reflection on conscience, martyrdom, and religious unity.

In an age increasingly indifferent to religious conviction, More’s enduring witness — and now perhaps his visible relic — may yet call a new generation to the courage of truth. 🔝

1. Catholic News Agency, “St. Thomas More’s skull may be exhumed from Canterbury vault for saint’s 500th anniversary,” 19 July 2025.
2. The Times, “Church seeks to exhume skull of Thomas More for 500th anniversary,” July 2025.
3. Church Times, “Deteriorating head of St Thomas More should be exhumed and conserved, PCC agrees,” 18 July 2025.
4. E.E. Reynolds, Saint Thomas More, London: Burns Oates, 1953.
5. Church Times, ibid.
6. The Times, ibid.
7. CNA, ibid.

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In Other News…

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The Sacred or the Spectacle? Apostolic Nuncio Warns Nigerian Clergy on Liturgy for Profit

“We call it the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. A Priest should be holy, and anything that distracts from that needs to be avoided.”
— Archbishop Michael Francis Crotty, Apostolic Nuncio to Nigeria

In a striking intervention aimed at preserving the sanctity of the Catholic liturgy, Archbishop Michael Francis Crotty, the Apostolic Nuncio to Nigeria, has denounced the increasing commercialisation of the Eucharist among clergy in the West African nation. Speaking at a clergy formation workshop hosted by the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria on July 16, Crotty decried a growing trend of treating sacraments as revenue opportunities—particularly weddings, funerals, and baptisms¹.

“The liturgy,” he warned, “cannot be taken for granted.” Practices such as prosperity preaching, liturgical showmanship, and the improper use of vestments were singled out as signs of a deeper malaise: the banalisation of the sacred. These abuses, he cautioned, “diminish the sacred character of our worship” and ultimately corrupt the identity of the priesthood itself.

Crotty’s remarks call to mind the repeated warnings of recent popes against reductionism in liturgy—where reverence gives way to entertainment or expediency. Pope Benedict XVI, in his apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, stressed that the Eucharist “is too great a gift to tolerate ambiguity and depreciation”². Similarly, Pope John Paul II warned that liturgical celebrations must “correspond to the holiness of the mysteries which are celebrated”³.

Echoing those teachings, Crotty insisted that holiness, not popularity or profit, must shape priestly ministry. “Where priests are holy,” he said, “holiness flourishes around them.” This reflects the Second Vatican Council’s Presbyterorum Ordinis, which teaches that the holiness of priests is essential for the sanctification of the faithful⁴.

The Nuncio’s words carry added weight in a country where poverty, insecurity, and Pentecostal influence all place pressure on Catholic clergy to compromise tradition. The rise of prosperity theology, especially within Nigerian charismatic movements, has led to confusion among Catholics about the purpose of the Mass and the priest’s role⁵. The temptation to mimic high-energy prosperity services—often rife with staged “healings,” applause, and emotional manipulation—has led some priests to reduce the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass to a spectacle, blurring the line between worship and performance⁶.

In tandem with his liturgical warning, Crotty addressed the worsening violence against the Church in Nigeria. Referring to the July 10 attack on the Immaculate Conception Minor Seminary in the Diocese of Auchi—in which three seminarians were kidnapped and a security guard killed—he questioned the motive behind targeting poor, unarmed clergy-in-training. “These seminarians are not businessmen,” he said. “They have no money. They are not political actors.”⁷

He described Nigeria’s security crisis as a symptom of unchecked criminality and impunity, and called for state accountability: “It is the primary responsibility of the forces to ensure law and order… and justice for the victims of crime.” Reports from NGOs and regional observers confirm that attacks on churches and religious personnel are often ignored or inadequately pursued by Nigerian authorities⁸.

Despite the sobering reality, Crotty called the faithful to prayer and confidence in divine providence. “We live in a situation where things happen that should not happen,” he said, “nevertheless, we must always trust in the power and sovereignty of God, that good always triumphs over evil.”

His message is one of both pastoral concern and doctrinal fidelity—a call for priests to rediscover the radical holiness of their vocation, for bishops to safeguard the sanctity of the liturgy, and for the faithful to resist the lure of spiritual consumerism. At stake is not simply ecclesial decorum, but the soul of the Nigerian Church itself.

Fructus Fidei—fruit of faith—is what Archbishop Crotty implicitly calls forth. Only when the Mass is rightly offered, and the priest rightly conformed to Christ, will the Church in Nigeria bear fruit that endures. 🔝

¹ ACI Africa, “Apostolic Nuncio in Nigeria Calls Out Priests Turning the Eucharist, Church Events into Moneymaking Opportunities,” 17 July 2025.
² Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, 2007, §6.
³ John Paul II, Redemptionis Sacramentum, 2004, §5.
⁴ Second Vatican Council, Presbyterorum Ordinis, 1965, §12: “By the sacred ordination and mission which they receive from the bishops, priests are promoted to the service of Christ the Teacher, Priest and King… they grow in holiness through the exercise of their ministry.”
⁵ Cf. Pew Research Center, “Ties That Bind: Faith and Family in a Changing Africa,” 2010; see also Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, Pastoral Letter on the Dangers of Prosperity Preaching, 2016.
⁶ Orobator, Agbonkhianmeghe E., The Church as Salt and Light: Path to an African Ecclesiology of Abundant Life, Orbis Books, 2005, esp. pp. 115–119.
⁷ ACI Africa, ibid.
⁸ U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, “2024 Annual Report: Nigeria,” April 2024; Human Rights Watch, “World Report 2023: Nigeria.”

The Book Three Popes Recommend: “Lord of the World” and the Prophetic Warning of a Godless Society

Praised by Benedict XVI, Francis, and now Pope Leo XIV, Robert Hugh Benson’s apocalyptic novel offers a stark vision of secularist totalitarianism and the consequences of a world without Christ.

A century-old novel is enjoying a remarkable resurgence—not due to marketing or modern adaptations, but because it has been consistently recommended by three successive pontiffs. Lord of the World, written in 1907 by Fr. Robert Hugh Benson, a former Anglican who became a Catholic priest, has been cited with high regard by Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, and now Pope Leo XIV.

The book envisions a future in which secular materialism, relativism, and technocratic state control dominate the world, eradicating Christianity and replacing it with a false, global peace under the reign of a charismatic Antichrist figure. The themes, long thought fantastical, are now being recognized by Church leaders as uncannily prescient.

Benedict XVI: “Much Food for Thought”
Long before his election to the papacy, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger referenced Lord of the World in a 1992 lecture at the Catholic University of Milan. He praised it as a work that “gives much food for thought” and implicitly recognized its theological significance in critiquing the modern loss of transcendence.¹

Pope Francis: “Prophetic in a Certain Sense”
Pope Francis has spoken publicly about the novel on multiple occasions, including a 2023 speech in Budapest, where he called it “prophetic in a certain sense.” He warned that the society Benson portrays—a world driven by technological control, homogenized human culture, and the abolition of religion—mirrors present-day ideological colonization:

“In the society described in the book, all differences are eradicated… a new ‘humanism’ is preached that suppresses differences, nullifying the life of peoples and abolishing religions.”²

Francis was especially struck by the passivity and moral disintegration of such a society, in which euthanasia becomes routine and human dignity is subordinated to the pursuit of false peace:

“It seems obvious that the sick should be gotten rid of… that national languages and cultures should be abolished… peace is transformed into oppression based on the imposition of consensus.”³

He first recommended the book publicly in 2015 during a press conference returning from the Philippines and has since returned to it as a key literary example of how progress can become tyranny when severed from God.

Pope Leo XIV: “What Could Happen If We Lose Faith”
Now, Pope Leo XIV (formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost) has added his name to the list of readers who regard the novel as vital. In an interview with the Augustinians prior to his papal election, he reflected on Benson’s warning:

“It speaks about what could happen in the world if we lose faith… it presents challenges about the importance of continuing to live with faith and a deep appreciation of who we are as human beings… in relationship with God and His love.”⁴

Leo XIV specifically acknowledged that both Benedict XVI and Francis had referenced the book, and he praised its value in highlighting the spiritual dangers of a dehumanised, post-Christian order.

A Novel for Our Times
Though written in 1907, Lord of the World is now widely regarded as a literary prophecy. It anticipated many 20th- and 21st-century ideologies: globalism without God, a technocratic elite suppressing dissent, and a world unified not by truth but by forceful consensus. Benson’s Antichrist is not monstrous, but charming and efficient—a reflection of modern temptations to worship the State, technology, or emotional consensus instead of the living God.

For Catholics today, especially those grappling with cultural decline and ecclesial confusion, Lord of the World offers not merely dystopian fiction but a call to spiritual vigilance. The novel warns that when man no longer believes in God, he does not believe in nothing—he believes in anything, even in the deification of power itself.

As Pope Francis put it: “Mechanical complexity is not synonymous with true greatness,”⁵ and as Leo XIV reminds us, without faith, humanity forgets who it is. 🔝

1. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Lecture at the Catholic University of Milan, Feb. 1992.
2. Pope Francis, Address to the Academic and Cultural World, Budapest, Hungary, April 28, 2023.
3. Ibid.
4. Interview with Cardinal Robert Prevost, Order of St. Augustine, Rome, 2024.
5. Ibid., Francis, Budapest, 2023.

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Stealing from the Altar: Florida Parish Administrator Sentenced to Ten Years for $700,000 Theft

The embezzlement of parish funds in the Diocese of Palm Beach is the latest in a growing list of scandals involving financial misconduct, exposing once again the vulnerability of the Church to internal betrayal.

A Florida woman has been sentenced to a decade in prison after confessing to stealing nearly three-quarters of a million dollars from Holy Cross Catholic Church in Vero Beach. The fraud, which extended over eight years, was uncovered only after the death of the parish priest, who had co-managed the scheme.

Deborah True, 72, was convicted of first-degree felony grand theft and sentenced on July 18, 2025, after pleading no contest to embezzling $697,138.98 from Holy Cross Catholic Church between 2012 and 2020.¹ She had served as parish administrator and bookkeeper for over two decades. The funds, prosecutors revealed, were siphoned off through an unreported parish bank account created and managed in partnership with the now-deceased pastor, Fr. Richard Murphy.²

The illicit account, opened in 2012 and unknown to diocesan auditors, contained nearly $1.5 million in parish funds. True and Murphy were the sole signatories. Funds from the account were used to cover personal expenses including Uber Eats, veterinary bills, Best Buy credit card debt, and large personal transfers to True’s private accounts.³

True attempted to deflect culpability by insisting she did not know the funds were illicit, claiming Murphy had helped her during personal financial hardship and presented the funds as “gifts.”⁴ “I just looked at it as a gift,” she told investigators. “I did what Father Murphy told me to do.”⁵

Her justification was undermined by the forensic trail: $549,289.62 was paid directly to credit card companies for True’s personal debt, while $147,037.98 went into her checking accounts. The remaining $811.38 was withdrawn in cash when she closed the account two months after Murphy’s death in March 2020.⁶

The Diocese of Palm Beach discovered the existence of the hidden account only after the appointment of a new pastor. It had never been disclosed in official audits or annual parish financial reports. While no charges were filed posthumously against Fr. Murphy, investigators confirmed that checks from the secret account were also made out to him and used for his personal expenses.⁷

What emerges from the case is not merely a tale of criminal misappropriation, but of ecclesial failure: a breakdown in oversight, accountability, and the moral integrity expected of those entrusted with the care of the Church’s patrimony.

In her testimony, True described her long and “companion-like” relationship with Murphy, dating back to their work together at St. Joseph parish in 1983. The two reportedly took vacations together and remained personally close for decades. While she denied physical intimacy, her claim that Murphy was simply “generous to a fault” did not explain the long-running financial deceit.⁸

Theological and Institutional Implications
This case raises deeper questions about the fiduciary trust placed in lay parish employees and priests. The Catechism teaches that “the seventh commandment forbids theft, which is the usurpation of another’s goods against the reasonable will of the owner” (CCC §2408). But when the Church herself becomes the victim of theft, and the perpetrators are internal, the sin takes on the character of sacrilege. It is not simply the faithful who are robbed—it is the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, and, by extension, God Himself.⁹

Further, the systemic dimension is clear. True’s sentencing follows another case earlier this year, in which Heather Darrey, a parish administrator in Tampa Bay, was sentenced to 27 months in prison for embezzling $900,000 from Christ the King parish.¹⁰

In both instances, it was not auditors or oversight committees that exposed the wrongdoing, but changes in leadership that broke the chain of control and revealed what had been hidden. As Robert Warren, a retired IRS investigator, noted, “This fraud scheme was not detected by auditors or whistleblowers. It was discovered only after both key figures were gone.”¹¹

Warren emphasized that the Florida sentencing is unusually harsh, even compared to federal convictions. “While some may deem the sentence harsh, it just may serve as the general deterrent that will keep others in parish administration from committing the same crime.”¹²

Conclusion
Cases like that of True and Murphy reveal the fragile balance between trust and accountability in parish life. Trust is not an excuse for clerical or lay impunity. On the contrary, the Church must now reaffirm, especially in the wake of ongoing financial and abuse scandals, that justice and stewardship are part of the spiritual mission.

To betray the Church’s material resources is to weaken her ability to serve the poor, teach the truth, and sanctify her members. Mercy is never served by concealing wrongdoing or shielding corruption. If the Church is to retain the trust of the faithful, she must hold her servants—clerical and lay—to the standard not merely of law, but of holiness. 🔝

1. Catholic News Agency, “Former parish administrator faces decade in prison for $700,000 theft from Florida parish,” May 8, 2025.
2. VeroNews, “Attorney: Priest involved in church theft scheme, but only office manager will pay,” July 24, 2025.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. The Pillar, “Florida woman gets 10 year sentence for embezzling $700,000 from parish,” July 23, 2025.
6. VeroNews, ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. The Pillar, ibid.
9. Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2408.
10. Tampa Bay Times, “Former parish administrator sentenced for embezzling nearly $900K,” January 2025.
11. The Pillar, ibid.
12. Ibid.

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The Pinesap Affair: Catholic Fascism, Public Outcry, and the Illusion of Persecution

When self-inflicted scandal masquerades as martyrdom in the digital age

The online personality known as “Pinesap,” now identified as Connor Estelle, has become the centre of a swirling controversy following his appearance in Jubilee’s Surrounded series, in which twenty self-identified “Far-Right Conservatives” engaged in a televised debate with British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan. Estelle, a young American convert to Catholicism, described himself on the programme as a fascist and voiced preference for an “autocratic Catholic state” over liberal democracy. Following public backlash and scrutiny of his online activity, he was dismissed from his job as a cloud engineer at VeUP, prompting him to launch a fundraising appeal for financial support under the banner “Fired for My Political Beliefs.”

The episode, which aired on 21 July and quickly gained over four million views, captured national attention. During the conversation, Estelle referenced Carl Schmitt, the Nazi-affiliated jurist whose political theology advocates for a sovereign unbound by legal norms during states of exception. When pressed by Hasan on whether he aligned himself with Nazism, Estelle did not categorically deny it. Instead, he doubled down on his self-professed fascism, earning scattered applause from some attendees in the studio.

He further defended Spanish dictator Francisco Franco as a leader who “fought for the Church,” denying Franco’s association with civilian atrocities, despite overwhelming historical evidence of violent repression during and after the Spanish Civil War¹. Estelle’s stance appeared not to reflect traditional Catholic political theology, which since Pope Leo XIII has explicitly distinguished between legitimate authority and totalitarian nationalism².

Online Radicalism and Ideological Confusion
Investigations into Estelle’s online presence revealed additional troubling material. An Instagram account under the name “pinesap3” contained devotional Catholic content — including tributes to St. Josemaría Escrivá and condemnations of the SSPX — alongside posts expressing incel ideology, a misogynistic subculture characterised by bitterness, sexual entitlement, and social alienation³.

More disturbingly, his X (formerly Twitter) account, operating under the alias “FeelsGuy2003,” included racist messages — including some aimed at Hasan — and one particularly grotesque remark: “I want America to be a nightmare version of The Handmaid’s Tale.”⁴ Far from representing a coherent Catholic political vision, the combination of fascist nostalgia, internet radicalism, and reactionary despair points to a modern nihilism masquerading as tradition.

Estelle’s dismissal prompted a public appeal for funds via the Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo. Framed as a defence of free speech, the appeal surpassed its original $15,000 target, collecting over $21,000 within days. While many donors offered generic support, some left messages laced with ethnic supremacist slogans, including veiled neo-Nazi code (“88”), underscoring the broader ideological ecosystem now rallying around Estelle⁵.

The Martyrdom Complex of the Radical Right
In his public statement, Estelle claimed that “voicing fully legal traditional right-wing political views results in real consequences.” This framing — that of the misunderstood dissident punished by a liberal regime — has become a familiar trope among the new right, especially among young men radicalised online. Yet it misrepresents the issue entirely. Estelle was not terminated for “being Catholic,” but for publicly identifying with fascism, praising a known Nazi collaborator, and posting material that can reasonably be construed as hateful and threatening.

Critics have rightly noted that this is not a case of mere political heterodoxy, but of public advocacy for a system that Catholic teaching has historically condemned. As Quadragesimo Anno (1931) makes clear, “a ruler who acts contrary to the law of God and the good of the people ceases to be legitimate”⁶. Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (1937), written against the errors of Nazism, likewise denounced racial ideology, deification of the state, and attacks on the Church⁷. For a young man to wrap fascist authoritarianism in Catholic symbolism is not courageous — it is doctrinally incoherent and morally corrupt.

The Limits of Platforming
Jubilee, for its part, has faced mounting criticism for lending airtime to such figures under the guise of “free speech” and ideological variety. While open dialogue is an essential part of democratic discourse, platforming openly fascist individuals can distort the very terms of that discourse. Several commentators have questioned the vetting process and editorial framing, particularly given the growing trend of monetised extremism in online media.

Meanwhile, Mehdi Hasan — whose questioning of Estelle was direct but civil — has himself drawn criticism for past inflammatory rhetoric. In a 2009 speech, Hasan referred to non-Muslims as “cattle,” language he has since retracted⁸. Once an outspoken critic of abortion, writing in 2012 that the left had “fetishised choice,” Hasan reversed his position in 2019, calling his prior stance “offensive and illiberal”⁹. These inconsistencies have led some to accuse Hasan of political opportunism, but they pale in comparison to the far more dangerous ideological stew surrounding Estelle and his supporters.

Conclusion: The Perversion of Catholic Politics
The Estelle affair is a cautionary tale. It reveals how Catholic aesthetics and terminology can be co-opted by those with little understanding of the Church’s moral and political tradition. It also underscores the dangers of substituting genuine formation and sacramental life with online radicalisation and ideological performance.

What Estelle champions is not Catholicism but a caricature of it: stripped of its sacramental grace, its universal charity, and its deep commitment to the dignity of the human person. Catholic political thought begins with the kingship of Christ and ends with the common good — not racial supremacy, authoritarianism, or despair.

If the Church wishes to reach young men like Estelle, it must do so with truth, formation, and fatherhood — not slogans, echo chambers, or ideological cosplay. 🔝

¹ Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust (Harper Press, 2012).
² Leo XIII, Diuturnum Illud (1881); see also Immortale Dei (1885).
³ The incel subculture has been studied extensively in modern sociology. See Debbie Ging, “Alphas, Betas, and Incels,” Men and Masculinities (2019).
⁴ Screenshot archives from “FeelsGuy2003” profile, publicly available via Reddit threads (July 2025).
⁵ The Daily Beast, “Self-Described Fascist Begs for Donations After Getting Fired,” 23 July 2025.
⁶ Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, § 74.
⁷ Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, § 9–20.
⁸ Mehdi Hasan, “The Cattle Speech,” Islam Channel (2009); retraction in The Intercept, 2020.
⁹ Mehdi Hasan, “On Abortion: I Was Wrong,” Twitter/X, 25 May 2019.

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Britain’s Apostasy and Islam’s Ascent: A Traditional Catholic Perspective

The question Britain must now face is not whether mass Islamic immigration has changed the nation, but whether anything remains capable of restoring what has been lost. From grooming gangs and terror attacks to the closure of churches and the rise of mosques, the evidence is visible everywhere. This is not simply a policy failure—it is a spiritual one. When Christ is no longer acknowledged as King over hearts, homes, and nations, a vacuum opens—and Islam has filled it.

Since 2001, the Muslim population of the UK has more than doubled, rising from 1.6 million to nearly 4 million—a 143% increase in two decades¹. Muslim fertility rates remain significantly higher than those of the native population, averaging 3.0 compared to 1.8 for non-Muslims². Professor Matthew Goodwin projects that the White British share of the population will fall below 50% by 2063 and drop to just 33.7% by the end of the century if current trends continue³. Meanwhile, native families collapse under the weight of over 10 million abortions since 1967⁴, widespread contraception, fatherlessness, no-fault divorce, and a government that actively undermines marriage and family⁵.

The Catholic Church teaches that Christ alone is the foundation of a just society. Remove Him, and society does not become neutral—it becomes pagan. The statistics confirm this: Muslims make up 18% of the prison population in England and Wales despite comprising only 6.5% of the general public⁶. Islamic grooming gangs have abused thousands: in Rotherham alone, over 1,400 girls were abused between 1997 and 2013, with national estimates reaching into the hundreds of thousands⁷. Polygamy and cousin marriages persist. A 2024 FOI request revealed £3.6 million was spent at a single NHS trust to treat 1,559 genetic disorders linked to cousin marriage⁸. In early 2025, Parliament debated a ban on such marriages, noting that 40–60% of Pakistani and Bangladeshi marriages are consanguineous, doubling the risk of congenital disorders from 2% to 4%. Despite public support (77% overall, 82% of Reform UK voters), Muslim MPs opposed the bill as “unenforceable” and “stigmatising”⁹.

Sharia courts, now numbering 85 across the UK, continue to operate unofficially outside British legal norms and often deny justice to women¹⁰. Estimates suggest as many as 20,000 polygamous marriages exist in the UK, often sanctioned by mosques but unregistered under civil law¹¹.

More than 3,500 churches have closed in the past decade¹², while between 800 and 900 new mosques have opened, including some in converted churches¹³. Where the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass once sanctified towns and villages, the muezzin now calls. A Christian nation does not sell its churches—it rebuilds them. It does not flatter error—it proclaims truth.

In Muslim communities, economic inactivity is widespread: only 51.4% of working-age Muslims are employed, compared to 70.9% of the general population, while 41.9% are economically inactive¹⁴. Immigration levels remain high, particularly among young men from Islamic nations arriving illegally via small boats. Between 2021 and 2025, over 178,000 arrived in the UK this way, with 45,774 in 2022 alone¹⁵. Public services are strained, housing is overwhelmed, and criminal incidents around asylum centres continue to rise. In 2025, 339 criminal charges—including rape, attempted rape, assault, arson, and theft—were brought against illegal migrants in just six months, including the rape of a woman in an Oxford churchyard and an attempted rape in a Wakefield nightclub¹⁶.

The deeper crisis, however, is not political but theological. Islamist terror has killed hundreds in the UK since 2005, including the 7/7 bombings, the Manchester Arena attack, and the London Bridge stabbings¹⁷. Yet the state refuses to name the ideology behind the violence. While Catholic saints once gave their lives opposing heresy, today’s leaders embrace false pluralism. They treat Islam as a “partner in dialogue,” not as a religion in need of conversion. This is not evangelisation—it is capitulation.

Even Japan, without the Gospel, has managed to preserve its identity by rejecting mass immigration. Foreign-born residents make up less than 3% of Japan’s population, compared to 15% in the UK¹⁸. Japan accepts fewer than 100 refugees per year¹⁹ and has suffered no Islamist terror attacks on its soil.

The UK, once a Catholic nation dedicated to Our Lady, has instead opened its doors and surrendered its soul. Where Japan has prudence, we had grace—but we squandered it.

Immigration is not the cause of our collapse. It is the effect. A truly Catholic Britain—unified in faith, strong in families, confident in Christ—would not face this crisis. Until the nation returns to the Gospel, the mosques will rise, the churches will fall, and Mary’s Dowry will become a memory. Only Christ can save Britain. But He will not save a people who refuse to be His. 🔝

¹ Office for National Statistics, “Religion by year,” Census 2001 & 2021
² Pew Research Center, “Europe’s Growing Muslim Population,” November 2017
³ Matthew Goodwin, “Values, Voice and Virtue,” Penguin, 2023, pp. 210–211
⁴ Department of Health and Social Care, Abortion Statistics, England and Wales: 2022
⁵ Ministry of Justice, “Family Court Statistics Quarterly,” April–June 2022 (No-fault divorce came into effect 6 April 2022)
⁶ HM Prison and Probation Service, “Offender Equalities Annual Report 2021/22”
⁷ Jay Report, “Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham,” 2014
⁸ Daily Telegraph, “Cousin marriages costing NHS millions, figures reveal,” 26 June 2024
⁹ Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 30 January 2025; YouGov polling, January 2025
¹⁰ Civitas, “Sharia Law or ‘One Law for All’?” 2009; see also Baroness Cox’s Arbitration and Mediation Services Bill
¹¹ House of Commons Library, “Polygamy,” Briefing Paper SN05051, updated 2020
¹² Church of England, Research & Statistics Unit, 2023; Church Times, “Church Closures Accelerate,” July 2023
¹³ The Times, “Mosques Replacing Britain’s Churches,” 5 February 2024
¹⁴ Office for National Statistics, “Census 2021: Religion and Labour Market Participation,” March 2023
¹⁵ Home Office, “Irregular Migration to the UK,” Quarterly Report, April 2025
¹⁶ Hansard, House of Commons, Chris Philp MP, Oral Questions, 17 July 2025
¹⁷ MI5 and Home Office briefings, 2024; BBC News archives, 2005–2023
¹⁸ Japan Immigration Services Agency, “Foreign Resident Statistics,” 2023
¹⁹ UNHCR, “Japan Refugee Data,” 2024

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Reclaiming the Right to Speak Truth: A Catholic Defence of Nick Timothy’s Free Speech Bill

The freedom to proclaim truth—even when it offends—is not a liberal indulgence, but a natural right grounded in divine law. When Nick Timothy MP rose in Parliament on 17 July 2025 to introduce the Freedom of Expression (Religion or Belief System) Bill, he did something few have dared to do in recent decades: he spoke openly about Islam, without fear or flattery, and reaffirmed the moral necessity of equal treatment under the law¹.

“I do not believe that Mohammed was a Prophet sent by God,” he said, adding that he did not mind if Muhammad was “satirised, criticised or mocked.” He made clear that the same standard must apply to all religions, including Christianity². This was not relativism—it was moral clarity. In a truly Christian polity, the truth may be attacked, but it may never be legally shielded from scrutiny.

England abolished its blasphemy laws in 2008³, but as Timothy rightly noted, new ones have crept back in. Today, under sections 4 and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 and other communications laws, people are arrested and prosecuted for “causing distress” to Muslims or “offending Islam.”⁴ Such prosecutions are neither neutral nor just. They reward intimidation and chill any public witness to the truth—especially the Gospel⁵.

Timothy’s Bill seeks to prevent these laws from being misused. It expands the existing free speech protections in section 29J of the Public Order Act to cover all public order and communication laws⁶. Crucially, it protects not only criticism of religion but also proselytism—the very act of calling others to repentance and conversion⁷. That is an act of charity, not hate⁸.

We must be clear: Christian evangelisation has always included the call to abandon false religion. When our Lord said, “Go therefore and teach all nations”⁹, He did not intend that His Church be silent in the name of public order. Nor can any Catholic accept a legal regime in which false religions are protected from contradiction, while the true Faith is subject to persecution.

The recent case of a man stabbed while burning a Qur’an in protest—and then himself fined for “offending Muslims”—reveals how deeply this injustice now runs¹⁰. The victim was criminalised not for inciting violence but for committing sacrilege against a book. This inversion of justice is not accidental. It is the fruit of a post-Christian state that has lost its nerve.

Timothy’s Bill does not aim to provoke Muslims, nor to undermine public order. Rather, it seeks to reassert a fundamental truth of Christian civilisation: no religion, no belief system, no creed may command obedience through fear. Truth must remain free to speak—and falsehood must remain subject to exposure.

As Traditional Catholics, we cannot remain neutral in this battle. We know that Our Lord is Truth incarnate¹¹, and that silence in the face of error is complicity. We must defend those who, even if imperfectly, defend the liberty to preach Christ without censorship, legal harassment, or intimidation.

Nick Timothy’s Bill may not be perfect, but it is a necessary stand in an age when cowardice too often masquerades as tolerance. It reminds us that Britain cannot be restored by compromise with error, but only by a courageous return to truth.

May more legislators have the moral clarity and courage to follow his example. And may the Church, once again, proclaim Christ crucified—not behind closed doors, but in the public square, without fear. 🔝

¹ Hansard, HC Deb, 17 July 2025, Vol. 749, col. 271.
² Ibid., col. 272.
³ Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, s.79.
⁴ Public Order Act 1986, ss.4–5; see also Communications Act 2003, s.127.
⁵ Hansard, HC Deb, 17 July 2025, col. 273.
⁶ Freedom of Expression (Religion or Belief System) Bill, Bill 257 [as introduced], Clause 1(2).
⁷ Ibid., protection includes “proselytising or urging adherents… to cease practising their religion.”
⁸ Cf. Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos (1928), §10: “Charity demands that the light of truth be shown to those in error.”
⁹ Matthew 28:19, Douay-Rheims.
¹⁰ Daily Mail, “Kurdish atheist fined for burning Qur’an,” 17 July 2025; Daily Record, “CPS confirms 2027 trial date for attacker,” 16 July 2025.
¹¹ John 14:6 – “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

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COMMENT

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The Wound of Disconnection: Unpacking the Origins of Same-Sex Attraction

Insights from Dr Joseph Nicolosi Jr and a Testimony of Grace
At a time when political activism and cultural affirmation drown out any nuanced discussion of same-sex attraction, one interview stands out. In a compelling exchange with Becket Cook, clinical psychologist Dr Joseph Nicolosi Jr revisited the developmental roots of homosexuality—not as a moral accusation, but as a compassionate investigation of relational wounds. Together, they uncovered a truth hidden in plain sight: same-sex attraction is not a fixed identity, but a psychic response to early emotional and developmental injuries, especially in the life of a boy whose need for paternal affirmation was unmet.

This conversation draws not only from Nicolosi’s clinical practice and his father’s pioneering research in reparative therapy, but also from Cook’s own lived experience—a former gay man who found freedom in Christ. Their testimonies challenge the dominant paradigm and call the Church to offer something deeper than tolerance: healing.

Shame and the False Self
The Nicolosi model is built upon the concept of shame and attachment loss. According to Dr Joseph Nicolosi Sr., children pass through distinct developmental stages, and for boys, the first major gender-specific hurdle occurs around age two or three. At that age, a boy must disidentify from his mother and begin to identify with his father. When the father is absent, emotionally unavailable, or perceived as critical or unsafe, the boy’s natural progression into secure male identity is disrupted.

Instead of growing in masculine confidence, the boy withdraws. He may become cautious, perfectionistic, overly compliant, and relationally dependent on his mother. In therapeutic terms, he constructs a “false self”—a protective mask to secure relational safety in the absence of genuine attachment. He becomes, as Nicolosi puts it, “the good little boy.”

This emotional adaptation helps him survive childhood, but it comes at a cost. As he enters adolescence, the unfulfilled need for male love and affirmation resurfaces—not as simple affection, but as sexual attraction. The boy’s longing to connect with the masculine world becomes eroticised. What was once a cry for closeness becomes, under the weight of shame, a sexual fixation.

This is not ideology—it is observation. It is not condemnation—it is compassion. And it is borne out in hundreds of testimonies, including Cook’s own: a boy who found comfort in the kitchen with his mother while watching his brothers play football outside, longing to belong, yet unable to enter that world.

Eroticised Envy and Ontological Confusion
Dr Nicolosi describes this phenomenon as eroticised envy. The boy sees in other males what he himself feels he lacks—strength, ease, confidence, and belonging. His attraction is not fundamentally erotic, but emotional. He is not seeking sex for its own sake, but masculine identity through symbolic union with someone who possesses what he does not.

Here the cultural narrative of “born this way” falls apart. Twin studies repeatedly demonstrate that same-sex attraction is not genetically predetermined.¹ Even among identical twins, concordance in sexual orientation is far from universal. What the Nicolosis propose is a “constellation of factors”—temperament, trauma, parental roles, sibling dynamics, and even sexual abuse—all contributing to a boy’s alienation from his own gender and his eventual romanticisation of that alienation.

Rosaria Butterfield, herself a former lesbian and now a bold Christian voice on sexual identity, has sharply critiqued this shift from morality to ontology. In Openness Unhindered, she writes:

“If we accept the category of ‘gay Christian,’ we are not simply adding an adjective to a noun. We are fundamentally changing what it means to be a Christian.”²

This is the heart of the problem. When sexual attraction becomes identity, the soul is reduced to its temptations. As Butterfield notes, the modern concept of sexual orientation “renders sin a human attribute rather than a moral violation.”³ It becomes not something I experience, but something I am. This is a conceptual error, an ontological distortion—and, ultimately, a theological heresy.

The Nicolosi framework restores clarity. It affirms the truth that one’s identity is not found in disordered desires, but in being created male and female, called to chastity, and redeemed in Christ.

Fantasy, Theatricality, and the Search for Affirmation
The same young boy who once hid in the kitchen window may grow up to become a man who is drawn to fantasy, performance, and dissociation. Nicolosi observes that many men with same-sex attraction adopt roles that offer a sense of control or affirmation: the entertainer, the drag queen, the activist, the aesthetic perfectionist. These are not expressions of freedom—they are compensations for unhealed wounds.

Becket Cook testifies to this pattern. As a young man, he often felt he had to be “on” at social gatherings—funny, dazzling, irreproachably likable. It was a performance that exhausted him. Others retreat into appearance-obsession, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, or hypersexuality. Nicolosi identifies four common false selves: the compliant “nice guy,” the theatrical extrovert, the hyper-feminine provocateur, and the angry hyper-masculine activist.

These masks hide the same wound: I was not enough. I was not seen. I was not affirmed by my father or welcomed by my male peers. And behind these masks, Nicolosi observes a repetition compulsion—a drive to reenact the wound in the hope of mastering it, often through promiscuity. Sexual encounters promise masculine validation. But the validation fades, and the emptiness returns. The pattern repeats. Cook recalls this cycle from his own past. Thousands of others quietly confess the same.

What the Church Must Recover
The Church must recover the courage to name this truth and the compassion to walk with those wounded by these patterns. Too often, Catholics are either silent, complicit in modern confusion, or harsh in judgment. None of these responses offer healing.

What is needed is the restoration of Christian anthropology. We must reject the ontological category of “gay person.” We must affirm that chastity is not repression, but integration. And we must proclaim that masculinity and femininity are not social constructs, but gifts that unfold in relationship and require affirmation from the same-sex parent and community.

When the Church fails to speak this truth, others do—often with less charity, or less grace. In the void left by pastors unwilling to teach clearly, the world speaks loudly. And it tells our children: This is who you are. Be proud. But the Nicolosi model reminds us that this is a false pride. It is the pride of compensation, not the joy of restoration.

Healing Is Possible: Grace and Grief
There is no single path to healing. For some men, it will require grief work—the mourning of a lost father, a misattuned mother, a stolen innocence. For others, it will mean confronting the false self and rediscovering the true. For all, it will require brotherhood, friendship, prayer, discipline, and above all, the grace of Christ.

Therapy can help. So can pastoral accompaniment. But the deepest healing comes through the Cross, where wounds become redemptive, not just psychological but spiritual. Becket Cook’s journey is proof. Once a successful Hollywood designer immersed in gay culture, he now lives in joyful fidelity to Christ, freed from identity slavery and false affirmation.

As Nicolosi’s clinical data shows, same-sex attraction can diminish. Masculine confidence can be restored. Emotional needs can be met in healthy relationships. But this healing requires space, freedom, and truth. Laws that ban so-called “conversion therapy” rob men of the right to pursue the life they desire—and deny what the Church should proclaim: Change is possible because grace is real.

Conclusion: Truth and Mercy Together
The modern world offers slogans: Love is love. Born this way. Be yourself. The Church must offer something deeper: You are not your wounds. You are not your desires. You are made for wholeness.

This is the true pastoral response—not affirmation of sin, but restoration of the person. Not silence in the face of suffering, but the proclamation of healing through Christ. Those with same-sex attraction are not a separate class of people. They are sons and daughters of God, wounded by a fallen world, invited to holiness, and capable of great sanctity.

In a time of identity confusion and moral collapse, let the Church be the one place where men hear: You are not alone. You are not broken beyond repair. You are not your past. You are loved, and you can be whole.

That is not repression. That is redemption. 🔝

¹ Bailey et al., “Genetic and Environmental Influences on Sexual Orientation and Its Correlates in an Australian Twin Sample,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1991.
² Rosaria Butterfield, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ, Crown & Covenant, 2015, p. 19.
³ Ibid., p. 20.
⁴ Joseph Nicolosi Sr., Shame and Attachment Loss: The Practical Work of Reparative Therapy, IVC Publishing, 2009.
⁵ Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2358.

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The Forgotten Innocents: The Global Plight of Children and the Call to Catholic Witness

Across continents and cultures, amidst civilised cities and forgotten villages, the world’s most vulnerable continue to suffer—not by accident, but by abandonment. While politicians preen over climate summits and social media parades the latest slogans of virtue, millions of children endure lives shaped by hunger, war, ideology, and exploitation. Their pain is not hidden; it is ignored. Their suffering is not inevitable; it is permitted. And in the silence of those who know better, the innocence of the next generation is daily sacrificed on the altars of greed, apathy, and modernity.

From the slums of Nairobi to the backstreets of São Paulo, in conflict zones of Gaza and Sudan, and even in the neon classrooms of Western democracies, children are not thriving—they are surviving. The cry of the innocent—physical, emotional, spiritual—is rising to heaven.

A Crisis of Protection
In Latin America, thousands of children roam the streets of Caracas, Tegucigalpa, and Bogotá, without parents, without food, without hope. Criminal gangs lure boys into drug running and girls into prostitution. Latin America holds some of the highest rates of child homicide and forced gang recruitment in the world¹. Many are trafficked across borders or disappear without trace.

In Africa, children are enslaved in mines, conscripted into militias, or forced into early marriages. Famine, disease, and political collapse are the backdrop of their lives. Over 30% of African girls are married before the age of 18, and millions more work in hazardous, often exploitative labour conditions².

In the Middle East, war continues to destroy homes, families, and futures. In refugee camps across Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza, children are at heightened risk of sexual violence, trafficking, and militant indoctrination. Tens of thousands in Syria alone have lost one or both parents and live without formal documentation or education³.

In Asia, child labour and trafficking remain endemic. Over 160 million children are engaged in child labour globally—over half in Asia and Africa combined⁴. In India and Bangladesh, children work in brick kilns, garment factories, and agriculture. In Southeast Asia, thousands are exploited in sex tourism or by organised crime syndicates⁵. In China’s Xinjiang region, reports continue of Uyghur children separated from families and placed in state-run boarding institutions for political indoctrination⁶.

The Myth of Western Safety
And yet, we deceive ourselves if we think the West is immune. While children may not die of hunger in London or Los Angeles, they are starved of truth, stability, and love.

In Britain, over 4 million children live in poverty⁷. In the United States, more than 11 million children live below the federal poverty line⁸. In both nations, family breakdown—particularly fatherlessness—is epidemic.

State education systems, once designed to form minds in virtue, now increasingly deform them in ideology. Children as young as five are introduced to contested gender theories and radical sexual ethics. In the UK, parents who challenge these curricula risk being labelled bigots or face exclusion from consultations⁹. In the US, some school boards have denied parental opt-outs or concealed transitional counselling from parents¹⁰.

Technology, especially social media, has become a dominant force in shaping childhood. Clinical studies link screen addiction and algorithm-driven content to spikes in anxiety, depression, and precocious sexualisation¹¹. Reports from Europol and the FBI show an alarming increase in online grooming, sextortion, and child exploitation—especially during the COVID-19 lockdowns when children were isolated¹².

Trafficking, far from being a third-world issue, is a growing crisis in developed nations. The UK’s Modern Slavery Helpline received over 15,000 contacts in 2023, with many involving children¹³. In the US, the Department of Homeland Security reported over 1,000 investigations into child trafficking rings in a single year¹⁴. Traffickers increasingly use legal immigration pathways, foster care loopholes, or social media to prey on children.

The Church’s Own Scandal
No article on the plight of children would be complete without the painful acknowledgement that the Church herself has, in many times and places, failed to protect the little ones entrusted to her.

Since the 2002 revelations of systemic clerical abuse in Boston, subsequent investigations have uncovered widespread sexual abuse and episcopal negligence across the globe—from Ireland to Chile, from Germany to Australia¹⁵. The 2018 Pennsylvania Grand Jury report alone identified over 300 abusive priests and more than 1,000 child victims across six dioceses over a 70-year period¹⁶.

Papal initiatives have since mandated reforms, including the motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi, but critics argue that real episcopal accountability remains elusive¹⁷. High-profile cases like that of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick have revealed glaring failures in oversight even at the highest levels¹⁸. Meanwhile, survivors continue to report stonewalling, minimisation, and lack of pastoral care in certain dioceses.

If the Church is to be restored as a defender of the innocent, she must not only institute safeguarding protocols but cultivate a culture of contrition, justice, and spiritual renewal. The credibility of the Church’s voice in the world will not be regained by administrative gestures alone. It must be earned by humility, truth, and sacrificial charity.

A Catholic Response: What Must Be Done
What then are we to do?

The Church cannot be silent. Not now. Not again.

We must form families rooted in fidelity and prayer, where children are loved and taught the faith.
We must support institutions—schools, parishes, missions—that feed both body and soul.
We must speak boldly against the exploitation of children by state, media, and market.
We must resist false compassion that affirms error rather than heals wounds.
And we must recover a theology of childhood: that every child is made in the image of God, entrusted not to governments or algorithms, but to mothers, fathers, and the Church.

The Cost of Silence
Too often, the Church in the West has retreated from its duty. Scandals, bureaucratic inertia, and fear of controversy have silenced our pastors and paralysed our laity. Meanwhile, the world advances its own false gospel—one that preaches rights without responsibilities, freedom without truth, and love without sacrifice.

But the price of that silence is paid by the smallest. And Our Lord’s words stand as judgment upon us: “It were better that a millstone were hung around his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalise one of these little ones.” (Luke 17:2)

The Harvest of Compassion
Let us then not grow weary in doing good. Let us support orphanages, missions, crisis pregnancy homes, and Catholic schools that still teach truth. Let us give not only money, but time, example, and prayer. Let us raise our voices in the public square and in private homes, proclaiming that every child—born or unborn—is Christ in disguise.

The plight of children is the crisis of our age. And it is the test of our fidelity.

Will we be complicit in their suffering? Or will we take up the Cross and be fathers and mothers to the forgotten?

The answer will not be found in headlines or hashtags, but in hearts conformed to the Sacred Heart.

Caritas Christi urget nos. 🔝

¹ Human Rights Watch, World Report 2024: Latin America & the Caribbean, www.hrw.org
² UNICEF, Child Marriage and Adolescent Pregnancy in Eastern and Southern Africa, data.unicef.org, 2022
³ Save the Children, Syria Crisis: 12 Years On, savethechildren.net, March 2023
⁴ ILO & UNICEF, Global Estimates of Child Labour 2021, ilo.org
⁵ Human Rights Watch, Small Change: Bonded Child Labour in India’s Silk Industry, www.hrw.org, 2020
⁶ Amnesty International, China: Uyghur Children Forcibly Separated from Families, amnesty.org, 2021
⁷ UK Department for Work and Pensions, Households Below Average Income, March 2023
⁸ U.S. Census Bureau, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2022, census.gov
⁹ Civitas, Trans Ideology in Schools: A Threat to Child Welfare?, civitas.org.uk, 2023
¹⁰ Daily Telegraph, Parents Penalised for Challenging Gender Curriculum, May 2024
¹¹ Journal of Adolescent Health, Social Media Use and Adolescent Mental Health, Vol. 70, 2022
¹² FBI, ICAC Annual Report 2023; Europol, IOCTA 2023 – Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment
¹³ UK Modern Slavery Helpline, Annual Assessment 2023, modernslaveryhelpline.org
¹⁴ U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Center for Countering Human Trafficking: FY2023 Report
¹⁵ Associated Press, Global Clergy Abuse Crisis Timeline, apnews.com, 2022
¹⁶ Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, 2018 Grand Jury Report, attorneygeneral.gov
¹⁷ Pope Francis, Vos estis lux mundi, motu proprio, May 2019
¹⁸ Vatican Secretariat of State, Report on Theodore McCarrick, November 2020

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Hope Not Hate: From Watchdog to Enforcer
How a once anti-fascist campaign became a tool of ideological conformity

Hope Not Hate (HnH) presents itself as a guardian against extremism, but its record reveals a troubling shift. Once focused on neo-Nazism and far-right violence, it now targets moral dissent and religious orthodoxy under the guise of “challenging hate.”

The group has repeatedly labelled mainstream Christian and conservative views as “far-right,” conflating traditional beliefs on immigration, sexuality, or national identity with genuine threats. As The Spectator noted, even following public figures like Nigel Farage or Douglas Murray is enough to earn suspicion.¹

This mission drift has had consequences. The 2023 Shawcross Review into the UK’s Prevent strategy revealed how HnH’s ideological influence helped skew public policy. While Islamist extremism remains the dominant terrorist threat, Prevent was redirecting focus to those holding lawful but traditional views. Only 11% of referrals concerned Islamism—despite MI5’s warnings.² HnH’s reports helped normalise this distortion.

The problem is not just policy—it is public trust. In 2024, HnH falsely claimed a Muslim woman had suffered an acid attack in Middlesbrough. The story was untrue. Days later, CEO Nick Lowles warned that over 100 far-right riots were imminent, urging counter-protests. None materialised.³ Yet he admitted the list was fabricated, reportedly saying: “Yes, the list was a hoax, but look at the headlines.”⁴

Despite wasting police time and inciting public fear, Lowles faced no sanction. His ideological alignment with the establishment insulated him. Had a conservative made such claims, the consequences would have been severe.

HnH’s power comes not just from activism but access. It receives public funding—from government grants to London voter engagement campaigns⁵—and its materials are used in council training and schools. In 2023, its charitable trust transferred £650,000 to its campaign wing.⁶ The line between education and indoctrination is increasingly thin.

It also employs techniques like “deep canvassing”—emotionally charged conversations designed to manipulate moral intuitions. While marketed as empathy, this is a method of ideological grooming, bypassing rational debate to instil approved values.

Most dangerous of all is HnH’s control over moral language. By branding dissent as “hate,” it renders Christian witness unspeakable. Pope Benedict XVI warned of a “dictatorship of relativism”⁷—and HnH enforces it.

The Christian response must be clear: speak the truth in love, without fear. False definitions of extremism must not silence the Gospel. Hope Not Hate does not define moral conscience. Christ does. 🔝

¹ The Spectator, March 2024.
² The Shawcross Review, 2023.
³ Connor Tomlinson, Substack, 2024.
⁴ Reddit, August 2024; The Guardian, 7 Aug 2024.
⁵ DCLG Grant Logs; GLA Reports.
⁶ Hope Not Hate Trust, Charity Commission, 2023.
⁷ Benedict XVI, Homily, 18 April 2005.

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The Problem with “Judeo-Christian”: Fulfilment, Not Fusion

The term “Judeo-Christian” has become a commonplace in political rhetoric and cultural commentary, particularly among conservatives eager to defend the moral foundations of the West. Yet its popularity belies a profound theological confusion—one that not only undermines the exclusivity of Christ but also reflects the creeping influence of Dispensationalist error within Catholic and Protestant thought alike.

Historically, Judeo-Christian entered Western vocabulary in the early 19th century as a label for Jewish converts to Christianity or congregations observing Jewish rites to attract Jews. It was only in the 20th century, particularly after the horrors of the Holocaust, that the term was elevated as a symbol of moral alliance. In Cold War America, it became a cornerstone of national identity, invoked to oppose both fascism and communism and to emphasize a shared ethical heritage rooted in the Ten Commandments. In this limited cultural sense, it denoted the continuity between the moral law of the Old Testament and the natural law tradition sustained by Christianity.

But Judeo-Christian is not a theological term—and never was. Christianity does not stand beside Judaism as one of two valid interpretations of revelation. Rather, the Church confesses, with unbroken authority from Christ through the apostles and fathers, that Christianity is the fulfilment of the Jewish religion. The promises made to Abraham, the Law given through Moses, and the prophets who cried out for Israel’s fidelity—all find their consummation in the Incarnate Word. As St. Augustine said, “In the Old Testament the New is concealed; in the New, the Old is revealed.”¹

To speak of “Judeo-Christian values” as if the two faiths are parallel or mutually sufficient is to deny this fulfilment. It is a theological sleight of hand that strips Christianity of its finality, replacing the proclamation of Christ as the true Messiah with a vague ethical coalition. Worse still, such language has served as a gateway to the even more confused language of “Abrahamic faiths” and “Judeo-Christian-Islamic values”—an unholy trinity that collapses distinctions between law and grace, type and fulfilment, shadow and reality.

Nowhere is this distortion more evident than in the errors of Dispensationalism—a 19th-century innovation originating among Anglo-Protestants and popularized in the United States through the Scofield Reference Bible. Dispensationalism holds that God has distinct and separate plans for Israel and the Church, and that ethnic Jews remain God’s “chosen people” in a political and salvific sense even apart from Christ. This theological dualism, so contrary to Scripture and Tradition, has led to the dangerous veneration of the modern state of Israel as a quasi-sacred reality. Catholic participation in this narrative—particularly through post conciliar flirtations with religious pluralism—has only muddied the waters further.

The pre-Vatican II magisterium spoke with far greater clarity. Pope Pius XII, in his 1943 encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, affirmed unequivocally that the Old Law had been abolished and fulfilled in Christ: “the juridical mission of Moses has come to an end with the coming of Jesus Christ, and with it, the entire Mosaic economy was superseded.”² This teaching echoed St. Paul himself: “Christ is the end of the law unto justice to everyone that believeth” (Romans 10:4). The Church, as the New Israel, is not a partner alongside Judaism but its supernatural completion.

By contrast, the post conciliar period has seen the growth of theological ambiguity. The 1985 Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism by the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews avoided any reference to conversion or fulfilment. Pope John Paul II’s reference to Jews as “our elder brothers in the faith” further contributed to a narrative of continuity without consummation. While well-intentioned as gestures of goodwill, such language risks encouraging the error that the Mosaic covenant remains salvifically valid.³

The consequence is theological confusion on a global scale. Catholic laypeople and clergy alike now speak of Judaism and Christianity as coexisting tracks within divine providence—an idea condemned by the Council of Florence in Cantate Domino (1442), which declared: “[The Church] firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church… not even the Jews… can become partakers of eternal life unless before death they are joined with her.”⁴

The antidote is a return to doctrinal clarity. Christians are not called to affirm Judaism but to evangelize all peoples, including the Jews, with humility, love, and unshakable conviction that “there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). True respect does not consist in theological compromise, but in proclaiming the truth that the prophets longed to see: that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

The term “Judeo-Christian” may persist as a cultural artifact—but it must never be mistaken for a theological identity. Christianity is not a fusion. It is a fulfilment. And if the West is to recover its soul, it must rediscover not its shared values, but its crucified and risen Lord. 🔝

1. St. Augustine, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum, 2.73: “In Vetere Novum latet, in Novo Vetus patet.”
2. Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, §29.
3. Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, Notes, June 24, 1985.
4. Ecumenical Council of Florence, Cantate Domino (1442), Denzinger 711.

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Archbishop Mathew’s Prayer for Catholic Unity
Almighty and everlasting God, Whose only begotten Son, Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd, has said, “Other sheep I have that are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd”; let Thy rich and abundant blessing rest upon the Old Roman Apostolate, to the end that it may serve Thy purpose by gathering in the lost and straying sheep. Enlighten, sanctify, and quicken it by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, that suspicions and prejudices may be disarmed, and the other sheep being brought to hear and to know the voice of their true Shepherd thereby, all may be brought into full and perfect unity in the one fold of Thy Holy Catholic Church, under the wise and loving keeping of Thy Vicar, through the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who with Thee and the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth God, world without end. Amen.

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Old Roman TV

OLD ROMAN TV Daily Schedule Lent 2025: GMT 0600 Angelus 0605 Morning Prayers 0800 Daily Mass 1200 Angelus 1205 Bishop Challoner’s Daily Meditation 1700 Latin Rosary (live, 15 decades) 1800 Angelus 2100 Evening Prayers & Examen 🔝

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Litany of St Joseph

Lord, have mercy on us.	Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.	Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.	Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.	Christ, graciously hear us.
God the Father of heaven,	have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the World,	have mercy on us.
God the Holy Spirit,	have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, one God,	have mercy on us.
Holy Mary,	pray for us.
St. Joseph,	pray for us.
Renowned offspring of David,	pray for us.
Light of Patriarchs,	pray for us.
Spouse of the Mother of God,	pray for us.
Guardian of the Redeemer	pray for us.
Chaste guardian of the Virgin,	pray for us.
Foster father of the Son of God,	pray for us.
Diligent protector of Christ,	pray for us.
Servant of Christ	pray for us.
Minister of salvation	pray for us.
Head of the Holy Family,	pray for us.
Joseph most just,	pray for us.
Joseph most chaste,	pray for us.
Joseph most prudent,	pray for us.
Joseph most strong,	pray for us.
Joseph most obedient,	pray for us.
Joseph most faithful,	pray for us.
Mirror of patience,	pray for us.
Lover of poverty,	pray for us.
Model of workers,	pray for us.
Glory of family life,	pray for us.
Guardian of virgins,	pray for us.
Pillar of families,	pray for us.
Support in difficulties,	pray for us.
Solace of the wretched,	pray for us.
Hope of the sick,	pray for us.
Patron of exiles,	pray for us.
Patron of the afflicted,	pray for us.
Patron of the poor,	pray for us.
Patron of the dying,	pray for us.
Terror of demons,	pray for us.
Protector of Holy Church,	pray for us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,	spare us, O Jesus.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,	graciously hear us, O Jesus.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,	have mercy on us, O Jesus.
He made him the lord of his household	And prince over all his possessions.

Let us pray:
O God, in your ineffable providence you were pleased to choose Blessed Joseph to be the spouse of your most holy Mother; grant, we beg you, that we may be worthy to have him for our intercessor in heaven whom on earth we venerate as our Protector: You who live and reign forever and ever.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Note: Pope Francis added these titles to the Litany of St. Joseph in his “Lettera della Congregazione per il Culto Divino e la Disciplina dei Sacramenti ai Presidenti delle Conferenze dei Vescovi circa nuove invocazioni nelle Litanie in onore di San Giuseppe,” written on May 1, 2021:

Custos Redemptoris (Guardian of the Redeemer)Serve Christi (Servant of Christ)Minister salutis (Minister of salvation)Fulcimen in difficultatibus (Support in difficulties)Patrone exsulum (Patron of refugees)Patrone afflictorum (Patron of the suffering)
Patrone pauperum (Patron of the poor)

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