COLLAPSE: 12 Years of the Bergoglio Age in Numbers

 by Paix Liturgique

February 26, 2025

The Bergoglian Age in numbers: in ancient Christian countries, but not only, the number of Catholics is declining. Of course, there are many reasons for this, such as secularization, urbanization, competition from competing ideologies and religions, and the unravelling of family units and traditional values in many places. But the statistics point to a worrying acceleration since the start of Pope Francis' pontificate, particularly in places where bishops and indeed the Church as a whole pride themselves on their progressivism and their entry into the marvellous synodality.

Germany, spearhead of Catholic progressivism, loses 500,000 Catholics a year

Francis' Cruelty - Costa Rica: Fr. Varela, the First Priest Suspended for Celebrating the Traditional Mass (and the New Mass in Latin!) Following the new Motu Proprio

FROM SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM TO TRADITIONES CUSTODES: CHRONICLE OF A PASTORAL DISASTER IN COSTA RICA

 by Augustine Aksala*

I feel the need to write this chronicle due to the concern expressed in different parts of the world to know clearly what is happening in Costa Rica after the promulgation of the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes.

On July 7, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI published his apostolic letter in the form of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. With this document, the Pope established that it was licit to celebrate the sacraments with the liturgical books prior to the post-conciliar liturgical reform. Thus, in the Roman Rite there was an ordinary form and an extraordinary form, and no priest needed any permission to celebrate Holy Mass with the 1962 missal, edited by St. John XXIII. Moreover, the faithful who requested it were to be admitted to such celebrations.

A Public Letter from Italian Laity: Francis, enough! Stop the ideological Civil War in the Church

This heartfelt letter by several Italian lay people was published today in Italian daily IL FOGLIO. The laity are exhausted after 8 years of war conducted from on top: we want peace. Stop, Francis, just stop.

Holy Father,

The latest book by Andrea Riccardi, founder of Sant'Egidio and a well-known voice of the progressive Catholic world is entitled "The Church is Burning: Crisis and the Future of Christianity ”.

We have not written any books, we have not conducted any detailed analysis, but we see every day the slow fire that devours and destroys the Catholic Church in Italy and around the world.

The resignation of Benedict XVI, eight years ago, left many in desolation and others in hope. For some time there was talk of the "Bergoglio effect", alluding to a rebirth that unfortunately never took place. On the contrary! The "Church that goes forth" has remained a slogan with no real application. On the contrary, the holy city of Christianity [Rome], in the age of covid, was the first to barricade its churches, giving the world a sign of total desertion.

Speaking to the Masses

Pope Francis' recent attack on the traditional Latin Mass and those who attend and offer it has produced quite the outcry around the world.  Yet another example of the unintended Francis Effect, slapping around faithful Catholics has blown up in the face of the Vatican.  When the Jesuit, left-wing America magazine and normally anti-TLM neoconservative George Weigel both voice public criticism of restricting the freedom to offer and attend Latin Masses, clearly the Vatican roll-out of Francis' hit-job can be considered a massive communications failure based on bad policy and poor planning.

To that end, we all have likely had family or friends with almost no interest in the traditional Latin Mass ask us what on earth is going on recently.  It is a terrific moment to educate -- the ideal time to further grow the TLM movement.  Very few people have publicly defended Francis' recent attack on the TLM.

There are usually two kinds of Catholics with respect to news and current events: those who pay close attention to daily updates, and those who scan headlines or get their news from someone else.  Rorate readers likely fall into the former category; and we commend you for staying educated.  At the same time, while even the mainstream media is interested in the traditional Latin Mass -- an opportunity that does not come often -- we have the chance to speak to the masses (pun intended).

A RORATE CÆLI Editorial: The Attack of Hatred and Vengeance Against the Latin Mass Should be Ignored

As confident as we were in our sources forecasting today as the day of reckoning for Summorum Pontificum and the traditional Latin Mass as we know it, in the back of our minds we had hoped it was merely an unfounded rumor.  After all, Pope Benedict XVI is not only alive, but fully cognizant, dressed in a white cassock while living in the Vatican gardens.  To that end, would a sitting pope be so arrogant as to publicly humiliate the 94 year old pope emeritus?

Alas, the answer is yes.  Jorge Mario Bergoglio is without a doubt the most arrogant pope in the history of the Catholic Church.  From day one, if not before, it has always been about him -- whatever the subject.  Labeled "humble" by the mainstream media due to token stunts such as carrying a bag and wearing polyester vestments, Bergoglio is in reality a man of vengeance.  A pope of vengeance.  An angry bitter Jesuit settling scores through vengeance.

What ought traditional Catholics to do in response to the latest attack on the Mass and all those who love tradition?  Simply put:  ignore it.  Ignore its message.  Ignore its motivation caused by pure hatred and vengeance. Keep calm and keep on going as if it does not even exist.

The new encyclical "Fratelli Tutti" is basically an ode to Fraternity, in the French revolutionary concept of the word (Updated: Full text of the Encyclical)

 

Liberté - Égalité - Fraternité : Hall of the Grand Lodge of France (GODF), Paris

The Spanish text of the newest papal encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, which will be released in a couple of hours, was leaked by Spanish website Infovaticana.

The main point of the text, a long text, 123-pages long, we can now reveal, is its inspiration by the Abu Dhabi document (the "Statement on Human Fraternity"), which itself established an institution of flabbergasting name: The Higher Committee for Human Fraternity.

It's all based on the notion of "Fraternity" inspired by the French Revolution. Whether this is good or bad, we'll let you decide for yourself.

UPDATE: Sunday, Oct. 4 - Full text of Fratelli Tutti in English.

An Empty Apostolic Square: The Wolf Came, the Sheep Scattered

It was impossible for us not to think of the empty squares, churches, chapels today with the words of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on this Good Shepherd Sunday.

The governmental wolves ordered churches closed, as if they were not essential. The bishops (the "shepherds" in name only) fled, and the sheep scattered and left the field.

O tempora!...

At that time Jesus said to the Pharisees: I am the good Shepherd. The good Shepherd giveth his life for his sheep. But the hireling, and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming and leaveth the sheep and flieth: and the wolf catcheth and scattereth the sheep. [From the Gospel for the Second Sunday After Easter.]

No, Francis, God did not "will a plurality and diversity of religions": saying so is "altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion."

Point:

The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.

Document co-signed by Francis and the "Grand Imam of Al-Azhar" Ahmad Al-Tayyeb

Counterpoint:

Never perhaps in the past have we seen, as we see in these our own times, the minds of men so occupied by the desire both of strengthening and of extending to the common welfare of human society that fraternal relationship which binds and unites us together, and which is a consequence of our common origin and nature. For since the nations do not yet fully enjoy the fruits of peace - indeed rather do old and new disagreements in various places break forth into sedition and civic strife - and since on the other hand many disputes which concern the tranquility and prosperity of nations cannot be settled without the active concurrence and help of those who rule the States and promote their interests, it is easily understood, and the more so because none now dispute the unity of the human race, why many desire that the various nations, inspired by this universal kinship, should daily be more closely united one to another.

A similar object is aimed at by some, in those matters which concern the New Law promulgated by Christ our Lord. For since they hold it for certain that men destitute of all religious sense are very rarely to be found, they seem to have founded on that belief a hope that the nations, although they differ among themselves in certain religious matters, will without much difficulty come to agree as brethren in professing certain doctrines, which form as it were a common basis of the spiritual life. For which reason conventions, meetings and addresses are frequently arranged by these persons, at which a large number of listeners are present, and at which all without distinction are invited to join in the discussion, both infidels of every kind, and Christians, even those who have unhappily fallen away from Christ or who with obstinacy and pertinacity deny His divine nature and mission.

Certainly such attempts can nowise be approved by Catholics, founded as they are on that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule.

Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it, and little by little turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly follows that one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion.

Pius XI

Mortalium Animos

Op-Ed: A French Historian muses about the "Anglicanization" of the Catholic Church: A Priest Responds

Paul VI is paid a "solemn visit" by the high Anglican minister of Canterbury, March 23, 1966 

French historian Luc Perrin, a Professor at the University of Strasbourg, and a well-known commentator of Catholic matters, published a long comment at the French Traditional Catholic page "Le Forum Catholique", in which he asked if the Catholic Church is going through a process of "Anglicanization".

Our Contributor Fr. Richard Cipolla, DPhil, thought this was an interesting exercise and penned a response.

First, Professor Perrin's dubium:

I am submitting this reflection to the wisdom of the reader: this idea has been running around in my head since the annus terribilus of 2018 at least.

There were various theological elements of Catholicism that were the subject of discussion before 2013, but it seems to me—some will disagree on this point, but this is not what I am talking about—that in these discussions the magisterium of Vatican II and the post-conciliar developments until 2013 defended a hermeneutic of reform within a search for continuity, rejecting the hermeneutics of rupture in a direct and recurring manner (this is true for Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, in whose allocution of December 22, 2005 was the last to formalize this insistence on continuity.)

Op-Ed - The President of the Catholic University of America is totally wrongheaded in his comparison of Humanae Vitae and Pope Francis

by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla, PhD, DPhil (Oxon)

CUA campus in Washington, D.C.

It is indeed a good thing when a president of a Catholic University takes the time to write an Op-Ed piece for a Catholic news agency.  John Garvey, President of the Catholic University of America is the author of such a piece, his monthly column for Catholic News Service, that was recently published in the Arlington Catholic Herald, among other diocesan paper.  The Op-Ed piece is titled “One, holy, Catholic”.  In this editorial he expresses his deep concern over what he sees as division in the Church between those he calls “progressives” and “traditionalists”.   I share Garvey’s concern over the divisions in the Church, but I believe that the lens through which he sees the problem distorts and makes impossible to understand what the real conflict in the Church is about. 

Garvey reminds us that this summer marks the fiftieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae and the statement of dissent by a significant group of theologians, all from the United States.  Garvey claims that the Pope Paul VI’s upholding the Traditional teaching of the Catholic Church against those theologians who wanted that teaching changed provoked “an unprecedented crisis of authority in the American Catholic Church.”  I would ask Garvey to remember in the first place that there is no American Catholic Church.  There is the Catholic Church in America, or much better still, in the United States.  He summarizes what has happened in the past fifty years in this way:

Abortion and sterilization are commonplace. Artificial birth control has opened “wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards”. Governments favor “those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective…(and) may even impose their use on everyone”.

Garvey then says: “In 1968 the pope’s critics envisioned a different future”.  What was that future that the dissident theologians envisioned?  What did they think the future of marriage and sexual morality would be like once the sexual intercourse was cut off from both the natural biological purpose of the act and the basic understanding of sexual intercourse in a Catholic marriage, when that act was cut off from the possibility of new life, that possibility that prevents that intimate act from being merely an act of closed-in selfishness?

In a somewhat curious defense of the dissidents, Garvey tells us that the statement of dissent  “generously” (!) acknowledged that the pope had a “distinct role” in the Church. This sounds like what Anglicans believe about the Archbishop of Canterbury, a primus inter pares, someone who comes last in the procession, but with no doctrinal authority at all.  The “distinct role” of the Pope in matters of doctrine is clearly defined by both the First and Second Vatican Councils. 

The German Rebellion on Eucharistic Communion for Protestants: The Ground Opens Up

Sandro Botticelli

Punishment of the Rebels [Moses and the Sons of Korah]

Sistine Chapel, 1482

And immediately as Moses had made an end of speaking, the earth broke asunder under their feet: And opening her mouth, devoured them with their tents and all their substance. And they went down alive into hell the ground closing upon them, and they perished from among the people. But all Israel, that was standing round about, fled at the cry of them that were perishing: saying: Lest perhaps the earth swallow us up also. And a fire coming out from the Lord, destroyed the two hundred and fifty men that offered the incense. (Numbers 16:31-35)

Once again in this Pontificate, the most sacred treasure possessed by the Church, the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, is turned into an object of rebellion and division. The first was, of course, the fake controversy of Communion to adulterers ("remarried divorced" Catholics).

Now, following several denials by Rome, but after a clear authorization given informally by Francis in another interview granted in his return to Rome from Geneva a week ago, the first German bishop has finally awarded express authorization for Communion to be regularly offered to Protestant spouses of Catholics.

From the German-language page of the EWTN news network, the news that the Archbishop of Paderborn, Hans-Joseph Becker, has given his full authorization for the distribution of Holy Communiuon to Protestant spouses:

Antidote to the denial of Hell

How should a faithful Catholic respond to last month's scandalous declaration on Holy Thursday -- ". . . those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls" -- that Pope Francis is reported to have spoken to Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari? (As many have noted, this is not the first time Scalfari has reported the pope making such a statement, and Pope Francis has not yet specifically or categorically denied Scalfari's reports on this  matter)

In response to so lamentable a report, it is the first duty of the faithful to reaffirm their belief in the Catholic doctrine of the hell of the damned.

"THERE IS NO HELL" -- new Francis revelation to atheist journalist just in time for Good Friday

In another informal interview with Italian atheist journalist (and founder of liberal newspaper Repubblica) Eugenio Scalfari, published today, Pope Francis reveals that "hell does not exist".

His exact words below (full interview behind paywall here, most important excerpt below):

Pope Francis and the Perplexed Secularists

Bergoglio has been criticized by traditionalists for his Christmas homily, but over the years some [noted] secularists have raised some perplexity about the Pontiff’s actions

Francesco Boezi

Il Giornale

12/29/2017

Pope Francis is at the center of controversy because of his Christmas homily. His combination of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem for the Birth of Jesus and the theme of immigrants has been questioned by traditionalists.

Promotion of Homosexuality: The Defining Image of a Corrosive Pontificate

The image above is taken from

Op-Ed: The Knights of Columbus want to silence and shame Catholic Converts

...actually, "in service to some" - just "cradle Catholics":
Converts need not apply, or buy insurance

***

The Knights of Columbus made a clear choice when the organization decided to sponsor the faltering "Crux" -- founded by the Boston Globe for liberal journalist John Allen Jr (when the Globe thought it could cash in on Francis' supposed "popularity") and then, when it came into trouble, propped up by the Knights.

The Knights' choice was to uphold the liberal and Modernist version of Catholicism in reporting news.

For a few weeks now, Knights-Crux has been on a crusade to crush the credibility of converts to Catholicism. This because the Modernist establishment currently in charge of much of the central government of the Church hates American Catholicism, hates conservative Catholics in the United States, hates the Traditional-friendly general trends of the strongest portions of English-speaking Catholicism, and hates, therefore, informed converts who are so influential in those circles.

Guest Op-Ed: Catholic Collapse in Australia Even Worse Than It Looks -- and Bishops are to blame

By an Australian Priest

The headlines did not exaggerate: "Christian heritage fades''; "Australia’s rapidly-changing population is more godless'' and "Atheists demand political influence as record numbers choose 'no religion on census'.''

Results of Australia's five-yearly Census, a detailed snapshot of how Australians live, where they come from, what they earn and what they believe were released this week. For those who value the nation's Christian underpinnings the picture was bleak.

The proportion of Australians who marked "no religion'' on their Census form was 29.6 per cent __ in stark contrastto 1966 when just 0.8 per cent of the population ticked that box. That year, 88 per cent of Australians identified as Christian; now it's a bare majority -- 52 per cent. Come the next Census in 2021,nominal Christians could be a minority, for the first time in the nation's history.

Vatican Police State: Pope wants to know where each Cardinal is at all times

It's funny how this Pope only wants "tradition" (with a very, very small "t") when it suits his purposes.

This letter sent by the Dean of the College of Cardinals to the "Resident" Cardinals, that is, those who reside in Rome, was revealed today by the Rome correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, Francis X. Rocca:

DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF CARDINALS

From the Vatican, May 31, 2017

N. 122/2017

Your Eminence,

A noble tradition has always led the Fellow Cardinals residing "in Urbe" to inform the Holy Father, by way of the Secretariat of State, the period of their absence from Rome and the address of their stay.

Pope Francis has recently requested of the Dean of the Cardinalatial College to fraternally remind each single Cardinal the opportunity of keeping that practice, even more so in the case of an extended absence from Rome.

Wall Street Journal: "How Pope Francis Became the Leader of the Global Left"

Robespierre - Marx & Engels - Lassalle - Liebknecht - Lenin - Trostsky - Stalin - Mao - Fidel - Hoxha - Pol Pot - Chavez...

...Jorge Mario Bergoglio

From The Wall Street Journal:

Op-Ed: "With Democrats' loss in the US, Francis becomes the leader of the Global Left."

After Trump’s victory, has Pope Francis become the leader of the international left?

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

November 11, 2016

The Cardinal Secretary of State, Parolin sent the Holy See’s congratulations to Donald Trump, expressing its hopes that the new president would work in service to his country and for peace in the world. Also Joseph Kurtz, Archbishop of Louisville and President of the U.S. Bishop’s Conference, congratulated the newly-elected President, urging him to govern for the common good of all citizens. The position of the Vatican diplomacy appears to be correcting, or tempering, that of Pope Francis, who has never concealed his intolerance with the candidate for the American presidency.