Francis claims to have a ‘Strong Devotion’ to Saint Pius X — No Joke!

You can’t make this stuff up!

Seriously: Francis claims to have a ‘Strong Devotion’ to Saint Pius X

No, it’s not a joke. It’s not fake news. And of course today is not April Fool’s Day either.

This story is not even new, but it is useful to bring it up again, since many will have either forgotten about it or never heard of it in the first place. It shows how brazen of a liar Jorge Bergoglio (“Pope Francis”) is.

On Aug. 22, 2015, Vatican Radio reported:

Pope Francis surprised the faithful in St. Peter’s Basilica on Friday [Aug. 21] when he attended the 7:00 morning Mass at the Altar of St. Pius X in the church. It was the feast day of the saint [in the Novus Ordo calendar].

The Mass was celebrated by Msgr. Lucio Bonora, an official of the Vatican’s Secretary of State, who was unaware the Pope planned on being there.

When he was informed Pope Francis was praying at the altar, he asked if he should go back to the sacristy, but was told to say Mass as usual.

“When [Pope Francis] saw me, he told me he came to pray because he had already said Mass earlier in the Casa Santa Marta, and he wanted to pay his respects to St. Pius X,” Msgr. Bonora told Vatican Radio.

“When he say I had come to celebrate Mass, he wanted to remain, to stay there with the faithful, attend Mass and pray,” he said.

Msgr. Bonora said Pope Francis greeted the faithful during the sign of peace.

“It was very moving for me, and for the faithful, to see the Pope as a humble member of the faithful, going to pray at the tomb of St. Pius X,” the priest said.

Msgr. Bonora said Pope Francis told him he has a strong devotion to Pius X, and prayed especially for catechists, since in Buenos Aires the feast serves as the Day of Catechists.

(“Pope Francis surprises pilgrims in St. Peter’s Basilica”, Vatican Radio, Aug. 22, 2015; underlining added.)

Naturally, other news outlets picked up the story as well, including the following:

• “Pope joins faithful at altar of St. Pius X” (La Stampa)
• “Pope makes surprise visit to St Peter’s” (Herald Malaysia Online)
• “Pope Francis Surprises the Faithful By Sitting In Pews With Them During Mass” (Aleteia)

Apparently the incident of Aug. 21, 2015, was not isolated. At least in 2019, Francis pulled off the same stunt again, as reported by John Allen:

…[T]here he was on Aug. 21, attending a Mass for the feast in a side chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica like an ordinary member of the faithful, sitting unobtrusively in the sixth row. While we have no idea what was in Francis’s mind at that moment, it’s hard not to think he wanted to honor the memory of his predecessor – suggesting, among other things, that perhaps Francis’s view of “modernism” and the Church’s efforts to resist it are a bit more nuanced than is often appreciated.

…

In part, however, Francis’s apparent sympathy for the “anti-modernist pope” likely also didn’t have much traction because it confounds the media narrative that’s been created around Francis from the beginning. He’s supposed to be the progressive-minded Third World maverick, shaking up a fussy and hidebound institution, so it just didn’t compute.

Had Francis shown up unannounced at a memorial for Alfred Loisy, the French Biblical scholar who was often credited as the leading modernist of his day and who was excommunicated in 1908, that probably would have had an echo, because it’s what most media observers would expect. To see this pope memorialize the man who hounded Loisy out of the church, however, generates cognitive dissonance.

(John L. Allen, Jr., “On narratives about popes and allowing oneself to be surprised”, Crux, Aug. 23, 2019)

After so many years of “Pope” Francis in action, Allen should understand that this is simply Bergoglio being Bergoglio. There is no great mystery here — no “enigma”, as was once said about Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI — and no “confounding” of those who have been paying attention either.

In Bergoglio, we are simply dealing with a talented deceiver, a charlatan who loves nothing more than to send conflicting messages and so keep people guessing. It’s simply part of the Bergoglian playbook of sowing as much confusion and as many mixed signals as possible.

The false pope has a little something for everyone, and that as a matter of strategy. This way, both the liberals and the conservatives can quote Francis (or point to something done by him) in support of their positions, respectively.

For instance, when it comes to transgenderism, Francis told Salzburg auxiliary Andreas Laun that he believes it is a “demonic” ideology. Now there is something for the conservatives to celebrate! But the liberals get something too, and much more than mere words: Francis has been going out of his way to affirm sodomites in their vices. Countless examples can be found on this page, but here we will mention specifically only the following two:

• Francis welcomes transgender group to Vatican for fourth time this year (Life Site)
• In Message to ‘LGBTQ Catholics’, Francis confirms Aberrosexuals in their ‘Identity’

Another issue on which Francis clearly plays both sides is that of abortion. Especially in interviews, the fake pope likes to thunder against the barbaric practice of murdering pre-born infants — it’s like “hiring a hitman”, he has said again and again. And yet, he utterly delights in giving support to, or hobnobbing with, the very individuals who enable, promote, support, or defend the horrific slaughter of the pre-born.

Whether it be Emma Bonino, Jeffrey Sachs, Lilianne Ploumen, Nancy Pelosi, or Joe Biden, Bergoglio’s indirect support for abortion has been so effective that the American pro-abortion lobby group NARAL published a thank-you message to “Pope” Francis in 2013.

Bergoglio’s modus operandi seems to be this: The conservatives get the words; the liberals get the action. We know which one speaks louder. A sly devil he is!

St. Pius X (r. 1903-1914) was everything Francis detests; and Francis is everything St. Pius X fought against. Any suggestions of a “kindred spirit” between the holy Pope Giuseppe Sarto and the despicable Modernist Jorge Bergoglio are utterly laughable.

Of course one will inevitably find certain overlapping elements between the canonized saint and the infernal demon, and it is those items that some commentators will jump on as alleged evidence of their similarities. For example, Pope St. Pius X had a genuine love for the poor, and if one takes Francis’ gestures and words in favor of the poor at face value, then one will draw the conclusion that Francis too loves the poor.

However, there is an essential difference: In St. Pius X the love was genuine and supernatural, as it arose from his love of God and was subordinate to it; it concerned not merely the poor’s temporal well-being but, even more so, their spiritual welfare. Bergoglio never shows concern for the souls of the poor, only for their bodies. His goal is to naturalize Catholicism completely by reducing it to a pseudo-spiritual humanitarianism with bad liturgy. This way, what is left will integrate seamlessly with the one-world religion of humanity he and his fellow-globalists are building.

Also, the claim advanced by Vatican News two years ago — and repeated by John Allen — that St. Pius X approved of the Tango dance, is demonstrably false — nothing short of fake news. The truth is that the holy Pope Pius condemned it as immoral, whereas Francis, of course, loves the Tango, which originated in his native Buenos Aires, Argentina:

• Dirty Dancing meets Fake News: Vatican News spreads false claim Pope St. Pius X approved of the Tango

How is it that Francis can get away with making such a ridiculous claim as having a strong devotion to St. Pius X? It seems to be a trait of the psychology of fallen human nature that the more brazen a lie is, the more believable it becomes, simply because people instinctively think that no one would lie so audaciously, especially not the “Pope”. So perhaps that can explain it.

Our Blessed Lord said to the Jews, “If you be the children of Abraham, do the works of Abraham” (Jn 8:39). Likewise, anyone who claims to be devoted to St. Pius X, will do the works of St. Pius X, that is, he will not merely honor him with his lips, but will teach his doctrine and condemn what he condemned; he will seek inspiration from his holy life, try to imitate his virtues, and will look to him for guidance. He will try to make the saint loved, honored, and imitated by others as well. This Francis does not do. Far from it!

There are many things on which Pope Pius X and “Pope” Francis are diametrically opposed. To name just one obvious example, consider the issue of theological novelty. Francis is well-known for his love of novelty — the “god of surprises” that brings “new paths” and condemns that insufferable “rigidity” that nostalgically clings to a past that will not return, is frequently on his impious lips.

Here, by contrast, is St. Pius X:

Likewise, all terms smacking of an unhealthy novelty in Catholic publications are condemnable, such as those deriding the piety of the faithful, or pointing out a new orientation of the Christian life, new directions of the Church, new aspirations of the modern soul, a new social vocation of the clergy, or a new Christian civilization.

(Encyclical Pieni L’Animo, n. 12)

Love of novelty is especially characteristic of Modernism. In his most significant document condemning the doctrine of the Modernists, the encyclical letter Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), St. Pius X did not mince words:

[quoting Pope Gregory XVI:] “A lamentable spectacle is that presented by the aberrations of human reason when it yields to the spirit of novelty, when against the warning of the Apostle it seeks to know beyond what it is meant to know, and when relying too much on itself it thinks it can find the truth outside the Catholic Church wherein truth is found without the slightest shadow of error.” (n. 40)

Whether it is ignorance or fear, or both, that inspires this conduct in them, certain it is that the passion for novelty is always united in them with hatred of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign that a man is tending to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for the scholastic method. Let the Modernists and their admirers remember the proposition condemned by Pius IX: “The method and principles which have served the ancient doctors of scholasticism when treating of theology no longer correspond with the exigencies of our time or the progress of science.” They exercise all their ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight and authority. But for Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those “who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind…or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church”… (n. 42)

The same policy is to be adopted towards those who openly or secretly lend countenance to Modernism either by extolling the Modernists and excusing their culpable conduct, or by carping at scholasticism, and the Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, or by refusing obedience to ecclesiastical authority in any of its depositories; and towards those who show a love of novelty in history, archaeology, biblical exegesis; and finally towards those who neglect the sacred sciences or appear to prefer to them the secular. (n. 48)

Far, far from the clergy be the love of novelty! (n. 49)

Early on in his reign of error, the Lefebvrist Bp. Bernard Fellay denounced Bergoglio as a “genuine Modernist”, and he was right (although, of course, he didn’t draw any consequences from that).

It is clear that Francis is the anti-Pius X.

St. Pius X wanted to restore all things in Christ: “…We proclaim that We have no other program in the Supreme Pontificate but that ‘of restoring all things in Christ’ [Eph 1:10], so that ‘Christ may be all and in all’ [Col 3:2]”, the glorious and holy Pope wrote in his inaugural encyclical E Supremi (n. 4).

Francis, by contrast, wants to re-establish all things in man: “…if we accept the great principle that there are rights born of our inalienable human dignity, we can rise to the challenge of envisaging a new humanity”, the false pope wrote in his latest encyclical Fratelli Tutti (n. 127).

According to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, there is indeed a “new man” (Eph 4:24), but he is man supernaturally regenerated by the grace of Christ unto justification. For Naturalists like Francis, by contrast, the “new man” is unregenerate man who has become conscious of his dignity.

Francis is basically everything St. Pius X condemned: He is a Modernist, a Liberal, an anti-Scholastic, a Naturalist, an Indifferentist, a Sillonist.

But then, being the cunning deceiver that he is, that is probably precisely why he claims to be devoted to him.

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