Francis Allows 100 Buddhist Monks to Pray Over Him at Vatican

Before sending them to historic local church to pray for peace…

Francis Allows 100 Buddhist Monks to Pray Over Him at Vatican

On May 27, 2024, the Argentinian apostate Jorge Bergoglio (‘Pope Francis’) received a delegation of Buddhist monks from the Temple of the Reclining Buddha (officially named the Wat Phra Chetuphon Wimon Mangkhalaram Rajwaramahawihan) in Bangkok, Thailand.

As is customary, Francis gave them a short address. After expressing his delight regarding the “Seventh Buddhist-Christian Colloquium held in Thailand last November … on the theme ‘Karuna and Agape in Dialogue for the Healing of a Wounded Humanity and the Earth'”, he reiterated the importance of working together “to promote a friendship that sustains peace and fraternity and builds a more inclusive world” since “no one is saved alone” — an ambiguous slogan that he has been repeating a lot since his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti (see n. 32).

If only Bergoglio meant that Christ founded the Catholic Church as the only Ark of Salvation and was beckoning them to enter it, but no! That is most definitely not what he means, for supernatural salvation is the farthest thing from his mind, especially when mingling with members of non-Christian religions, which he has long whitewashed in politically-correct manner as “different ways of coming to God”, whereas we know there is only one way to God, and His name is Jesus Christ: “Jesus saith to him: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me” (Jn 14:6).

In Francis’ speech to Buddhists, the context was that of “promot[ing] a friendship that sustains peace and fraternity and builds a more inclusive world.” That is what ‘His Holiness’ means by “being saved together”!

In his May 27 address, the false pope also praised the pagan delegation from the Temple of the Reclining Buddha for their stated belief that “prayer and meditation can turn things upside down by purifying our hearts and minds; generating loving-kindness, mercy and forgiveness where there is hatred and vengeance creating a spirit of respect and care for the other and the earth”, adding: “I am very pleased that you will pray for peace tomorrow in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere.”

Buddhists praying in this most sacred, ancient Catholic church! That is fine with Bergoglio, but not the Traditional Latin Mass! Never mind that prayer and meditation are very different things for a Catholic compared to what they are for a Buddhist, as we will see further below.

Francis endorsed the value of Buddhist prayer not only in words, however; he did so also in action by allowing the unbelieving monks to pray over him, which they did, using chant. How that looked and sounded, can be gleaned from the following video clip provided by EWTN on Twitter/X:

Perhaps someone familiar with the language and Buddhist practice can identify just what these monks are actually singing there. Meanwhile, for what it’s worth, the Learn Religions web site has a page on ‘the role of chanting in Buddhism’ here.

That ‘Pope’ Francis has no interest in preaching the Gospel to Buddhists is also evident from his 2017 visit to the Buddhist nation of Myanmar (Burma), on which occasion he gave to the country’s president a copy of the Vatican-produced manuscript Life of Buddha, celebrating the founder of the heathen religion. As if the president of Myanmar had need of that or could derive any spiritual benefit from it. Imagine if Francis had handed him a copy of The Life of Christ instead, introducing him to the Savior and Redeemer of the world! But no, that is obviously not Francis’ mission because he is not actually the Vicar of Christ; if anything, he is the Vicar of the Antichrist because he is certainly doing all he can to usher in his prophesied reign of terror.

We might add here that the ‘Seventh Buddhist-Christian Colloquium’ Francis referenced in his address had cranked out a joint statement presented by the Vatican. In it, we are told:

As Buddhists and Christians, we see the Buddha and Jesus as Great Healers. The Buddha pointed to greed and Jesus to sin as the cause of suffering. On many levels, Jesus and the Buddha proposed love and compassion as medicine to drive out the darkness in the human heart and the world. Nourished by their respective spiritual teachings, Buddhists and Christians, for thousands of years, have adopted compassionate ways of living to address the suffering of life.

(Final Statement of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue at the end of the Seventh Buddhist-Christian Colloquium, Vatican.va, Nov. 16, 2023)

How despicable of them to drag the Son of God and Savior of the World down to the level of the pagan Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)! It is a disgraceful equalization/relativization that is taking place, if not always directly, certainly always in intended and actual effect.

But what does the New Testament teach us? “Bear not the yoke with unbelievers. For what participation hath justice with injustice? Or what fellowship hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath the faithful with the unbeliever? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?” (2 Cor 6:14-16).

Although Francis does not fail to assert on occasion that Catholics must courageously, joyfully, and prophetically ‘proclaim the Gospel’ to all, these are mere words that are always drowned out by what he says directly to unbelievers and especially by how he acts towards them. (And besides, we know that by “proclaiming the Gospel” he does not mean “proselytism”!)

This was certainly evident again in his address to the Buddhist monks, which he concluded by invoking upon them “abundant divine blessings”, carefully avoiding any mention of the Lord Jesus Christ or the Most Holy Trinity — the only true God — since that might jeopardize harmonious relations. Besides, he does not wish to convert the Buddhists to Catholicism for the sake of their eternal salvation anyway but instead wishes to affirm them in their false religion and make them more comfortable in their soul-destroying errors so that they will follow him to eternal damnation.

What Francis did there on May 27 is thus nothing short of an effective endorsement of the false religion of Buddhism.

At the origin of this endorsement there lurks the old liberal error of Indifferentism, the idea that it doesn’t matter what religion one embraces; as well as the Modernist error that all religions are equally good and praiseworthy, or at least good and praiseworthy enough for bringing man into salvific contact with God.

This kind of thing is by no means unique to Francis, however. It was already contained, in principle, in ‘Saint’ John Paul II‘s call of the world’s religions to Assisi, first in 1986, to pray for peace. It is a tacit acknowledgment that the prayer and worship of false religions — precisely as false religions — is efficacious with God and can obtain blessings and graces from Him.

At the root of this de facto endorsement of every kind of non-Christian religion is, of course, as always, the apostate Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which scandalously declared in 1965:

…Buddhism, in its various forms, realizes the radical insufficiency of this changeable world; it teaches a way by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination. Likewise, other religions found everywhere try to counter the restlessness of the human heart, each in its own manner, by proposing “ways,” comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites. The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.

(Vatican II, Declaration Nostra Aetate, n. 2)

What utter blasphemous claptrap! The Catholic Church does not regard “with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings” that depart “in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth”, just because they sometimes “reflect” a mere “ray” of truth!

By that logic, should we regard with sincere reverence a whore because she sometimes wears beautiful earrings? Should we bow to an abortionist for his ‘medical’ skills? Should we honor and respect a child molester because of the sweet things he tells children in order to lure them into his clutches?

The gravity of these frightful errors of the Vatican II religion can hardly be overstated, and this becomes more apparent when we consider Nostra Aetate in light of what Buddhism actually is, that is, what it believes and teaches.

The French philosopher Jacques Maritain (1889-1973), who later turned into a liberal that influenced Giovanni Battista Montini (‘Pope’ Paul VI) and Vatican II, wrote a few lines about Buddhism in one of his earlier works:

…[T]he teaching of deliverance from suffering, which in Buddhism, even more than in Brahmanism, dominates the entire system, assumes a different and even more radical form. Evil is no longer merely the possession of individual or personal existence; it is existence itself: it is evil to be, and the desire of existence is the root of all suffering. The wise man must therefore destroy in himself man’s natural longing for existence and for beatitude, the fullness of being; he must abandon all hope and extinguish every desire. He will thus attain the state of emptiness or total indetermination called nirvana …, which will deliver him from the evil of existence and the yoke of transmigration, and which, in the logical consequence of Buddhist principles, must be regarded as the annihilation of the soul itself. For since the soul is only the chain or current of thoughts and feelings which derive their existence from the desire to be, to extinguish that desire is to extinguish the soul.

This nirvana is the goal for whose attainment Buddhism made use of the ascetic practices which it took over with considerable mitigation from Brahmanism, also of its moral code [code of behavior] which is thus directed, not to God, but to a species of mystical nothingness as its last end. Moreover, the source and ultimate measure of Buddhist ethics is man, not God. If it rejected the system of castes which exaggerated the demands of social order and divided man almost into distinct species, it was only to dissolve social order of any kind in an absolute equality and individualism. And though it prescribed a universal benevolence (which extended even to prohibiting the slaughter of animals and to a compulsory vegetarianism), almsgiving, pardon of injuries, and non-resistance to the wicked, its motive was not love of one’s neighbour as such, whose positive good and (by implication) existence we are bound to will, but to escape suffering to oneself by extinguishing all action and energy in a kind of humanitarian ecstasy. Buddhism is, therefore, a proof that gentleness and pity, when they are not regulated by reason and dictated by love, can deform human nature as much as violence, since they are then manifestations of cowardice, not of charity.

(Jacques Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, trans. by E. I. Watkin [New York, NY: Sheed & Ward, Inc., 1937], pp. 35-36; italics given; underliing added.)

What a wicked system Buddhism is! And how contrary its doctrine is to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the God who is existence (see Ex 3:14; Jn 1:1-3; 8:58), who became man and died on the Cross so that we mere creatures and wretched sinners “may have life, and may have it more abundantly” (Jn 10:10) — indeed, even to the incredible point that we “may be made partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4)!

In his De Revelatione (1950), the great Dominican theologian of impeccable orthodoxy, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877-1964), describes Buddhism in very much the same way as Maritain and then offers a sober assessment. After noting some superficial and merely external similarities between the pagan religion and the religion of Jesus Christ, Fr. Garrigou points out that

…Christianity leads to perfect life and the vision of God, through the grace of the sacraments, prayer, and supernatural merit. By contrast, Buddhism tends toward self-annihilation and likewise does not speak of grace, prayer properly so-called, and the supernatural moral life.

(Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., On Divine Revelation, vol. II, trans. by Matthew K. Minerd [Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2022], p. 540. #CommissionLink)

He then provides a brief critique of Buddhism, exposing the shocking ideas held and proliferated by those who follow it:

(a) The dogmas of Buddhism manifestly do not surpass natural reason. Nay, they are very inferior to the conclusions of sound philosophy. For it teaches nothing concerning God. Likewise, it seems to be unaware of the spirituality of the human soul since it seems to place no essential difference between man and brute animals, as is clear from its doctrine of metempsychosis [transmigration of souls, i.e. reincarnation]. Not only does it not know that providence orders all things to the good but it even professes a form of pessimism, teaching that all of life is evil and that the ultimate end that is desirable above all else is self-annihilation or something similar. This is obviously false. Meditation consists in thinking about nothing, lest something evil may be thought. Practices of this kind produce nervous overexcitement with quasi-pathological effects. By means of self-suggestion many monks arrive at a kind of ecstasy.

It does not know of creation and the conservation of all things, nor is God the judge of men’s actions. Nay, the very existence of the soul is denied. The person or “self” is only a word expressing a collection of phenomena, sensations, perceptions, and so forth, which therefore lack a subject, for they have no ultimate identity.

(Garrigou-Lagrange, On Divine Revelation, vol. II, pp. 540-541; italics given; underlining added. #CommissionLink)

Nor can one consider Buddhism to be teaching an acceptable morality of sorts, as we have already seen. Like Maritain, Fr. Garrigou points out that some of its ‘ethics’ is in line with the natural law; however, “the self-denial and benevolence that it fosters do not proceed, like Christian charity, from love for God and men inasmuch as they are children of God, but rather from self-love and from a kind of natural sympathy” (p. 541; italics given).

Nor is Fr. Garrigou impressed with the quiet and ‘prayerful’ life of Buddhist monks: “Monks often indulge in laziness, for they are prohibited from performing labor and they do not know of prayer, properly so-called. Hence, although some of them sometimes exhibit great zeal, they have established nothing similar to the countless works of Christian charity” (p. 542).

How refreshing to hear a truly Catholic assessment of Buddhism, as opposed to the endless effusions of praise and assurances of esteem coming from the Novus Ordo religion!

Thus we see that Buddhism is a wicked atheistic-agnostic philosophy that calls existence itself evil and teaches men to seek self-annihilation. Nonetheless, that is what Vatican II claims the Catholic Church “regards with sincere reverence” because it supposedly “often reflect[s] a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men”! And it is this evil religion to which Bergoglio just gave credence once more, especially by allowing the heathen monks to pray over him and by lauding the joint declaration of the 2023 interreligious colloquium that recognizes Buddha as a “great healer”.

At this point, few people will be surprised to find out what Francis told a Buddhist delegation in March of last year, to wit:

Dear friends, it is my hope that this educational pilgrimage will lead you, guided by the thoughts of your spiritual teacher Buddha, to a deeper encounter with yourselves and with others, with the Christian tradition, and with the beauty of the earth, our common home.

(Antipope Francis, Address to Delegation of the United Association of Humanistic Buddhism, Vatican.va; Mar. 16, 2023; underlining added.)

If this isn’t the Great Apostasy, what will be left to apostatize from?

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