A dark message about ‘light’…
Vatican ‘Grace for the World’ Concert:
The Creepy ‘Spiritual’ Message of Pharrell Williams
Frequent readers of this blog may recall that on Sep. 13, 2025, St. Peter’s Square was transformed into a venue for a flashy, elaborately-produced musical concert and light show closing out the third annual so-called World Meeting on Human Fraternity.
Under the highly misleading title Grace for the World, the Vatican-sponsored event featured numerous celebrity performers. They included, among others, the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, American singer Teddy Swims, French-Beninese singer Angélique Kidjo, American rappers John Legend and the heavily-tattooed Jelly Roll, the Thai rapper BamBam, the American hip hop duo Clipse — and the American singer and songwriter Pharrell Williams (b. 1973).
The latter is perhaps most famous for his 2013 song Happy. What he is not famous for is any kind of competence or clout in Catholic doctrine. Nevertheless, the Vatican authorities — obviously not without the permission of the city’s monarch, ‘Pope’ Leo XIV — saw fit to have Williams deliver a brief talk about unity and grace less than 30 minutes into the event.
The following video clip shows Pharrell’s remarks, followed by a transcription:
.
That this world is in desperate need of grace, of that there can be no doubt. That anyone would turn to Pharrell Williams to be instructed on this topic, however, is another matter. (They might as well ask Aerosmith rocker Joe Perry to give an interview on human health. Oh, wait — they already did!)
In any case, here is a transcription of Williams’ incredible spiritual wisdom:
To stand here in this holy place with my fellow artists, world leaders, and all of you beautiful souls, my humblest and sincerest thanks.
First and foremost, I want to sincerely thank His Holiness, Pope Leo, for opening the doors to this sacred place to us all and reminding us that true compassion and grace begin with fraternity: seeing one another as brothers and sisters and fellow human beings and fellow siblings. Thank you to Cardinal Gambetti, Andrea Bocelli, Kimbal Musk, and Nova Sky. And to all the artists who have brought their bright light to this moment.
Today, I want you to understand that I and all of us, we feel grace, we feel love. Do you feel it too?
But what is grace? Grace is a light that lives in each of us, waiting to be shared. Not just a blessing that we receive, but a force that we extend to one another. Beneath every culture, every language, every story is the same breath, the same spirit, the same light, the light of the universe, the all that is, all that ever will be. This is an opportunity for all of the light to come together.
And I feel that we’re not doing enough. This is an opportunity for people to galvanize and recognize their strength in numbers. We still haven’t done that as a species. We still haven’t asked ourselves for the sake of humanity, far beyond the reaches and constrictions of different religions.
Can we just hold hands for a moment and see the light that we have? You guys, put your cell phones in the air. Turn the lights on. Put your cell phones in the air. Let them see you in the world. The power that we have when we come together. This is 300,000 lights. All denominations. The only way to get to that light is to have grace for others.
Too often humanity sees difference as danger. We judge before we understand, but grace whispers, “Wait”, and curiosity asks, “Why?”. Imagine if instead of saying, “You are not like me”, we [were to] ask, “What can I learn from you? What light do you carry that I do not?” And just maybe on the other side of that question mark is the answer, right there waiting for everyone. Grace makes space, curiosity leans in; together they can carry us toward one another.
Grace and curiosity are not luxuries, but, guys, they are remedies, remedies for division, [of] which there’s so much in the world right now. That light — hold it up! — because there’s division, there’s despair. Well, you can shine your light on the rest of the world. This is how walls become windows and how borders, borders, become bridges — how your light becomes my light and my light becomes yours. Make some noise for the light.
So we [have] got to have grace for the world if we ever want to get to that light, to that place. So, in this historic moment, I ask you to choose grace, choose curiosity, choose them until they become contagious. And together we will flood the world with this light and this love, not with power and pride, but with light and love, always with the light and love.
Thank you.
Wow! ‘Pope’ Francis would be proud. This much Naturalist claptrap from beginning to end while still coming across as profoundly spiritual is not easy to put together. At the same time, the fact that people are asked to hold hands while at the same time holding their cell phones into the air shows that whoever composed it must not have given it too much thought.
One almost suspects it may have been written by a member of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue. It is certainly one of those pseudo-spiritual, meta-religious messages that said Dicastery is good at cranking out. It tries to find a generic human spirituality of the lowest common denominator aimed at creating ‘fraternity’ among men. It reeks of 19th-century American Transcendentalism, of Universalism, New Age, Indifferentism, Perennialism, Pelagianism, and Freemasonry — certainly more so than of anything remotely Catholic. It is a Naturalist ‘humanity, save thyself!’ message. The complete absence of any mention of God or of Jesus Christ is par for the course.
Although it is true that a natural bond of sorts exists among men simply in virtue of their common humanity, this bond has been wounded by original sin; and for this state of affairs the only remedy is the Gospel and the supernatural bonds of Faith, hope, and charity God’s grace makes possible. In the words of Pope Saint Pius X:
Indeed, we have the human experience of pagan and secular societies of ages past to show that concern for common interests or affinities of nature weigh very little against the passions and wild desires of the heart. No, Venerable Brethren, there is no genuine fraternity outside Christian charity. Through the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ Our Saviour, Christian charity embraces all men, comforts all, and leads all to the same faith and same heavenly happiness.
(Pope Pius X, Apostolic Letter Notre Charge Apostolique condemning Le Sillon)
In other words, the only true and lasting way to establish genuine fraternity among men is to inculcate in them the teachings of Jesus Christ and unite them in His supernatural Kingdom, the holy Catholic Church.
There is no alternative to this; there is no ‘generic’ fraternity that applies to people of all religions, in which Christian charity would be a participation and to which it would have to be subordinated. As if the Redeemer of mankind were only the Redeemer for Catholics; as if the Gospel were only for those who choose to believe in it; as if there were one set of divinely-revealed truths for followers of Christ and a different set of divinely-revealed truths for everybody else!
Indeed, Pope Pius X chastised the French Sillonist movement precisely for this false notion of fraternity,
which they found on the love of common interest or, beyond all philosophies and religions, on the mere notion of humanity, thus embracing with an equal love and tolerance all human beings and their miseries, whether these are intellectual, moral, or physical and temporal. But Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged, but in the zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement as well as for their material well-being. Catholic doctrine further tells us that love for our neighbor flows from our love for God, Who is Father to all, and goal of the whole human family; and in Jesus Christ whose members we are, to the point that in doing good to others we are doing good to Jesus Christ Himself. Any other kind of love is sheer illusion, sterile and fleeting.
(Pope St. Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique)
Here’s some advice, Mr. Williams: Unless you’re going to preach the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, don’t waste your breath with musings about unity, fraternity, respect, or alleged mutual enrichment. Even if they weren’t objectionable on doctrinal grounds, just practically speaking, these ideas are dead on arrival. They’re not going to work. Only God’s real grace — God’s supernatural aid, not the Naturalist counterfeit of a ‘light inside all of us’ — can fix our miserable condition.
Only Jesus Christ, the true Light of the World, can deliver this world from its darkness: “That was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not” (Jn 1:9-10); “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me, walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (Jn 8:12). Any other light is either merely natural and therefore insufficient (such as the light of reason), or it is diabolical and false and therefore militates against the True Light: “For Satan himself transformeth himself into an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14) so as to deceive.
Pharrell’s ideas about light are reminiscent of the strange Naturalist doctrine that was peddled by the shady ‘Abp.’ Carlo Maria Viganò in his open letter to U.S. President Donald Trump in 2020:
Having inculcated false teaching about grace and light in his audience, Pharrell Williams doubles down in his address: “Beneath every culture, every language, every story is the same breath, the same spirit, the same light, the light of the universe, the all that is, all that ever will be.”
This apostate doctrine aligns perfectly with ‘Pope’ Francis’ 2019 Abu Dhabi heresy that God wills a diversity of religions, as well as with his 2024 Singapore heresy that the different religions are just diverse languages or paths ultimately arriving at the same God. These abominable heresies imply that no religion is true; that God did not reveal a true doctrine to mankind and did not establish one true religion. In other words, the preaching, Passion, and Death of Jesus Christ were a gigantic fraud. What blasphemy!
Pharrell’s mystical greeting-card spirituality is thus shown to be quite dangerous. One might be more forgiving if he hadn’t claimed to know what grace is and was just spouting platitudes; but he presumed to define and teach it: “But what is grace? Grace is a light that lives in each of us, waiting to be shared. Not just a blessing that we receive, but a force that we extend to one another.”
No, it’s not. Rather, the definition of grace (in general) is as follows:
GRACE (Lat. gratia, favour). i. Strictly, a supernatural (q.v.) gift of God to an intellectual creature, bestowed with a view to eternal life. In 1713, in the bull Unigenitus, Pope Clement XI condemned the Jansenist proposition that “no grace is given outside the Church.”
ii. Sometimes, broadly, any gift freely given by God irrespective of a relation to man’s supernatural end. So creation and conservation are sometimes called graces.(Donald Attwater, ed., A Catholic Dictionary [1957 ed.], p. 216; bold and italics given.)
Let’s also look at the definitions of actual grace and sanctifying (or habitual) grace more specifically:
GRACE, ACTUAL. Any supernatural (q.v.) and transient aid by which God enlightens the mind or assists the will to produce supernatural acts. It affects the faculties of the soul (intellect and will), whereas habitual grace (q.v.) affects the very substance. Such grace may be given either immediately (“No man cometh to me, except the Father … draw him,” John vi, 44), or mediately, on the occasion of a reading of Scripture or the hearing of a sermon, from a joy or a sorrow, a dream, a sunset, or a song.
GRACE, HABITUAL. An absolutely supernatural (q.v.) quality, intrinsically and permanently inhering in the soul, by which we are made friends of God, adopted sons, co-heirs with Christ, “partakers of the divine nature” (q.v.). It is a created and finite habit, not to be identified with the Holy Ghost indwelling in the souls of the just; fixed in the soul, it is no mere imputation of the merits of Christ, no mere “garment” (the Protestant error). When Scripture so speaks of it, this is merely to indicate that it has an external origin in the merits of Christ.
What do you know! There’s nothing there about fraternity, dialogue, light, or curiosity. Grace is a supernatural aid freely given by God whose ultimate purpose is eternal salvation. It is not part of man’s nature; it is not in all of us; and we certainly cannot feel it. Although some graces can be merited if we are in the state of sanctifying grace, that state itself cannot be merited. It is a gratuitous gift of God, who was under no obligation to make our salvation possible.
One of the grave errors Williams peddles in his infernal address is the old heresy of grace being inherent in nature, condemned by the Catholic magisterium time and again, as the following examples demonstrate:
- Pope St. Pius V, Bull Ex Omnibus Afflictionibus (1567)
- CONDEMNED HERESY: “Absurd is the opinion of those who say that man from the beginning, by a certain supernatural and gratuitous gift, was raised above the condition of his nature, so that by faith, hope, and charity he cherished God supernaturally.” (Denz. 1023)
- CONDEMNED HERESY: “The integrity of the first creation was not the undeserved exaltation of human nature, but its natural condition.” (Denz. 1026)
- Note: St. Pius V condemned the above errors as “heretical, erroneous, suspect, rash, scandalous, and as giving offense to pious ears.” (Denz. 1080)
- Pope Clement XI, Apostolic Constitution Unigenitus (1713)
- CONDEMNED HERESY: “The grace of Adam is a consequence of creation and was due to his whole and sound nature.” (Denz. 1385)
- Note: Clement XI condemned the above error as “false, captious, evil-sounding, offensive to pious ears, scandalous, pernicious, rash, injurious to the Church and her practice, insulting not only to the Church but also the secular powers, seditious, impious, blasphemous, suspected of heresy, and smacking of heresy itself, and, besides, favoring heretics and heresies, and also schisms, erroneous, close to heresy, many times condemned, and finally heretical, clearly renewing many heresies respectively” (Denz. 1451). In addition, on August 28, 1718, in his bull Pastoralis Officii, Pope Clement decreed the excommunication of all who refused to adhere to his Apostolic Constitution Unigenitus (source).
- Pope Pius VI, Bull Auctorem Fidei (1794)
- “The doctrine of the synod [of Pistoia] about the state of happy innocence, such as it represents it in Adam before his sin, comprising not only integrity but also interior justice with an inclination toward God through love of charity, and primeval sanctity restored in some way after the fall; in so far as, understood comprehensively, it intimates that that state was a consequence of creation, due to man from the natural exigency and condition of human nature, not a gratuitous gift of God, [is condemned as] false, elsewhere condemned in Baius, and in Quesnel, erroneous, favorable to the Pelagian heresy.” (Denz. 1516)
- Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Humani Generis (1950)
- “Others destroy the gratuity of the supernatural order, since God, they say, cannot create intellectual beings without ordering and calling them to the beatific vision.” (n. 26; Denz. 2318)
This is not the first time that some celebrity has been allowed to proclaim a heretical message in St. Peter’s Square.
In May of 2024, in the presence of ‘Pope’ Francis and before countless children, Italian actor Roberto Benigni blatantly denied the existence of hell and purgatory: “…don’t be afraid, because there is no such thing as hell, purgatory. There is only heaven, the one you are in now, the realm of childhood, of youth, buzzing with dreams.” Francis, otherwise not known for keeping his mouth shut for any length of time, raised no objection to this audacious heresy scandalizing the little ones. (Imagine how Francis would have reacted if Benigni had said that God loves white people more than brown people, or some other such blasphemous nonsense.) Christ our Lord, on the other hand, had issued a stern warning: “But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Mt 18:6).
Let’s also not forget how during the 2019 Vatican Christmas Concert that took place in the creepy Paul VI audience hall on Dec. 14, a Native American woman was brought on stage to show the audience — including Novus Ordo bishops — how to get in touch with ‘Mother Earth’. Needless to say, her instructions were followed eagerly:
.
Returning to the case of Pharrell Williams, surely the blame is to be sought not so much with the American entertainer himself as with the Vatican prelates who authorized this junk, most notably ‘Pope’ Leo XIV, Robert Prevost. Even if he wasn’t personally involved in approving every word that would be said at this event, he was ultimately responsible for what was going to take place there. The buck stops with him.
Episodes such as this one demonstrate that when the Vatican speaks about human fraternity — and let’s remember this was the closing concert of its own third annual World Meeting on Human Fraternity — it does not mean a Christian fraternity that is based on the bonds of supernatural Faith and charity, but rather a false, Naturalist fraternity based on mere human nature — even if Christian ideas are sometimes used to justify and smooth over this false doctrine. Not only does such false fraternity disregard religious considerations, it subordinates them to the Naturalist agenda.
If you remember nothing else about Pharrell’s creepy ‘luminous’ New Age speech, remember this: As his wearing of the sunglasses indicated, it was a rather dark message about false ‘light’.
But what is so much worse is that this wasn’t simply the message of a secular American singer and songwriter. Considering where and in what context he was allowed to deliver his remarks, it is clear that it was the message of the post-Catholic Vatican under ‘Pope’ Leo XIV.
The real question is why the Vatican has an interest in misleading souls about grace.
Image source: YouTube (screenshot)
License: fair use
;
No Comments
Be the first to start a conversation