“From my heart I wish Pope Leo XIV the
grace of God, that he may have the courage
to repair this act of abomination which has
sullied the holiness of the Jubilee Year.”
The following article is taken
directly from
Diane Montagna’s
Substack
and was not written for the Boston Catholic
Journal — but ... is of such significance
to the Catholic world at large that it deserves every
possible exposure, for it reveals an inexcusable state
of dereliction in the papacy of Leo XIV and nothing less
than criminal negligence in the episcopacy under him. It
is an alarming revelation of the submission of
indefeasible Catholic teaching to the clamor of a
disordered and decadent world in which sexuality
in its most perverse expressions is the axis of
existence. It would appear that the Holy Door of the
Jubilee Year has been slammed in the face of reason
itself, to say nothing of the faithful. Editor
_______________________________________________________
[I have highlighted in bold
what I consider to be extremely important statements in this
discussion. Ed.]
VATICAN CITY, September 10, 2025 — Bishop Athanasius Schneider
has spoken out forcefully against the recent Vatican-sanctioned
international “LGBTQ+” Jubilee pilgrimage, denouncing it as a
“desecration” of the Holy Door and a “mockery” of God.
The pilgrimage, listed on the Vatican’s Jubilee 2025 General
Calendar, was organized by Italy’s pro-LGBTQ+ association Tenda
di Gionata [Jonathan’s Tent]; the Global Network of Rainbow
Catholics, which had lobbied during the 2018 Vatican Youth
Synod; and the U.S.-based Outreach, led by Fr. James Martin, SJ.
On Saturday afternoon, viral photographs showed two male
participants openly holding hands in St. Peter’s Basilica, one
carrying a backpack emblazoned with the words “F*** the Rules.”
Another image depicted a young man in a rainbow shirt taking a selfie of his “clawed” hand with Bernini’s Baldacchino as the
backdrop.
The two-day pilgrimage also featured a Friday evening vigil at
which a lesbian couple recounted their “love story,” and a
Saturday morning Mass celebrated by the vice-president of the
Italian Bishops’ Conference, who encouraged attendees to be
patient until the Church recognizes the LGBTQ+ lifestyle. Over a
thousand people were in attendance.
In this exclusive interview with the auxiliary bishop of Astana,
Kazakhstan, we discuss his reaction to these events, Pope Leo XIV’s widely publicized audience with Fr. James Martin, and the
grave risks for the Catholic Church and the world should she
forfeit her moral authority in such matters.
Bishop Schneider further implores Pope Leo XIV to follow the
example of Pope John Paul II by publicly denouncing the LGBTQ+
incident in St. Peter’s Basilica, acknowledging the Vatican’s
fault in permitting it, and performing acts of reparation in
humility and truth.
He also denounces priests who affirm the LGBTQ+ lifestyle as
“spiritual criminals” and “murderers of souls,” warning that God
will hold them accountable, while urging the faithful to work
zealously to rescue those deceived by sin.
_______________________________________________________
Here is my interview with
Bishop Athanasius Schneider
Diane Montagna:
A viral photo of two homosexual men brazenly
holding hands in St Peter’s Basilica, one with a backpack saying
“F*** the Rules”, and another image of a young man in a
“rainbow” shirt taking a selfie of his clawed hand with
Bernini’s Baldacchino as a backdrop, have gone around the world
since September 6. The pilgrimage group also somehow entered the
Basilica holding aloft a “rainbow” cross; it’s unknown how such
an item got through security. The pilgrimage was approved by the
Vatican, as part of the Jubilee year called by Pope Francis.
Your Excellency, what was your first reaction when you saw these
photos?
+Athanasius Schneider: My reaction was a silent cry of horror,
indignation, and sorrow. All true believers in the Church—both
faithful and clergy—who still uphold the validity of God’s
commandments and take Him seriously, should experience this
provocation as a brazen slap in the face. I believe that many
faithful Catholics and members of the clergy remain, in a sense,
stunned by such a massive blow and require time to recover. An
unprecedented act has taken place in St. Peter’s Basilica in
Rome, one that may fittingly be described, in the words of Our
Lord, as an “abomination of desolation standing in the holy
place” (cf. Mt. 24:15).
What is the significance of the Holy Door, and how does its
meaning affect the reality of what happened on September 6th?
(AS) One of essential meanings the Jubilee Year and the Holy
Door consists in “leading man to conversion and penance,” as
Pope John Pau II explained it in the Bull of Indiction of the
Holy Year 2000. Another distinctive sign is the indulgence,
which is one of the constitutive elements of the Jubilee. Hence,
the Jubilee Year is a powerful means of God’s grace to help the
faithful make real progress in holiness through a fruitful
reception of the sacrament of penance and the gaining of the
indulgence, which implies a conscious detachment of all serious
sins and moral disorders. For “free and conscious surrender to
grave sin … separates the believer from the life of grace with
God and therefore excludes the believer from the holiness to
which he is called” (John Paul II, Incarnationis Mysterium, 9).
The declared aim of the LGBTQ+ organizations that assembled
adherents and activists for this Jubilee pilgrimage was that the
Church recognize and legitimize so-called gay rights, including
homosexual acts and other forms of extramarital sexual conduct.
There were no signs of repentance and renunciation of
objectively grave homosexual sins and homosexual lifestyle on
the part of the organizers and participants in this pilgrimage.
To pass through the Holy Door and participate in the Jubilee
without repentance, while promoting an ideology that openly
rejects God’s Sixth Commandment, constitutes a kind of
desecration of the Holy Door and a mockery of God and the gift
of an indulgence.
The groups involved in Saturday’s event (Jonathan’s Tent [Tenda
di Gionata], the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, and
Outreach led by Fr James Martin, SJ) reject the idea of
conversion from an LGBTQ+ lifestyle and believe instead that
it’s time for the Catholic Church to recognize their lifestyle.
What does it say about the current state of the Vatican that
this event was allowed?
In this, the responsible authorities of the Holy See
collaborated de facto in undermining and calling into question
the validity of God’s Sixth Commandment, particularly His
explicit condemnation of homosexual activity. They stood by and
allowed God to be mocked and His commandments to be scornfully
cast aside.
Was this event worse that the Pachamama scandal in your view?
From a theological and objective standpoint, the veneration of
the Pachamama in St. Peter’s Basilica was worse than the LGBTQ+
pilgrimage, for it constituted a direct transgression of the
First Commandment of the Decalogue and was therefore more
godless than even a heinous event that contradicts or ridicules
the Sixth Commandment. The promotion of sodomy and other sexual
immorality amounts to a form of indirect idolatry, whereas the
Pachamama idol was accorded explicit acts of religious
veneration—incense, lights, candles, and prostrations. Both
events must be publicly repaired by the Pope himself. This is
urgently needed, before it is too late, for God will not be
mocked (cf. Gal. 6:7).
Prior to the pilgrimage through the Holy Door, a
Mass was
celebrated by Bishop Francesco Savino, vice-president of the
Italian Bishops Conference, at Rome’s Jesuit-run Church of the Gesù.
Everyone was welcome to receive Holy Communion. Isn’t
one’s assent to all the Church’s teaching (doctrine and morals)
a precondition for receiving Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist?
Yes, this is certainly a precondition as ordered by God in Holy
Scripture through the teaching of St. Paul: “Anyone who eats and
drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on
himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have
died” (1 Cor. 11:29-30). The Church kept this precept unchanged
and universally for two thousand years and keeps it still in her
official teaching. The Catechism clearly states that: “Anyone
aware of having sinned mortally must not receive Communion
without having received absolution in the sacrament of penance”
(n. 1415). Furthermore, it notes, Sacred Scripture “presents
homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, [and] tradition has
always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically
disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the
sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a
genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no
circumstances can they be approved” (n. 2357).”
By permitting such public Masses for LGBTQ+ organizations in
Rome and granting them passage through the Holy Door of St.
Peter’s Basilica, the authorities of the Holy See displayed
before the entire world a striking contradiction between the
Church’s official teaching and her practice. In so doing, these
high-ranking authorities effectively repudiated the very
doctrine they are bound to uphold. In light of these manifest
facts, evident to all, one must ask: can the world still take
the Church’s official teaching seriously?
The organization “Courage International” is an apostolate that
serves men and women who experience same-sex attraction, helping
them to lead a life of holiness in accord with the fullness of
the Catholic Faith. Had Saturday’s pilgrimage been sponsored by
Courage, there would have been no scandal. What is your message
to the people who participated in Saturday’s event, who are
being misled by Fr James Martin and the LGBTQ+ movement?
My message to them is first one of compassion. For when a person
consciously rejects God’s explicit commandment prohibiting any
sexual activity outside a valid marriage, he places himself in
the gravest danger—that of losing eternal life and being
eternally condemned to Hell. We must show compassion toward
those who advocate the legitimization of homosexual activity and
persist in it unrepentant and even proudly. True love for such
persons consists in calling them, gently yet persistently, to
genuine conversion to God’s revealed will. Such individuals are
misled and deceived by the evil spirit, by Satan, the father of
lies, and are ultimately unhappy, even if they have stifled the
voice of conscience.
We must be filled with great zeal to save these souls, to free
them from poisonous deceits. Those priests who confirm them in
their homosexual activity or in a homosexual lifestyle are
spiritual criminals, murderers of souls, and God will demand a
strict account from them, according to His word: “Son of man, I
have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear
a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I
say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you
do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that
wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will
require at your hand” (Ez. 33:7-8).
This event was planned before Pope Leo XIV’s election. Some have
argued that it could have and would have been worse had Pope
Francis still been alive. They point out that Pope Leo did not
receive a delegation from the LGBT+ group at his general Jubilee
audience in St Peter’s Square earlier on Saturday, nor did he
send the group a message.
These arguments are unconvincing. For the Pope to have received
a pro-LGBTQ+ delegation would have been truly unprecedented and
the height of scandal. The fact that Pope Leo XIV did not cause
such scandal in no way justifies his de facto consent to this
event. Indeed, one cannot reasonably presume naivety on his
part, for it was entirely foreseeable that a pro-LGBTQ+
organization, or at least some of its members, would exploit the
Holy Door and St. Peter’s Basilica as a platform to promote an
ideology that openly scorns and rejects God’s explicit will as
expressed in His holy Commandment.
Fr. James Martin circulated photos of an audience he had with
Pope Leo several days before the event. Did popes prior to Pope
Francis meet with such figures in this way? What is your view of
this and other recent audiences, such as that with the
controversial Dominican Sister Lucia Caram, who reportedly
supports “gay marriage”?
Before the pontificate of Pope Francis, the successors of Peter
neither received officially nor posed for photographs with those
who, by word or deed, openly rejected the doctrinal and moral
teaching of the Church. Through these official meetings and
photographs, Pope Leo de facto sent a message to the world that
he does not distance himself from their heterodox and scandalous
teaching and behavior—particularly since the Holy See offered no
clarification afterward and did not correct Fr. James Martin’s
triumphant messages circulated on social media. There is a
common saying that goes: “Qui tacet consentire videtur”—“He who
is silent is taken to agree.”
The Church has traditionally not only preached the truth but
also actively combated error. As Islam continues to grow in the
West and Europe becomes more de-Christianized, what is at risk
if the Catholic Church cedes her moral authority to these
lobbies and movements?
St. Peter and his successors, the Roman Pontiffs, together with
the Holy See, and thus the Catholic Church as such, received
from Christ Himself the highest moral authority in this world.
This authority consists in teaching the entire world—people of
all nations and religions—the commandments of God, that is, to
observe all that Christ has commanded (cf. Mt. 28:20).
To the extent that the teaching office of the Church—in the Holy
See and the Catholic episcopate—becomes weak, unclear,
ambiguous, or even contradictory, the influence of anti-truth,
in all its ideological derivations and religious forms, will
inevitably increase.
Islam’s strength may increasingly be attractive to some, but it
does not and can never impart to the human soul the necessary
spiritual power to be inwardly transformed into a new person
through Christ’s grace. By permitting such outrageous events,
the authorities of the Holy See are effectively silencing
Christ’s truth, Christ’s voice. It is therefore imperative for
our time that the words of the Pope and the authorities of the
Holy See regarding the Church’s teaching correspond faithfully
with their deeds. For there is no higher moral authority in this
world than that of Jesus Christ, who entrusted His authority to
the Magisterium of the Pope and the episcopate. What a
tremendous responsibility! And what an immense future
accountability before the judgment seat of Christ!
Although I wrote to Vatican spokesman Matto Bruni asking if the
Vatican would be issuing an acknowledgement that this should not
have been permitted and apologizing for the scandal caused,
there’s been no response. What do you believe this silence
reveals?
The Holy See finds itself in a kind of impasse and is faced with
two reactions.
On one side, organizations advocating the legitimization of the LGBTQ+ lifestyle rejoiced. The inclusion of LGBTQ+ activists
among the Holy Year pilgrim groups and their solemn entry into
St. Peter’s Basilica—the spiritual center of Catholicism—sent a
message to the entire world that the Holy See recognizes the
primary aim of these organizations: the approval of homosexual
activity and other sexual conduct outside of marriage. The world
applauds Pope Leo XIV and the Holy See for this.
On the other side, there are all those—Catholics, of course, but
also non-Catholics and adherents of other religions—who continue
to uphold the validity of God’s commandments and take Him
seriously, and who find themselves in a state of shock. All
faithful sons and daughters of the Holy Church feel deeply
humiliated. It is, as it were, a blush upon the faces of the
children of the Church. We feel ashamed before God.
One perceives an embarrassed silence on the part of the Holy
See, resembling the conscience-stricken silence of one who has
done wrong.
This event occurred on the First Saturday of the month, a day on
which Our Lady of Fatima especially asked for reparation for
offences committed against her Immaculate Heart. How can the
faithful help to remedy what happened?
The situation that has ensued is nothing less than a public
humiliation of our Holy Mother Church before the shameless
jubilation of the enemies of God’s commandments. We should all
make a collective act of reparation for the outrage committed
against the sanctity of God’s house and the holiness of His
commandments. We, the children of the Church—above all the Pope,
and especially those clerics who permitted, supported, and even
justified such an abomination—should make our own the words of
the prophet Daniel: “To you, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but
to us open shame… because of the treachery that they have
committed against you. To us, O Lord, belongs open shame, to our
kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have
sinned against you.” (Dan. 9:7-8)
During the Great Jubilee of 2000, Rome hosted the first ever
World Pride (July 1–9, 2000). Pope John Paul II publicly
denounced the event, saying:
“In the name of the Church of Rome I can only express my deep
sadness at the affront to the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 and
the offence to the Christian values of a city that is so dear to
the hearts of Catholics throughout the world. The Church cannot
be silent about the truth, because she would fail in her
fidelity to God the Creator and would not help to distinguish
good from evil” (CCC, n. 2358) In this regard, I wish merely to
read what is said in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
which, after noting that homosexual acts are contrary to the
natural law, then states: “The number of men and women who have
deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This
inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for
most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect,
compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination
in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to
fulfil God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to
unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they
may encounter from their condition” (CCC, n. 2358) (Angelus,
July 9, 2000).”
Your Excellency, what message would you like to send to Pope Leo
XIV?
I would like to implore Pope Leo XIV to repeat, in substance,
these words of Pope John Paul II, thereby manifesting before the
entire world true humility in acknowledging the fault of the
Holy See regarding the outrageous LGBTQ+ event in St. Peter’s
Basilica. Humility is courage for truth. Should Pope Leo XIV
make public acts of regret and even reparation, he will lose
nothing; should he fail to do so, he will forfeit something
before the eyes of God—and God alone matters. From my heart I
wish Pope Leo XIV the grace of God, that he may have the courage
to repair this act of abomination which has sullied the holiness
of the Jubilee Year, employing in all truth the words of St.
Paul: “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel
of God” (Acts 20:26-27).
Your Excellency, is there anything you would like to add?
May Our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV take to heart the following
words of Our Lord which He once spoke through St. Bridget of
Sweden to one of his predecessors (Pope Gregory XI):
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