Is Pope Benedict XVI a prisoner in the Vatican?

My good friend Bishop Rene Henry Gracida on this troubling question here.

Seven years ago, and several years before Francis stepped onto the world stage, I wrote a post for this Blog in which I said, "...masonic forces seek to subvert the Church from within and to create a "new church" created in the image and likeness of man.  The new humanitarian religion will result from a quiet revolution within the Church.

This new religion will be anti-supernatural.  And it will embrace the Socialistic New World Order and the Reign of Antichrist.  This is the false church Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich saw in her visions.

Father Emmanuel Barbier, a well-known anti-modernist and anti-masonic author, transcribed a document dated April 3, 1844, in which a high-ranking leader of Italian masonic forces called Nubius explains to another highly-placed mason how the quiet revolution will work.  He writes, "Now then, in order to ensure a pope in the required proportions, we must first of all prepare a generation worthy of the kingdom of which we dream...

Cast aside the old men and men of a mature age; go to the youth, and if possible, even to children...It is to the youth that we must go, it is the youth that we must lead, unperceived by them, under the flag of the secret societies.  In order to advance with prudent steps on this dangerous but sure way, two things are absolutely necessary.  You must have the simplicity of doves and the prudence of the serpent...Never pronounce before them a word of impiety or impurity: Maxima debetur puero reverentia...Once your reputation has been established in colleges, high schools, universities, and seminaries, once you have gained the confidence of professors and students, make sure that especially those who enter the ranks of the clergy be pleased with your meetings...

Such reputation will give your doctrine access to the young clergy and to convents.  In a few years, this clergy will naturally have invaded all functions: they will govern, administer, judge, from the Sovereign's council, be called to choose the Pontiff who must reign; and this Pontiff, like most of his contemporaries, will be more or less imbued with Italian and humanitarian principles that we will start placing in circulation...Let the clergy move forward under your standard always believing they are advancing under the banner of the apostolic Keys.  Cast your net like Simon Bar Jonas; spread it to the bottom of sacristies, seminaries, and convents, rather than casting it to the bottom of the sea; if you do not precipitate anything, we promise you a catch even more miraculous than his...

You will have fished a revolution dressed in the Pope's triple crown and cape, carrying the cross and the flag, a revolution that will need only a small stimulus to set fire to the four corners of the earth." (Nubius, Secret Instructions on the Conquest of the Church, excerpted from Les infiltrations maconiques dans l'Eglise, Paris/Brussels: Desclee de Brouwer, 1901, p. 5).


Meditation: John 5:43.

Father Linus Clovis makes the point that,“Obedience is owed to the pope, but the pope owes obedience to the word and the apostolic tradition. We have to obey the pope, but the pope himself must obey the written word. He must obey the tradition. He must respond to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Obedience is owed to the pope, but it is the duty of the pope to give the character of possibility to this obedience. The pope has to facilitate our obeying him, by himself being obedient to the Word of God. Pope Felix III told us, ‘an error that is not resisted is approved. A truth that is not defended is suppressed.’ So we have an obligation to resist error, and we must do everything that we can to promote the truth.”  Father Clovis made this remark in response to the crisis in the Church and the role of Pope Francis in this crisis.  See here.

"The apostasy of the city of Rome from the vicar of Christ and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts very new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians of greatest repute. First Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Biegas, Suarrez, Bellarmine and Bosius that Rome shall apostatize from the Faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ and return to its ancient paganism. ...Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible; hidden in catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking places; for a time it shall be swept, as it were from the face of the earth. Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early Church.”- Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, The Present Crisis of the Holy See, 1861, London: Burns and Lambert, pp. 88-90)

Cardinal Manning delivered a series of lectures in 1861 under the title “The Present Crises of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy” in which Manning he foresaw a future crises in the Roman Catholic Church initiated by a false ecumenism and progressivist theology that many orthodox Catholics have loathed following the Second Vatican Council. Manning believed that this progressivist current would undermine the authority of the Church and ultimately result in a departure from the true faith by the nations together with the displacement of the true pope by a false prophet, thus ushering in the Antichrist and global apostasy. Manning also believed secret societies like the Freemasons were part of this conspiracy. “The secret societies have long ago undermined and honeycombed the Christian society of Europe, and are at this moment struggling onward towards Rome, the center of all Christian order in the world,”he wrote. But when he looked at the prophecy in Revelation 18 concerning the end-time destruction of Mystery Babylon, Manning saw it was the hand of God in judgment of worldwide apostasy emanating from Rome:
"We read in the Book Apocalypse, of the city of Rome, that she said in the pride of her heart, “I sit as a queen, and am no widow, and sorrow I shall not see. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day: death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be burned with fire, because God is strong who shall judge her.” Some of the greatest writers of the Church tell us that…the great City of Seven Hills…the city of Rome will probably become apostate…and that Rome will again be punished, for he will depart from it; and the judgment of God will fall…"

Manning explained how many of Catholicism’s greatest theologians agreed with this point of view:

"The apostasy of the city of Rome…and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts so new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians, of greatest repute. First, Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Viegas, Suarez, Bellarmine, and Bosius, that Rome shall apostatize from the faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ, and return to its ancient paganism. Malvenda’s words are:
'But Rome itself in the last times of the world will return to its ancient idolatry, power, and imperial greatness. It will cast out its Pontiff, altogether apostatize from the Christian faith, terribly persecute the Church, shed the blood of martyrs more cruelly than ever, and will recover its former state of abundant wealth, or even greater than it had under its first rulers.'
Lessius says: 'In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be destroyed, as we see openly from the thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse;' and again: 'The woman whom thou sawest is the great city, which hath kingdom over the kings of the earth, in which is signified Rome in its impiety, such as it was in the time of St. John, and shall be again at the end of the world.'
 And Bellarmine: 'In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be desolated and burnt, as we learn from the sixteenth verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Apocalypse.' On which words the Jesuit Erbermann comments as follows: 'We all confess with Bellarmine that the Roman people, a little before the end of the world, will return to paganism, and drive out the Roman Pontiff.'

 Viegas, on the eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse says: 'Rome, in the last age of the world, after it has apostatized from the faith, will attain great power and splendor of wealth, and its sway will be widely spread throughout the world, and flourish greatly. Living in luxury and the abundance of all things, it will worship idols, and be steeped in all kinds of superstition, and will pay honor to false gods. And because of the vast effusion of the blood of martyrs which was shed under the emperors, God will most severely and justly avenge them, and it shall be utterly destroyed, and burned by a most terrible and afflicting conflagration.'"


 It was Saint John Bosco who prophesied, "And to you, Rome, what will happen! Ungrateful Rome, effeminate Rome, proud Rome! You have reached such a height that you search no further. You admire nothing else in your Sovereign except luxury, forgetting that you and your glory stands upon Golgotha. Now he is old, defenseless, and despoiled; and yet at his word, the word of one who was in bondage, the whole world trembles.

Rome! To you I will come four times.

The first time, I shall strike your lands and the inhabitants thereof.

The second time, I shall bring the massacre and the slaughter even to your very walls. And will you not yet open your eyes?

I shall come a third time and I shall beat down to the ground your defenses and the defenders, and at the command of the Father, the reign of terror, of dreadful fear, and of desolation shall enter into your city.

But My wise men have now fled and My law is even now trampled underfoot. Therefore I will make a fourth visit. Woe to you if My law shall still be considered as empty words. There will be deceit and falsehood among both the learned and the ignorant. Your blood and that of your children will wash away your stains upon God's law. War, pestilence and famine are the rods to scourge men's pride and wickedness. O wealthy men, where is your glory now, your estates, your palaces? They are the rubble on the highways and byways.

And your priests, why have you not run to 'cry between the vestibule and the Altar,' begging God to end these scourges? Why have you not, with the shield of faith, gone upon the housetops, into the homes, along the highways and byways, into every accessible corner to carry the seed of My word? Know you that this is the terrible two-edged sword that cuts down My enemies and breaks the Anger of God and of men?"
In our own time, the germ ideas of a one-world religion are already being sowed. And this false humanitarian religion will burst into poisonous flower when enough hearts have grown cold and have abandoned the true religion. As Jane Le Royer explained in prophecy: "When the time of the Antichrist is near, a false religion will appear which will be opposed to the unity of God and His Church. This will cause the greatest schism the world has ever known."

Can you not see the emerging signs? How do we find the Church today? The Mystical Body of the Crucified One - the Holy Catholic Church - is climbing Calvary, carrying a heavy cross. She is experiencing the hour of abandonment and betrayal. Her body is being tormented by the scourges of sin which strike at it and by numerous sacrileges which open up deep wounds in it. A Catholic priest in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts openly calls her "evil" just as the Pharisees suggested Our Lord was evil and demon possessed (Matthew 11:18; 12: 24). And his parishioners applaud.

Indeed, Our Lady told Father Gobbi,"The hour of Calvary has arrived for the Church, called to offer herself in holocaust and to be immolated on the cross of her bloody martyrdom. The hour of Calvary has arrived for this poor humanity, which is already beginning to live the painful hours of its chastisement..' (Rome, May 1, 1994).

But too many are proud. Their eyes blinded by sin and egoism. Like the Pharisees before them, they are incapable of reading the signs of the times because their spiritual eyes are closed. They cannot hear the Spirit because their ears are closed. They cannot feel the promptings of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus because their hearts are closed. Such people cannot endure sound teaching but have itching ears and will continue to accumulate teachers who suit their own likings, teachers who will cater to their lusts by providing them with myths (2 Timothy 4: 3, 4).

And still so many of our shepherds remain silent like mute dogs. They have not begged God to end these scourges. They have not wept between the vestibule and the altar. They have not taken up the shield of faith to protect their flocks. Their judgment will be all the more severe, for God expects more from His ministers (Luke 12: 48).

Pray for Pope Benedict XVI and Holy Mother Church.

O man, how prompt to slavery!

The Masonic plan to corrupt the Church from within through the papacy is in full swing.  See here.


For a long time now, modernists have dreamt of  changing the Church from within through infiltration.  The ultimate goal of Freemasonry within the Church (ecclesiastical masonry) is to obtain a Pope favorable to masonic principles, a Pope who will preside over a revolution which will permit the man of iniquity to enter the Church's interior and to conquer the saints.

This is not religious paranoia.  This is not religious fiction.  Many popes have warned (and most notably Pope Leo XIII) about the designs of Freemasonry.  It was Pope Leo XIII who warned that, "Freemasonry is the permanent personification of the Revolution; it constitutes a sort of society in reverse whose aim is to exercise an occult overlordship upon society as we know it, and whose sole raison d'etre consists in waging war against God and His Church." (Encyclical Letter On the 25th year of Our Pontificate, March 19, 1902).

Freemasons believe that the Catholic Church must fall apart and dissolve and that a secular, humanitarian religion must - and will - take its place - Freemasonry.  In his Encyclical Letter Humanum Genus, Pope Leo XIII emphasizes that the ultimate aim of Freemasonry "is to uproot completely the whole religious and political order of the world, which has been brought into existence by Christianity, and to replace it by another in harmony with their way of thinking.  This will mean that the foundation and the laws of the new structure of society will be drawn from pure Naturalism."

In a letter dated April 3, 1844, a high-ranking mason known as Nubius commented to another highly-placed mason: "Now then, in order to ensure a pope in the required proportions, we must first of all prepare a generation worthy of the kingdom of which we dream...Cast aside the old and men of a mature age, go to the youth, and if possible, even to children....It is to the youth that we must go, it is the youth that we must lead, unperceived by them, under the flag of the secret societies...Once your reputation has been established....Such reputation will give your doctrine access to the young clergy and to convents.  In a few years, this clergy will naturally have invaded all functions; they will govern, administer, judge, form the Sovereign's council, be called to choose the Pontiff who must reign; and this Pontiff, like most of his contemporaries, will be more or less imbued with Italian and humanitarian principles that we will start placing in circulation.....Let the clergy move forward under your standard always believing they are advancing under the banner of the apostolic Keys.  Cast your net like Simon Bar Jonas; spread it to the bottom of sacristies, seminaries, and convents...we promise you a catch even more miraculous than his....You will have fished a revolution dressed in the Pope's triple crown and cape, carrying the cross and the flag, a revolution that will need only a small stimulus to set fire to the four corners of the earth." (Taken from Les infiltrations maconiques dans l'Eglise, by Father Emmanuel Barbier, p. 5).

This is the plan of ecclesiastical masonry - a corrupt pope who will lead his flock into the new kingdom of sin which will be presided over by the Son of Perdition, the very person of the Antichrist.

How close are we to such an evil scheme actually being fulfilled? Our Lady warned Father Stefano Gobbi that, "The hour of its great trial has above all come for the Church, because it will be shaken by the lack of faith, obscured by apostasy, wounded by betrayal, abandoned by its children, divided by schisms, possessed and dominated by Freemasonry, turned into fertile soil from which will spring up the wicked tree of the man of iniquity, the Antichrist, who will bring his kingdom into its interior."

Pope Benedict XVI has already warned that we are entering a profound period of testing.  Indeed we are.  Pray for the Church.  Now is the time of diabolical disorientation.

It was Tacitus who proclaimed, "O man, how prompt to slavery."  And waiting in the wings is a Lawless One who will rule over such men.  The Christian message will not be tolerated.  He will strive to stamp it out altogether.  He will seek to eradicate any expression of Christian thought or prayer.  He will outlaw the Holy Mass.  And then he will demand worship of himself.

"These comedians in chasubles..."

As I said in a previous post, "..masonic forces seek to subvert the Church from within and to create a 'new church' created in the image and likeness of man. The new humanitarian religion will result from a quiet revolution within the Church. This new religion will be anti-supernatural. And it will embrace the Socialistic New World Order and the Reign of Antichrist. This is the false church Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich saw in her visions."

In this false church within the True Church, the cancer within the Mystical Body of Christ, there is a loss of the sense of the sacred.  Which is why Fr. Miceli wrote that, "Much of the new liturgy has been drained of the numinous and the sacred.  The new forms are without splendor, flattened, undifferentiated.  Why was kneeling replaced by standing?  Jesus himself fell on his knees and on his face as he prayed to his heavenly Father.  Satan too knows the meaning of worship and man's need for it.  He tried to get Jesus to fall down and worship him.  Why has the liturgical year and the Mass been so unfortunately mutilated against the wishes of the faithful?  In fact, the faithful are now confused about the Mass, the feast of the saints, the holy seasons.  Why was the Gloria, that prayer of total consecration on God's Majesty and Goodness, restricted practically to Sundays alone, and only to those Sundays outside of Lent?  Moreover, is the faith really renewed and vivified by by obscuring our sense of community with the Christians of apostolic and ancient times?  The new liturgy no longer draws us into the true experience of reliving the Life of Christ.  We are deprived of this experience through the elimination of the hierarchy of feasts and the at random changing of the dates of famous feasts.  Then too, the new forms are the result of experimentation.  But one experiments with things, with objects that one wants to analyze.  Experimentation is the method of science.  The wretched idolatry and vulgarity of tinkering with sacred realities has, unfortunately, penetrated the Church and produced a mediocrity-ridden liturgy, a show for spectators that distracts from the holy, frustrates intimate communion with God and trivializes, where it does not suppress, sacred actions, symbols, music and words.  In reality, such diminished liturgies have renewed nothing.  Rather these innovations have emptied churches, dried up vocations to the priesthood and sisterhood, driven off converts and opened the doors wide to a flood of renegades.  Even though valid in its essence, such a new liturgy cannot inspire for it is colorless, artificial, banal, without the odor and flavor of sanctity.  A humanized and popularized, man-oriented liturgy will never produce saints.  Only a divinized, God-oriented liturgy can accomplish that miracle.  One suspects that many priests realize the banality of the new liturgy.  That is why they often become, during the Mass and other ceremonies, actors and entertainers.  They put on a show in order to gain the attention of the congregation.  These comedians in chasubles preach a utopian Christianity rather than the true Christianity.  Their treasure is man rather than God; their emphasis this-worldly rather than other-worldly; their goal progress rather than sanctity; their apostolate is immanent rather than transcendent; their means to their goal is the way of revolution rather than the way of the cross; they preach a secular Church instead of the Sacred Church founded by Christ; the essence of their morality is self-assertion rather than self-denial; the Christ they present to the congregation is the Humanist Christ rather than the God-Man crucified Christ...they genuflect before the world and stand before Christ...they are moved by resentment and envy instead of radiating the joy of Christ.."

These comedians in chasubles, these actors on a stage erected to celebrate the Cult of Man, prefer the tabernacle off to the side and the celebrant's chair in the center. The idea of a crucified Christ is repugnant to these propagandists for a man-centered religion.  And those who maintain an authentic devotion to the Mother of God and her Holy Rosary, those who fall to their knees in prayer, are considered "out-of-date" and "immature" in faith.

In the 1980s I had a "pastor," and I use this word loosely for this man was not a pastor of souls as was the Cure of Ars, who would denigrate a member of the congregation (a devout woman who prayed the Rosary every day) for kneeling to receive Holy Communion.  This devout woman, whom I greatly admire for her courage, is still praying her daily Rosary and adores the Eucharist.  She has led an exemplary life. The priest in question has been charged with molesting numerous altar boys and playing with their genitalia.

I pray the Holy Rosary before each and every Mass.  To that end, I always arrive roughly 45 minutes to an hour before Mass to pray the mysteries devoutly.  There is seldom a Sunday when someone isn't attempting to distract me from the august mysteries of the Holy Rosary.  Just a few days ago it was a Deacon who insisted upon disrupting my prayer.  Why is this?  St. Louis de Montfort explains in The Secret of the Rosary (Ninth Rose) that, "Even though God has set His seal of approval on the Holy Rosary by many miracles, and in spite of the Papal Bulls that have been written approving it, there are only too many people who are against the Holy Rosary today. These freethinkers and those who scorn religion either condemn the Rosary or try to turn others away from it.


It is easy to see that they have absorbed the poison of hell and that they are inspired by the devil - for nobody can condemn devotion to the Holy Rosary without condemning all that is most holy in the Catholic Faith, such as the Lord's Prayer, the Angelic Salutation and the mysteries of the life, death, and glory of Jesus Christ and of His Holy Mother.

These freethinkers who cannot bear others to say the Rosary often fall into a really heretical state of mind without even realizing it and some to hate the Rosary and its holy mysteries.

To have a loathing for confraternities is to fall away from God and true piety, for Our Lord Himself has told us that He is always in the midst of those who are gathered together in His name. No good Catholic should forget the many great indulgences which Holy Mother Church has granted to Confraternities. Finally, to dissuade others from joining the Rosary Confraternity is to be an enemy of souls because the Rosary is a sure means of curing oneself of sin and of embracing a Christian Life.

Saint Bonaventure said (in his Psalter) that whoever neglected Our Lady would perish in his sins and would be damned: "He who neglects her will die in his sins." If such is the penalty for neglecting her, what must be the punishment in store for those who actually turn others away from their devotions!"

Continue to pray the Holy Rosary.  Continue to focus on the Lord Jesus while ignoring those clerics who have become actors on a stage.  The Church will be renewed.  If we refuse to do it, the Lord Jesus will continue to cleanse His Church through chastisement.

The masonic plan to subvert the Church from within according to Nubius...

I have said this hundreds of times before, masonic forces seek to subvert the Church from within and to create a "new church" created in the image and likeness of man.  The new humanitarian religion will result from a quiet revolution within the Church.  This new religion will be anti-supernatural.  And it will embrace the Socialistic New World Order and the Reign of Antichrist.  This is the false church Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich saw in her visions.

Father Emmanuel Barbier, a well-known anti-modernist and anti-masonic author, transcribed a document dated April 3, 1844, in which a high-ranking leader of Italian masonic forces called Nubius explains to another highly-placed mason how the quiet revolution will work.  He writes, "Now then, in order to ensure a pope in the required proportions, we must first of all prepare a generation worthy of the kingdom of which we dream...

Cast aside the old men and men of a mature age; go to the youth, and if possible, even to children...It is to the youth that we must go, it is the youth that we must lead, unperceived by them, under the flag of the secret societies.  In order to advance with prudent steps on this dangerous but sure way, two things are absolutely necessary.  You must have the simplicity of doves and the prudence of the serpent...Never pronounce before them a word of impiety or impurity: Maxima debetur puero reverentia...Once your reputation has been established in colleges, high schools, universities, and seminaries, once you have gained the confidence of professors and students, make sure that especially those who enter the ranks of the clergy be pleased with your meetings...

Such reputation will give your doctrine access to the young clergy and to convents.  In a few years, this clergy will naturally have invaded all functions: they will govern, administer, judge, from the Sovereign's council, be called to choose the Pontiff who must reign; and this Pontiff, like most of his contemporaries, will be more or less imbued with Italian and humanitarian principles that we will start placing in circulation...Let the clergy move forward under your standard always believing they are advancing under the banner of the apostolic Keys.  Cast your net like Simon Bar Jonas; spread it to the bottom of sacristies, seminaries, and convents, rather than casting it to the bottom of the sea; if you do not precipitate anything, we promise you a catch even more miraculous than his...

You will have fished a revolution dressed in the Pope's triple crown and cape, carrying the cross and the flag, a revolution that will need only a small stimulus to set fire to the four corners of the earth." (Nubius, Secret Instructions on the Conquest of the Church, excerpted from Les infiltrations maconiques dans l'Eglise, Paris/Brussels: Desclee de Brouwer, 1901, p. 5).


Meditation: John 5:43.