“Habemus Papam!”

What should we think about Pope Leo XIV? This is a key question that has no doubt been on your minds since May 8, the date of Cardinal Prevost’s accession to the sovereign pontificate. The Pope is the Vicar of Christ Who has entrusted His Church to him so that he may govern her in His name, and this almost superhuman quality forbids a priori anyone from having to give an opinion on the Holy Father. He is the Pope, and that should be the only answer a faithful Catholic is worthy of giving. In normal times, the person of the Holy Father is not a subject for discussion. No one is entitled to give an opinion on him which, in any case, the Holy Spirit will not heed.

But we are in troubled times.

The Pope is not a god. He may fall into error in certain circumstances. Father Georges de Nantes enjoyed a very special grace to understand in all its depth and extent the formidable error committed at the Second Vatican Council, that of positing a possible and permanent reform of the Church. It was our Father’s superhuman knowledge and understanding of this error that precluded him from becoming complicit in it by remaining silent. He made it his duty to disavow error in order to preach the Truth of the Catholic Faith in all its fullness; he never stopped speaking to enlighten souls by explaining the errors of the false prophets, even in the person of the Pope, and he was never censured for what he said. And we do not want it to be through our fault.

Pope Leo XIV was born in the United States in 1955. He entered the minor seminary of the Order of Saint Augustine in Chicago at the age of fourteen and, once a religious, embarked on an incredible career that led him to hold increasingly important positions until he was elected Provincial, then Superior General of his Order, before being appointed a bishop in Peru and finally sent to Rome as Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops. We can say without the slightest hesitation that he received all his intellectual and spiritual training from a ‘reformed’ Church, and moreover within an American Catholic society that is by definition extremely liberal! Barring a miracle of grace, which we cannot presume, it is impossible for Pope Leo XIV not to have received and accepted from his Order, from his superiors, from the Church to which he owes everything, all the defects of a ‘reformed’ religion that our Father never ceased to denounce in order to preserve the purity of the dogma of the faith.

Unfortunately, the very first official interventions of Pope Leo XIV, with a few exceptions, only confirmed this initial feeling.

On May 16, 2025, the Holy Father gave a speech to the members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See in which, at first sight, all religions and interreligious dialogue are called upon to play a role in peaceful international relations. “In this regard, I believe that religions and interreligious dialogue can make a fundamental contribution to fostering a climate of peace. This naturally requires full respect for religious freedom in every country, since religious experience is an essential dimension of the human person. Without it, it is difficult, if not impossible, to bring about the purification of the heart necessary for building peaceful relationships.”

Three days later, on May 19, Leo XIV called together all the representatives of other faiths and religions who had come the day before to attend his inaugural Mass. He introduced his remarks with what he considered to be the strong point of Pope Francis’ pontificate, namely universal fraternity, whereas we have the lucidity to consider it to be one of the worst, one of the most insulting to Our Lord: “In this regard the Holy Spirit really ‘urged’ him,” declared Leo XIV, “to advance with great strides the initiatives already undertaken by previous Pontiffs, especially since Saint John XXIII. The Pope of ‘Fratelli Tutti’ promoted both the ecumenical path and interreligious dialogue. He did so above all by cultivating interpersonal relations, in such a way that, without taking anything away from ecclesial bonds, the human trait of the encounter was always valued. May God help us to treasure his witness!”

Again a few days later, at the general audience on May 28, Leo XIV presented the parable of the Good Samaritan as a lesson on compassion, as a lesson in humanity “before being a religious matter”. Just as Pope Francis had done in his encyclical Fratelli tutti, he dismembers the prestigious Catholic brotherly love, severing it from its Source – Jesus Christ, His Sacred Heart and the Cross. It is diverted from its end: the conversion and salvation of poor sinners through the universal mediation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It has been transformed into a universal secular and Masonic fraternity, at the service of which the Church, only seriously mentioned at the very end of the document, should be confined.

Does the Holy Father intend to produce a document on the social doctrine of the Church? This was implied by the name he chose. On May 17, 2025, before the members of the Centesimus annus pro pontifice foundation, he declared that “the Church’s social doctrine is called to provide insights that facilitate dialogue between science and conscience, and thus make an essential contribution to better understanding, hope and peace.” But on what foundations? “On fundamental moral principles such as the dignity of the person, the common good, solidarity, freedom of conscience, among many other fundamental principles”.

The most damning of these was undoubtedly this declaration of adherence “to the path that the universal Church has now followed for decades in the wake of the Second Vatican Council” made on May 10, 2025 in the presence of the entire College of Cardinals. Leo XIV referred to the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium in general and to the “synodal” reform of the Church in particular, based on principles that we believe to be heretical.

On the face of it, all this is very damning. We have detected no sign of a clear break in the succession between Pope Francis and Leo XIV. Admittedly, they have very different temperaments, but it has to be said that Father Prevost, appointed to head the diocese of Chiclayo, in northern Peru, in 2014, seems to have corresponded perfectly to what Pope Francis considered the ideal bishop, to the point that he entrusted him with the formidable task of selecting episcopal candidates for the universal Church.

In fact, it is premature today to pass any real judgement on Pope Leo XIV. We must wait until the Holy Father produces a major inaugural text. This is what our Father did for Paul VI with his encyclical Ecclesiam suam (August 6, 1964) and John Paul II with Redemptor Hominis (March 4, 1979). The Holy Father will certainly produce such a text in which he will endeavour to set out what he wants to do for the service of the Church. Then it will be possible to give a cautious opinion on his thinking. In any case, it is very clear that he seems to have already given a great deal of thought to the question of the social doctrine of the Church. Is the American society that enjoys incredible and undeniable material success, in which the good God is totally absent, the object of his reflections?

A salient feature of Pope Leo XIV’s spirituality is his love of the Church and his love of his religious order, to which he is very faithful. This seems to be the grace of his religious consecration sealed by the three vows of obedience, chastity and poverty. In an interview published by the Order of Saint Augustine in September 2023, when he was created a cardinal by Pope Francis, he himself explained: “When I think of Saint Augustine and his vision and understanding of what it means to belong to the Church, one of the first things that comes to mind is what he says about the fact that you cannot call yourself a disciple of Christ without being part of the Church. Christ is part of the Church. He is her head.

“So those who think they can follow Christ ‘in their own way’ without being part of the body are unfortunately having a distorted experience of what is really authentic. The teachings of Saint Augustine touch every aspect of life and help us to live in communion. Unity and communion are essential charisms in the life of the Order and are fundamental to understanding what the Church is and what it means to belong to her”. These words are a great comfort to us. Jesus loves the Church, the Blessed Virgin loves the Church and Leo XIV loves the Church, so we can only hope that he is well aware of her boundaries.

The Church today still holds intact the sacred deposit of Faith, because all this alleged human ‘tradition’ produced by men of the Church since the Second Vatican Council, incredible though it may seem to assert such a thing, has no guarantee of infallibility and remains infallibly provisional, fallible and reformable. Thus, in spite of the defects of this conciliar reform which hampers Leo XIV’s mind, we have the firm hope that he is the object of the predilections of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Who never cease to assist him with Their counsel. Hence the divine and unexpected surprise of his message dated May 28, addressed to the bishops of France, urging them to solemnise the centenary of the canonisation of Saint John Eudes, Saint John Mary Vianney and Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus with a supernatural impetus for evangelisation: “our three Saints are undoubtedly masters whose life and doctrine I invite you to constantly make known and appreciated by the People of God. Was Saint John Eudes not the first to celebrate the liturgical worship of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary? Was Saint John Mary Vianney not the priest who gave himself passionately to his ministry and who said: “The priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus”? and finally, was Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face not the great Doctor of scientia amoris that our world needs, she who “breathed” the Name of Jesus at every moment of her life, with spontaneity and freshness, and who taught the little ones an “easy” way to access it?”

In Peru, as in the whole of Latin America, popular devotions, manifestations of the sensus fidei but in the traditional sense of the term, are of great importance in the transmission of the faith, in fidelity to the Church in the face of the attacks of the Protestant sects which, although very enterprising, cannot offer, in their proselytism, the cult of the saints and above all devotion to the Blessed Virgin, victorious over all heresies. This is a decisive experience, well understood by Bishop Prevost during all these years spent in Peru, where even today 80% of the population remains Catholic. This led him to pronounce, on January 6, 2019, in the cathedral of Chiclayo in the midst of all his people, a magnificent and solemn “act of repentance, forgiveness and reparation to God” and to renew “the consecration of Peru to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, united to the dioceses, parishes, priests, deacons, seminarians, religious men and women and laity”. This was a decisive experience for Bishop Prévost on his return to Rome and no doubt explains the concern he expressed to the Cardinals in his address on May 10 2025: “Attention to the sensus fidei (cf. nos 119-120), especially in its most authentic and inclusive forms, such as popular piety (cf. no. 123)”.

It is our hope that Pope Leo XIV will one day recommend, for the universal Church, the devotion of reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, well adapted to all nations, whether French, Peruvian or even American. It is truly the salvation of nations, of souls and of the Church with this Church devotion in which lay people, religious and priests each play their part in sacrificing themselves for poor sinners and preventing them from falling into Hell, and in praying to and consoling the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The whole economy of salvation and the mystery of the Redemption, today totally neglected by the hierarchy, would suddenly be re-established in the Church by this simple devotion. And it would be an admirable act of both authority and humility on the part of the Holy Father to submit his magisterium to a will of God, expressed in person by the Blessed Virgin and transmitted by a nun. If only Pope Leo XIV’s heart would allow itself to be moved.

In the meantime, for us, it will be difficult, it will be very difficult with this work of Counter-Reformation that we must pursue in fidelity to the vocation that our Father bequeathed to us, while awaiting the time ordained for the renaissance of the Church.

To work for the Counter-Reformation is first and foremost to pray for the Holy Father. We need to pray much for the Holy Father. Our Lady of Fatima and the Church urge us to do so.

The work of Counter-Reformation also entails guarding against a covert schism consisting of no longer being interested, no longer paying the slightest attention to what the Holy Father says or writes under the pretext that he is totally in error. It also consists of taking stands straightaway that are too general, too “cut-and-dried”. The Holy Father will write errors. This, alas, is all too certain, especially with this synodal reform that is going to be applied in all dioceses. When such is the case, we will have to point them out, obviously interpreting his words and writings accurately and in accordance with his intentions. To make such criticism does not derogate from the respect due to his authority, quite the contrary. Such criticism, however, has to be presented with a concern to serve the Church and not to rend her. Furthermore, it must always be supported by a demonstration that lies very exactly and logically within the scope of what our Father himself wrote. His work is immense; he himself drew up the list of the twelve major heresies that have plagued the teachings of Churchmen since the Second Vatican Council. We need to refer to it constantly to make sure that we ourselves do not go astray. This obliges us to study hard and to work towards the reconciliation that our Father always had in mind.

And until “the return of the Lord, that will not be long in coming” (Article 1 of the Provisional Rule of the Little Brothers of the Sacred Heart of Villemaur), under the vigilance of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, “we will faithfully await for the Church to recover herself after this period of frenzy and illusion, as she was when she came to us from the depths of time. We will wait, without fomenting sedition or disorderly movements, standing steadfast in our faith.” And we will make our own the words written by our Father to Bishop Le Couëdic on December 19, 1965: “We are not the faith of the Church, but we are her Fidelity.” (Letter to My Friends no. 220, January 6, 1966, p. 9) So be it!

Brother Bruno of Jesus-Marie