Leo’s Sacrilege at St. Peter’s

While Tradition is Sidelined, Sodomy is Celebrated

No More Benefit of the Doubt

The mask has slipped. For years, Catholic conservatives pleaded for “prudence,” urging us to give the papal revolutionaries the benefit of the doubt. Now there is no doubt left. This September, Leo XIV gave his blessing not to the 8,000-strong Latin Mass pilgrims who packed Rome with prayer, but to a handful of rainbow activists led by the ever-present Fr. James Martin.

As the pilgrims of Tradition were shunted to the margins, the Vatican rolled out the red carpet for Sister Lucy Caram, who has defended abortion and mocked the Holy Family, and for Martin, whose “bridge-building” means lowering the drawbridge for Gomorrah. This is apostasy dressed in the language of compassion.

The Porn Curator of St. Peter’s Academy

If you thought the Academy for Life was corrupted under Francis, wait until you meet the new head of the Vatican’s Academy of Fine Arts: Cristiana Perrella.

Her résumé is a parade of degeneracy. Exhibits celebrating nightclub culture as the beating heart of “queer identity.” Pornographic cinema posters from Italy’s red-light boom. Photographs of naked men urinating on other men, with plastic bags over their heads, described by Perrella as “poetic, elegant, and melancholic.”

This is who Leo XIV has chosen to “promote and preserve Catholic tradition in the arts.” The 16th-century founders of the Academy must be rolling in their tombs, watching their institution turned into a showcase for sodomy and sadomasochism.

The Dicastery for Culture and Education, steered by Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, made sure Perrella’s star kept rising. Once again, the same circle of “LGBT-friendly” prelates pushes their protégés into places once meant to guard the sacred.

The Abomination in the Gesù

September 6th, Rome’s Church of the Gesù, the mother church of the Jesuits, where St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Robert Bellarmine lie buried, hosted a spectacle unthinkable even a decade ago.

Bishop Francesco Savino, vice president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, presided over a Mass for an international LGBT pilgrimage. More than 1,000 people attended, waving rainbow flags and rainbow crosses. Religious sisters and brothers fanned themselves with rainbow-colored fans. The recessional ended in applause and embraces.

And there, in the sanctuary above the tomb of St. Robert Bellarmine, the great defender of the papacy against Protestant heresy, a rainbow cross was lifted high as if it were the new sign of salvation.

Savino’s homily preached “living truth over dead truth.” In other words, apostolic doctrine is lifeless dogma, while sodomy celebrated in public liturgies is “living truth.” He dared to pit “Peter and the Apostolic College” against what the Apostolic College has always taught, as though St. Paul’s condemnations of impurity now mean the opposite.

What would Ignatius say, whose Spiritual Exercises taught mortification of the senses to conquer sin? What would Bellarmine say, who bled for the defense of Catholic doctrine? Their silence in the grave thunders louder than Savino’s homily.

The Holy Door Profaned

The Associated Press captured the same scandal in glowing tones: “Over 1,000 LGBTQ+ Catholics and their families participated in a Holy Year pilgrimage to Rome, celebrating a new level of acceptance in the Catholic Church after long feeling shunned, and crediting Pope Francis with the change.”

Pilgrims marched through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica as if their defiance of the moral law were now sacramental. One participant, flanked by his “husband,” said the experience felt “epic, like I was able to touch the hand of God.” Another declared, “Pope Francis influenced me to return back to church. Pope Leo only strengthened my faith.”

The pilgrimage was not underground or marginal. It was listed in the Vatican’s official calendar of events for the Holy Year. Trans activists, American groups like DignityUSA and Outreach, Brazilian networks, even an Italian group of trans women, all took part in a procession that climaxed in rainbow crosses, rainbow chants, and rainbow tears of joy.

Twenty-five years ago, DignityUSA was detained in Rome as a threat to the Holy Year. Today, they are celebrated as honored pilgrims, openly thanked for their “gifts to the church.” What changed? Not doctrine, which still calls these acts intrinsically disordered. What changed was the will to enforce doctrine. What changed was Rome.

St. Peter’s Profaned

As part of the same LGBT pilgrimage, rainbow activists paraded into St. Peter’s Basilica itself. Some wore shirts declaring “F*ck the rules.” Others brandished rainbow accessories, making a mockery of the Holy Door and the basilica consecrated by the blood of martyrs.

The very space where Peter was crucified upside down for refusing to deny Christ is now used to flaunt sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. And still Rome smiles. Still Rome applauds.

The Pattern and the Signs

The pattern is clear. Traditional Catholics are marginalized, their Masses restricted, their pilgrimages sidelined. Meanwhile, the revolutionaries are not only tolerated but enthroned in the very heart of the Church.

And yet, God has not abandoned His flock. Bishop Earl Fernandes of Columbus has spoken firmly for tradition. And in Naples, the blood of St. Januarius flowed once more.

The saints remain faithful. The martyrs still intercede. Miracles still erupt from the veins of Heaven’s defenders. Rome may have chosen rainbows over redemption, but Heaven still answers with blood.