Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: Address at Civitas in Pontmain, France, on July 29, 2023.
Do not believe that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come separate the son from his father, the daughter from her mother, the daughter‐in‐law against her mother‐in‐law: and one’s enemies will be those of his own household. – Mt 10: 34‐36
Allow me, dear friends, to extend my greetings to all the organizers of this new edition of your Université d’Été, in particular to the president of Civitas, Alain Escada; to the speakers, whose talks are clarifying the various aspects of the current civil and ecclesial crisis; and to the participants, who by their presence confirm the determination of good Catholics to fight the bonum certamen under the banners of Christ the King. These meetings of doctrinal, cultural, and social formation are the sign of an awakening of consciences and hearts: Quia hora est iam nos de somno surgere. Nunc enim propior est nostra salus, quam cum credidimus. It is now the hour to wake from sleep, for our salvation is closer than when we first accepted the faith (Rom 13:11).
The consistency of the good As there is a consistency of good, so there is also a consistency of evil. The good, a substantial attribute of God, also has its own consistency in what participates in it: the love of the mother who prepares the snack for her children; the solicitude of the owner of the company towards his employees; the preparation of lessons by the professor; the dedication of the doctor to patients; the availability of the priest in the care of the souls entrusted to him – all of these are consistent with the good. Even ironing a shirt, taking care of the garden, organizing a conference, and celebrating an anniversary with loved ones becomes consistent with what we are, because we behave according to what we are: Agere sequitur esse. Those who live in the good and therefore in the true; those who “breathe” the good – from the celebrations they attend in church to interactions with their loved ones and education in the family – do not need to want to do the good, because this comes spontaneously in a good soul. And this is exactly what grace accomplishes in us, in making actions that are in themselves morally neutral – or only humanly good – into virtuous works, where habit in the good becomes virtue and everything permeates our life; and in adding to actions that are good in the natural order that quid which elevates them in the supernatural order by directing them to a higher end. On the other hand, when you love the Lord, what more beautiful and fulfilling thing can you wish for than to do His will? And what could be more motivating, in our relationships our neighbors, than to make known to them that True Holy One who is also supremely Good and Just? Bonum diffusivum sui, according to the scholastic adage: Good is in itself expansive, prone to spread. This is demonstrated to us by the work of the Creator, who from nothing brings into existence all things, both visible and invisible. This is confirmed to us by the work of the Redeemer, who draws the rebellious man in Adam out of the abyss of offense to the divine majesty through the sacrifice of the Man‐God.
The consistency of evil But as there is a consistency in good, so also there is a consistency in evil; and those actions that we apparently judge not particularly serious – if we do not contextualize them – turn out to be wheels of a gear, perhaps marginal and small, but which allow it to function, and without which something would jam. That is why evil – which ontologically is a non‐being, an absence of Good – tries to creep into our souls in small steps, obtaining progressive failures, making sure that it does not arouse in us any concern or any remorse; and then grows and expands like a cancer. And where good brings more good, so evil calls forth more evil, getting us used to it, and to all that it attracts. The infernal plans of the globalist elite – which we have seen to be inherently evil – are also consistent with each other, because they are moved by the adversary’s hatred of Christ. Bill Gates’ project to obscure the sun and vaccinate the world’s population; Soros’ plan to invade Western countries by hordes of Muslims and undermine the natural family by financing the woke and LGBT movements; Klaus Schwab’s plan to force us to eat insects or confine ourselves to 15‐minute “smart cities”; Harari’s plan to erase the idea of a transcendent God and compose a “politically correct” Bible; the plan of the deep state to centralize control of citizens by means of digital ID, electronic money and the manipulation of the vote; Bergoglio’s plan to transform the Church into an agency of the U.N. and the World Economic Forum – none of these are completely separate plans carried out autonomously and without any relationship between them. In all that has happened in recent decades in a more underground form – and more recently in an obvious way – we can see a mens, an intelligence capable of organizing in a way that appears both infallible and unstoppable. Because we have to admit it: whoever built this infernal machine, in which all the gears seem to fit together perfectly, demonstrates a superior, angelic, and indeed, a satanic intelligence.
The apparent victory of the wicked Our observation of the organizational efficiency of the wicked should not frighten us, nor make us desist from fighting against their plans. Indeed, I believe that it is precisely this “perfection” in the enemy camp that will end up constituting its own condemnation: Simul stabunt, simul cadent, says the Latin adage – they will either stand or fall together. And it will be exactly so, because the triumph of evil is a fiction, a simulation, merely the staging of a scene, a scene that is based – like everything that comes from Satan – on appearance and lies. Let’s go back for a moment to Easter of the year A.D. 33. Let us place ourselves among those in Jerusalem who witnessed Jesus’ Crucifixion, after seeing Him perform miracles and healings. Even on Golgotha, in the absence of the apostles, Lucifer’s staging should have ratified the defeat of the Messiah, the dispersion of His disciples, the consignment of His teaching to oblivion, and the disavowal of His Divinity. But precisely on the Cross, the instrument of death and infamy, the fate of humanity has been reversed by the one who by the death of the body restored the life of the soul, and who, allowing Himself to be nailed to that wood, nailed hell to it. O mors, ero mors tua. Our nature, wounded by original sin, finds it difficult to accept the understanding that Christ’s victory is accomplished according to the logic of charity rather than the logic of hatred, and that His victory is all the more inexorable and definitive the more that we His children allow greater room for God to act, and place less trust in human means.
Satan the illusionist Let us not, therefore, judge the apparent “happy living of those who are evil” of Psalm 36 as a sign of inevitable defeat: this impressive deployment of forces, this scenography that seems so realistic, this impressive choreography, all constitutes the only resource from which the great liar can draw – illusion – and the only way to induce us to believe that he is powerful and invincible. He is a great magician, this is certain: but as such he can amaze us as an illusionist, deceive us with his tricks, which, once they are off the stage and seen in the light of day reveal their pathetic inconsistency. The trick of pulling a rabbit out of a hat or the spectacle of a woman sawed in two only work as long as the audience remains at a distance, letting itself be deceived by the dim lighting and theatrical gestures of the magician – and so it is also with the mantras of respect for the environment, the health of citizens, and universal brotherhood. On the other hand, who among the spectators at a “magic” show or someone who lingers on the subway to watch a performer play the game of the three little cups would think that the “tricks” are real? Who would give credit to a Doctor Dulcamara who proposes, as in Donizetti’s work, a drug that is “a cure for toothaches, an admirable liquor, and a powerful destroyer of mice and bedbugs?” (Felice Romani, L’elisir d’amore, scene V, Dulcamara). Fiction – or, more precisely, a fraudulent sale, because that is what it is – is the mark of Satan’s trade. Comprate il mio specifico, per poco ve lo do – Buy my item; I’ll give it you for a little money. This trickster dealer – and along with him all his servants, who are no less busy selling their concoctions – reminds us of certain characters who until some time ago, in the parking lots of the motorway restaurants, offered the unwary a video recorder for a few euros, which then turned out to be a casing weighed down by a brick; or those who, in exchange for a sum for the processing of the notarization, promise in an email to give the reader the inheritance of an African millionaire who has just passed away. But if we all know perfectly well that behind these high‐sounding promises there is only a fraud against us, why are there still those who believe in them? Wasn’t the efficacy of the experimental mRNA serum mass inoculation equally patently false? Isn’t the narrative about the energy crisis, achieved by imposing sanctions on Europe’s largest exporter of natural gas equally ridiculous? Is not environmental fraud grotesquely unfounded? Yet, looking around, it seems that many, many people are more than willing to believe the lies of these Dulcamaras, these fairground hucksters who from the World Economic Forum or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the European Union or the World Health Organization, extol the virtues of their miraculous filters: universal income, abolition of poverty, the defeat of disease, and global peace. Only to discover that we must pay that universal income by going into debt and giving up private property, that their “abolition of poverty” leads to the misery of individuals and nations, that Big Pharma wants us to be chronically in need of medical care, and that the peace of the New World Order means perpetual war.
How was this possible? Many in recent years have asked: How was it possible that such a large part of humanity could have consented to all this? If we look back – going back to the 1980s, for example, before high finance decided to attack European nations with the privatization of state assets and with the definitive destruction of society and the family, which had already begun well before – it seems almost impossible that in a short time the enemy could have taken such impressive steps without arousing significant reactions and resistance. And if we listen to the words of those whom Roncalli called prophets of doom, who from the first sessions of Vatican II announced the apostasy to which it would lead, it seems unthinkable that their authoritative alarms could have been ignored and indeed that those who sounded them deserved to be condemned and ostracized by the supreme pastors. And here we return to fraud, to the adulteration of faith, of morals, of the liturgy, to the culpable deception of those who, constituted in authority, reveal themselves as enemies of those whom they should instead protect, and friends of those whom they ought to oppose or convert. The chimera of a brotherhood devoid of the common fatherhood of God is exposed as fraud; the actuosa participatio that has destroyed public worship by Protestantizing it is fraud; the shared priesthood of the faithful is a fraud, fraudulently insinuated at the council to weaken the hierarchical priesthood; the alleged democratization of the Church is fraud: Her Divine Founder intended Her to be monarchical, something no human authority can ever change; ecumenism is also a fraud, by which the divine majesty is humiliated at the level ofprostitution, as Scripture eloquently calls false religions. All the gods of the pagans are demons (Ps 96:5), and the sacrifices of the pagans are made to demons and not to God (1 Cor 10:20).
The correct question Let’s try to reformulate the question more clearly: “How was it possible that peoples who grew up within the heritage of Greek and Roman thought, in the light of Christian Revelation and the civilization it built, have decided to believe a blatantly false lie, namely that peace, concord, prosperity and happiness far from God is possible? Indeed, openly siding with an enemy whom Christ has already defeated and vanquished?” On closer inspection, we could have asked Adam and Eve this question as well: “You were in the earthly paradise; you met the Lord and spoke with Him; you had no sickness or death; you had an agile intelligence in learning and understanding; you were not subject to the lust of the flesh… you had everything, because you had God: well, how could you believe the serpent, who promised you that by disobeying the Lord’s command you would get what you already had? When it was evident that a creeping creature could never compete with the omnipotence of the Creator?” We find similar promises in the temptations to which Our Lord wanted to submit Himself in the desert: even in that case Satan offers to the master of all things the domains of the earth that already belong to Him, daring to ask Him in return for an idolatrous act of adoration as absurd as it is impossible. All this will be yours, if you fall prostrate and worship me (Lk 4:7). To these absurdities dictated by a mind ensnared and obstinate in the evil will, the Lord responds by quoting Scripture, without even deigning to argue their falsity. Because with the devil there can be no discussion: it is a waste of time. Satan must be cast out and kept away.
The sin of modern and contemporary man The colossal fraud that has been hatched against modern man is in no way different from the one that marked the fall of our first parents: believing the lie as such, subverting the divine order. We have not been deceived by a new lie, because the same deception has been evident from the beginning: to become sicut dii by eating the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or to pretend that surgical amputations can transform a man into a woman is substantially the same deception, as is offering our firstborn to Baal or killing them in the womb so as not to increase the carbon footprint. What Satan asks of us is not so much to perform a reprehensible action, but to make us do it by accepting as true that it does not have consequences: throw yourself from this tower, and your angels will come to support you. Get vaccinated with this experimental serum, and you will be making a gesture of love. Buy a child with surrogate pregnancy, and you will be a parent. Give up your freedom, and you will be free. Buy what you cannot afford and will put you in debt forever, and you will be happy. Shut up your elderly mother in a care facility, and she will be looked after by staff who will make her feel good. Let your children change their sex, and they will feel fulfilled. Let the state be secular and legislate without conditioning on the part of the Church, and harmony will reign among the faithful of all religions. None of these promises has even the semblance of truth: they are all lies, and as such the Prince of Lies wants us to accept them, because with them we accept the subversion of the divine order. That is why it is not a mistake, but a sin for which we are morally responsible.
The consequences of accepting the lie The concept of tolerance of evil – which in a society that is still Christian could somehow allow limited exceptions for a greater good – has been cancelled by civil society and the Church when, having lost the transcendent reference of the supreme good and the holy true – the Lord God – there is no longer any evil to tolerate, nor any property to be protected. Because the contemporary acceptance of both the truth and its negation – the lie – is a logical contradiction, even before it is a theological one. And this is the result of a process that I believe deserves to be analyzed very carefully.
Subversion by the authority The process to which I refer is that sequence of linked events that led the Catholic Church – and with it the nations in which Catholics are present and socially relevant – to personalize the relationship of the faithful with God where it had been public – through worship, the; liturgy – and to collectivize, so to speak, the relationship of the faithful with God, when it had been personal – conversion, prayer, meditation, ascetic and mystical experience. This inversion – borrowed from Protestants – ensures that the action of the Church’s public worship becomes a moment of self‐celebration of individuals and groups, and not the choral voice of the Bride; and at the same time it cancels the intimate union of the soul with her Lord – something attainable only in individual recollection – in order to exalt a “community,” to give it the consistency and attractiveness of “walking together,” even if the walking has no goal. Hieratic normality, which stands above time and space, yields to the temporariness of the experiment, to the unknown result, to pathetic creativity or sacrilegious improvisation. And this principle necessarily extends to civil life, where the witness of the Catholic is not only not necessary, but is indeed to be deplored; and where rulers, even if nominally Catholic, can legislate contrary to the Law of God and the Church. Because each of them is convinced that they can think in one way and act in the opposite way, while in reality they end up thinking on the basis of how they behave.
The role of the Deep Church As long as the hierarchy of the Church was faithful to its mandate, every persecution of anti‐Catholic and revolutionary governments was faced with honor and firmness, often even with the heroism of martyrdom, as in the Vendée, Spain, Mexico, the Soviet Union, and China. But as soon as Vatican II “reset” the hierarchy in a liberal and progressive sense, the hierarchy itself began promoting the secularization of society and the voluntary exclusion of the Church and religion from every sphere of civil life, going so far as to call for the revision of the Concordats. In the space of a few generations, the Christian civilization that was built thanks to the Catholic Church has been denied and forgotten, to the point of undermining the foundations of the social contract. It is not a question of statistics or numbers – which can also be documented – but of a radical change in society, of the principles that animate its citizens, of the hopes that grandparents and fathers have for future generations. I speak of the ability of our grandparents and parents to give up so many comforts in order to guarantee an education or a home for their children; I speak of the unhinging of the family by means of divorce, the deliberate creation of an economic crisis that makes it impossible to be autonomous, to be able to get married and educate children, to know that civil and religious authority are friends, and not hostile and mutually traitorous. This has also led generations to progressively but inexorably lose all that legacy of daily behavior, idioms, and habits that were the practical translation of a Catholic’s way of being; an abandonment that was encouraged by those who instilled in citizens and faithful a sense of shame for their past, for their history, traditions, and faith. It is disconcerting that this betrayal has been accomplished without any push back, after having been imposed from above both in the civil sphere and even, in an unprecedented way, in the ecclesial sphere. The secularity of the State, with which the nations shrug off the Lordship of Christ, constitutes the philosophical and theological basis on which the dissolution of Christian society could be theorized: without it divorce, abortion, euthanasia, sodomy, genetic manipulation, and transhumanism could never have been introduced into national legislation. And this has happened with the decisive support of the Deep Church since the 1960s, and more recently with the total enslavement of the Catholic hierarchy to the 2030 Agenda: as recognized by Msgr. Hector Aguer, former Archbishop of La Plata in Argentina.
The breakdown of the family All this has disappeared: no young member of a modern family has ever even heard of what life was once like. What was believed. What was hoped for. On the other hand, where are the grandparents, who once looked after their grandchildren and transmitted to them the memories of their ancestors, their wisdom, their simple religiosity? It was the grandparents who brought their grandchildren to pray before the image of Our Lady, taught them prayers, how to make an examination of conscience, how to pray a Requiem – “Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord” – when passing in front of a cemetery, the meaning of obedience to parents, of honesty, of keeping one’s word. Freemasonry has eliminated the elderly, turning them into commodities for the care facility business or exterminating them with the gene serum or forced ventilation. Their absence, for decades now, has been accompanied by a frontal attack against the woman, in her role as wife and mother: another element of cohesion of the family demolished, another bulwark torn down. The attack on the father figure – which used to be modeled on the authority and goodness of God the Father – was carried out through the corruption of morals, through pornography and promiscuity, and finally – having cut the umbilical cord that binds sexuality to the conjugal relationship for the purpose of procreation – the man, the husband, the father, the citizen was further destroyed by stigmatizing his “toxic masculinity,” effeminating him, castrating him in both his will and intellect; first by putting the means (the legitimate pleasure of the conjugal act) before the natural end (procreation), and then by substituting the means for the end. And children, separated from their working parents, find in television, on the internet, on social media, through apps, at school – indeed everywhere – a new oracle, an entity that relieves them of the responsibility of choosing and tells them what to think, what to want, and against whom to direct their frustrations. Et inimici domini domestici eius – and one’s enemies will be those of his own household (Mt 10:36). This entity – to which power would like to attribute almost divine characteristics, simulating the faculties of human intelligence – proposes a new environmentalist creed, exalts new “green” and “woke” virtues, points to new masters, and celebrates its liturgies. Because it stands as a religion and as such requires from the faithful their assent and their obedience to its ministers.
The state religion The system of indoctrination has been proven to be effective, and throughout history it has changed only a few details due to new times or technological progress, but it has always preserved its original scheme. And it is this scheme that must be made known, if we want to oppose it in all its different forms: health, energy, climatic, war, financial, and religious. A scheme that is undeniably inspired not only by the cancellation of the only true religion, but also by its replacement by the Luciferian religion of progress, humanity, brotherhood, and Mother Earth. Let us not be surprised, therefore, if the initial pretext with which Freemasonry undermined the authority of the Catholic Church in the name of religious freedom is falling apart, leaving the unchallenged dominion – also recognized at the institutional level – of the only religion compatible with the ideology of the New World Order: the cult of Satan. Who, after having concealed himself for two centuries behind Prometheus and the goddess reason, today comes out publicly into the open and claims for himself that exclusivity for which he had reproached the true Church and denied her, to the point of becoming the “state religion,” imposing its absurd dogmas and false beliefs on the international community, indoctrinating children and young people in schools, and obliging citizens to comply with its precepts. It seems that we are witnessing a global revival of paganism as under the reign of Julian the Apostate: a sort of revenge of the idolatrous cults on the religion of Christ, a revenge of darkness on the light. But this, as we know, is ontologically impossible.
Exsurge Domine In the face of the abdication of civil authority, there are many groups around the world that are organizing to oppose violations of fundamental freedoms, denounce them where possible, and coordinate aid to those who are ostracized because of their resistance. It is not a substitution of authority, nor a form of sedition: it is the necessary response – waiting for better times – of those who see their future, their goods, and their very life threatened. I considered it my duty as a pastor to take a similar initiative in the ecclesial sphere, founding the Exsurge Domine association to counter the inverted, reverse persecution that priests and traditional religious are suffering from the Bergoglian sect because of their fidelity to the Church of Christ, which is today infested with traitors, corrupt individuals and mercenaries. Exsurge Domine, under my personal patronage, wants to help clerics, religious, monks and nuns who have been deprived of their means of subsistence, expelled from their monasteries, and made the object of persecution from their superiors because they are linked to the apostolic liturgy or because they are not willing to deny the charism of their order. Parish priests who from one day to the next are removed from their parish, nuns on whom Rome imposes a progressive abbess, clerics reduced to the lay state without due process and with slanderous accusations: all these good souls, in love with the Lord and faithful to the Church, need material help, spiritual support, and legal and canonical assistance. I ask all of you to be promoters of this initiative, along with your acquaintances and friends, and to contribute according to your possibilities to the financing of our first project: the construction of a monastic village in the province of Viterbo to welcome the female Benedictine community of Pienza. Your support, along with your prayers, will enable these good priests and religious not to succumb to the Bergoglian purges and to be able to carry out the ministry or follow the charism that they have generously chosen following God’s will.
Conclusion I would like to conclude my speech by referring to this very place, Pontmain, where on January 17, 1871, the Virgin Mary appeared under the title of Our Lady of France. Shortly thereafter, on March 18, 1871, the Franco‐Prussian war would end with the defeat of Napoleon III and the riots of the following March would give rise to the Paris Commune. In that circumstance French Freemasonry (of socialist inspiration and tied to the centers of cultural power) organized a revolution which was however drowned in blood the following May following the intervention of the Versailles government on the orders of English Freemasonry (which was liberal and tied to institutional power). Today that rift between different Freemasonries has been overcome by a pactum sceleris that unites them – concilium fecerunt in unum (Ps 70:10) – with the common goal of completing the establishment of the New World Order, a necessary premise for the reign of Antichrist. The Blessed Virgin, in her apparition at Pontmain, said nothing. At her feet was an open scroll with gold letters that read: “Pray, my children. God will answer you very soon. My Son allows His Heart to be touched.” Well, even today these words of comfort remain true and valid: the Lord will respond very soon, because there are many good souls who, in this phase of apostasy and crisis of authority, are waking up from the torpor in which they have remained for far too long. The infernal fraud of globalism is doomed to total failure: on this point there can be not the slightest doubt. The Babel of the New Order will collapse under the weight of his lies, the unmistakable mark of the work of the devil. The task that falls to us is to proclaim the truth, to remind the world that salvation comes only from Christ, the Prince of Peace, whose Lordship over the nations and over the Church, which has been usurped by a rebellious and corrupt authority, must be restored.
May the Most Blessed Virgin, the Queen of Victories and the Mediatrix of all Graces, hasten the end of this tribulation, so that her words spoken at Fatima in 1917 may be fulfilled: “In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”