8.36. Pope Leo XIV was elected by 88 of 133 cardinals in prayer. I believe the Holy Spirit guides the Church—let's trust God’s will and remain open to His work.
I truly appreciate your prayers and your desire for unity — and I want to emphasize that I also long for the unity of the Church. But unity must be grounded in truth, not simply appearances or emotions.
Please know that I am fully Catholic. I believe with all my heart in the papacy as instituted by Christ. I believe that the Church is indefectible and that the Holy Ghost protects her from teaching error. That’s precisely why I can’t accept Leo XIV — or any of the Vatican II claimants — as true popes.
The problem isn’t personal. The problem is doctrinal.
Since Vatican II, a new religion has emerged — one that keeps the outward appearance of the Catholic Church (the buildings, titles, and symbols), but has abandoned the true Catholic faith internally. It's very similar to what happened in the Protestant Revolt — except worse, because instead of leaving, this new modernist sect stayed inside and occupied the Catholic structures, creating a counterfeit church that seems Catholic, but teaches errors previously condemned.
For example:
Religious liberty, as promoted in Dignitatis Humanae, was solemnly condemned by Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII as a grave error.
Ecumenism, which teaches that all religions are partial reflections of truth and should be respected as such, directly opposes the dogma that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church.
The claim that all faiths lead to God — found in documents like Nostra Aetate — was condemned repeatedly by pre-Vatican II popes, who warned against exactly this kind of indifferentism.
This new "church" speaks the language of Catholicism but empties it of its meaning. It presents a Christ without the Cross, a Church without dogma, and a gospel of man rather than of God. It is not the spotless Bride of Christ — it is a counterfeit, as painful as that is to admit.
Leo XIV was ordained in 1982 under the radically revised 1968 rite — a rite so deficient in form and intention that it very likely does not confer valid orders. If he's not even a priest, how can he be the Vicar of Christ?
You said the cardinals were "divinely inspired" and that we must trust the Holy Spirit — but inspiration is not a guarantee of truth, especially when those cardinals themselves were appointed by men who reject traditional Catholic doctrine. The Holy Spirit never contradicts Himself. He cannot inspire a conclave to elect someone who will promote heresies already condemned.
This is not rebellion. I’m not “rejecting the pope” in the Protestant sense. I’m simply recognizing that a heretic cannot be pope — a truth taught by great saints and doctors of the Church, like St. Robert Bellarmine and Pope Paul IV. I’m not leaving the Church. I’m staying with it — with the true Catholic Church, the one that existed before this rupture in the 1960s.
I know this is hard to accept — it was hard for me too. But we are in the midst of a long-prophesied crisis of faith. The true Church still exists, though eclipsed — like Our Lady warned at Fatima and La Salette. I remain faithful to her, not because of my will, but because Christ promised that His Church can never change.
Let us both pray for the grace to see clearly and to love the truth more than comfort, and the Cross more than approval.
I remain in Christ, faithful to the same Catholic Church that all the (pre-Vatican II) Saints belonged to.