(LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Athanasius Schneider expressed “horror” at the Vatican’s endorsement of the “LGBTQ Jubilee pilgrimage,” rebuking priests who support homosexuality as “spiritual criminals” and “murderers of souls.”
“My reaction was a silent cry of horror, indignation, and sorrow,” the auxiliary of Astana, Kazakhstan, said regarding the Vatican’s approval of an LGBTQ-themed “pilgrimage” on its Jubilee website, in an interview with Diane Montagna, a journalist in Rome.
Montagna had highlighted the fact that photos captured an array of rainbow paraphernalia in St. Peter’s Basilica, as well homosexual male couple “brazenly holding hands there, one with a backpack saying F*** the Rules,” at the conclusion of their “pilgrimage.”
What took place there could be described as an “abomination of desolation standing in the holy place,” in the words of Christ (cf. Mt. 24:15), said Bishop Schneider.
He pointed out that the embrace of homosexuality by these “pilgrims” contradicted one of the very key meanings of the Jubilee Year and the Holy Door: “Leading man to conversion and penance,” as Pope John Paul II explained in the Bull of Indiction of the Holy Year 2000.
“There were no signs of repentance and renunciation of objectively grave homosexual sins … on the part of the organizers and participants in this pilgrimage,” noted Bishop Schneider. “To pass through the Holy Door and participate in the Jubilee without repentance, while promoting an ideology that openly rejects God’s Sixth Commandment, constitutes a kind of desecration of the Holy Door and a mockery of God and the gift of an indulgence.”
The bishop had strong words for the Vatican authorities who “collaborated de facto” in this open rejection of God’s commandment, expressed aptly in the “f*** the rules” message.
“They stood by and allowed God to be mocked and His commandments to be scornfully cast aside,” said Bishop Schneider.
When asked to compare it to the Pachamama scandal, he noted that while direct transgression of the First Commandment is even more grave, the endorsement of sodomy – a sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance – “amounts to a form of indirect idolatry.”
“Both events must be publicly repaired by the Pope himself. This is urgently needed, before it is too late, for God will not be mocked,” said the bishop.
Bishop Francesco Savino, vice president of the Italian Bishops Conference, welcomed “everyone” to receive Holy Communion at a Mass for the “pilgrims,” Montagna then pointed out. Bishop Schneider affirmed that assent to “all of the Church’s teaching” is a precondition for receiving Christ in the Eucharist, as was expressed by St. Paul: “Anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. (1 Cor. 11:29).
He added that this has been clearly stated by the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Anyone aware of having sinned mortally must not receive Communion without having received absolution in the sacrament of penance” (n. 1415).
Furthermore, it notes, “Sacred Scripture ‘presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, [and] tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. … Under no circumstances can they be approved’ (n. 2357).”
READ: Science agrees with the Catholic Church: Homosexuality is disordered
Thus, by granting these LGBTQ groups passage through the Holy Door and approving their “pilgrimage,” Vatican authorities in effect rejected “the very doctrine they are bound to uphold.”
Bishop Schneider said his message for participants in the LGBTQ “pilgrimage” is one of compassion, and he called for all Christians to show compassion towards not just those living homosexual lifestyles, but those who support its legitimization and “persist in it unrepentant and even proudly.”
“For when a person consciously rejects God’s explicit commandment prohibiting any sexual activity outside a valid marriage, he places himself in the gravest danger—that of losing eternal life and being eternally condemned to Hell,” said the prelate.
“True love for such persons consists in calling them, gently yet persistently, to genuine conversion to God’s revealed will,” he continued, adding that such people are “ultimately unhappy” even when they have suppressed their conscience.
“We must be filled with great zeal to save these souls, to free them from poisonous deceits. Those priests who confirm them in their homosexual activity or in a homosexual lifestyle are spiritual criminals, murderers of souls, and God will demand a strict account from them,” Bishop Schneider declared.
To those who defend Pope Leo XIV amid the Vatican’s approval of the LGBTQ scandalous “pilgrimage” because he did not receive a delegation from them or send them a message, Bishop Schneider said that “one cannot reasonably presume naivety on his part,” because it was “entirely foreseeable” that an LGBTQ activist group would take advantage of the Holy Door to promote their sinful lifestyle.
Furthermore, by meeting with Father James Martin, SJ, a heretical pro-LGBT priest, as well as pro-homosexual “marriage” Sister Lucia Caram, Pope Leo XIV has expressed that he is not opposed to their “heterodox and scandalous teaching and behavior—particularly since the Holy See offered no clarification afterward and did not correct Fr. James Martin’s triumphant messages circulated on social media,” noted Bishop Schneider.
He pointed out that in doing so, Pope Leo XIV broke with the precedent of all popes before Francis, who “neither received officially nor posed for photographs with those who, by word or deed, openly rejected the doctrinal and moral teaching of the Church.”
“There is a common saying that goes: ‘Qui tacet consentire videtur’—’He who is silent is taken to agree,’” Bishop Schneider added.
The prelate called upon all Catholics to “make a collective act of reparation for the outrage committed against the sanctity of God’s house and the holiness of His commandments,” and implored Pope Leo XIV to follow in the footsteps of Pope John Paul II, who Montagna noted had denounced the first “World Pride” event in Rome during the Great Jubilee of 2000.
“Should Pope Leo XIV make public acts of regret and even reparation, he will lose nothing; should he fail to do so, he will forfeit something before the eyes of God—and God alone matters,” said Bishop Schneider.
“May Our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV take to heart the following words of Our Lord which He once spoke through St. Bridget of Sweden to one of his predecessors (Pope Gregory XI)”:
Uproot, pluck out and destroy all the vices of your court! Separate yourself from the counsel of carnal-minded and worldly friends and follow humbly the spiritual counsel of My friends. Get up like a man and clothe yourself confidently in strength! Start to reform the Church that I purchased with My Own Blood in order that it may be reformed and led back spiritually to its pristine state of holiness, for nowadays more veneration is shown to a brothel than to My Holy Church. My son, heed My counsel. If you obey Me in what I told you, I will welcome you mercifully like a loving father. Bravely approach the way of justice and you shall prosper. Do not despise the One Who loves you. If you obey, I will show you mercy and bless and dress you and adorn you with the precious pontifical regalia of a holy pope. I shall clothe you with Myself in such a way that you will be in Me and I in you, and you shall be glorified in eternity (The Book of Revelations, Book IV, chap. 149).
