(LifeSiteNews) — Traditional Catholic podcaster Anthony Stine decried Pope Leo XIV’s recently surfaced participation in a pagan Pachamama ritual as “an act of apostasy.”
Photo and book documentation unearthed by Father Charles Murr shows then-Father Robert Prevost, OSA, kneeling in what is described in a photo caption as a “Celebration of the Rite of Pachamama (Mother Earth).” Other photos of the same 1995 event shared by Novus Ordo Watch show the participants prostrating themselves with their heads to the ground while Prevost leans forward and extends his arm to the ground, as if he’s about to prostrate himself.
Pachamama is an Andean “Mother Earth” deity to whom members of her cult have even offered human sacrifice, as shown in recent reporting by InfoVaticana.
Stine described the ritual portrayed in the photos as “earth worship,” calling Prevost’s participation “utterly astonishing.”
“What he did was an act of apostasy,” declared Stine, who used further commentary on the incident to show why this is the case.
He cited the WM Review, which noted that Prevost went a step further than Pope Francis, who himself observed a 2019 Pachamama ceremony; whereas the pictures released by Fr. Murr show Prevost kneeling and “appearing to pray,” as well as apparently preparing to prostrate himself.
The WM Review explained:
The moral theologians Frs. McHugh OP and Callan OP consider such involvement to be active participation in a rite,2 which they say is “intrinsically and gravely evil,” given that it “expresses a belief in the false creed symbolized”3 and is liable to make others conclude that one is taking part in false worship.4 The same applies, even if one only simulates active assistance in such worship whilst withholding assent to the creed that it symbolizes. One implication is that Prevost may have committed a public act of apostasy, with it being unclear whether he ever abjured such an act.
The Review further noted that an external profession of faith, which is required for Church membership, “includes not saying or doing anything openly contrary or incompatible with the profession of faith,” such as committing an act of apostasy.
Dr. Taylor Marshall recently affirmed in an X post that, assuming it was Prevost portrayed in the photos, he was in fact “participating in the idolatrous worship of the false goddess Pachamama,” and “the Roman Cardinals have elected an idolater and a syncretist to the papacy.”
To suggest that Pope Leo XIV has not recently acquired an aversion to pagan gods and goddesses, Stine highlighted the fact that as recently as Jan. 19, 2026, Leo appointed Sofía Nicolasa Chipana Quispe as a consultant for the Vatican Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue.
As Novus Ordo Watch shared, Chipana Quispe is “(a)ssociated with indigenous, feminist, and decolonial currents, (and) she maintains that she promotes ‘prayer with Pachamama’; she also cites a statement from 2025: ‘We are not Pachamama … we belong to Pachamama,’” per InfoVaticana.
“Pray for the Church,” Stine concluded. “And pray again that the truth emerges, because it’s only through the truth that we can actually get out of this mess.”
LifeSiteNews has launched a petition calling for Leo XIV to set the record straight and condemn Pachamama worship. The petition states:
This is therefore the time for you to clarify the situation and condemn all forms of idolatry and religious syncretism, and in particular the worship of the Pachamama goddess.
Such a public condemnation would repair the harm caused by Francis in 2019 and clarify your own position with regard to the worship of this false Mother Earth goddess.
The duty to profess the faith openly and clearly when God’s glory or scandal is at stake is well established in the Catholic Church. Pope Felix III, quoted by Pope Leo XIII in Inimica Vis, wrote:
An error which is not resisted is approved; a truth which is not defended is suppressed…. He who does not oppose an evident crime is open to the suspicion of secret complicity.[1]
