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| Vatican denies Bishop Schneider Latin Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica |
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Posted by: Stone - 2 hours ago - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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Now even a pro-Vatican II Bishop is punished for his part in the promotion of the Traditional Mass...
Vatican denies Bishop Schneider Latin Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica
'It seems very strange that today the so-called LGBT Catholics can obtain a special Mass in St. Peter's
more easily than Catholics attached to the Church’s Tradition,' a source told LifeSite.
Sep 9, 2026
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Traditional Latin Mass will not be celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica during this year’s Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage.
On September 9, the organizers of the 15th edition of the traditional Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage at the Tomb of St. Peter released the official program of the event. Unlike last year — and as already happened during Francis’s pontificate — the Pontifical Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica has been forbidden.
“The Secretariat of State sent the organizers a letter explaining that, at least for this year, permission for the Pontifical Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica will not be granted,” a source very close to the organization of the traditional pilgrimage told LifeSiteNews. “The real reasons are unknown. It seems very strange that today the so-called LGBT Catholics can obtain a special Mass in St. Peter’s more easily than Catholics attached to the Church’s Tradition.”
Bishop Athanasius Schneider will celebrate the Pontifical Mass at 3 p.m. at the high altar of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major.
“Despite the bitterness of this prohibition, we were consoled by being contacted by the Archpriest of Saint Mary Major, the Lithuanian cardinal Rolandas Makrickas, who expressed his willingness to welcome us into the important Roman church. This is why the Pontifical Mass will be celebrated there this year. Paradoxically, it is the very same church in which Pope Francis is buried,” said the source.
The pilgrimage itself will still proceed to St. Peter’s, where participants will venerate the tomb of the Apostle Peter at the Altar of the Confession. “The organizers insisted on obtaining at least a moment of prayer in the Basilica, which is the heart of Catholicism,” said the source. “It seemed the bare minimum.”
According to another source consulted by the Catholic outlet Ad Vaticanum, the difficulty in obtaining permission for this year’s Pontifical Mass followed the reaction to last year’s celebration. Pope Leo XIV’s 2025 concession was viewed by the Pope’s “circle” and by staff at St. Peter’s Basilica led by the controversial Cardinal Mauro Gambetti as “gloating.”
“That perception was not well received,” that source said.
The change represents a reversal from the 2025 pilgrimage, when the Traditional Latin Mass was celebrated at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica by Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke. For several years before that, the pilgrimage had been unable to hold its Pontifical Mass inside the Vatican basilica following the promulgation of Pope Francis’ Traditionis custodes (2021), which placed restrictions on celebrations according to the 1962 Roman Missal.
Last year’s edition even saw Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the progressive head of the Italian bishops, preside over the Pontifical Vespers. At the end of the Mass in St. Peter’s, instead, the Albanian cardinal Ernest Simoni — known for having suffered torture and unjust imprisonment during the Soviet occupation — performed a minor exorcism from the ambo, reciting the long prayer to St. Michael composed by Pope Leo XIII. The 2025 edition of the pilgrimage saw record participation and was perceived by many as a possible sign of openness from Pope Leo XIV toward the traditional rite. [...]
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| EU to rule on forcing Catholic Church to erase baptismal records |
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Posted by: Stone - 09-07-2026, 10:12 AM - Forum: Global News
- No Replies
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EU to rule on forcing Catholic Church to erase baptismal records
The European bishops insist that the EU has no right to interfere with baptismal registers.
Sep 7, 2026
LUXEMBOURG CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The EU’s top court may force the Diocese of Ghent to erase baptismal records at the request of individuals under EU data-protection law.
The Court of Justice of the European Union is considering a case involving the Diocese of Ghent in Belgium and a dispute over whether a person who requested “debaptism” has a right under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to have all personal information removed from the Church’s baptismal register.
“The baptismal register is the fundamental basis for establishing the juridical status of the person in the internal legal order of the Church,” the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union stated. “Requiring the Catholic Church to erase the data contained in it, thereby intervening directly in its organization, would constitute a serious infringement upon Church autonomy and institutional freedom of religion.”
The case is named C-12/25 Bisdom Gent. It began on March 25, 2021, when an individual asked the Diocese of Ghent to remove his or her personal information from all diocesan files, including the baptismal register, invoking the GDPR.
On April 2, 2021, the diocese did not delete the baptismal entry. Instead, it added an annotation stating that the person “left the Church” on a certain date, while two diagonal lines were drawn across the entry.
The individual subsequently maintained that the information should be completely erased and complained to Belgium’s Data Protection Authority. On December 19, 2023, the authority ordered the Diocese of Ghent to comply with the request, but the diocese appealed.
According to the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, the Ghent annotation was “not ideal” and does not represent the practice used by the Church throughout the other EU member states. Nevertheless, the European bishops insist that the EU has no right to interfere with baptismal registers.
The main point of contention is the characterization of baptismal registers as mere membership lists. The bishops explicitly referred to a Note issued by the Dicastery for Legislative Texts on April 7, 2025. This Note recalls that “Canon Law does not allow modifying or deleting entries made in the Baptismal Register” except to correct transcription errors, because the register “represents the objective record of sacramental actions, or actions related to the sacraments, historically carried out by the Church”.
It further explains that “if the Church did not have these general norms on the obligatory registration of Baptism, it would not be possible for the Church itself to carry out sacramental activity, since the valid reception of the sacraments requires certainty about the reception of Baptism”. A minister “cannot permit the celebration of other sacraments if the reception of Baptism is not certified”.
For this reason, the Note recalls that “the Baptism Register is not a list of members, but a record of baptisms that have taken place. Since its sole purpose is to attest to an ecclesial historical ‘fact’, it does not aim to certify the religious faith of individuals or whether a person is a member of the Church.”
For these reasons, according to the European bishops, the possible EU decision would imply that “the nature and character of baptismal registers were to be re-defined by a civil court in a way that contradicts the definition upheld by the Church, on the basis of its self-understanding, including through its highest authorities.”
“In some sense, erasure from baptismal registers would impose on the Church as a whole a concept of ‘membership’ that does not belong to it or to its legal order,” the bishops continued.
RELATED: Irish Catholics refute ex-president’s claim that baptism violates children’s rights
The bishops’ statement also insists that the secular nature of the State means not only that the Church must not interfere in politics, but also that “the State must not interfere in Church affairs.” They warn that no government – “least of all the European Union” – can dictate the Church’s internal rules.
The bishops say that forcing the erasure of baptismal records could “mislead the faithful, and even more seriously, non-believers,” into thinking that baptism is repeatable or optional – an idea they call an “infringement on the substance of the sacrament.”
Finally, they argue that the rights of those who wish to leave the Church cannot extend to reshaping Catholic theology: requiring the Church to treat baptismal registers as a mere “list of members” would mean altering not only administrative procedures but “theological reflection itself,” which they say is protected by Church autonomy. The European bishops also stress that the case “goes beyond data protection” and concerns the very space EU law leaves for Churches to live and organize their faith freely.
In traditional Catholic doctrine, Baptism is the sacrament that removes original sin inherited from our first parents, both in its guilt and its spiritual effects, including the loss of grace. Through this sacrament, the soul is purified and reborn in divine life. Baptism also incorporates the person into the Mystical Body of Christ, namely the Catholic Church, making him or her a living member of the Church. For this reason, it is considered the necessary condition for receiving all other sacraments, since participation in the sacramental life presupposes the new birth conferred by Baptism.
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| Pope Leo criticizes ‘prophets of doom,’ quoting John XXIII at Vatican II |
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Posted by: Stone - 09-04-2026, 10:13 AM - Forum: Pope Leo XIV
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Pope Leo criticizes ‘prophets of doom,’ quoting John XXIII at Vatican II
Pope Leo XIV recalled that Pope John XXIII slammed those who believe modern times are worse than past ages,
then went on to ask the faithful to engage with 'modern realities' such as poverty, the 'future of the planet,' and war.
![[Image: GettyImages-2280383099.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-2280383099.jpg)
Pope Leo XiV
Juan Naharro Gimenez/Getty Images
Sep 3, 2026
(LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV opened this week’s Wednesday General Audience by citing Pope John XXIII’s warning against the so-called “prophets of doom” who believe our current time is worse than previous generations.
During his September 2 audience, which focused on the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes promulgated at the Second Vatican Council, Pope Leo recalled that Pope John XXIII, in his opening address to the Second Vatican Council, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, had slammed the “prophets of doom” who believe modern times are worse than past ages. The pontiff went on to call on the faithful to engage with “modern realities” such as poverty, the “future of the planet,” and war.
Despite the pontiff endorsing his predecessor’s words, he has repeatedly suggested that our modern age is the worst it has been for the environment, noting his belief that the “world is burning” due to “global warming.”
Quote:“With today’s meeting, we will begin to reflect on the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, with which the Second Vatican Council intended to focus on a fundamental theme, namely the relationship between the Church and the contemporary world. Saint John XXIII, as early as his inaugural address of 11 October 1962, had sought to take issue with the ‘prophets of doom’ who, ‘though burning with zeal for religion (…) go about saying that our times, when compared with past centuries, are entirely worse; and go so far as to behave as if they had nothing to learn from history,'” Leo said during the audience.
“Hence the task entrusted to the Council Fathers: ‘In the present state of human events, in which humanity appears to be entering a new order of things, one must rather see the mysterious plans of Divine Providence, which are brought to fulfilment in due course through the work of men, and often beyond their expectations, and which, with wisdom, arrange everything, even adverse human affairs, for the good of the Church,'” he added.
Indeed, a 2025 study showed that since 1965, the final year of the Second Vatican Council, Catholic countries across the globe have experienced a “steady decline in the monthly adult religious service attendance rate starting immediately after Vatican II.”
While the pontiff has not discussed this decline among the faithful, he has spoken extensively about his concern for the environment and so-called “climate change” since the beginning of his pontificate.
While celebrating his first “Mass for the Care of Creation” last year, Leo XIV declared that the “world is burning” because of “global warming.” He also highlighted a supposed need for “conversion” for those who do not yet prioritize “the urgency of caring for our common home.” This week, the Holy Father opened the second “Season of Creation” of his pontificate by celebrating another “Care of Creation” Mass.
During the audience, Leo also stressed that the faithful are called to help to address issues such as poverty, hunger, helping the environment, and working toward peace:
Quote:Christian solidarity commits us to engaging with reality and also to unmasking the contradictions that characterize personal and social life in the contemporary world: for example, scientific and technological progress, which constantly offers new possibilities, but only to some, and which human beings do not always succeed in ‘subjecting .. to [their] own welfare’; or a clearer understanding of the ‘laws of society,’ accompanied, however, by uncertainties ‘about the direction to give” them; or, again, a greater abundance of “wealth, resources and economic power”, which, unfortunately, today as in the days of the Council, leaves “a huge proportion of the world’s citizens … still tormented by hunger and poverty” (GS 4); or a shared awareness that the future of the planet is at stake, coupled with an inability to renounce selfish consumption and the illusion that war is an effective means of building peace.
While there is nothing wrong with the faithful praying for these intentions, not mentioning the need to spread the Gospel is a glaring omission.
The pope did note that “in the Church, at every level and in every age, it is necessary to achieve the merciful kenosis of Christ, who ‘did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant … and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross’ (Phil 2:6-8).”
However, Leo only made this brief statement at the end of the audience.
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