Umberto Longo: a Freemason appointed to the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences

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Umberto Longo: a Freemason appointed to the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences

InfoVaticana [Slightly adapted - not all hyperlinks included from original] | August 15, 2026

Pope Leo XIV has appointed Italian historian Umberto Longo, director of the Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo and full professor of Medieval History at La Sapienza University of Rome, as a member of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences. The appointment was officially announced by the Holy See on August 13, together with those of Francesco Cesareo and Anna Barańska, and reported by Vatican News.

The relevant fact is that Longo’s membership in Freemasonry does not simply follow from his attendance at conferences organized by lodges. There are documents published by Italian Masonic institutions themselves that present him as a “Fratello,” attribute to him specific degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, and place him in internal positions. The documentation is considerably stronger than what a mere proximity to Masonic circles might suggest.

The first evidence appears in Logos, the publication of the Regional Inspectorate of Lazio of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, corresponding to 2013. On the page dedicated to the “Cariche per il 2013” of the Loggia di Perfezione Maestri Segreti «Giano», Oriente di Roma, it expressly lists “Fr. Oratore Umberto Longo 4°”. The magazine itself immediately clarifies that the degrees indicated are those held by each “Fratello” at the time of assuming office.

We are not, therefore, dealing with the name of an external guest. “Fr.” means Fratello, brother; “Oratore” is the position Longo held within that Lodge of Perfection, and “4°” indicates his degree in the Scottish Rite. The same issue of Logos also publishes various works under the heading “Le Tavole del Fr. Oratore Umberto Longo 4°” —nine ritual tables engraved for the Lodge’s work during 2013— and a study on the history of the Rite again signed “Fr. Umberto Longo 4°”. In the introduction, the Regional Inspector for Lazio expressly presents the fascicle as the collection of the tables engraved “a cura dell’Oratore Fr. Umberto Longo 4°”.

To this documentation is added a second official source, this time from the Grande Oriente d’Italia. Its magazine Erasmo, issue 7-8 of 2013, reports on a “Tornata di I° Grado” held on March 25 at the Casa Massonica Romana in Piazzale degli Archivi. The chronicle explains that numerous brothers and Worshipful Masters participated and expressly lists among the latter Umberto Longo. It was not an open academic congress, but ritual Masonic work of the first degree.

But probably the most significant documentary evidence appears when crossing two different sources from 2014. On July 8, 2014, the official website of the Grande Oriente d’Italia announced that Umberto Longo would deliver the following day, within the so-called “Luglio Scozzese” organized by the Regional Inspectorate of Lazio, a lecture entitled “La via dinamica di perfezionamento dei Cavalieri Scozzesi. Tradizione e ritualità, rigenerazione e universalità”.

That same work, with exactly the same title, appears published in the 2014 issue of Logos, the magazine of the Scottish Rite. And there the author is unequivocally identified as “Fr. U. Longo 9°”. The Grande Oriente publicly attributes the lecture to Umberto Longo; the Scottish Rite publication reproduces that same intervention and attributes it to “Brother U. Longo,” ninth degree. The same issue also includes the “Tavola d’Agape 2013 del Fr. Oratore U. Longo 9°”: the annual ritual agape of the “Giano” Lodge, whose prayer was once again delivered by the same Orator whom the magazine had identified the previous year with full name and surname.

The content of the text is equally revealing. Longo does not write from the perspective of an external researcher describing the rituals as a historical object. He speaks of the “privilege of participating in an initiation rite”, of using the instruments that “Freemasonry makes available”, and of the aspirations of Masons and the duties of Scottish Knights.

The documentation does not end in 2014. In Logos of 2015 appears another intervention entitled “La piramide rituale scozzese”, signed “Fr. U. Longo 9°”. The text is again written unequivocally from within the Rite. Longo uses expressions such as “nel rituale di IV Grado ci sono stati fatti compiere” and, even more explicitly, “Come massoni e scozzesi abbiamo quindi…”: “As Masons and Scots, therefore, we have…”. It is difficult to conceive of a more direct formulation regarding the condition from which the author writes.


The identification admits no doubt

LifeSiteNews, which reported on the case on August 14, introduced some formal caution regarding the identification between the “Fr. Umberto Longo” of the ritual publications and the professor at La Sapienza. The cross-referencing of the primary sources makes that caution untenable.

In 2019, the Grande Oriente d’Italia again included Umberto Longo as a speaker —presented as a historian, alongside Carlo Ricotti— at the congress organized in Rome by the “Dio e Popolo” lodge no. 786 and the Collegio Circoscrizionale dei Maestri Venerabili del Lazio on the occasion of the 170th anniversary of the Roman Republic.

And in December 2022 the identification is sealed by the very organization of the event. Longo participated in Venice in a conference dedicated to Hugo Pratt and the initiatory universe of Corto Maltese, and the organizing entity expressly identified the speaker as “prof. Umberto Longo, professore ordinario di Storia Medievale a La Sapienza Università di Roma”. The event was sponsored by the Fondazione Scozzese Triveneta; the closing greetings were delivered by Gian-Paolo Barbi, Sovereign Grand Commander of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite; and the honorary president of the organizing association was Luigi Milazzi, exactly the same Sovereign Grand Commander who heads the organizational chart of the Supreme Council in the issues of Logos from 2013, 2014, and 2015 in which “Fr. Umberto Longo” signs. The professor at La Sapienza who speaks on esotericism under Scottish sponsorship in 2022, before the leadership of the Rite, is the same person whom the Rite had been publishing as a brother of the fourth and ninth degrees.

The sequence established by the open sources is, therefore, unequivocal: in 2013 Longo appears in internal documentation as “Fr. Oratore Umberto Longo 4°” and the Grande Oriente includes him among the Worshipful Masters present at a ritual meeting; in 2014 the Scottish Rite publishes as “Fr. U. Longo 9°” exactly the same lecture that the Grande Oriente publicly attributes to Umberto Longo; in 2015 he again signs as ninth degree a text in which he speaks in the first person as a member of the “Masons and Scots”; in 2019 the Grande Oriente presents him as a speaker at one of its lodges; and in 2022 he speaks, identified by name, surname, and chair, at an event sponsored by a Scottish foundation and closed by the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Rite.

There is, therefore, more than sufficient primary documentation to establish that Umberto Longo belongs to Freemasonry, held positions in a Lodge of Perfection, and attained at least the ninth degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. No public source records any act of abandonment, resignation, or rupture with the institution; on the contrary, his connection with the circles of the Rite is documented continuously at least until December 2022, barely three and a half years before his pontifical appointment. If Longo had ceased to be a Mason, it is up to him—or to the Holy See, which appointed him—to prove it. The documents published by the Masonic organizations themselves say what they say.


What the Church teaches about Freemasonry

The appointment takes on special relevance in light of the Church’s position on Freemasonry. The Declaration on Freemasonry of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of 1983, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and approved by John Paul II, establishes that the Church’s negative judgment remains unchanged because the principles of Masonic associations are incompatible with Catholic doctrine. Membership remains prohibited, and the faithful enrolled in them are, the document states, in a state of grave sin and cannot receive Holy Communion.

The Holy See reiterated that position in November 2023, when the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith recalled, with the approval of Pope Francis, that the active membership of a faithful in Freemasonry is prohibited by the “irreconcilability between Catholic doctrine and Freemasonry.”

It is not recorded that Umberto Longo is Catholic, so it would not be correct to automatically transfer to him the canonical consequences that those documents establish for the faithful. Nor is that the question: the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences is an academic body that has included non-Catholic members. The question raised by his appointment is another, and more serious: Leo XIV has incorporated into a pontifical body—precisely the one in charge of historical sciences, a field where historiography inspired by Freemasonry has its own well-known agenda regarding the Risorgimento, the Papal States, or the historical processes of the Church—a Mason of the ninth degree of the Scottish Rite, brother, Worshipful Master, and officer of a Lodge of Perfection according to the official publications of the Rite and the Grande Oriente d’Italia themselves.

The evidence does not come from anonymous lists, leaks, or accusations by third parties. It has been published for years on the official pages of Italian Freemasonry. The question that remains in the air is who prepared the proposal for the appointment and what filter was applied—if any was applied—before placing it on the Pope’s desk. This medium has requested comments from the interested party and from the Holy See Press Office.