Latest / The Catholic Current / Walking with Revolutionaries? (Michael Hichborn) 7/16/26

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Walking with Revolutionaries? (Michael Hichborn) 7/16/26 · The Catholic Current

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This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert Matej.
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People who are inclined to traditional liturgy are inclined to traditional spirituality,
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are inclined to traditional morality, and you don't get invited to the cool
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kids' table when you have those kinds of commitments. That's my hermeneutic of suspicion
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at work. Is that too darkly cynical on my part? Not all dark cynicism is
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wrong, I can tell you that. Could you put that in writing? I want to
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have that calligraphied. Thank you. It's sort of like
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when there's a storm cloud, it's not rude to say, gee, I think the storm
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Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus, your daily host
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prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Almighty God,
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through the intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola, we ask that you pour forth your Holy
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Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment that might hear your voice and obey your
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command. In the name of the Father, Son, and the
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Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, friends, I know it's a very popular
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thing when you go to Rome to, you know, go to the Vatican to
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try to have an audience with the Pope. Even if you're in a big crowd,
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you try to get photographed with the Pope. And I know lots
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of people who are in a receiving line have a half a second handshake with
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the Pope, and they take that as a personal papal endorsement.
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They try to market it accordingly. So I always want to be a little skeptical
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and a little careful with people being photographed handshaking
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with the Pope. The Pope is a busy man. He doesn't know everything that every
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baptized Christian is doing, but I think there are some
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things he should know about, and there are some
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things that the people around him should protect him
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from. And that's why, sadly, today's episode is called
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Walking with Revolutionaries? There's something called
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popular movements. They have very dark and shady roots,
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and they seem to have become really buddy-buddy with the Vatican the past 10 or
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12 years. So when it's time to look under a fresh
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rock and look at the horrors underneath, my go-to guy is
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the president of the Lepanto Institute and a friend of this show,
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Michael Hitchborn. Welcome back to The Catholic Current. Thanks so much for having
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me back on, Father. Michael, I always start our interviews with, one of these days
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we're going to talk about something really upbeat and pleasant that doesn't make me feel
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nauseated at the end, but I, I don't think Teddy is that
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day. You've recently released 2 reports, and as always,
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very thoroughly, carefully documented and not tendentious,
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about something called Popular Movements Becoming Cozy with the
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Vatican. I had a vague sense of popular
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movements where they were mostly Latin American,
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sorta, kinda socialist,
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a little bit liberation theology hangover, and everyone had read
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the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. But that's
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as far as I knew. There's very much more though, isn't there?
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Yes, a lot of people have a misunderstanding about popular movements.
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They hear popular movements and all they think about are, you know,
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a large gathering of people, popular being it has broad
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support, and a movement being, you know, like the pro-life movement
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or the LGBT movement or whatever it is. Exactly,
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that there's an ideology that's being propagated through broad support.
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But the The notion of popular movements actually
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falls more in line with Saul Alinsky's idea of community organizing.
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And the purpose of the popular movements is
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revolutionary social change. And a lot of
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people say, well, revolutionary, we mean that not in the violent sense.
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We mean that in the, we need change for the sake of
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these oppressed people or whatever. So it's revolutionary in the sense
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that they want change for the better. But that's
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not really what's going on with the popular movements that
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we have been watching and paying attention to for the last 15
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years, primarily with what we found going on
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in the Vatican, well, since 2014. Okay, so what's
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the kickoff in 2014? How did this precipitate this crisis?
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So Pope Francis in 2014 launched what
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he called the World Meeting of popular movements.
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And it was actually a continuation of a program that he
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had going on when he was the Bishop of Buenos Aires. But what he
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instituted was this meeting of a
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whole bunch of different South American organizations, plus a few
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from Africa and a couple from Asia. The popular movements
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that he brought in were groups like MST,
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Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra.
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You had these Guatemalan groups that were involved with guerrilla warfare.
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You had La Via Campesina, which is a massive
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organization, a global organization started back in the '90s.
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And the problem is they're all communists. Everybody remembers
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that picture of Pope Francis receiving that blasphemous
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hammer and sickle crucifix from Evo Morales back in 2015.
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He's the president of Bolivia? Yes. Okay. And what people
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don't really seem to remember or it actually
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wasn't that much reported, was that the reason he was in Bolivia was
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to convene the Second World Meeting of Popular Movements.
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And the day before the meeting
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took place, Evo Morales handed him that hammer and sickle
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crucifix. The very next day, Evo Morales sat
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right next to him for the rest of these meetings.
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And they were— yeah, and again,
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These are communist organizations. Evo Morales is a Marxist.
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You start putting 2 and 2 together, and you see this is
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basically giving top cover, a moral veneer
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from the Vatican to communist movements. Now,
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I want to interject. In my research, I tried to put together a
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comprehensive list of papal condemnations of socialism,
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Marxism, communism, and it was just entirely
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too long. So, folks, we put just 3 documents
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to get you started. We put in the show notes. Now,
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as professor of philosophy and theology and a student of history, I could say Marx
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was a lousy economist, a worse philosopher, and just
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an absolutely miserable, horrible human being.
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So, the idea that he's going to become the
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nuclear reactor, the furnace, the lifeblood of a
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movement makes me really wonder how
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Catholic or how intelligent these people are. They may be
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cunning, they may be crafty, but I don't think they study the faith.
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They don't study the tradition, and they're not very
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good as philosophers. But if Pope Francis is calling
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the Second Worldwide Meeting, can we take that as a
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stamp of approval? I would. I actually would.
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Okay. I don't know how we can interpret it any other way. I really don't.
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Right, right. No, no, I agree. I don't know how— so,
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I, you know, who let this happen? Someone should have said something
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to somebody to do something about it. And let's not forget, the hammer
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and sickle goes back to the old Soviet flag.
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It was the workers and the farmers
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who were going to be the vanguard of the workers' revolution and throw down the
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bourgeoisie and etc., etc. And historically, communism and Marxism doesn't
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have very nice things to say about the church, does it? No, not at all.
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In fact, Karl Marx, when he was writing about how religion
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is the opiate of the masses, what he did— he didn't mean that it was
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some sort of pipe dream that was just kind of a, you know,
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an illusion. What he meant was that it's a way of quelling the masses
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for the propagation of communist
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ideologies. So if you wrap communism into a
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religious veneer, then you get what he was actually aiming for. And that's kind of
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the problem that we're finding with this World Meeting of Popular Movements.
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Well, you know, gosh, I remember when I was an
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undergrad in the '80s, I mean, this is not a new thing, but they
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were selling little red books, like, remember Mao's Little Red Book in Communist
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China? And it was called Quotations from Chairman Jesus. And it
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was a way of, you know, cutting and pasting the Gospels in
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order to have sympathies for Marxism. So, Well, the story
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goes something like this: material poverty is bad,
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and the only one who can rescue it is going to
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be Marxism. And now we go back to the
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'70s with liberation theology, which, I'm not kidding, I'm sure you've
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seen this too, Michael, a lot of liberation theology was fomented by
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the Soviet KGB in the '70s. It wasn't a genuine popular
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movement, but the story goes is that if you combine Marxist
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critiques and worker struggles, And you end up being Moses and
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the Book of Exodus, and that's how to do theology.
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Have you heard that stream as well? Absolutely. In fact,
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if you really understand what Marxism is,
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it's the idea of perpetual revolution. And the
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focus of the revolution is on the rejection of the cross.
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It's all built around envy and the desire
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to take something that you don't have from those who do. Right.
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And again, I, I can't stress enough, friends,
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how much Marx hates Christ.
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Marx hates Christ. He hates
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the Incarnation. He hates the cross.
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And when we talk about Marxism, when we talk about socialism,
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which is just Marxism with a smile on its face and
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a gun behind its back— and Marx is very
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clear that he can't wait for it to be his turn to
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be the violent one. So if there is a safe
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way of dallying with communism, I don't
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know what it is. I think it compromises your faith.
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I think it compromises your morals. And really, it's lousy
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theology. It's lousy economics.
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And what Marxism has bequeathed to the world is the
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cult of envy and tens of millions
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of dead bodies people who died in terror and violence
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or through the slow agony of starvation.
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This is not something that we can play with.
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Friends, we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Michael Hitchborn of
10:57
the Lepanto Institute. We're talking about walking with revolutionaries.
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Are there Marxist populist movements getting cozy
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with the Vatican? Michael says that he has the receipts.
11:09
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defend our Catholic faith. Our returning guest today is Michael Hitchborn of the
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Lepanto Institute. We're talking about walking with revolutionaries Are
13:02
there Marxist popular movements that are getting cozy with
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the Vatican? So, Michael, we've kind of given a bit of history and
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a background. Let's name names. Let's produce the receipts.
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Who are the major players, the leaders, the organizations,
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and what are they doing with the Vatican? So, I'll start with
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Cardinal Czerny, who is the head of the Dicastery
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for Integral Human Development in the Vatican, and he
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was the driving force behind the
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World Meeting of Popular Movements. Movements. And one of the things that he said in
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his speech was that the intention of the World Meeting
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of Popular Movements was part of the synodal path. And the
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idea— yeah, oh yes. And the idea was to
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not— in fact, he said for the very first time, not only
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were these popular movements meeting under the auspices of the Vatican,
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but they were— they had invited local representatives
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with a mandate from the local churches to accompany these communists
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in the meetings. And the idea was that they would then go
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back to their local communities and have greater collaboration with
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these communists once they settled back in, in their homes.
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So, just for clarification, there were basically church
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people paired with these different
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Marxist groups meeting at the Vatican. Is that correct? That's correct.
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And it was part of this synodal path. Okay.
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All right. Okay, go on. So the meetings
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were held, at least the one in October of 2025,
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so just last year, the meetings were held in a place called
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Spin Time Labs. And Spin Time Labs is
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a squatter-occupied building that Pope Francis
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had protected even when the governments of Italy and the local government in
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Rome tried to evict the people out of this building.
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They are actual communists. In 2019,
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they hosted the Communist Party of Italy for an event commemorating
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the life of Marxist philosopher and theorist Domenico Losurdo.
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They, um, in 2021, they hosted an event
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called— and it's in Italian, I'll just read you the, uh,
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the translation— Beauty and the Beast, a meeting with
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Franco Bernardi Bifo. And Bifo is an openly Marxist
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philosopher, theorist, activist. And what's
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interesting about that particular event at Spintime Labs in 2021
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is that Bifo then had a dialogue with
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His Eminence Don Matteo Zuppi. So Cardinal Zuppi was
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participating in this, uh, you know, and, and we've got a whole
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bunch of other pieces of evidence to show just how communist,
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uh, Spintime Labs is. But what's really
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disturbing is that amidst its promotions
15:53
of LGBT activism and abortion, they actually had a
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meetup at Spendtime Labs as they were preparing
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to have a pro-abortion march. They also,
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and this is just really kind of crazy, but they hosted
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this, or they actually not hosted, but they were the
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venue for a performance called La Merda,
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which in Italian means something that I can't say on the radio,
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right? But, uh, what it, um, what it was
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was a, uh, it was a one-woman act show,
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a one-woman act performance where she's just doing
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a monologue for, I think, 90 minutes. And the,
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the thing about it is that she was completely nude the entire time,
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no clothing whatsoever, and she was sitting in
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a chair just delivering this monologue with nothing to block
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any of the nudity. And in 2023,
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when Spin Time Labs was hosting this, they posted a
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sellout performance post on Facebook. They said yesterday at Spin
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Time Labs, the last day of La Merda show,
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they said it was all sold out. And they posted pictures from
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crowds waiting in the lobby to get into the performance.
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And in the lobby, they have a photograph of Don
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Mattei Ferrari, who happens to be the coordinator
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for the World Meeting of Popular Movements. So Don
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Mattei Ferrari was in the lobby waiting to attend
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this live nude performance at Spindime Labs,
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and this was 3 years or 2 years before the World
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Meeting of Popular Movements would be held at Spintime Labs. So,
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you know, you start to put the pieces together and you go, well, of course
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they knew who this organization was. Of course they knew what this venue was all
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about. And yet they decided anyway that that would be the place that
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they'd hold this meeting of communists. Right. And when you start
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digging into the, the organizations that were on
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the organizing committee, you've got Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra,
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They do actual read-alouds of the Communist
18:11
Manifesto. We have video of them reading it aloud with
18:16
young kids. We're talking like 10-year-olds reading portions
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of the Communist Manifesto while the Communist Internationale is playing in
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the background. They celebrate Karl Marx,
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his— the date of his birth as well as the date of his death,
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as if he was on par with Saint John the Baptist. Right.
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Um, and, you know, it's— they, they are
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actual communists. Mediterranea Saving Humans, uh,
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Don Matteo Ferrari is the chaplain for
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Mediterranea Saving Humans, and the head of it is a
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guy named Luca Casarini. Casarini is a longtime,
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uh, hardcore leftist activist. He has,
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uh, a long history of, of, uh, being involved with
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and a member of and a leader in various communist
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organizations in Italy. You know,
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and we have a bunch of others. Union de Trabajadores de
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la Economía Popular, so UTEP,
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which is— they march around through the streets very
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often with communist organizations. They celebrate
19:23
Hugo Chavez, who was a Marxist. They celebrate Fidel Castro, who was
19:27
a communist. You know, you could go down the list.
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Sure, sure. All of these groups, they're just,
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they're horrible. Right. Now, just to be clear, in my understanding
19:37
of the current practice of Marxism, when they talk about
19:41
revolution, it really is kind of a Nietzschean
19:45
inversion of all values. And basically,
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they hate the family, because when you have
19:53
families, you want to feed your children, and you want your children to
19:57
become heirs. So, you like private property,
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and private property is the boogeyman of Marxism.
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So they're very keen on the destruction of the family,
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aren't they, as seen in their advocacy for,
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so we say, irregular and intermittent unions,
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as well as abortion? Is it fair to say that they're not only economic revolutionaries,
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they're sexual revolutionaries as well? 100%. In fact, most of these
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organizations, they sign on to attempts to
20:28
change abortion laws to be more liberal. They are
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actively marching through the streets for LGBT ideologies.
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Consistently, we found consistently, organization after
20:40
organization participating in the World Meeting of Popular Movements were not
20:44
just Marxists, but they were also pro-abortion, pro-LGBT,
20:48
pro-sexual revolution. Now, what are the odds that the
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clergy who has been schmoozing
20:56
with them in Rome How credible is it that they had
20:59
no idea? I would say zero.
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Okay. Any— it didn't take long for
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us to find just how thoroughly Marxist these organizations were.
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The hard part in putting this report together was determining what not
21:14
to include. The evidence
21:17
is absolutely and completely overwhelming.
21:20
Right. And I said, I mean, I read thoroughly. I mean, your reports
21:25
go on at length. And, you know, again, you've got the receipts,
21:28
you've got all the details. This isn't just rumors that
21:33
you've heard. So, you know, I make references to the Catholic cadres or
21:37
the people who should really know better club. Even if you give
21:40
Pope Leo the absolute blank check benefit of the doubt that
21:44
he's never, ever, ever had any idea about this whatsoever,
21:49
is it unreasonable to expect that the people around him should
21:53
have known and could have known? No, it's not unreasonable at all. Cardinal Czerny,
21:57
he knew who these groups were. He was in the room with them.
22:00
He was listening to their discussions and their promotions.
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And just looking at the final document, the final declaration
22:09
that came out of the World Meeting of Popular Movements, it called for wealth
22:13
redistribution. It called for universal access to healthcare,
22:17
which, when you take it in context with those pro-abortion,
22:20
pro-LGBT organizations, you know that they actually mean
22:24
We want universal access to abortion, and we want universal
22:28
access to sex change operations. Right, right. Yeah, we can't afford
22:33
to be coy about that. So, is it reasonable,
22:36
then, to infer that at least some senior
22:40
Catholic cadres of the People Who Should Really Know Better club are actually on
22:43
board with this agenda? I think that's a reasonable conclusion,
22:46
yes. Okay, I don't know.
22:52
How— I mean, I don't know how you get around that conclusion, and that just
22:56
makes me wonder, you know, have you read the documents? I mean, have you heard
23:00
of John Paul? So, you know, when we can talk about how
23:04
did this happen, etc.
23:07
What— we got about 2 minutes left in this segment.
23:11
What kind of numbers are we talking about in terms of membership?
23:14
Is it just 3 or 4 groups of 5 or 6
23:18
people, or are we talking bigger numbers? No, there were about
23:22
100 different organizations represented at the World Meeting of Popular
23:26
Movements. Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem
23:29
Terra has 1.5 million members. So when
23:33
you start, yes, these are not small organizations. Some of them are,
23:38
but these are not tiny organizations.
23:41
CUC has about 150,000
23:46
members. The organization Senerob has about 180,000
23:50
members. La Via Campesina, because they're a conglomerate of 181
23:56
different organizations, they claim that they represent
24:01
200 million people. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that they have 200
24:04
million people that are active members, but that
24:09
means that they have influence that can reach 200 million people.
24:12
See, this is why I think it's really important that we're clear on
24:15
the numbers, because, you know, this is hard to process,
24:19
Michael. And there are people who say, look, it's just
24:23
a small fringe group of, of people who are,
24:26
who are rather feverish in their thoughts, nothing to see
24:29
here. And I understand that as a temptation. I think it's hopium
24:34
and copium. But we are talking about organizations that are large
24:38
that are effective, that have access to money,
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and it seems they have access to the ear of the Vatican
24:46
as well. And that's what I find especially disturbing.
24:50
And my goodness, uh, it gets even worse,
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friends. We come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Michael Hitchborn of the
24:57
Lepanto Institute. We're talking about walking with revolutionaries,
25:01
Marxist popular movements to have the ear of the
25:05
Vatican. What should we do about that? After the broadcast today,
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26:52
Our topic today is this: Walking with Revolutionaries?
26:56
It seems that popular movements are actually Marxist
27:01
front organizations, and they seem to have the ear of powerful people in
27:05
the Vatican. My guest today who's done the research on it is Michael Hitchborn of
27:09
the Lepanto Institute. Michael, it's not only Marxist,
27:12
we have to talk about a pagan element as well, don't we?
27:16
Yes, unfortunately, one of the things that came up
27:19
in our research was that several of these organizations, and, and they
27:23
represent large numbers of people, are deeply
27:27
involved with pagan and demonic practices.
27:31
All right, so fill us in on that, please. Sure. So one
27:35
of the things that we posted in a follow-up article, the title of which is
27:39
The World Meeting of Popular Movements Part 2, Bringing It All Home.
27:42
You can see it on our website. Right. There are 2 photographs that we
27:46
open the article with. The left photograph shows
27:49
a picture of Pope Leo. He's at the World Meeting of Popular Movements General
27:54
Gathering. So they're meeting in the Vatican, not at Spintime Labs.
27:58
And the leader representing MST,
28:02
Movimentos dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, is presenting him
28:06
with a beaded tapestry And you look at it and
28:10
it looks kind of like an indigenous person dressed up in some sort of strange
28:14
regalia, right? We did some research on it and we discovered that
28:18
the tapestry actually depicts a pagan deity called Osanna,
28:22
and that pagan deity belongs to a pantheon of other
28:26
deities involved in something called Candomblé.
28:30
Candomblé is if you were to take voodoo
28:33
and combine it with Santeria, you'd have Candomblé, where they,
28:37
they use syncretism to hide their pagan gods behind
28:41
the images of Catholic saints, right? And they,
28:45
they conduct these dark rituals— I mean, really dark rituals— uh,
28:49
invoking spirits to possess their bodies so
28:54
that they can then be involved in divination and answer,
28:58
you know, certain questions about, oh well, is that— is the girl gonna love me,
29:01
or am I ever gonna find that job that brings me wealth or whatever.
29:04
And, and they do these divining rituals through
29:09
the possessed person. And one thing that's, that's particularly,
29:13
uh, interesting about candomblé is that many times
29:18
the possessed person will take on the characteristics and attributes
29:22
of members of the opposite sex.
29:25
And as, as a result, we do find MST
29:29
another group called Sene Rab that are deeply involved
29:33
with Candomblé. They are very, very big in
29:37
promoting transgenderism. So there's a connection between
29:41
their pagan worship, their dark rituals, and their promotion
29:46
of an ideology, a political/moral ideology that
29:50
is antithetical not just to the moral order, but also
29:55
to human nature itself. Gosh, where to begin with
29:59
this? You know, uh, Michael, as, as we're recording this, I offered Mass today
30:04
on the Feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius, who were, you know,
30:07
very great missionaries and were able to make
30:11
use of local culture in a legitimate way
30:15
and Christianize it. And that is an honorable
30:19
thing to do. I mean, Jesuit missionaries, uh, did this in
30:23
the Amazon, went out to the middle of nowhere in the
30:26
jungle. People didn't even have a written language, gave them a grammar,
30:30
gave them a dictionary, and then also taught them how to build basilicas,
30:35
and then also taught them how to make symphonic instruments that are still used today,
30:39
and incorporated some of their musical tones,
30:43
etc., in very beautiful music, some of which could
30:47
be incorporated into chant, etc. That's legitimate enculturation.
30:52
What I've seen, and I want to ask if you've seen this too, is that
30:56
we're just going to adapt things willy-nilly without any
31:00
discernment at all and call it an enculturation,
31:04
and that makes it okay. Have you seen this too?
31:07
Absolutely. In fact, one of the things
31:10
that we— I mean, everybody remembers the Pachamama incident from 2019.
31:16
Yeah, you know, This kind of excuse-making
31:20
for what really amounted to be the
31:24
odd synchronization of the Pachamama
31:28
with Our Lady was absolutely— it was not a
31:32
matter of using imagery from
31:36
a pagan culture and trying to illustrate Christian
31:41
realities because of it. No, this was a conflating
31:45
of this pagan deity with Our Lady, which is completely—
31:48
it's blasphemous. Well, of course it is, you know, and then, and she was presented
31:52
as nude, uh, as well. So let's not, let's not
31:57
forget that. So yeah, I mean, it's undeniable that pagan worship
32:01
does often include invocation of
32:05
the demonic. It's not something that you can play
32:09
with. This isn't just cosplay or LARPing. So,
32:14
there is that strain. Are there other pagan elements as
32:18
well? Because I think some of the pagan elements that I saw kind
32:22
of divinize the earth, so you're worshiping the elements and so
32:27
on. You make this particular
32:30
planet the absolute. Doesn't that obscure heaven?
32:34
Well, it certainly does. And,
32:38
you know, There's one of the organizations that we focused
32:42
on is called the Comité de Unidad Campesina.
32:46
And this organization, they've got ties to
32:50
not just communism, the other groups do too,
32:53
but this one has ties to guerrilla warfare.
32:57
They were heavily involved in the guerrilla
33:01
Marxist revolutions in Guatemala. And this
33:05
organization was almost wiped out in the '70s and early
33:09
'80s, and then they kind of reformed. And what they
33:13
did is they decided to take their Marxist
33:17
ideologies and latch them onto local indigenous organizations.
33:21
So they brought in these indigenous peoples, and they made it their goal
33:26
to promote the indigenous peoples as a way of promoting Marxism.
33:30
And one of the things that they latched on to is something called
33:34
a Mayan cosmology. The Mayan cosmovision is what
33:38
they talk about. Now, the Mayan cosmovision is
33:42
this holistic worldview where the universe is a— it's like a living,
33:46
conscious entity that has all life.
33:50
You know, all life comes from the universe, and all life is directed towards the
33:54
universe, and thus all things must maintain a a harmonious and interdependent
33:59
relationship. So because of that,
34:03
they take that Mayan cosmovision where everything
34:06
comes from the universe and goes back out to the universe, therefore we're all working
34:10
together, which forms into a political ideology as well.
34:15
And that's the communism that they're promoting with it.
34:18
Not to mention, and then it's bad theology. I mean, there's no transcendent
34:23
God. Nope. I mean, I mean, nope. Is it fair
34:27
to say that this is a kind of earth worship? Well, it definitely
34:30
is. In fact, they openly worship
34:35
earth deities. I'll just give you a little sampling.
34:39
In 2011, CUC admitted to invoking pagan deities
34:43
as it opened its 10th National Assembly, and it said
34:46
this extraordinary event began with the invocation of the Mayan
34:50
deities so that the event would conclude with satisfactory
34:54
results in favor of the peasant population and the
34:58
protection of Mother Earth. And they had involved
35:02
in this some sort of fire ceremony, which was also
35:07
participated in by Monsignor Alvaro Ramazzini,
35:12
who was later made a cardinal by Pope Francis.
35:15
And they have these candles and these fires,
35:18
and they've got colors that represent the different elements
35:23
of the universe, and they have a shaman come in, and the shaman
35:27
shakes a stick and invokes these spirit guardians to
35:30
try and protect them somehow. But yeah, it's earth
35:34
worship, it's shamanism, it's spiritism,
35:39
where they're invoking spirits, spirits of the earth, spirits of the air,
35:42
spirits of the elements. And there is no
35:46
adoration or veneration towards God at all.
35:50
And ultimately, they all become God. And when
35:54
you really think about it, I mean, Teilhard de Chardin becomes kind
35:59
of the priest prophet of
36:03
this shamanistic religion within the Catholic Church.
36:07
Yeah, that's— I had heard, I have to confirm this, but I had heard
36:10
there was some movement not only for his theological
36:14
rehabilitation, but they may have been promoting his cause as well. I know
36:18
the the first is underway. I'm not sure about the
36:22
second. Is there— I mean, aside from the Lepanto Institute,
36:26
is there anyone else sounding the alarm and saying,
36:30
have we thought about this? Are we sure this is something we really want
36:34
to do? With regard to the World Meeting of Popular Movements?
36:37
Yeah. Nobody, nobody has reported
36:42
on this. No one. Well, suffice to
36:45
say, that's— yeah, that's terribly disappointing. Sweet Mother. So, you've got this
36:50
invocation of pagan divinities. Part of my fear is that,
36:54
you know, thinking is hard, thinking well is harder, thinking well
36:58
as a matter of habit is hardest of all, is, hey, if synodality
37:03
is the magic word, and you've got popular and movement together,
37:07
by golly, that sounds synodal too. Come on into our
37:11
big tent and we'll all sing All Are Welcome. Are there attempts to
37:15
link synodality with these movements? Well, yes. In fact, Don Matteo
37:18
Ferrari, the coordinator for the World Meeting of Popular Movements,
37:22
and Cardinal Czerny, both made it very clear that they wanted
37:25
synodality to be at the center of these meetings.
37:29
The whole purpose was to gather them together. And then when
37:33
you— my goodness, I mean, I don't know if Pope Leo actually wrote
37:37
his own speech or not, but he called these movements, he called the leaders
37:42
of these movements, social poets and champions of humanity.
37:46
He said that their cause is just.
37:49
He said, your effort is ever more necessary. He said,
37:53
I'm encouraged to see how popular movements, organizations of civil society,
37:57
and the church are addressing these new forms of dehumanization.
38:02
This makes you champions of humanity, witnesses to justice,
38:05
and poets of solidarity. He even went so far
38:08
as to say that your struggles under the banner of land, housing,
38:12
and efforts for a better world deserve encouragement. And as the
38:17
Church accompanied the formation of union leaders in the past, today we ought
38:21
to accompany the popular movements. And these are Pope Leo's words.
38:25
Okay, yeah, I believe you.
38:28
I want to believe, I need to believe that someone
38:32
just handed— I mean, he's a busy man. He obviously doesn't write all
38:36
of his speeches. I really want to believe that somebody just handed him
38:40
that, and then he read it as is. But there wasn't
38:44
any correction or, you know, upon further
38:47
reflection, the Holy Father also said— there was none of that after
38:51
that speech, was there? No. In fact, we sent a copy of our
38:55
report to the papal nuncio with a specific request for the nuncio
38:59
to hand-deliver our report, all 144 pages of it,
39:03
to Pope Leo. And at the end of our report,
39:07
we made a very specific appeal to him directly,
39:10
asking him to shut down the World Meeting of Popular
39:14
Movements, to condemn the communist organizations
39:18
that were in attendance there, and also to sanction and punish
39:22
the prelates and priests who were involved in inviting those organizations to
39:27
Rome to be a part of this World Meeting of Popular Movements.
39:31
And to date, there's been no response. Well,
39:34
I— you can't see my surprised face, but I'm worried.
39:38
Surprised. No, I think they're— I'm gonna
39:43
take a deep breath. I need to calm down as we come up to the
39:46
break. I find this profoundly disturbing.
39:49
And I can't imagine that John
39:53
Paul and Pius XII and Leo XIII And
39:57
Fulton Sheen are smiling upon this.
40:00
Friends, we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Michael Hitchborn of the
40:03
Lepanto Institute. We're talking about popular movements, uh, having the
40:07
ear of the Vatican in Rome, and they seem very strongly to be,
40:12
uh, Marxist and pagan. What are we going to do about that?
40:16
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41:01
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41:20
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
41:24
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world
41:28
and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross
41:30
Studios, your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app,
41:33
and we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
41:37
My returning guest today is president of Lepanto Institute, and Michael Hitchborn.
41:40
We're talking about walking with revolutionaries,
41:43
Marxist popular movements that seem to have gained a foothold
41:48
in the Vatican. Michael, you've documented— I want to emphasize
41:51
documented— something really disturbing. These popular
41:56
movements that are associated with liberation theology,
41:59
especially in Latin America, are fundamentally
42:03
Marxist from a political point of view, are advocates
42:08
for, you know, communism, socialism, the end of private
42:12
property, the destruction of the family. They're pro-abortion.
42:17
They're pro-rainbow advocacy. They're undoubtedly,
42:21
many of them, profoundly pagan in the
42:25
darkest way. I don't have a human suggestion.
42:29
I don't know that I can call a meeting and make this go away
42:33
in 10 steps. I, I think we're at 1 Peter 5 and
42:37
Ephesians 6, and it's spiritual warfare in
42:41
Fatima. What do you think? I think you're absolutely right.
42:44
One of the things that we closed our report with was
42:49
a quote from Saint James, because it seemed that he was speaking with foreknowledge
42:53
about the true nature of the organizations that were participating there.
42:57
Saint James said, You covet and have not. You kill and envy
43:01
and cannot obtain. You contend and war and
43:05
you have not because you ask not. You ask and receive not
43:09
because you ask amiss, that you may consume, consume it on your
43:12
own concupiscences. Adulterers, know you that, know you
43:16
that you are not the friend, uh, know you not that
43:20
friendship of this world is enemy with God? Whosoever therefore will
43:25
be a friend of this world becometh an enemy of God. And the thing is,
43:29
these popular movements, they're rebellious, they're envious, they're covetous, they're worldly,
43:33
which is exactly what St. James was describing.
43:36
And then our Lord's own words, he said, if the world hate you,
43:40
know that it hated me before you. If you had been of the world,
43:44
the world would love its own. But because you
43:48
are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world,
43:51
Therefore the world hateth you. So when
43:55
we have— I mean, you just look at the very name,
43:58
popular movements. Mm-hmm. What does that say to you?
44:02
It says worldly love. It says these
44:06
are people who love themselves and they love those who love them because they
44:09
are worldly. And by their
44:13
very nature, we should be rejecting them. Yes. Yes. And this is
44:17
where I think we have to really have an examination of conscience,
44:21
because look, we will We are all, all of us
44:25
subject to the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
44:28
Michael, you and I, and I bet everyone who listens to my voice,
44:32
we live in a culture that is sick and sickening. So first,
44:36
we have to examination— have to have an examination of conscience, get our
44:40
own house in order, go to confession. But then I think
44:44
we need to step up our commitment to spiritual warfare. We, we need
44:48
to read more about Fatima, pray the the rosary, wear our brown scapular, our Miraculous
44:53
Medal, First Fridays,
44:57
First Saturdays. Can you talk about in
45:01
your own life, if you're willing, you know, you've been looking under ugly rocks
45:04
for a long time, and I've
45:08
never heard you in any of our conversations, public or private,
45:11
say an uncharitable word. How do you pray
45:15
to sustain yourself in this work and not lose heart? Well,
45:19
I pray the rosary daily with the family, and Our Lady made
45:24
that request specifically, that we all pray the rosary every day.
45:28
And, you know, I look at what's
45:32
happening in the world, and especially within the Church, in the same way that
45:36
a doctor looks at a patient who's sick. A doctor doesn't
45:40
hate the patient because the patient is sick. The doctor hates the illness that's infecting
45:44
the patient. And when the doctor is trying to find
45:48
the problem and it eludes the doctor, you know, there are a
45:51
lot of symptoms but no real cause, the doctor's
45:55
frustrated. But when the doctor finds the cause, he rejoices. Why? Because now
45:59
he can apply a remedy. And that's kind of the way that I look at
46:03
the whole situation. There is a sickness that is invading the church.
46:07
That sickness needs to be identified. It needs to be named.
46:10
And that remedy needs to be applied. Now,
46:14
that's up to the Fathers of the Church. I can't do
46:18
that because I'm a simple layman. I can point out the problems,
46:22
and I can say that there is a problem here. And just as we're all
46:26
members of the body of Christ, what do we do? The body being
46:30
a body, when the body stubs its toe, the whole body
46:34
grabs the toe and shouts, ouch! Yes. Well, we're shouting
46:38
ouch, and we're saying there's a pain here, and it needs to be
46:42
examined and rectified. Right. And I think, you know,
46:46
also don't shoot the messenger for acknowledging that there is a problem.
46:50
And, you know, Mike, I always say, look, if we're wrong about
46:53
this, in charity, show us where we're
46:57
wrong. Show where, you know, Michael Hitchborn has gotten
47:01
the wrong information, or Father McTague drawn the wrong conclusions
47:05
from the information that Michael documented.
47:07
But has— have you gotten any feedback from anybody important
47:12
or official who said, hey, Michael, you got this all wrong, you're slandering good people,
47:16
here's the good news? Have you gotten anything like that in response to this
47:19
report? No. In, in fact, I have
47:23
never seen such silence about any report that we've ever written
47:27
as I've seen about this one. Our allies,
47:32
our friends, they've reported, and you've had me on your program, and we're talking
47:35
about it now. But I thought this was a massively
47:40
explosive story, and every single
47:43
mainstream news Catholic outlet, every mainstream
47:48
secular media outlet has ignored this report.
47:51
And it shocked me just how quickly they wanted
47:55
to turn their— turn away and not pay any attention to
47:59
this report at all. I know, I find that very
48:02
deeply disturbing and very, very disappointing as
48:06
well. Are there any more Popular Movement meetings scheduled
48:10
for Rome anytime soon on the horizon? Well, they, they don't
48:14
tend to schedule them except fairly shortly before the meetings happen,
48:18
but we are keeping an eye on it. And if such
48:22
meetings are scheduled and put forward, we'll be reporting on it
48:26
and letting everybody know exactly what's going on.
48:29
I know, I think this is really tremendously important.
48:33
And I think especially because of the link
48:38
to synodality, you know, because in 2027,
48:42
and again in 2028, apparently having synods isn't
48:45
synodal enough. There's also going to be ecclesial assemblies
48:49
in 2027, 2028. And I just have to wonder, I think
48:54
it's not unreasonable to wonder, are we going to see
48:58
some of this brought in to the
49:02
synod meetings? That, as you know, what the Spirit
49:06
is saying now is got to be something
49:10
with these popular movements. Michael, very quickly, where can people find your work? They go
49:14
to our website, lepantoin.org.
49:22
Sign up for our newsletter. You can follow us on X @lepantoinst,
49:29
and I'm the only Michael Hitchborn on Facebook, and you can find me there.
49:33
And I post a lot of things on my own personal Facebook page as well.
49:37
Michael Hitchborn of the Lepanto Institute, I'm very grateful for your faith.
49:40
I'm very grateful for your good work, and I do look forward to our next
49:44
conversation. And please God, someday it will be a happy topic for both of us.
49:48
Amen, Father. I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeague,
49:51
your host every day of The Catholic Current. You want to join us tomorrow?
49:54
It's a Friday. You know what that means— another round of Let's Talk About This.
49:58
You and me, we walk through a complex issue together. And you want to stay
50:01
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50:05
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50:08
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50:12
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50:23
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50:27
and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.