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| Pope Leo XIV announces follow-up consistory in June, pledges annual meetings of the cardinals |
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Posted by: Stone - 01-12-2026, 10:27 AM - Forum: Pope Leo XIV
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Another Conciliar novelty...
Pope Leo XIV announces follow-up consistory in June, pledges annual meetings of the cardinals
The decision signals an ongoing emphasis on the synodal model of Church governance, first launched under Pope Francis.
![[Image: Untitled-11.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Untitled-11.png)
Pope Leo XIV leaving the event at the Waterfront Mass on December 2, 2025, in Beirut, Lebanon
Photo by Adri Salido/Getty Images
Jan 9, 2026
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV has announced that an extraordinary consistory of cardinals will be held annually in remarks delivered at the conclusion of the two-day consistory held this month.
On January 8, Pope Leo XIV met with 170 cardinals, both electors and non-electors, and formally announced that consistories will be convened annually, with the next scheduled for June 27-28, in order to strengthen consultation within the College of Cardinals and continue the synodal path requested during the pre-conclave general congregations.
READ: Pope Leo calls Second Vatican Council the ‘guiding star’ of the Church’s path
“The fact that the Holy Father has said that there will be another consistory in June, and that he wishes to continue this next year as well, is an indication that he found it very important, and that it has been in assistance to him in his role of the Successor of St. Peter,” said Cardinal Stephen Brislin during the Vatican press briefing at the conclusion of the consistory.
Pope Leo XIV made the announcement explaining that the two days of meetings were intended as a “prefiguration of our future path” and that future consistories would last three to four days. The Pope also confirmed the post-synodal “Ecclesial Assembly,” scheduled for October 2028.
The meetings brought together cardinals from around the world and were structured around linguistic working groups. There were 20 groups in total: 11 composed of non-elector cardinals and nine of elector cardinals, including diocesan ordinaries and apostolic nuncios currently in service. The methodology was designed, according to the Pope, to encourage an exchange of knowledge among participants with diverse backgrounds and pastoral experiences.
During the sessions, themes discussed included synodality, understood “not as a technical process” but as a shared journey, its implications for the exercise of authority in the Church, priestly formation, the work of nuncios, and the life of the Roman Curia, particularly with regard to greater internationalization.
LifeSiteNews previously reported comments by Luigi Casalini of the Italian blog Messainlatino, who questioned the internal process of the meeting, asking who had determined the program, selected the speakers, and decided to reduce the number of discussion topics from four to two, a decision announced by the Pope himself.
According to Vatican News reports released soon after, those questions have now been addressed, with the Holy See clarifying that the choice of topics followed a vote by the cardinals themselves, taken for reasons of time management, in which an overwhelming majority selected the themes of the Church’s mission in the modern world, considered in light of Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium, and the theme of synodality.
Cardinal Juan José Omella Rueda Aparicio emphasized that the Pope’s decision to convene the consistory eight months after the conclave demonstrated his desire to listen. “This strengthens us in the mission of the Church,” he said. Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, Archbishop of Kalookan, highlighted the format of the meetings, noting that “everyone was able to speak” and that Pope Leo “listened more than he spoke,” taking notes attentively throughout the discussions.
Several cardinals underlined that the overall atmosphere was marked by what they described as “unity that is not uniformity.”
READ: Pro-LGBT Cdl. Radcliffe urges ‘openness to novelty’ in address to extraordinary consistory
Alongside these official accounts, Messainlatino reported off-the-record comments attributed to unnamed cardinals present at the consistory. According to the blog, some cardinals described the second day as more substantial than the first, while others said that familiar expressions such as “a Church that goes out” and “field hospital” were again used during the discussions, as well as the assertion that “a Church that is not synodal cannot be a true Church.”
The same source claimed that the cardinals were divided into two groups during the sessions, with older cardinals seated at the back. It also reported dissatisfaction among some participants regarding the current doctrinal, theological, and liturgical diversity within the enlarged College of Cardinals, though these remarks were not made publicly. “Some cardinals reported terrible things,” the source says, without going into detail.
The series of extraordinary consistories that will from now on be convened annually is connected to the ecclesial assembly that will be held in October 2028, originally called by Francis and now confirmed by Leo.
The ecclesial assembly will not be a new synod but the culmination of the implementation phase of the Synod on Synodality concluded in 2024.
As explained by Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the General Secretariat of the Synod, in a letter to bishops and Church leaders sent in March 2025, the assembly will serve to consolidate and evaluate the reception of the synod’s “Final Document,” which Pope Francis formally recognized as “part of the ordinary magisterium of the Successor of Peter.”
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| Pope Leo begins a new catechism series dedicated to Vatican II |
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Posted by: Stone - 01-12-2026, 10:21 AM - Forum: Pope Leo XIV
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The Conciliar Church attempting, once again, to promote the many errors of Vatican II (cf. SiSiNoNo: The Errors of Vatican II). There has been no 'return to tradition' thus far in this pontificate. Let us pray for Pope Leo XIV's conversion!
Pope Leo begins a new catechism series dedicated to Vatican II
Pope Leo on Wednesday praised the ‘liturgical reform’ launched by Vatican II that laid the groundwork for the revolutionary Novus Ordo Missae, the new Mass.
![[Image: Shutterstock_2678868575.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Shutterstock_2678868575.jpg)
Sculpture on St Peter's basilica door: Vatican II council
Shutterstock
Jan 8, 2026
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews [slightly adapted, not all hyperlinks included from original]) — Pope Leo XIV announced Wednesday that he is beginning a catechesis series to “closely” study the Second Vatican Council, which many priests and scholars have affirmed to be in need of correction.
“We are beginning a new catechesis series dedicated to the Second Vatican Council and to a fresh reading of its Documents,” Leo wrote in an X post. “The Council’s Magisterium remains even today the North Star guiding the Church’s journey.”
“Closely studying the Council documents will help us to be attentive interpreters of the signs of the times, and to proclaim the Gospel to all,” Leo said Wednesday during his general audience.
In Leo’s strong support for Vatican II, he aligns himself with Pope Francis, who described the Council as “a visit of God to His Church,” and as “irreversible.”
The pope has not given further details thus far on the forthcoming “catechesis” of Vatican II. However, during his general audience on Wednesday, he highlighted aspects of the Council that he highly esteems.
For example, Leo praised the “liturgical reform” launched by Vatican II, which laid the groundwork for the revolutionary Novus Ordo Missae, the new Mass. The Council “set in motion an important liturgical reform by placing at the center the mystery of salvation and the active and conscious participation of the entire People of God,” Leo said in his general audience.
Liturgist and author Dr. Peter Kwasniewski has pointed out that the idea articulated in the Second Vatican Council’s Sacrosanctum Concilium that “In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else” is backward.
“It cannot escape our notice that this text turns things on their head,” Kwasniewski remarked in 2019. “Where Pius X had said that what should be ‘provided for before everything else’ is the ‘sanctity and dignity of the temple,’ Vatican II says that ‘the aim to be considered before all else’ is ‘full and active participation by all the people.’ In doing so, it inverts the hierarchy of goods. Now the worship of God and its right condition becomes secondary to the people’s involvement.”
Pope Leo also on Wednesday lauded Vatican II for being responsible for a Church committed to “seeking the truth through the way of ecumenism, interreligious dialogue and dialogue with people of good will,” as if the Church needs to seek truth outside of Herself. The idea that the fullness of the truth is not found within the Catholic Church is heretical.
Leo’s description of the Second Vatican Council during his general audience and in his social media post as the “guiding star” of the Church’s path suggests he sees this council as surpassing in importance every other council of the Church, which is especially significant given that Vatican II appeared to contradict previous magisterial councils in certain respects.
Prelates such as Bishop Athanasius Schneider and Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò have pointed to errors in the Second Vatican Council regarding religious freedom and other religions, and in doing so have been supported by many priests and scholars.
For example, Bishop Schneider has said Lumen Gentium is “wrong” and errs by suggesting that Christians and Muslims participate together in the same act of adoration when it states that “Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God.”
It errs because Muslims worship on a natural level, at the same level of anyone who adores God with the “natural light of reason,” whereas Christians adore God on a supernatural level as His adopted children “in the truth of Christ and in the Holy Spirit.”
“This is a substantial difference,” Schneider observed. He explained that the use of the phrase “with us” represents a relativization of the act of adoration of God and also of Christians’ “sonship.”
In addition, Muslims reject the Trinity, which they consider to be an idolatrous idea. Christ made clear that “whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me” (Luke 10:16) and “no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
Schneider criticized texts suggesting that Buddhists and Hindus can attain illumination on their own, without “the grace of Christ,” as a heresy. Nostra Aetate claims that “in Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery,” and that Buddhism “teaches a way by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination.”
The German prelate has also criticized Dignitatis Humanae for putting forth “a theory never before taught by the constant Magisterium of the Church, i.e., that man has the right founded in his own nature, ‘not to be prevented from acting in religious matters according to his own conscience, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.’”
Archbishop Viganò agreed with Bishop Schneider in his criticism of the Second Vatican Council, noting that Vatican II’s formulation of religious freedom “contradict[s] the testimony of Sacred Scripture and the voice of Tradition, as well as the Catholic Magisterium which is the faithful guardian of both.”
It is also noteworthy that Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, condones “prayers in common” with our “separated brethren” in “certain special circumstances, such as the prescribed prayers “for unity,” and during ecumenical gatherings.”
However, the Councils of the Church have repeatedly made clear that Catholics cannot pray with heretics or schismatics, let alone those of other religious practices:- “One must neither pray nor sing psalms with heretics, and whoever shall communicate with those who are cut off from the communion of the Church, whether clergy or layman: let him be excommunicated.” — Council of Carthage
- “No one shall pray in common with heretics and schismatics.” — Council of Laodicea
- If any ecclesiastic or layman shall go into the synagogue of the Jews or to the meeting houses of the heretics to join in prayer with them, let them be deposed and deprived of communion. If any bishop or priest or deacon shall join in prayer with heretics, let him be suspended from communion. — II Council of Constantinople
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| Leo XIV Appoints Archbishop of Cape Town - Considers Protestants Part of the Church |
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Posted by: Stone - 01-12-2026, 09:13 AM - Forum: Pope Leo XIV
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Leo XIV Appoints Archbishop of Cape Town - Considers Protestants Part of the Church
gloria.tv | January 12, 2025
Pope Leo XIV named Monsignor Sithembele Anton Sipuka, 65, as Archbishop of Cape Town on January 9. He succeeds Cardinal Stephen Brislin, who was transferred to Johannesburg in October 2024.
Early Life and Formation
Sithembele Anton Sipuka was born on April 27, 1960, in Idutywa (Dutywa) in the Eastern Cape. Before entering seminary, he worked for two years as a post office clerk.
He was ordained a priest in 1988 for the Diocese of Queenstown, six years before the end of apartheid.
In 1992, he was sent to Rome to study at the Pontifical Urban University.
Rising Star in the Church
In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Sipuka as Bishop of Mthatha. The diocese is rural, located in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, and has fewer than 40,000 Catholics.
Cape Town, by contrast, is one of South Africa’s most prominent sees, with approximately 280,000 Catholics.
From 2019 to 2023, Bishop Sipuka served as President of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
In July 2025, Pope Leo XIV appointed him a member of the Vatican Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue.
Leadership of Ecumenical Council of Churches
In October 2024, Sipuka was elected President of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), becoming the first Catholic—let alone a bishop—to hold that office.
The SACC is an ecumenical body with deep historical roots in the anti-apartheid political struggle. The organization is highly left-wing political, ideologically driven, heavily dependent on foreign funding, and has been accused of mismanaging donor funds and excluding faithful evangelicals.
The notorious homosexual activist Desmond Tutu, who held the title “Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town,” was its most famous official and served as General Secretary of the SACC.
Ecumenical Preaching and “Rainbow” Imagery
In June 2025, Monsignor Sipuka preached a homily as SACC President at an ecumenical prayer service held in the Protestant Grace Bible Church in Soweto.
He began with what he called a “beautiful imagery”: “Archbishop Tutu famously described our country as a ‘rainbow nation.’”
In the same homily, Monsignor Sipuka attributed a unique political and reconciliatory role to the South African Council of Churches: “Our task as the Church is to help people envision and believe in possibilities they can't currently see, where racial reconciliation actually works, and where justice and peace coexist.”
Monsignor Sipuka abused the term “the Church” including Protestants also on other occasions.
At a meeting of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Johannesburg in June 2025, Sipuka expressed hope that “the Church can still act as a bridge-builder, a voice for the voiceless, and a bearer of Christ’s good news to a world in desperate need.”
Paganism and Ancestral Cosmology
His former Diocese of Mthatha is overwhelmingly Xhosa-speaking, rural, poor, and deeply shaped by ancestral cosmology.
Practices commonly reported even among clergy include participation in ancestral rituals at funerals and pagan healing practices known as amagqirha or ubungoma.
Throughout his years as bishop, Monsignor Sipuka tolerated these practices.
In January 2022, the South African bishops began study groups examining the pagan rite of ubungoma.
In January 2023, Bishop Sipuka told a local radio: “Now we are dealing with Ubungoma, which we hope to complete the research by the end of this year and then hopefully by next year maybe we can be able to give some direction.”
During the bishops’ conference in August 2025, Bishop Sipuka finally stated—verbally only—that: “traditional practices like ubungoma offer spiritual power that competes with our loyalty and obedience to Christ.”
Catholic priests in South Africa largely ignored the bishops’ warning and continued engaging in pagan practices.
In September 2025, the territorial bishops of the KwaZulu-Natal region attempted to enforce the decision and announced punishments for priests involved in pagan rites.
Bishop Sipuka’s see, Mthatha, lies in the Eastern Cape. This territory did not take action against ubungoma.
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