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October 19, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Father Frank Unterhalt, a diocesan priest of Paderborn, Germany has written an analysis of the new papal encyclical Fratelli Tutti, whose tone of religious indifferentism and the call to universal fraternity reminds him of the language and program of Freemasonry. He also reminds us all that the so-called Sankt Gallen (St. Gallen) Group – a group of progressivist cardinals who unsuccessfully tried to elect then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as Pope in 2005 – played a major role in electing Pope Francis in 2013 and that their goals are now being implemented by Francis.

In his new statement (see full text below), Father Unterhalt makes it clear that this new papal document that is promoting a sense of equality among religions and downplays Catholic beliefs and positions is not in accordance with the Church’s teaching on the unique role of the Catholic Church for the salvation of man.

Reminding us of Nathan the Wise, a play written by the German poet Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Unterhalt points out that it is the goal of Freemasonry to establish a new “brotherhood” in which all religions are equal. This idea also appeared during the French Revolution which was, at its core, deeply anti-Catholic.

These congruences are for Fr. Unterhalt a sign for our “apocalyptic” times.

“In this apocalyptic time of the False Prophecy,” he writes, “in which the diabolical lie is limping around, the Church of the Lord has the duty to proclaim Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as the only Savior and true Redeemer.”

Thus, he refuses to follow such a teaching from Pope Francis that does not proclaim Jesus Christ as the only Savior.

For Fr. Unterhalt – a priest who has repeatedly made his public witness against the weakening of the faith – Catholics need to turn to Our Lady, the Mother of God, as a refuge of sinners and a protector against heresies.

He states: “In the lived consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Mother of God, who alone ‘conquered and destroyed all heresies’, we will be able to preserve the purity of faith and clarity of thought and be ready to follow faithfully our crucified and risen Lord, who sent his own to bear witness to the one God and the true Gospel.”

In an August 15 statement published by LifeSiteNews, Unterhalt had pointed out that Our Lady of Fatima already warned us of an apostasy that was to come in the Church and that that apostasy was to start “at the top.”

With this statement and critique of Fratelli Tutti, Father Unterhalt joins the voices of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and Bishop Athanasius Schneider, both of whom have pointed to resemblances between this new papal document and Freemasonic thought. Both have also rejected the tone of religious indifferentism found in this new text.

Father Unterhalt has been making strong statements in the last years pertaining to the preservation of the Catholic faith. He and his priestly group Communio veritatis opposed, for example, the idea of intercommunion with Protestants; he publicly rebuked the head of the German bishops, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, for adapting the Catholic Church to the zeitgeist; and he condemned the practice of receiving Holy Communion in the hand while standing. Unterhalt also rejected Pope Francis’s new rule of giving Holy Communion to adulterers. Once before he encouraged us to remain close to Our Lady, saying, “Many faithful are asking themselves today how one can withstand the current storm of the great test and remain in the true Faith. I would like to answer that with the famous words of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary in Fatima: ‘My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way which leads you to God!’”

Below is the full statement by Father Frank Unterhalt:

A Document in Masonic Mode

The new letter from the Vatican is here — signed politically correct in a sterile manner with the exclusion of the faithful to a large extent. After surfing on the immanent ecowave of the secular climate religion and the pantheistic vision from the fairy-tale Amazon, now the very thick board is to be drilled. In continuation of the embrace with the Grand Imam from Cairo, the present paper Fratelli tutti proclaims the brotherhood of all people.

The brochure delivers — entirely in the spirit of the self-proclaimed “St. Gallen Mafia”[1], whose program was handed over to the author. Even his choice of name and the supposed connection with the saint from Assisi were planned. Cardinal Danneels had testified to this as a member of the circle at a press conference in loquacious hubris.[2]

Later, during the official presentation of his biography, both the massive agitation against Pope Benedict XVI and the enforcement of the selected candidate organized by a network were explicitly mentioned.[3] As a reward at the time, the election coordinator[4] Danneels was allowed to be on the loggia on March 13, 2013. Furthermore, the man from Brussels, who was known as an activist for abortion, homosexuality, same-sex “marriage”[5] and the cover-up of abuse[6], was able to present his intentions as a special envoy (!) at the so-called family synod[7], the consequence of which became the unacceptable text Amoris laetitia.

A major theme of the conspirators from St. Gallen was also syncretism, disguised as “interreligious dialogue in a global framework,” with a striking affinity to Islam and what is called the “Sacred Scriptures.”[8]

Thus we are within the dimension of the present paper Fratelli tutti. Expressly mentioned at the beginning and at the end (Numbers 5 and 285) is the direct connection with the Abu Dhabi Declaration. There, according to the analysis of the renowned philosopher Prof. Josef Seifert, no less than the sum of all heresies was proclaimed[9] and sealed by signature — in the assertion, namely, that the pluralistic diversity of religions corresponds to the will of God. This Magna Charta of ultimate relativism then led to the neo-pagan madness of sacrilegious and blasphemous Pachamama worship in the Vatican[10].

Fratelli tutti tries at the beginning (numbers 1-4) and at the end (number 286) to claim St. Francis of Assisi as the patron saint of a supposed interreligious brotherhood “without borders” by completely distorting his visit to the Sultan in Egypt 800 years ago. This path with the readiness to martyrdom had precisely not the goal of throwing itself at Islam in the desire “to embrace everyone” (number 3), in the noncommittal concealment of the Gospel in a weakening way, but rather in concern for the eternal salvation of souls to call for conversion to the true faith. The Poverello was imbued with the Word of God: “Go out into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creatures! Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:15-16). For this he was literally ready to go through the fire. St. Bonaventure reports that Francis of Assisi “preached to the Sultan with such fearlessness, spirituality and fervor the one triune God and the Savior of all men, Jesus Christ”[11] that the hearer was enormously impressed. The Bulled Rule therefore testifies to the zeal for mission, “that we, always subdued and subjected at the feet of this holy Church, established in the Catholic faith, […] may observe the holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we have firmly promised.”[12]

The author of Fratelli tutti, on the other hand, has repeatedly used his dreaming of “a single human family” (number 8) as an occasion to propagate a religious relativism. This intention was particularly striking in the context of the so-called prayer intention for January 2016, which was combined with a telling video. The symbols of the different religions were shown, equally placed next to each other. The child Jesus was also present — held in a circle next to the other signs in the camera and lined up in sayings of faith in Allah and trust in Buddha.

Former Israeli President Shimon Peres testified on September 4, 2014, after his audience in the Vatican, to his proposal to the Bishop of Rome to “found the ‘United Religions’” — developed out of the United Nations.[13]

The Grand Lodge of Spain, in view of the Christmas address of December 25, 2018, in the Vatican, has already expressed its enthusiasm and, in the name of all Freemasons, has joined the proclaimed “fraternity between men of different religions.”[14] In view of the latest brochure, the same Grand Orient is currently raising an even louder cry of euphoria when it states that in Fratelli tutti “universal fraternity, the great principle of modern Freemasonry,”[15] is now welcomed.

This idea has already been well advanced in the context of the Abu Dhabi Declaration. The Bishop of Rome, following up on the same document, established the so-called “Higher Committee for Human Fraternity” to implement it. The construction project “Abrahamic Family House” has already been launched in Abu Dhabi — an interreligious house with mosque, synagogue and church. The three buildings of the so-called “Abrahamic religions” look similar, are designed with identical dimensions and create the impression of equality. The common ground floor with teaching center connects the temples. The next step to the world-unifying religion is thus not far away.[16]

The Bishop of Rome recently proclaimed that man is obliged to obey the United Nations.[17] Praising its charter, Fratelli tutti has again emphasized this postulate (number 257).

The agenda that took shape in Abu Dhabi is, of course, not new, but the exact implementation of the Masonic ideology in Lessing’s drama “Nathan the Wise,” which is based on the lodges’ creed that truth and religion are relative. In the struggle against the claim to absoluteness of Christ and his Church, Lessing painted in the Parable of the Ring[18] the picture of the supposed fraternal unity of the three so-called “Abrahamic religions,” which in their historical conditionality were only of relative importance and interchangeable — in a manner typical of the rationalist dictate of tolerance of the Enlightenment.

The striving for universal ecumenism of religions has always been a concern of Freemasonry on the way to its actual goal, namely to bring about the breakthrough of that self-constructed religion in which all human beings are supposedly in agreement.[19]

Bishop Dr. Rudolf Graber accurately described the pertinent plan to make religious coexistence “an ecumenical interweaving and thus prepare the one-world-religion in the one-world-state.”[20] The decisive term here is the so-called “synarchy” on the way to a “unified government planned as a counter-church.”[21]

The French Revolution is of particular importance in Masonic strategy. It is striking that Fratelli tutti literally adopts its slogan when the headline of numbers 103 to 105 reads “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.”

A glance at history makes it clear that the aforementioned “Great” Revolution came upon us only externally as a political and social upheaval, but its innermost essence must be described as anti-Christian.[22]

The late Enlightenment philosopher Sylvain Maréchal was one of the initiators of the “Manifesto of Equals” in 1796.[23] He regarded the French Revolution and its bloody reign of terror as merely the “forerunner of another, much larger, much more serious revolution, which will be the last.”[24] The Manifesto already proposed socialism as practical politics at that time and provided decisive ideas to later social revolutionary movements. Karl Marx had been convinced since his Parisian exile years that 1789 was only the prelude to the actual, the communist revolution.[25]

When Fratelli tutti explicitly uses the crisis brought about by Covid-19 as an occasion to express the call “Let us dream, then, as a single human family” (number 8), one should be well aware of the clear statements of those behind the scenes who have already spoken out with the aim of a globalized New World Order.[26]

Bishop Dr. Rudolf Graber aptly summarized the corresponding strategy at the time: “Politically, synarchy strives for the integration of all social and financial powers, which this world government under socialist leadership naturally has to support and promote. Catholicism, like all religions, would therefore be absorbed by a universal syncretism.”[27]

The letter Fratelli tutti makes itself the advocate of all religions in the eighth chapter, when it praises them by emphasizing the plural in “the service of fraternity in our world” (number 271). The concept of religion is here reduced to its immanent function in terms of building a supposedly humane society.

The reader is practically invited to indifferentism when the author quotes the message of the film made about himself, that God’s love is “the same for everyone, regardless of religion. Even if they are atheists, his love is the same” (number 281). Which “God” and which “love” are meant? Here the all-decisive question of truth is completely ignored.

Based on the testimony of Holy Scripture (cf. 1 Tim 2:4), the Declaration Dominus Jesus proclaimed in the Holy Year 2000: “God wills the salvation of everyone through the knowledge of the truth. Salvation is found in the truth.” [28]

The indifferentism underlying the eighth chapter of Fratelli tutti was sharply rejected by St. John Paul II in his encyclical Redemptoris missio, because that attitude “is characterized by a religious relativism which leads to the belief that ‘one religion is as good as another.’”[29]

In this apocalyptic time of the False Prophecy, in which the diabolical lie is limping around, the Church of the Lord has the duty[30] to proclaim Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as the only Savior and true Redeemer.

St. Pope John Paul II has pointed this out with great emphasis: “Nowadays the call to conversion which missionaries address to non-Christians is put into question or passed over in silence. It is seen as an act of ‘proselytizing’; it is claimed that it is enough to help people to become more human or more faithful to their own religion, that it is enough to build communities capable of working for justice, freedom, peace and solidarity. What is overlooked is that every person has the right to hear the ‘Good News’ of the God who reveals and gives himself in Christ, so that each one can live out in its fullness his or her proper calling.”[31]

In this time of great apostasy from the true faith (cf. 2 Thess 2:3-8), it is necessary to confess Christ, the king of eternal glory, faithfully and fearlessly with St. Peter before the Sanhedrin: “In no one else is salvation to be found. For there is no other name under heaven given to us men by which we shall be saved” (Acts 4:12).

In the lived consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Mother of God, who alone “conquered and destroyed all heresies,”[32] we will be able to preserve the purity of faith and clarity of thought and be ready to follow faithfully our crucified and risen Lord, who sent his own to bear witness to the one God and the true Gospel: “All power is given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore to all nations, and make disciples of all men, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. Be sure: I am with you always, until the end of the world” (Mt 28:18-20).

October 13, 2020
Anniversary of the last apparition in Fatima of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of the Rosary and Victor in all God’s battles
Fr. Frank Unterhalt

Translation by LifeSite’s Martin Bürger

[1] Cf. Jeanne Smits, “Cardinal Danneels admits being part of clerical ‘Mafia’ that plotted Francis’ election,” in: LifeSiteNews, September 25, 2015.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Mettepenningen, Karim Schelkens, Godfried Danneels: biographie, Dutch edition (e-Book), Kalmthout 2015, chapter 26.

[3] Cf. Amand Timmermans, “Danneels und der Mafiaklub ‘Gruppe von Sankt Gallen,’” [“Danneels and the Mafia club ‘Sankt Gallen Group’”] in: Katholisches.info, October 5, 2015.

[4] Cf. Walter Pauli, “Godfried Danneels a oeuvré pendant des années à l’élection du pape François,” [“Godfried Danneels has worked for years for the election of Pope Francis”] in: Le Vif, September 23, 2015.

[5] Cf. Jeanne Smits, “Cardinal Danneels congratulated Belgian gvmt for legalizing gay ‘marriage,’” in: LifeSiteNews, September 23, 2015.

[6] Cf. Mark Eeckhaut, „En als we nu eens vergiffenis zouden schenken? Hoe kardinaal Danneels probeerde het schandaal-Vangheluwe geheim te houden“, in: Het Nieuwsblad, August 28, 2010.

[7] Cf. Dr. Benjamin Leven, “Wenn Vertuschung scheitert,” [“When Cover-up Fails”] in: Römische Korrespondenz, September 7, 2018.

[8] Cf. Mettepenningen, Schelkens, chapters 22 and 24.

[9] Cf. Dr. Maike Hickson, “Pope asks universities to disseminate his claim ‘diversity of religions’ is ‘willed by God’,” in: LifeSiteNews, March 25, 2019.

[10] Cf. Contra Recentia Sacrilegia. Protest against Pope Francis’ sacrilegious acts.

[11] Bonaventura von Bagnoregio, Legenda Maior – das Große Franziskusleben [The Great Life of Francis], chapter IX,8,6, in: Franziskus-Quellen, Kevelaer 2009, page 745.

[12] Bullierte Regel, chapter 12,4, in: Franziskus-Quellen, page 102.

[13] Cf. Giuseppe Nardi, “Das Video vom Papst – “Das mir nicht gefällt,’” in: Katholisches.info, January 7, 2016.

[14] El Oriente, “Todos los masones del mundo se unen a la petición del Papa por ‘la fraternidad entre personas de diversas religiones,’” Segunda época – Número 243.

[15] El Oriente, “El Papa abraza la Fraternidad Universal, el gran principio de la Masonería,” Segunda época – Número 409.

[16] Cf. Giuseppe Nardi, “In Abu Dhabi entsteht der Tempel der Welteinheitsreligion – mit Unterstützung von Papst Franziskus,” [“In Abu Dhabi, the Temple of the One World Religion is being created with the help of Pope Francis”] in: Katholisches.info, November 21, 2019.

[17] Cf. Jeanne Smits, “Vatican gives nod to ‘Abrahamic Family House’ that equates Christianity, Judaism, Islam,” in: LifeSiteNews, September 25, 2019.

[18] Gotthold E. Lessing, Nathan der Weise [Nathan the Wise], Stuttgart 1948, pages 89–97, 3. Aufzug, 7. Auftritt.

[19] Cf. Manfred Adler, Die antichristliche Revolution der Freimaurerei [“The anti-Christian revolution of Freemasonry”], Jestetten 1994 (5th edition), page 166.

[20] Bischof Dr. Rudolf Graber, Athanasius und die Kirche unserer Zeit [“Athanasius and the Church of Our Time”], Abensberg 1987 (11th edition), page 38.

[21] Id., S. 31.

[22] Cf. Manfred Adler, page 24.

[23] Cf. Chronique de la Révolution, [“Chronicle of the Revolution”] Paris 1988, pages 37 and 520.

[24] Heinrich August Winkler, “Zur Wiederholung nicht empfohlen,” [“Not recommended for Repetition”] in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 8, 2017.

[25] Heinrich August Winkler, “Marx und die Folgen. Gedanken zum Wandel der Revolution 1789–1989,” [Marx and the Consequences. Thoughts on the Change of the Revolution”] Opening talk in the series “Nach dem Ende der Illusion: Was bleibt vom Kommunismus im 21. Jahrhundert?,” [“After the End of the Illusion: What Remains of Communism in the 21th Century?”] Humboldt-Universität Berlin, February 7, 2017.

[26] Cf. Dorothy Cummings McLean, “Kissinger: Failure to establish post-Covid new world order ‘could set the world on fire,’” in: LifeSitenews, April 7, 2020; Cf. Martin Bürger, “Bill Gates: Life won’t go back to ‘normal’ until population ‘widely vaccinated,’” LifeSiteNews, April 6, 2020.

[27] Bischof Dr. Rudolf Graber, page 33.

[28] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Dominus Jesus. On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, August 6, 2000, number 22.

[29] Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Redemptoris missio, number 36.

[30] Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 851; Cf. CIC, can. 781.

[31] Papst John Paul II, number 46.

[32] Louis de Montfort, Abhandlung von der Wahren Andacht zur allerseligsten Jungfrau Maria [“On the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary”], II, 2, in: Das Goldene Buch, Feldkirch 1987, page 120.

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Dr. Maike Hickson was born and raised in Germany. She holds a PhD from the University of Hannover, Germany, after having written in Switzerland her doctoral dissertation on the history of Swiss intellectuals before and during World War II. She now lives in the U.S. and is the widow of Dr. Robert Hickson, with whom she was blessed with two beautiful children.

Dr. Hickson published in 2014 a Festschrift, a collection of some thirty essays written by thoughtful authors in honor of her husband upon his 70th birthday, which is entitled A Catholic Witness in Our Time.

Hickson has closely followed the papacy of Pope Francis and the developments in the Catholic Church in Germany, and she has been writing articles on religion and politics for U.S. and European publications and websites such as LifeSiteNews, OnePeterFive, The Wanderer, Rorate Caeli, Catholicism.org, Catholic Family News, Christian Order, Notizie Pro-Vita, Corrispondenza Romana, Katholisches.info, Der Dreizehnte,  Zeit-Fragen, and Westfalen-Blatt.