A photograph buried for decades has surfaced. It shows a young Augustinian priest, Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, kneeling in a circle, participating in a ritual explicitly labeled a “rite of Pachamama.” Multiple Augustinian witnesses have confirmed his identity. The year is 1995. The location is a symposium in South America. The ceremony is indigenous agricultural worship.

The panel on Faith and Reason presents this as explosive evidence, not of youthful indiscretion, but of a pattern. The same earth deity venerated in the Vatican Gardens in 2019, processed into St. Peter’s, and placed before the tomb of the Apostle was honored decades earlier by the man who now sits on the Throne of Peter.

Cardinals and bishops who condemned the 2019 Pachamama controversy as outright idolatry have not spoken. The double standard writes itself: Traditional Catholics are barred from kneeling for Communion, but a future Pope can kneel to Pachamama.

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March 18, 2026