VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis stated Sunday that the Holy Spirit is an “author of division” in the Church and was subsequently defended by L’Osservatore Romano, which used Francis’ words to explain the “general crisis” in the Church as a sign of a new Pentecost.
Pope Francis delivered his Pentecost homily on June 5 from his wheelchair while Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Dean of the College of Cardinals, celebrated the Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Drawing from the Gospel for the Mass, Pope Francis stated that the Holy Spirit “is practical, he is not an idealist.”
“The Spirit leads us to love, concretely, here and now, not an ideal world or an ideal Church, an ideal religious congregation, but the real ones, as they are, seen in broad light of day, with transparency and simplicity,” the Pontiff declared.
READ: Pope Francis’ new cardinal pick has a horrifying record on homosexuality and abortion
The Pope’s most notable phrase from his homily, however, was his depiction of the third Person of the Holy Trinity as the “author of division,” a term Francis explained by saying:
And finally, oddly, the Holy Spirit is the author of division, of ruckus, of a certain disorder. Think of the morning of Pentecost: He is the author … he creates division of languages and attitudes … it was a ruckus, that! Yet at the same time, he is the author of harmony. He divides with the variety of charisms, but it is a false division, because true division is part of harmony. He creates division with charisms and he creates harmony with all this division. This is the richness of the Church.
Pope Francis closed by urging Catholics to invoke the Holy Spirit in order to become more “open to the world” as a result. “Let us invoke him each day, so that he can remind us to make God’s gaze upon us our starting point, to make decisions by listening to his voice, and to journey together as Church, docile to him and open to the world.”
Pope’s teaching defended by L’Osservatore Romano
The striking phrase “author of division” was subsequently picked up by L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper that published an article June 6 entitled “Blessed division,” written by Father Luigi Maria Epicoco, an assistant at the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication.
Fr. Epicoco wrote that “the Pope enhances a detail that so many times escapes us: On the day of Pentecost, according to the account in the Acts of the Apostles, the Spirit’s action manifests itself as a force that turns the established order upside down; it is an action that undermines the stillness that the apostles had been struggling to recover after the events that had occurred. In a word: The Spirit begins his action by wreaking havoc.”
READ: Half of the traditional Catholics on the Chartres pilgrimage were under 20
This time last year, Justin Trudeau and his media allies were at the forefront of falsely accusing Catholic institutions of having buried Indigenous children in mass graves at various residential schools across Canada.
There was and is no credible evidence to support these wild accusations, but many Canadians are still unaware of the facts.
SIGN to demand an apology from Justin Trudeau for promoting the "mass grave" smear
The anger generated by the media at home and abroad saw over twenty Canadian churches burned, and extensive damage done to many more, but the record has never been set straight in what amounts to a disinformation campaign.
Terry Glavin at the National Post recently wrote a masterful piece that may go down in history as the definitive “debunking” of the assertions about the mass graves that never were.
Glavin points out that “nothing new was added to the public record” concerning the history of residential schools in Canada.
“The legacy of the schools had already been exhaustively explored in the testimony of hundreds of elders and a series of inquiries, public hearings, criminal cases, settlements and federal investigations going back decades. Most important of these efforts were the widely publicized undertakings of the 2008-2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), and the content of its voluminous findings,” Glavin wrote.
“…[N]ot a single mass grave was discovered in Canada last year,” he added.
“The several sites of unmarked graves that captured international headlines were either already-known cemeteries, or they remain sites of speculation even now, unverified as genuine grave sites.”
“Not a single child” accounted for during the extensively researched commission “was located in any of these places,” Glavin underscored.
“In none of these places were any human remains unearthed.”
SIGN and SHARE the petition calling on Justin Trudeau to set the record straight.
Even Trudeau's kneeling at what was reported upon as a just-discovered residential school burial ground was a lie - it was actually a well-known Catholic cemetery, but the media didn't let these details get in the way of reinforcing their narrative.
Trudeau also called on Pope Francis to come to Canada and apologize for what had happened, as outlets like Reuters, the New York Times and scores more told the world that “nearly 1000 bodies” had been found in two mass graves.
Those online articles were quietly edited from "mass graves" to "unmarked graves", but we still have the Twitter posts from major outlets like Reuters to prove the staggering level of misinformation.
SIGN: Justin Trudeau must tell Canadians the truth - there were no mass graves
According to an extensive investigation by Professor Emeritus Jacques Rouillard from the Université de Montréal: “The ‘discovery’ was first reported last May 27 (2021) by Tk’emlúps te secwépemc First Nation Chief Rosanne Casimir after an anthropologist, Sarah Beaulieu, used ground-penetrating radar in a search for the remains of children alleged by some to be buried there.”
“Her preliminary report is actually based on depressions and abnormalities in the soil of an apple orchard near the school – not on exhumed remains.”
Professor Rouillard opined that the unverifiable narrative of what could have amounted to child-murder has led to the false assertion of genocide, an assertion without any supporting evidence.
“By never pointing out that it is only a matter of speculation or potentiality, and that no remains have yet been found, governments and the media are simply granting credence to what is really a thesis: the thesis of the ‘disappearance’ of children from residential schools,” Rouillard wrote.
“And all of this is based only on soil abnormalities that could easily be caused by root movements, as the anthropologist herself cautioned in the July 15 press conference.”
The vast majority of Canadians have been misled by the media and Mr. Trudeau, believing the most incredible smears imaginable, leading to scores of attacks on churches around the country.
It's time we heard the truth.
Please sign the petition today.
We are also cc'ing Canada's Catholic bishops on this petition - they must also demand the record be corrected, lest Canadians continue believing the mainstream media's disinformation.
For More Information:
How the world's media got it wrong on residential school graves - National Post
Trudeau lied about the bogus mass grave story - LifeSiteNews
Trudeau's narrative was a hoax - LifeSiteNews
**Photo: St. Jean Baptiste Church in Morinville burned to the ground on June 30, 2021**
Fr. Epicoco likened the Holy Spirit’s descent upon the Apostles to the current “crisis” in the Church, stating that the very existence of a “crisis” is proof that “we are entering a new time of Pentecost.”
Too many times we can fall into the trap of thinking that the general crisis that the Church is also going through is just bad news. Some choices, some decisions, some new styles have also brought disarray, din, to the Church, but this thing instead of being proof that we are going astray is instead the testimony that we are entering a new time of Pentecost.
The columnist used Pope Francis’ homily to contrast the “harmony” of the Holy Spirit with “discipline and tranquility” and the “synchronicity of a barracks parade,” in language that echoed Pope Francis’ regular attacks on “rigid” Catholics. Epicoco wrote:
Certain situations, in fact, force us to look at ourselves with more truth and to divide ourselves, in the sense of “distinguishing ourselves,” that is, to discover what is truly ours, what pertains to a specific charism. Only in this way can the Spirit give us a harmony that is newness and not mere recovery of discipline and tranquility. We must ask the Church for the power of Pentecost, not the synchronicity of a barracks parade.
Teaching from Pope Francis’ predecessor contradicts statement about ‘division’
While the Pope was clearly referring to the miracle of Pentecost by which the Apostles spoke before the crowds in Jerusalem in all the various languages of those present, it was not the Holy Spirit that created the “division of languages,” as Francis suggested. (Acts 2: 3-12) As Scripture recounts, the division of languages among the crowd was already present and the gift of the Holy Spirit enabled the Apostles to speak in the diverse languages.
Pope Francis’ promotion of the Holy Spirit as the “author of division” also places him in contradiction to teachings of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. In his 2012 homily for the feast of Pentecost, Benedict XVI stated “at Pentecost, where there had been division and alienation, unity and understanding were born.”
Indeed, Pope Francis’ recent homily contradicted his address at the Regina Caeli for Pentecost last year, when the Pope described the Holy Spirit as “harmony, it is unity, it unites differences.”