Pope Francis née Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who practices an ecclesiology tailored to the spirit of the times, could easily be mistaken as Joe Biden in a white cassock and skull cap. They share an imperious disposition that takes delight in overturning or diminishing the decrees of their predecessors, overregulate their administrations with orders and encyclicals, are vindictive in their treatment of ideological opponents, look unfavorably upon conservative American Catholics, believe their foundational documents are out of step with modern times, and are hell-bent on transforming their sovereignties. They are both vaccinistas pushing COVID jabs, and climate hypocrites unfazed by their own globetrotting carbon trails as they gaslight their flocks over temperatures, tides, and net zero deadlines. Comfy and guarded in their castle keeps, they are tone deaf to the consequences of open border migration, and exhibit an affective tolerance of regimes that give lip service to religious freedom and human rights.   

As ideological bedfellows, Bergoglio has encouraged Joe Biden to continue taking Communion at Sunday Mass, despite his being a passionate advocate for infanticide and the capo di tutti capi for a global wave of human trafficking and child endangerment. Recently, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone barred House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving the Sacrament for her pro-abortion stance. One month later in Rome, Bergoglio publicly humiliated his own prelate by granting the former speaker a private audience and permitting her Communion at a Vatican Mass.

Were it not for his pastoral rearing in the cross currents of politics and Catholicism in Latin America, the ambiguous character, progressivism, and obscure apostolic exhortations of il Papa Francis, would have theologians in a pickle. Bergoglio ascended his Buenos Aires archdiocese as an ordained member of the Society of Jesus, an order identifying its clerics with the initials ‘S.J.’ Founded in the sixteenth century by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, it organized along a military-style chain of command, with a constitution pledging unwavering obedience to the pope, even unto martyrdom. Early Jesuits spread throughout the Old and New Worlds with a missionary zeal, preaching the Gospel and rescuing an eroding European Catholicism from the clutches of the Protestant Reformation.

The plight of the indigent populations they evangelized eventually drove them to pursue the causes of social, economic, and political justice. Their devotion to divinity took a back seat to the material needs of their ministries. Jesuit religious training drifted to earthly pursuits and achievements in science and education, putting them in positions of power in universities and as scientists on the world stage.

In the mid-twentieth century, radical Jesuits in Latin America preached a violent, neo-Marxist approach to theology, first in Peru, and then picked up arms to fight alongside revolutionary movements in Colombia and Nicaragua, going so far as to assume high political office.

In the sixties, provincials and superiors in the Jesuit hierarchy became increasingly heretical in their relationship to the Holy See and injected a lethal dose of modernism into the Catholic Church. Jesuit theologians, canonists, and prelates were front and center at the Second Vatican Council, elbowing the cardinals in attendance to approve crushing reforms to the age-old celebration of the traditional Catholic Mass, ridding it of its native Latin, lace vestments, Gregorian chants, and incense, as if they were trying to put Protestants into the pews. Decades of intrigues, contempt for papal authority, and rejection of magisterial tradition and faith followed Vatican II, undermining three successive papacies. With the abdication of Benedict XVI in 2013, Jesuits accomplished the unthinkable, sending white smoke up the chimney of the Sistine Chapel and putting a Jesuit on the throne of St. Peter.

Bergoglio is a Franciscan parody who acts and thinks like a Jesuit. In the Vatican, he has sidelined outspoken cardinals loyal to the old ways and staffed the most influential Vatican offices pertaining to Church doctrine and dogma, the faith, synodality and unity, culture, and education, with social liberals of Jesuit upbringing. Prefects in these posts have ghostwritten declarations and encyclicals for Bergoglio that have swung open the Church windows to blessing same-sex couples, idolizing ecology, embracing ecumenicism, condoning homosexuality and transgenderism, and pushing female ordinations. Succession planning is now underway in the Vatican College of Cardinals, with Bergoglian modernists replacing elderly cardinals who are aging out of their voting privileges in the papal conclave.

During his pontificate, Bergoglio has hosted individuals and groups antithetical in words and acts to Church doctrine and dogma under the banner of synodality, discernment, and unity. He has held numerous audiences with LBGTQ+ and transgender activists, hosted nativist celebrations of pagan idols, and embraced Islamist leaders who consider him an apostate. By contrast, he has drawn a bullseye on clerics loyal to the traditional practices of the Catholic liturgy, sidelining or canceling conservative bishops and priests who celebrate the Mass of the Ages.

As seen in other religious orders, bowing to the cultural zeitgeist has brought immorality into the Jesuit ranks. Bergoglio appears disoriented in his approach to the dilemma, encouraging those with same-sex preferences to continue pursuing the priesthood, despite evidence that such tendencies have a near-perfect correlation to the abuse of adolescents. He has shown partisanship in his lukewarm treatment of the most notorious predators in the Church, including Jesuit-educated now-ex Cardinal Theodore McCarrick,* Vatican artist and now-ex-Jesuit Father Marco Ivan Rupnik, S.J., and deceased Father Alfonso Pedrajas, S.J., their victims numbering in the hundreds, whose investigations have either dragged on, or outlived those under scrutiny.

To promote his militant Church agenda, Bergoglio leans heavily on two theological literati, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez S.J., an Argentinian Jesuit pulled up through the ranks by Bergoglio to take over the Vatican’s Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, and Andrea Grillo, a self-inflated lay liturgist at Rome’s Sant’ Anselmo College.

Bringing Fernandez to Rome gave Bergoglio a stranglehold on Church doctrine and morality, even in the face of a Vatican investigation into Fernandez’s literary works linking sexuality and spirituality. Some read like soft pornography, with titles such as “Heal Me with your Mouth. The Art of Kissing,” and, “Mystical Passion,” publications that advocated a perverted ecclesiology rooted in the pleasures of the flesh, featuring a teenage girl. In addition to scripting a papal exhortation for Bergoglio allowing divorced and remarried couples to receive Communion, in his first year as cardinal and prefect, Fernandez has penned three additional high-profile papal documents that have paved the way for the blessing of same-sex couples; imputed infinite dignity upon man without a mention of salvation, and downplayed the supernatural origin of Marian apparitions and Eucharistic miracles.

Despite his denials, Professore Grillo has his fingerprints all over Bergoglio’s Traditionis Custodes, the 2021 apostolic letter that reversed the edict of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, and  put the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass on life support. Grillo’s ecclesiastical arrogance and outsized Vatican influence is apparent in his well-publicized support for contraception, the blessing of same-sex unions, and female ordinations. He has little faith in the permanency of marriage, and denies that the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ is substantially present in the consecrated bread and wine of the Catholic Mass.

With the help of a Roman Curia overrun by Jesuit priests, bishops, cardinals, and lay loyalists, Bergoglio is building a Trojan Horse within Catholicism, all at once reimagining doctrine, dogma, the catechesis, and liturgy within a secular framework. The bedrock faith is suffering by way of eliminating Church tradition and teachings, celebrating heterodoxy, and putting worldly causes in the place of divine worship.

For their part, the Jesuit hierarchy in the Vatican has put the Catholic Church on a slippery slope to heresy and schism by rejecting their Ignatian call for sanctity and obedience and for accepting more than a century of cultural rot within their order. Disillusioned, some Jesuits are breaking ranks with their superiors. Perhaps it is a whiff of the supernatural that their ordinations and apostolates are shrinking dramatically against the popularity of other priestly orders, a chastisement for leading souls to ignore the hereafter in pursuit of the here and now.

Image: U.S. Department of State

Correction: McCarrick was Jesuit-educated as a youth, but not an ordained Jesuit.