The John-Henry Westen Show - May 14, 2025


Pope Leo XIV： A New Dawn for the Church？


Episode Stats

Length

19 minutes

Words per Minute

202.07494

Word Count

3,928

Sentence Count

268

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary

In the wake of the death of Pope John Paul III, many Catholics are asking, "Where does the new Pope stand on the Latin Mass?" In this episode, we talk to Michael Mattiello, head of the Traditional Catholic Movement in America and beyond, to find out where Leo XIV stands on the matter.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 If the Catholic Church is going to become completely irrelevant in politics, in lockdowns,
00:00:03.820 in medicine, world medicine, we're all in big trouble.
00:00:09.420 Hello, my friends. We are here in Rome. Obviously, we have a new Pope, Pope Leo XIV.
00:00:15.960 And I wanted to bring to you Michael Matt, really the head of traditional movement in
00:00:22.440 America and even beyond. His family, of course, has run the remnant for decades and fought this
00:00:29.900 war to restore the traditional Latin Mass to its rightful place. We are with a new Pope
00:00:35.860 now. Pope Francis, who very much tried to crush the Latin Mass, is gone. I was stunned that
00:00:44.000 yesterday, right where Francis had himself buried, right on top of him, was celebrated
00:00:50.380 the traditional Latin Mass with the Institute of Christ the King celebration yesterday, planned
00:00:55.460 before, but fulfilled right yesterday as he was laid to rest there. Michael, Matt, thank
00:01:03.040 you for joining us. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Let's begin as we always do with the sign
00:01:06.380 of the cross in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen. So you've been
00:01:11.900 here like for a week or more already. You've been covering this every day. You're exhausted,
00:01:16.920 I know. So thanks for doing this. Tell us what, I'd love to hear your perspective on what just
00:01:22.800 happened. If you came into the conclave thinking, well, this is the end of the revolution, you're
00:01:27.000 going to be disappointed. I mean, no one anticipated that at all. So I think what the main thing we're
00:01:32.600 looking for right now is on some certain key issues. For example, the traditional Latin Mass,
00:01:36.440 where does he stand on that? Generally speaking, and I've spoken to many people in this town over the
00:01:40.780 past week, people who know what's going on here, including priests and bishops, who've described
00:01:45.920 the last 12 years as living in a climate of fear. So there was an iron-handedness to this pontificate.
00:01:52.040 I'm sorry, God rest his soul. Of course, we pray for the reposal of Francis, but that's just the
00:01:55.940 reality. And so in that climate of fear, many people were doing things that I think, I'm talking
00:02:01.560 about churchmen now, almost in a fearful sense. Yes, I'm going to obey. I'm going to do whatever he
00:02:05.400 wants, because if you don't, it's going to get ugly. And he had a way of sort of bouncing people out.
00:02:09.460 I think that's come to an end. And this would be based, okay, everybody's really digging deep to try to find
00:02:15.520 out the best thing you can say without sugarcoating it or rose-colored glassing it or playing Pollyanna.
00:02:20.980 But one thing I will say from my personal experience, having covered the Synod on Synodality,
00:02:25.240 is that Cardinal Prevost, of all of the representatives who came and approached us as members of the press
00:02:31.000 and gave us, you know, declarations or explanations for what was happening with the Synod, he seemed to
00:02:36.120 me to be the one who actually was interested in talking to people, not just giving platitudes,
00:02:40.860 not just, you know, shutting down tough questions. He answered difficult questions,
00:02:44.140 like, for example, with respect to the African Bishops' Conferences and homosexuality and all
00:02:48.400 of that. He tried his back. And I remember thinking, he seems like a man of faith. He seems like an
00:02:52.840 intelligent guy. Obviously, he's an intelligent man. And I was thinking, how could he fall for
00:02:56.280 Synodality? This doesn't make any sense to me. But I'm just saying that because there was sort of a
00:03:00.420 genuine desire to make people see. So I think if that's going to be his role to try to build these
00:03:07.980 bridges, and I hate the expression, build the bridges. Everybody does. But he seems to take that
00:03:12.600 seriously. And his record more or less shows, reflects that. So then I think the best thing
00:03:16.860 to do is say, okay, what are we going to do? Where do we stand as, I myself, a traditional Catholic?
00:03:20.840 What do we do? Do we just shoot him down? Do we come on guns blaring and attack the new Pope?
00:03:24.940 Or do we stand and say, well, let's, we'll hear you out. Let's, let's find out what you want to do.
00:03:29.100 If you want to listen to us, you will have no greater defenders than us, the traditional Catholics,
00:03:33.500 if you're going to be fair. And if you're going to listen to what, to our case,
00:03:37.740 especially with respect to the traditional Latin mass. It's an interesting thing. I went,
00:03:42.040 we went into, at least I did, and many did, went into the last pontificate, totally not knowing.
00:03:47.720 So there was a huge hopefulness with Francis. There was two huge Orthodox papacies. You had
00:03:54.600 papacies that give you clarity on life and on family issues. And then the Francis thing was
00:04:00.080 one disaster after another. And it was so disheartening. We went down a hill. At this point,
00:04:05.220 the world is also very different. The research is very different. We have instant access to his
00:04:10.380 Twitter came out. His last Twitter post was bashing Trump's immigration policy. And that just from,
00:04:15.040 you know, less than a month ago. So it's interesting. So you're flooded with information.
00:04:19.960 We have, we know where he's coming from on so many issues. And there were many disastrous issues.
00:04:26.360 But I think we're starting from a more of a reality and we can work our way upward. And I think
00:04:32.880 that's a lot more hopeful because then we could be happily surprised by various things that come
00:04:38.680 out. And one of them, if it comes out, the traditional Latin mass, it would be incredible
00:04:42.760 that he would give, at least make for less restrictions. You have to keep your ear to
00:04:48.460 the ground to find out people who knew him personally. Just yesterday, last night, I heard
00:04:52.580 from two of them. By the way, I was up all night. So if I seem a little sluggish, because we were
00:04:55.800 literally up till 6.30 this morning working on all this. So, but I heard from two of his former
00:04:59.960 students who were a little bit, and both of them, one of them for sure, I know personally.
00:05:03.300 So I'm trying to give credibility to this witness. In fact, he's, he's, I'm not going to get,
00:05:06.960 I'm not going to give away because he has not cleared me to talk about this, but I know him
00:05:09.680 very well and I can vouch for him. And he said, wait a minute, I know this man personally.
00:05:13.060 I remember the way he was. I was, I was a former student of his. And he was very open to the idea of
00:05:17.820 being fair with the traditional Latin mass people. He was fair and he even protected certain seminary
00:05:22.700 down in Peru. And the other thing I would say is, when you mentioned Francis, we all, we were standing
00:05:28.380 right here when, when Bergoglio's Francis was, was, was, was selected. And what happened on the
00:05:34.660 loggia was something all of us were extreme. We'll put a lot of import on that. What's he trying to
00:05:39.600 do? What is the signal? Now we know what he was signaling. So if we were to do that with Francis to
00:05:44.040 say, look, what's going on, look how he's dressed, look how he says, you know, bless me and, and all the
00:05:49.500 kind of strange stuff that happened that night. Then I think in fairness, we have to look at what
00:05:53.480 happened on the loggia yesterday. And what happened on the loggia yesterday was, especially the way he was
00:05:58.000 dressed, which does mean something. This is the visual. This is the optic that the whole world
00:06:01.520 sees. And that optic was traditional. He did things, for example, he said that the confitier,
00:06:05.840 the old traditional confitier, I couldn't believe it. I mean, the parts that have been left out of
00:06:09.360 the Novus Ordo, he actually prayed that. Now, why? I don't know. I'm not trying to make a big defense
00:06:14.200 or an epilogy of what happened, but I'm just telling you what my reaction was. The Hail Mary in Latin,
00:06:19.780 lots of Latin. The blessing was beautiful. We have not seen a blessing like that since Pope Pius XII.
00:06:25.260 Now, what is he trying to signal? And I think as a traditional Catholic, it's very fair to say,
00:06:30.100 okay, we did it with Bergoglio. We looked at the loggia. We said, what does it mean?
00:06:33.600 Same thing has to happen here. What does it mean? And that's what we're going to wait.
00:06:36.920 That's what we're trying to find out. We're going to be patient and figure it out.
00:06:39.320 One thing on the loggia that I thought was really stunning. When, did you notice when he said the
00:06:44.160 holy name of Jesus, he bowed. That's a very pious traditional practice of a lover of Christ.
00:06:49.720 And it's one, I think that Bergoglio actually disdained such signs of shows of piety.
00:06:55.560 I'm afraid so. I mean, we all saw the, what I thought was a very upsetting scene. Again,
00:07:01.020 God rest his soul. I don't know what he was thinking, but you remember the altar boy who was
00:07:05.520 here in Rome, here in the Vatican, with his hands folded in the presence of the Holy Father. And I'm
00:07:10.720 sorry, but Pope Francis went up and pulled those hands apart and sort of scoffed at this thing.
00:07:13.860 I was a former altar boy. If that had happened to me, there was just a priest. I would have been,
00:07:17.600 you know, devastated. This was the Pope sort of frowning on that sort of thing. We all remember
00:07:21.960 the kissing of the ring fiasco, where he was almost violently pulling his ring away from people who
00:07:27.240 wanted to, wanted to kiss the papal ring. So yeah, that's the kind of thing that as, from what I could
00:07:33.000 see of Cardinal Prevost before he became Leo, don't think that would be in character with him at all.
00:07:37.720 I see a man who's much more open to discussion, much more of a gentleman, if you will. There's more
00:07:42.040 gravitas. There's more actual humility. I'm not talking about the promotion of humility,
00:07:46.140 but actual humility in this man, all of which to me speaks to what is the feeling? What's the gut?
00:07:51.780 Okay. The gut that we all had with Francis was not good. The gut that we have this, despite the fact
00:07:57.060 we disagree with him on things like synodality, the gut that I have now and that I had then was,
00:08:02.200 well, maybe this is a man we can work with. And that's, pray that's what it turns out to be.
00:08:06.420 Obviously for our record on him, one of the most severe things is his removal of Bishop Strickland,
00:08:12.620 you know, being involved in that directly himself and then pulling the plug and same time,
00:08:17.720 the elevation of McElroy. Those two stuck together, which they were in his tenure as the head of the
00:08:23.400 congregation for bishops. It was kind of deadly. I'd love your take. Well, it's deadly. But then
00:08:28.060 again, look how Bishop Strickland responded to Pope Leo last night and a beautiful thing,
00:08:33.020 calling for prayer, supporting him as the Holy Father and starting fresh, starting anew. So Bishop
00:08:37.480 Strickland, I don't know the details of that. I know what happened, but I don't know exactly
00:08:40.600 what the relationship is between Bishop, Bishop Strickland and Cardinal Prevost. But I thought
00:08:45.860 that it's good, good, good for Bishop Strickland sort of leading us, showing us a really good
00:08:51.760 example. This is a new day, the grace of office, the grace of the Holy Ghost. We have to be patient
00:08:56.960 and Strickland could have just, you know, reacted very violently against that if he had a personal
00:09:01.620 experience that wasn't positive, but he didn't call for prayer. With respect to McElroy, I mean,
00:09:06.140 the really strange thing about this, and you know this, is that he was only a cardinal.
00:09:11.200 Grievous was only a cardinal for five minutes. So he comes in and all of a sudden he's,
00:09:16.260 Francis promotes him for the castery for bishops. The good appointments, the bad appointments,
00:09:20.900 the things that happen, he only had a very short period of time. And as you know, in the Vatican,
00:09:23.940 there's an apparatus. I mean, you don't get to be just a complete renegade or a lone wolf on something
00:09:28.820 like that. So we don't, we just don't know yet. Was this things that were already sort of in place
00:09:34.480 or was this part of Prevost's personal agenda to put a McElroy, for example, in D.C.? We don't know.
00:09:40.460 But I would say he was only there for two years as cardinal. And maybe, hopefully, that was a mistake.
00:09:45.660 We don't know. We're going to wait and find out about that too. Indeed. And I think, for me anyway,
00:09:51.580 one of the clearest signs of goodwill on the part of Pope Leo XIV, because of his involvement,
00:10:00.680 it might have been forced involvement in Bishop Strickland's removal, would be the restoration
00:10:06.320 of Bishop Strickland. I think that's a key sign to watch for. I think that's the key sign to watch
00:10:11.860 for. When you're involved in what truly is an atrocity, and you have a rebirth, a conversion,
00:10:17.820 a turnaround, you do what our Lord said to Peter. Do you love me? Feed my sheep. Do you love me? Feed
00:10:24.860 my sheep. Do you love me? Feed my lambs. And then when you turn, strengthen your brothers. And if you
00:10:29.860 want to truly strengthen your brothers in the Episcopate, who all watched this disaster with
00:10:34.720 Strickland, I think most American bishops anyway, at least, knew Strickland to be the holiest among them,
00:10:41.320 bar none. And seeing his removal was devastating on so many, and on the faithful, I think it would be
00:10:50.060 still a moderate measure, but a measure of outreach in a positive way to restore Bishop Strickland.
00:10:58.780 Well, of course. And that remains to be seen. The appointments. Is he going to leave Perilin in?
00:11:03.820 Is he going to leave the apparatus of Francis set up alone? And we're going to find that out fairly
00:11:08.040 soon, I would think. So is he going to undo some of the scandals, such as the Strickland scandal?
00:11:12.600 We don't know yet. But I agree with you. Now he's in charge. Now we get to find out. And it's not
00:11:17.360 always, not to use a Nuremberg defense, but it's not always fair to look at what a man did who's
00:11:22.060 lowered down the chain of command and say, he did that on purpose. Everybody's got pressure.
00:11:29.060 There's political pressure. Even Cardinal Burke, he calls for the dubia. He issues the dubia. But
00:11:34.700 many people were critical of Cardinal Burke, who I love very much, because he never really came out
00:11:38.340 and denounced Francis in the issues over which the dubia were written. So even a churchman like
00:11:44.840 Cardinal Burke understands the threat of schism. He's concerned about scandalizing the faithful.
00:11:50.700 You and I, because we're journalists, we would love him to just come out and blast away. But he can't.
00:11:54.800 That's not the way the church works. Unless he wants to die on that hill, and that's it.
00:11:58.420 And he's gone. So I think everybody really needs to take into account that these are not bloggers,
00:12:04.060 these bishops and cardinals. They're not YouTubers. There's a very serious, not only human
00:12:10.040 responsibility, but also a spiritual responsibility to do what's best for the church. So sometimes,
00:12:14.760 for example, a cardinal might say, why are they getting rid of Strickland? But this is what Francis
00:12:19.180 wants. Because Francis is the one that got rid of Strickland, no matter what. He's the one that
00:12:22.340 wanted it to happen. But do we expect heroism on these bishops and cardinals to just reject the
00:12:29.900 Pope, just resist him right to his face, as laymen are more able to do? No, we can't do that. So
00:12:34.660 there's a lot behind the scenes of these things. I'm really curious to have a conversation with
00:12:38.940 Bishop Strickland and to see what he thinks. So like I said before, I'm really pleased that he came
00:12:42.700 out beautifully, I think, right away and showed the face of Christ in this situation. Maybe he'll share
00:12:48.400 some more with us on how that all happened. Because at the end of the day, the person who got
00:12:52.500 rid of Bishop Joseph Strickland was Pope Francis. Let's see, I'm waiting for that signal from Pope Leo
00:12:59.500 the 14th. That would be the most incredible thing. And it would show a sign of goodwill to restore some
00:13:07.040 of the damage. I have to wonder though, when you're talking about, you know, the bishops can't say
00:13:13.100 anything. And because it would cause schism. To be honest, Michael, I think we've been in schism for
00:13:19.960 a long time. You have mass changes on, you have the Pachamama idolatry really going quite unanswered
00:13:27.460 by almost everyone. You have the changing of the teaching in the catechism on the death penalty.
00:13:33.200 You have the changing in verbiage from Francis and approved by here on contraception, on divorce,
00:13:39.600 marriage, communion, on now immigration, ahead of abortion as a consideration when electing.
00:13:46.040 You have all these things that really made the faith into something else. A de facto schism,
00:13:53.220 if you will. But it's where everybody is. And it's where people believe the church is now,
00:13:59.660 especially the issue of homosexuality. Almost everybody thinks, you know, this is the new church.
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00:14:44.620 Well, the thing is, and this is where I would encourage your viewers to take into consideration
00:14:50.940 the long haul, both the long haul of the revolution and the long haul of the counter-revolution. This has
00:14:56.080 been going on for a very long time. And you have to decide if you're going to stay in it or not.
00:15:01.280 Are you going to fight or not? So I've been here for a week, as you say, a couple of weeks,
00:15:04.820 we're going to be here. Why? Because I feel obligated before God to exercise every possible
00:15:11.080 influence that I can as a lay Catholic journalist on this process, on what's going on. And I would
00:15:17.440 say that that's not wasted time because, ironically enough, the crackdown on the Latin Mass that Pope
00:15:23.120 Francis is responsible for, that signaled that he was very concerned about the pushback, about the
00:15:28.960 traditional Catholic resistance throughout the world. Loving resistance, but resistance
00:15:32.100 nevertheless. So I think we have to, again, take into account, not, you're right, there's so many
00:15:38.160 problems in the church, but the agenda of a Cardinal Burke, for example, a Cardinal Muller,
00:15:43.880 how much they can say and when they can say it is something that we don't understand as laymen
00:15:48.160 necessarily. So I'm not trying to give them excuses or giving them ways out. I'm just saying,
00:15:52.500 I don't pretend to understand the pressures that they're under. So yes, it seems kind of childish.
00:15:56.500 Why? What? You don't want to say that? We're already in cynicism. What are we talking about?
00:15:59.440 But Cardinal Burke, for example, thought he could do more here at the conclave. So he's like, okay,
00:16:03.400 let's make a big push for it at the conclave. Strategy is important. And again, this is not
00:16:08.860 American politics. Strategy is very important. And sometimes these princes of the church act in a
00:16:13.820 way that's different than we. We're scrappers. I've been at this all my life. Cardinal Burke's not a
00:16:17.880 scrapper in that sense. He's a theologian. And so, and also there's an awareness, I think,
00:16:22.660 on some of the conservative cardinals and bishops and priests of, oh my gosh, this thing is really
00:16:28.000 bad. It's worse than we thought. So they didn't even have the 40 years, 30 years that we had to
00:16:32.480 practice trying to make the traditional position heard. They're just kind of coming aware of it now,
00:16:37.660 I think. And this is, I think, a really important point. We have to consider that the changes that
00:16:42.800 have come over all of us over the past 12 years, not only with this pontificate, but also during COVID.
00:16:47.500 COVID was something locked down the world. The children of light were finally able to see
00:16:52.360 the evil face of the children of darkness and what they want to do. So I think it would be myopic
00:16:57.520 not to, even with Pope Leo, for him to have somehow missed that. Because he was pretty supportive of
00:17:03.500 the COVID thing too, as were many people, including many high-profile traditional Catholics.
00:17:08.160 But through the course of that, now that we find out what was really going on with COVID and with the
00:17:13.340 vaccinations, I can't imagine that that's not going to have an impact on people who are now in
00:17:18.060 positions of power. Is the church going to throw in with Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab's of the world
00:17:23.600 again next time? Or have we learned a lesson? I would suggest we've learned a lesson. And one of
00:17:28.220 the ways I think we could point to having learned that lesson is in American politics, the fact that
00:17:33.340 Donald Trump comes back. You know why he got back in? Because of a national and maybe even an
00:17:37.980 international fatigue with wokeism, you know, in politics, but also in the church. People are done.
00:17:44.620 They're sick and tired of this. So I think that for me is the kind of the expectation of the gift of
00:17:49.660 the grace of the Holy Spirit impacting this process and also the human side of it, the realization that
00:17:55.420 so many people have had that this is serious. And if you take the Catholic Church out of this,
00:18:00.140 if the Catholic Church is going to become completely irrelevant in politics, in lockdowns,
00:18:03.820 in medicine, world medicine, we're all in big trouble because there's going to be nobody between
00:18:09.020 us and that sort of brutal, brutal lockdown of the world for the on the whim of some globalists.
00:18:14.700 And then that's the other thing we're going to wait and find out is there was nothing that I could
00:18:18.860 tell from from talking and hearing Cardinal Prepaul speak to suggest he's the uber globalist that
00:18:24.780 Francis was. It's a little bit of hope, but there's a little bit in there. Beautiful. Can we end off
00:18:29.580 praying in Hail Mary for Popel Leo XIV and for the church. Absolutely.
00:18:35.980 Amen. Cool. All right. Thanks.
00:18:55.500 Aloha, everyone. This is Jason Jones for LifeSide News.
00:18:58.780 we hope you enjoyed this video for more content like this check the link in the description you
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00:19:10.380 faith family and freedom thanks for watching and may god bless you