The John-Henry Westen Show - Pope Leo XIV： A New Dawn for the Church？

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 0.86

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.

00:14:05.800 We've finally come to grips with and can accept love between people. We can approve of love.

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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 0.91

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 0.62

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

00:19:05.100 can also connect with us on social media to stay up to date with the latest news on life

00:19:10.380 faith family and freedom thanks for watching and may god bless you

The John-Henry Westen Show - May 14, 2025

Pope Leo XIV： A New Dawn for the Church？

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