[Music] Good evening everybody. Michael Matt here in Rome. Obviously you've all heard we have a pope. Pope Leo I the 14th is our holy father and we pray for him. Um I guess everybody wants the tratties anyway. They want us to be very negative and very upset. But the thing is this, my phone has been blowing up all night from people who have personal experience with him, the goods and the bads and what do you think and all this. Everybody's trying to figure out. I think one of the things that we can say about about Pope Leo is that nobody knows a whole lot. Um, but on on one issue, I think on the Latin Mass, there's actually some pretty good reason for hope. We just got a call just a few moments ago from a former student of his who says he's actually very favorable. not favorable in the sense of I want to be saying the Latin mass but favorable to the idea of allowing the freedom for the Latin mass which is obviously a positive thing but I just want to say like I'm not really interested in uh just just going all negative and dark now when Cardinal Joseph Rossinger was elected pope I remember very clearly a lot of traditional Catholics saying haven't you seen this guy is a modernist he was a peritus at Vatican 2 he's the worst of the worst it's awful you know and everybody panics you know he's he couldn't any any any worse than Rozinger in the tie with Roner back in the day Vatican 2. So we had this with Cardinal Rodinger uh when he became Benedict the 16th changed history and think about the guy from Vatican 2. Couldn't have been any worse, right? He was just the worst. Um brings back the Latin mass, frees the Latin mass completely. Uh lifts the excommunications of the the pious the 10th bishops. Who ever saw that coming? Nobody. Absolutely no. And this night this night, conclave night, I remember so clearly being told by a lot of traditional Catholics that it couldn't be any worse than Joseph Frosting. Well, history has shown that was absolutely not true. Even though he wasn't a traditional Catholic, something happens with these men when they become popes. And conversely, or in addition, I'll never forget the night that Jorge Mario Burggalio became pope. It was raining standing out there in the piaza. It was dark. It was scary. It was downright scary the feeling that we had um when that when when it was announced that Francis with the Burggalio South American Jesuit had become pope and it was uh you you couldn't it was really difficult with him to find anything positive with Burggalio. You just couldn't there was nothing. And yet, and yet 12 years later, I mentioned the other night um the counterrevolution uh got stronger, the revolution of Vatican 2 was exposed by Pope Francis more than any other pope since since the council. Francis exposed it. He showed everybody exactly what it was all about. And so there was an awakening that was incredible under under Francis. So, that would be another way of looking at what might happen with a pope with the current with the new uh Pope Leo. My point is don't jump in and decide you've got it all figured out because of what happened before. And again, we've been pouring over lots of things that he said. Mostly he's unknown uh to to us. He's not unknown to bishops because he was the prefect for the the caser for the bishops. Um so, some of his appointments were good, some of them were bad under him. He's only been there since 2023. Hasn't been there that long. People are saying, "Well, yeah, Mroy came up in the DC under him." And okay, well, we're these are all the things we're going to look at. Nobody's trying to sugarcoat anything. We're just trying to put everything kind of in perspective. You just don't know. So, I think that what what we need to do is there's a couple things that are important. He's very pro-life. The you just told me, Walter, tonight, that the uh Catholics for free choice are outraged over this because he started pro-life organizations and he's very pro sincerely pro-life. He's not particularly pro-LGBT rights and accommodations and walking and pathing and journeying with them. He's on the record has been there, so they're not too happy with it. He is in favor of some sort of cooperation with Francis for the cidality that in the church, which is which is concerning, it's a mixed bag. In other words, also as we move forward prayerfully, you know, hoping for the best. Um, he also has seen uh the chaos that's that's happened to the church over the past 12 years. Um, and it doesn't make any sense that he would just want to say, "I'm going to do exactly what Francis did." First of all, why does he not choose? If he wants to be Francis II, why doesn't he choose the name Francis II? If he wanted to be Francis II, why does he why does he wear the Mosetta? Why does he wear the red shoes? Why does he come out and do uh the confidier uh in Latin? Why does he pray the Hail Mary? Why does he give us a blessing in Latin? I said uh to someone that that that blessing has not been has not been given like that from the Loia since Pope Pius the 12. What's he trying to do? Is he trying to fool us like or just get us off guard? I don't think so. I mean, they've they've got all the power here, you know? So, I think there's something interesting in even in the the choice of the name Leo the 13th. I understand people have some criticism of Leo the 13th but ultimately the great social teaching of the church Leo the 13th oh my gosh you know he was a powerhouse even though there was an expectation he was going to be more liberal same with pas the 9th when he came in they actually put him in they tried to get him in lobbyed to get him into the chair of St. Peter because he was a liberal and he he's the one that gave us the syllabus condemning the errors of the modernists. One of the most powerful anti-modernist uh encyclical or letters documents in the history of the church. So you just don't know. And as I say, I think one of the big problems uh with us is we as traditional Catholics, we have to understand and we have to truly believe in the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. See what happens. We have to be the ones that give him every benefit of the doubt. It's a new day. This is something brand new now. He is no longer prevost. He is now Leo. And we want to see what's going to happen. And I think it's so important for traditional Catholics to be part of the solution. We've already established that we know how to resist. And we are going to if that if that happens, if it's as bad as it can possibly be, we continue doing what we already have been doing for a long long time. In my case, all of my life. This is not this is not different. So I would say to people in this audience, are you in this for the long haul or not? Um, this is going to it's been going on for a long time. They've been trying to undermine the Catholic Church for such a long time, all my life. Well, centuries before, right? It's going to go on for a long time. The church is strong. The church is divine. She's very difficult to destroy, obviously. So, I think we look at some of the positives in this man. He seems to actually be a man of faith to me. And I I say that from personal experiencing experience listening to him talk. I disagree with him obviously on a lot of things, but I want I want I want Leo to look at the traditional Catholic movement in the church today, which is extremely powerful now compared to what what used to be the case. Much more powerful than it used to be. And I want him to say, well, we better try to accommodate them. We better try to do what we can to make sure there isn't strong resistance as there was against Francis. It's not unthinkable at all if this is a man of who's reasonable, as a man of of of faith, even though he's certainly not a traditionalist, to think, well, why are we so divided? Why don't we talk to the traditionalists? Because let's face it, and this is no secret, there has been a reign of terror in the Vatican for 12 years. I've talked to a lot of people who reinforce it, who live here, priests and bishops who live in the Vatican. And that's the way to describe it, a climate of fear. I mean, it was a really brutal time. So, this didn't work. Obviously, it didn't work out well. And so, I think we just have to be the ones who send a a signal to the new pope. If you, you know, if you if you if you're if you're true to the promises of your baptism to not to your oath of office, you will find no greater defenders than than us. And we're not going to have preconceived notions. We're not going to judge the pope beforehand. So, we have to without becoming polyiana, we have to understand that, as I say, we've been in this for a long time. The war goes on, the fight goes on, but the counterrevolution has to go on. And we always have to present ourselves as traditional Catholics first and foremost to the new pope to say, "We are your loyal sons and daughters. If you're going to betray us, you're going to betray tradition. We will resist. Not because we want to, but because we have no choice. If you're going to persecute us, we will go into the catacombs, but we will we will keep the old faith." But if there's even this much of a chance that something good is going to happen as happened under Cardinal Roth and in in a strange contradictory way um despite himself as happened also under Francis there's no reason friends to go into a full-blown panic here all week long we were hearing names like like Tagley and and and and Perilyn and I think some choices that would have been considerably worse you know I I even heard Cardinal Supich at one point was was a possibility ility as an outsider. Um, those names didn't happen. Francis II didn't happen. So, here we are. And I would just I would beg you to keep in mind what's going on here. We have to stay Catholic. We have to show the world that what we want more than anything else is fidelity to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to tradition of the church. That's what we want. We don't want to I always say during the when the when when things were happening pretty good actually for the traditional Latin mass movement um under under Pope Benedict the 16th the remnant my organization became less relevant less needed I would love for the day to come when we don't have to be traditional Catholics when things like the remnant would just disappear or we would talk about sporting events or we would talk about literature or whatever something else besides counterrevolution you know and that's the spirit I think we all need to have we don't want to be in this position My heart was filled with joy today waiting all week long the expectation that some point the Holy Ghost is going to intervene that things can get better that maybe we're at the bottom and it's going to start you know going up now there's no place else to go but up um and I want to stay open to that possibility and I don't think that's polyiana at all. I think we all have to be in lock step united in that as Catholics with a with an appreciation a serious appreciation for the divine nature of this church. So we just hang in there. We just stay in there and we hope for the best. We pray for the best. And it's important on the human level for people to see traditional Catholics at the outset say, "Okay. This is a new day. It's starting here. Now we have a new pope. Thank God we have a new pope. He will see and find in us loyal sons of the church, defenders of the papacy certainly, and defenders of him if it's if it's at all possible. That's what we want. We'll wait to find out if there's really another reign of terror coming. I just in my heart of hearts I don't think that's the case. Um and my experience with uh with POS is that he seems like a genuine a nice man, a good guy. I'm not saying that that that makes it okay. Everything's fine. I agree with him. No, I disagree with him on a lot of things. But let's just let's just wait and see. And most importantly, friends, let's show him that we're we're willing that we have the grace and the faith to be wide open to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost in this process. that maybe he maybe the new pope is going to change things going in a different direction than his predecessor. Uh but please don't expect the worst. Please understand that I'm genuinely uh hopeful for the best and um all in God's providence. Things will work out fine. So keep the faith, stay strong, say your prayers, and thanks for um thanks for following along with our work here in Rome. Michael Matrena TV and we'll see you tomorrow.