The “Messa in Latino” Blog Case and Religious Freedom for Catholics around the World - by Roberto de Mattei

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

August 6, 2025

The recent case of the “Messa in Latino” blog gives us an opportunity to reflect on the religious freedom of Catholics in the world today. Since 2007, Messainlatino.it (MiL) has been one of the most popular and widely read Catholic blogs in the world. On July 11, 2025, with a simple unsigned email and without any warning, the blog was removed from Google's Blogger platform for alleged violation of the “hate speech policy.” MessainLatino defended itself tooth and nail against this abuse, raising awareness in the press, promoting two parliamentary questions in Rome and Strasbourg, and filing an urgent appeal with the Court of Imperia on July 17. At the end of the standoff, on July 23, the blog was restored by Google. MessainLatino thus won the battle, probably emerging stronger than before.

What has happened is, first and foremost, further confirmation of the arbitrary manner in which certain media oligarchies claim to control information in the West. The main digital platforms that control access to online information through algorithms are, in addition to Google, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and Microsoft. To these groups must be added the major news agencies Associated Press, Reuters, France Press (and in Italy, Ansa), from which most media outlets get their news. Despite the strong centralization of the flow of information, freedom of expression does exist and allows small but courageous “Davids” to successfully oppose the Goliaths of information. The characteristic of that geo-cultural area we call the West is this: a centuries-old revolutionary process is corrupting it, but a counter-movement is opposing it from within, often successfully.

In this battle, the interests of the Catholic Church converge with those of the West, surrounded by ideological and political enemies who want to destroy it. What these enemies are fighting against is not the corruption of the West, but its very essence, which dates back not to the last two centuries, but to the Christian Middle Ages, of which the Catholic Church was the mother. Who defends the Church and the West today? US President Donald Trump is a man who appears fickle, bizarre, and, in some ways, detestable, but without the political, economic, and military protection of the United States, the West would disappear, and its end would coincide with the disappearance of the Catholic Church.

 Within an aggressive anti-Western conglomerate, which includes countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, the Catholic Church is not allowed any freedom of action or expression today. The World Press Freedom Index, in its annual ranking published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), assessing the degree of press freedom in some 180 countries and territories, documents that the places where press freedom is most obscured are North Korea, China, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, and Russia, all communist or Muslim countries.  

The West, for its part, approves of infanticide and assisted suicide, but it is also experiencing a vigorous religious and moral reaction. These days, the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin, which is the main center of Marian devotion and traditional liturgy in the northern United States, is experiencing a historic week of religious celebrations, with the participation of Cardinal Raymond Burke, who founded it, Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk, Archbishop of Utrecht, and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco. Salvatore Cordileone. There is no Catholic shrine within Russia, China, or Muslim countries where pilgrimages or solemn liturgical ceremonies of this kind are permitted.

A few days ago, on July 26, thirty thousand participants in the pilgrimage to Saint Anne d'Auray, in Brittany, on the four hundredth anniversary of the apparitions, listened to a powerful and devout homily by Cardinal Robert Sarah, special envoy of Pope Leo XIV. During the same days, in Fanjeaux, in southern France, the Dominican teaching sisters celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their foundation. The sisters are also present in Germany, Switzerland, and the United States, running primary and secondary schools for girls, with a total of over 2,700 students. Their strictly traditional education is successfully carried out in the secularized West, but their presence would be unimaginable in the anti-Western world.

Of course, countless other examples could be given, but we have limited ourselves to those from the last week. The fact is that seminars, pilgrimages, and Catholic schools are flourishing in the West, especially in their more traditional form, thanks to the religious freedom that is guaranteed to them. 

The Society of Saint Pius X has its headquarters in Ecône, in the highly secularized country of Switzerland, and maintains seminaries in Germany, Argentina, and the United States. The Society of Saint Peter has seminaries in Germany and the United States, the Institute of Christ the King has a seminary in Italy, and the Institute of the Good Shepherd has one in France. None of these institutions would be able to open seminaries, priories, or centers of public apostolate in Russia, Iran, or China. In France, the United States, and even Italy, many families choose jobs based on traditional chapels and Catholic schools where they can educate their children. However, no one moves to Arab or communist countries, where it would be impossible to educate their children in the true faith.

Islamic sharia law prohibits the Catholic faith under penalty of death. Chinese communism tolerates it, provided that it is subject to the regime, without any public projection. In Russia, the Greek-schismatic religion is the only state religion, and Catholicism is excluded even from the “tolerated” religions: Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Shamanism. The Catholic religion is officially prohibited from any form of “proselytism,” that is, missionary work. In fact, the Church is reduced to clandestinity, even without suffering the bloody persecutions to which it is subjected in Congo, Syria, Nigeria, and many other countries around the world.

One million young people gathered in Rome for the Youth Jubilee, welcomed by Pope Leo XIV. Over the last twenty-five years, World Youth Days have been held not only in Europe, but also in Canada, Australia, Panama, and Brazil. However, it would be unthinkable to organize them in the countries of that anti-Western area that can be defined, not inappropriately, as the “axis of evil,” because it prevents any possibility of good manifesting itself. 

It is legitimate to resist the doctrinal and pastoral errors of the Church hierarchy and to criticize the political and military errors of Western leadership, but it would be irresponsible to wish for the total disappearance of the small religious and moral good that still survives and is flourishing within the Church and Western society. The restoration of Christian civilization does not come through collaboration in the self-destruction of the Church and the suicide of the West, but only through an authentic counter-revolution that victoriously opposes this destructive process.