The United States: the "Evil Empire"? Nothing could be Further from the Truth -- by Roberto de Mattei

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in Munich

 Corrispondenza Romana

February 18, 2026

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, attending the Security Conference held on February 14 at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich, delivered a broad and detailed speech in which he reaffirmed that the United States and Europe belong to a single civilization and must unite their forces to combat common enemies, both internal and external. And yet, for many conservatives and traditionally-oriented Catholics, the United States represents a kind of new "Evil Empire."

Pope Leo XIV, Cherubini's Mass, and King Charles X: Sacred Music returns to the Vatican in an event rich in symbols

Leo XIV, Cherubini's Mass, and Charles X

by Roberto de Mattei

 

The Coronation of Charles X at Rheims (1825)

On December 12, in the Vatican, in the presence of Leo XIV, Maestro Riccardo Muti conducted Luigi Cherubini's Mass for the Coronation of Charles X, performed by the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra and the Guido Chigi Saracini Choir of Siena Cathedral.

The event was rightly hailed as a sign of the return of great sacred music to the Vatican, which had been conspicuously absent during the papacy of Pope Francis. But the choice of this Mass as a musical tribute to Leo XIV also appears to be an event rich in symbolic allusions. 

Roberto de Mattei: "The Pontifical Mass at the Altar of the Chair of Saint Peter": An Event Far Greater than one Might Imagine Today

Cardinal Burke's solemn Mass at the Chair of Peter

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

October 28, 2025

The event has an importance—even symbolic—far greater than one might imagine today; and its memory deserves to be handed down to the reflection of tomorrow's historians. 

It was around 2:30 p.m. when the singing of the Creed echoed under the majestic vaults of St. Peter's Basilica, intoned with powerful voices by a procession of over two hundred priests, advancing slowly, followed by thousands of faithful participating in the 14th International Pilgrimage Ad Petri Sedem.

Dilexi Te -- Leo XIV's first Exhortation

by Roberto de Mattei

October 12, 2025

Leo XIV's first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi te ("I have loved you"), signed on October 4, 2025, and published on October 9, deserves our attention more than some of the pope's interviews, which are sometimes given excessive media coverage. We are faced not with a few words, but with a comprehensive document comprising 121 paragraphs, divided into five chapters plus an introduction. As has been noted, it is not a social encyclical, but an apostolic exhortation. An encyclical is a doctrinal document, while an apostolic exhortation is a pastoral document, which does not define principles, but exhorts us to behave in a certain way.

Roberto de Mattei - The Fr. Pompei Affair: Another Painful Episode of the Consequences of Boisterous Proclamations

Rorate note: Traditionalism did not start in 2025, or even during the Francis years. It is necessary to be truthful, but also prudent. Wise as serpents, gentle as doves, in the words of Our Lord and God Jesus Christ (Mt 10:16).

***

A new painful episode: Father Pompei's choice

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

September 10, 2025

After the “cases” of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Father Alessandro Minutella, and Father Giorgio Faré, now comes, in Italy, the no less serious and painful case of Father Leonardo Pompei, a priest who had been appreciated until now for his orthodoxy and moral conduct.

Nuclear Thoughts

 Morality and the Atom Bomb

by Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

June 18, 2025

The war between Israel and Iran, which overlaps with the war between Russia and Ukraine, makes the international scenario increasingly alarming. Let us leave aside the historical, political, and economic context in which these wars arose and developed and dwell on the moral problem on the horizon. In the Cold War era, the balance between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, was ensured by the strategy of “deterrence,” or “mutual assured destruction” (MAD), according to which nuclear weapons, due to their destructive potential, constituted a tool to deter the enemy from an attack that would have a devastating response. Nuclear arsenals had as their sole purpose “to nullify nuclear weapons” (Herman Kahn, Philosophy of Atomic Warfare, tr. it., Il Borghese, Milan 1966, p. 138). In the post-modern era following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there are no longer any shared international rules. The use of nuclear weapons is evoked, for example, by Vladimir Putin, as a means to rebalance military inferiority in the field of conventional weapons or, in the case of Iran, as a strategic goal to be achieved to destroy the State of Israel. One of the rules of deterrence was not to take the name of the bomb in vain. The verbal escalation we are witnessing could lead to actual war more quickly than we can imagine.

Leo XIV: Peace in the World and Unity in the Church -- by Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

May 21, 2025

Two words recur frequently in Pope Leo XIV's speeches from the very beginning of his pontificate: “peace” and “unity.” Peace is what the Pontiff invokes in the face of an international scenario that in the Regina Caeli of May 12 he described as "dramatic." Unity is what the Church needs in order to face a fragmented world, as he explained in his May 18 enthronement speech.  

Leo XIV and the Future of the Church - by Roberto de Mattei

 Roberto de Mattei

Rome, May 10, 2025

The white smoke rose as a surprise from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel at 6:08 p.m. on Thursday, May 8, as the twilight illuminated the Bernini colonnade. An hour later, St. Peter's Square and Via della Conciliazione were packed with more than a hundred thousand people, while nearly a billion were connected through the media. The crowd, as had happened in 1978 with Pope Wojtyla, did not immediately understand the name of the new pontiff, announced by Cardinal Dominique Mamberti. However, the applause erupted long and thunderous. The square acclaimed the 267th successor of St. Peter, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who assumed the name of Pope Leo XIV. 

Papal Scandal in Singapore: The Error of the Equality of Religions -- and the Faith of St. Francis Xavier (De Mattei)

 Pope Francis and the Act of Faith of St. Francis Xavier

 by Roberto de Mattei

Among the most serious errors prevalent today, even in Catholic circles, is the one according to which all religions are equivalent because they all worship one God. This error is most serious because it denies, at its root, the intrinsic truth of the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, Pope Francis' statements at the Catholic Junior College in Singapore last September 13, 2024, are along these lines and, with all due respect to the Pope, are objectively scandalous.

The official Vatican account quotes verbatim these phrases from Francis: "All religions are a path to get to God. They are - I make a comparison - like different languages, different idioms, to get there. But God is God for all. And because God is God for everyone, we are all God's children. "But my God is more important than yours!" Is this true? There is only one God, and we, our religions are languages, paths to get to God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian, but they are different paths. Understood?" Understood? 

Our answer is immediate: no, Holy Father, we have not understood and cannot understand it. Our religion and also the history of the Society of Jesus, to which you belong, teach us otherwise.

Catholics and the U.S. Presidential Elections: Donald Trump clearly is the choice from a Catholic perspective - by Roberto de Mattei

 

There is a Catholic doctrine of the lesser evil that can be summarized in these terms: 

1. One can never positively and directly commit even the slightest evil; 

 

2. to avoid a greater evil, one may tolerate a lesser evil committed by others, provided one does not approve of it as such and remembers the existence of a greater good to strive for. 

This doctrine is fundamental for orientation in a confused age in which the notion of the principle has been lost: “Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu”(St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-IIae, q. 18, a. 4 ad 3).

The Paris Olympic Ceremony: Not Simply Bad Taste, but an Act of War against Christian Civilization

by Roberto de Mattei

Marie-Antoinette being taken to her Execution (1793), by William Hamilton (1794)

Among the many symbolic events of our time, the grotesque spectacle that opened the Paris Olympics on July 26, 2024, cannot simply be dismissed as a show of bad taste or a cultural provocation.  It is the latest act of war against Christian Civilization that had one of its historical peaks in the French Revolution.  

Does the Church Still Believe in the Supernatural? - From Fiducia supplicans to the norms on the discernment of supernatural phenomena (Roberto de Mattei)

From Fiducia supplicans to the norms on the discernment of supernatural phenomena

by Roberto de Mattei

The declaration Fiducia supplicans, issued on Dec. 18, 2023 by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, with the approval of Pope Francis, has been one of the most controversial points of this pontificate, but it has also marked a turning point thanks to the vast reaction of cardinals, bishops, and entire episcopal conferences, starting with those “peripheries” that the Pope has so often invoked as bearers of authentic religious and human values (https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2023/12/fidelis-supplicans-and-upcoming.html).

Towards a Global War? Ducunt fata volentem, nolentem trahunt - by Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

April 17, 2024

As missiles and drones ply the skies from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, the concern of Western diplomacies seems to be to procrastinate as much as possible a general conflagration that everyone believes is inevitable. One reason for this pessimism is the apparent lack of a way forward in the face of increasingly intractable international issues, such as those in Ukraine and the Middle East. Only an axiological view of politics could offer a glimmer of light, but today every state, every coalition, makes Carl Schmitt's categories its own, according to which it is up to those who guide the destinies of peoples to decide from time to time who is the friend and who is the enemy. To the traditional social order, based on the Augustinian "tranquility in order"(De Civitate Dei, lib. 19, c. 12, 1), Schmitt opposes, as the norm of politics, the principle of disorder, based on Hobbes' theory of homo homini lupus . However, in the age of international disorder, nothing can be predicted and calculated with certainty, and politics turns into a game of chance, whose only rule is the imponderable. Probably neither Russia had calculated well the risk of the invasion of Ukraine, nor Hamas the consequences of the October 7 attack. The process of subsequent events is fraught with uncertainty and randomness.

The Declaration Dignitas infinita and the Mystery of the Church in our time - by Roberto de Mattei

by Roberto de Mattei

April 10, 2024

On April 8, 2024, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, published the Declaration Dignitas infinita on Human Dignity, with the "ex audientia" approval of Pope Francis. Cardinal Fernández, dwelling in the Introduction of the Declaration on its genesis, clarifies that the first draft of the text, which dates back to 2019, is due to his predecessor, Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer.

Putin, the United States elections, and the upcoming Conclave - by Roberto de Mattei

 [Rorate Note: Hours after the original Italian article was published by Professor de Mattei, Washington was abuzz with the news that there is a severe, though not imminent, national security threat posed by Russia regarding nuclear developments in space, in defiance of standing treaties. House Republican leadership has urged the White House to make as much information available as possible on this grave matter.]

***

PUTIN, THE UNITED STATES ELECTIONS, AND THE UPCOMING CONCLAVE 

Roberto de Mattei

February 14, 2024

A mantle of concern looms these weeks over the decision-making centers of the Western world.  On Jan. 24, General Patrick Sanders, chief of staff of His Majesty's Army, said that British nationals may be called upon in the not-too-distant future to fight against Russia (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68086188). For Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, head of the NATO Military Committee, it is also necessary to prepare for an imminent conflict (https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/russia-war-nato-military-exercise-admiral-rob-bauer-brussels-cold-war-b1133399.html). In the same days, the Swedish Minister of Civil Defense, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, said that everyone must prepare for the worst-case scenario, such as a war with Russia, before it is too late (https://www.anews.com.tr/world/2024/01/19/could-russia-go-to-war-with-sweden).

Pope Francis and the "global conflict" in 2024 - by Roberto de Mattei

The "Trinity" nuclear test, first detonation of an atomic bomb
New Mexico, July 16, 1945

What is the state of the world in this opening of 2024? A broad picture was outlined by Pope Francis in his Jan. 8 address to ambassadors to the Holy See, gathered for the traditional New Year's audience.

There is a first point that deserves to be emphasized. Pope Francis does not habitually quote Pius XII. This time he did so twice in the same speech, referring back to Pius XII's famous Radiomessage to the Peoples of the Whole World of December 24, 1944, in which the Pope proposed the foundations of a new international order, developing important concepts, such as the difference between the "people" and the "mass," which constitutes the degeneration of democracy. A speech, that of Pius XII, which deserves to be reread, in the run-up to the European elections in June 2024. 

Roberto de Mattei: “Quo usque tandem?” For How Much Longer, Francis, Will You Abuse Our Patience? - The Dicastery for the Faith Blesses Sin Against Nature

Quo usque tandem? Doctrine of Faith dicastery "blesses" sin against nature

Roberto de Mattei

December 20, 2023​

The Declaration Fiducia supplicans on the pastoral meaning of blessings issued on December 18, 2023 by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith marks one of the lowest points of Pope Francis' pontificate. Indeed, this document, contradicting Church doctrine, approves and in fact promotes the "blessing" of "couples" living in an intrinsically immoral situation, with a special focus on homosexual couples. 

To understand the origins of what happened, one must go back to the early 1970s, when, on the wave of the 1968 Revolution, but also of the post-conciliar "new morality," forms of "openness" to homosexual relationships began to spread in the Church. According to traditional doctrine, the sexual act is in itself, by its very nature, ordered to procreation and is good only if it takes place within marriage, without being diverted from its purpose. Instead, for the new theologians, the sexual act is always good because it constitutes the most intimate and intense moment of human love, regardless of whether or not it is ordered to procreation, whether or not it takes place within marriage, and whether or not it involves men and women of different or of the same sex.

"Abolish the Patriarchy"? -- It's Actually Gone, But We Should Return to It - by Roberto de Mattei

 Why We Must Return to the Patriarchy

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

December 2023

After the murder of a young woman, Giulia Cecchettin, last Nov. 11, Italy has discovered that it is threatened by the "patriarchy." The title of a dossier in the Nov. 24 La Repubblica newspaper is eloquent: "Feminicides: stop the slaughter." The thesis, which is the same one spread by the mainstream media, social media, and all kinds of influencers, is that there is a massacre of feminicides and the responsibility must be attributed to the still dominant culture of "patriarchy." We need to fight patriarchy to stop violence against women.

In Francis' Homage to a Marxist Freemason, Signs of the Political Synod About to Take Place - by Roberto de Mattei

Pope Francis, Giorgio Napolitano, and Matteo Messina Denaro

by Roberto de Mattei

September 27/28, 2023

The great Juan Donoso Cortés (1809-1853) said that behind every political problem there is a theological and metaphysical problem. Sometimes, however, behind a theological problem there is a political problem that explains it. This is what must be kept in mind in order to predict what will happen in the next Synod: a religious assembly, desired and organized by a pope for whom politics prevails over theological and moral doctrine. Some episodes that have happened in recent days help us understand this.

On September 22, 2023, Giorgio Napolitano, a leading figure in Italian political life for many decades, died at the age of 98. In his long life Napolitano combined an iron Communist militancy, which in 1956 led him to approve of the Soviet invasion of Hungary, with an equally iron loyalty to the Masonic fraternity to which he belonged, following in the footsteps of his father Giovanni (1883-1895), a leading figure in the Grand Lodge of Italy. On May 10, 2006, after Napolitano's election to the presidency of the Republic, lawyer Gustavo Raffi, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge, pointed to this choice as "one of the highest moments in the democratic life of the country," and on the day of the ex-president's death the Grand Lodge displayed flags at half-mast at its national headquarters on the Janiculum Hill as a sign of condolence. 

"Prigozhin, Putin, and Western Christendom: The West is Currently Sick, but it is not Evil, and it can Recover" -- by Roberto de Mattei

Roberto de Mattei

August 30, 2023

The crash of the plane on which Wagner Brigade leader Yevgeni Prigozhin was traveling on August 23 caused no less uproar in the world's media than his attempted rebellion against Putin that occurred exactly two months earlier, on June 24, 2023. In both the first case and the second, the most cerebral hypotheses have been put forward to explain the event. There are those who attribute the bombing not to the Russians but to Ukrainians or the Americans; there are those who are convinced that there was a double on the plane and Prigozhin is still in Africa; and there are those who deny the bombing, claiming that it was all a set-up to allow Prigozhin to disappear and, at the same time, Putin to demonstrate his strength. The hypothesis that Prigozhin was made to be assassinated in revenge by Putin seems all too obvious and normal in a world where narratives are superimposed on reality, creating a climate of dark uncertainty in which nothing can be stated categorically and clearly. We are so accustomed to "abnormality" that a "normal" reading of events seems trivial to us, not least because these events present themselves to us in an often contradictory and confusing manner.