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Every week - almost each day - the postconciliar agenda of Jorge Bergoglio and Robert Prevost, antipopes extraordinaire aka 'Pope Francis' and 'Pope Leo XIV', comes into clearer focus. While the Catholic commentariat still hold their collective tongue, waiting with bated breath for Prevost to prove his orthodoxy, his Vatican succcessively wheels out new promoters of its unholy grail: the decriminalisation of the sin of sodomy. It's done with stealth. And the bombs drop on more than one front. There are appointments to the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, headed now by a female: Prefect Sister Simona Brambilla. Sister Patricia Murray for instance, is a Loreto sister who once led the International Union of Superiors General. Does an 'International Union' of nuns not smack ever so slightly of socialism? Sister Murray pushes priesthood for women and speaks of the 'pain' and 'woundedness' of LGBTQ people (whose suffering is largely self-inflicted, by their sin). Priesthood for women. Maybe, just maybe, the advancement of that cause was the reason why Robert Prevost scandalised the Catholic world by courting the Archbishopess of Canterbury, Dame Mullaly, at St Peter's and her blessing of an unfortunate prelate just metres from the spot where St Peter was crucified. Sister Murray is only one of 15 such inheritors of Bergoglio's dream for the Church. She's a fan for his 'Synodality'. https://www.signofthecrossmedia.com/news/pope-leo-appoints-pro-female-ordination-pro-lgbt-consultors-to-religious-li And this latest Leonine instalment features promoters of LGBT ideology, greater liturgical experimentation, and structural changes to Church governance. Once upon a happy time, nuns prayed, healed, and taught. Now it seems they are agents provocateur for progressivism and modernism. And while that's going on, another postconciliar promotion is that of saints-in-the-making. We've already heard Prevost postulating the cause for canonisation of 'Pope Francis'/Bergoglio, arguably the most evil prelate ever. Another candidate to emerge, in Italy, is Father Lorenzo Milani, a candidate for sainthood promoted by both Bergoglio and Prevost. Once virtually exiled by his holy Archbishop (now Venerable), Elia Dalla Costa, for what reason we may only guess at, Fr Lorenzo Milani was a self-confessed paedophile. He asked rhetorically, in a letter, "Who could ever love children to the bone without ending up putting it even in their ass?" In 2017, 'Pope Francis' made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Fr Milani in Barbiana. He wished to respond to the request - repeatedly made by Milani during his lifetime - to be officially recognized by the hierarchy “in his fidelity to the Gospel.” On June 12, 2025 (approximately only one month after his papal election), speaking to the Roman clergy, Leo said: “In recent times we have had the example of holy priests who have been able to combine a passion for history with the proclamation of the Gospel, such as… Fr. Lorenzo Milani, prophet of peace and justice.” In regard to Jorge Bergoglio, the hierarchy and commentariat utterly missed the bus. He should have been called out as an antipope, but he wasn't. Their silence made them complicit in the evil he wrought in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. And so now they have Robert 'FtR' Prevost as a pretender pope, another antipope; and as Anthony Stine (an honourable exception) was reliably informed, soon after his election the commentors were told to "zip it". Now these churchmen, clerical and lay, still stand waiting wordless in the street, as it were, for signs of Catholicism in the Vatican. The word they want, the virtue they lack, is humility. They made a colossal mistake and it will take great courage to admit it. "Humility," said St Teresa of Jesus (Avila), "is to walk in truth". In this unprecedented crisis in the Church, Catholics are called to recognise the truth taught in Tradition, Magisterium and Scripture - until the Second Vatican Council revolution - that the sin of sodomy is an abomination which if unrepented is punished by eternal fire, and that we are to repent, publicly if necessary, for our complicity in that evil. Ironically enough, it was Prevost's namesake (if not his predecessor), Pope Leo XIII. who stated that "One who keeps silence in face of error is repulsive to God."  From Gaetano Masciullo for The Remnant Newspaper: |
Why are both Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV elevating one of the most controversial priests of the twentieth century? The renewed promotion of Fr. Lorenzo Milani is about far more than one man's legacy—it reveals the theological direction of the post-synodal Church and the future of Catholic moral teaching.
On July 25, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò published a post on X in which, commenting on yet another “LGBT pilgrimage” to the tomb of Saint Francis of Assisi, he wrote:
“The followers of the synodal church… have been ordered to normalize sodomy. To do this, they are not content merely with legitimizing or decriminalizing individual behaviors, but even go so far as to canonize them. This is why they authorize sacrilegious Masses and pilgrimages.
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| Fr. Julio Lancellotti, parish priest of St. Michael the Archangel Church, São Paulo, praised by Francis, a fan of Leo, with transgenders. |
They do not merely want the Priesthood to be accessible to sodomites and transgender people, but they are also preparing to canonize some homosexual pedophile. In this framework, one understands how the controversial figure of Fr. [Lorenzo] Milani (praised both by Bergoglio and by Prevost) is perfect – so to speak – as a symbol of the redemption of modernism and sodomy.”
And he concludes: “They will rely on anti-discrimination laws to obtain not only access of women to the Priesthood, but also the imposition of trans and gay priests.”
Regardless of the opinion each of us may have regarding Viganò’s figure, ideas and actions, it is undeniable that the statements of the Archbishop, former Apostolic Nuncio in the United States, deserve examination insofar as they are objectively verifiable. As regards the use of anti-discrimination laws to obtain access of women to the priesthood, we have already discussed this in a previous analysis.
The strategy denounced by Viganò concerning the normalization of homosexual acts within Catholic morality, however, has already been underway for several years. In Italian ecclesiastical circles, alongside the names traditionally invoked by the faithful in liturgy and popular devotions – from Saint Anthony of Padua to Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, passing through Saint Rita of Cascia and Saint Gemma Galgani – a new constellation of “unconventional” figures is increasingly gaining space.
The debate on Fr. Milani ultimately does not concern Fr. Milani himself—but what idea of Catholicism would be canonized together with him.
Tweet this quotePriests once viewed with suspicion, sometimes even censured by the Hierarchy, are today being “rediscovered” as spiritual heroes and presented – note well: almost always by progressive parish priests, bishops and cardinals, more rarely by the people – as if they were already saints, although not yet canonized.
In the more “creative” parishes, their names resound as those of moral teachers, sometimes placed alongside secular icons such as Gandhi. Among these “new saints” stand out figures such as Tonino Bello, Primo Mazzolari, Andrea Gallo, but the figure of greatest importance for these very broad progressive sectors of the Italian Church is certainly that — highly controversial — of Lorenzo Milani, who has become the symbol of a rebellious pedagogy and of a social Christianity that many today wish to reinterpret as a sign of the times in light of the current revolutionary context.
The question I will attempt to answer in this analysis is the following: why, after decades of relative marginality in ecclesial memory, has this controversial priest – Fr. Lorenzo Milani – become, within a few years, one of the most celebrated priests of contemporary Italian Catholicism?
Pope Francis made him one of the most recurrent symbols of his pontificate, even visiting his tomb and promoting his work on official occasions. Leo XIV moved in the same direction immediately, only a few days after his papal election.
The conclusion of this analysis, which can already be anticipated, is simple: the promotion of Fr. Milani does not primarily concern his historical figure. It concerns what that figure, suitably reinterpreted, can represent today for very specific currents within the Church, particularly the so-called LGBT lobbies.
Canonizing Fr. Milani would mean legitimizing not only a controversial priest, but an entire pastoral vision centered on social transformation rather than the salvation of souls.
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| 'Gay Mass' in New York |
Who Was Fr. Lorenzo Milani?
To understand the symbolic role that the figure of Fr. Lorenzo Milani assumes for the Catholic hierarchy in Italy, and for obvious reasons throughout the world, we must briefly reconstruct his history. Lorenzo Milani was born in 1923 into a family of the Florentine upper bourgeoisie. The Milani family was known for its secular, cosmopolitan activism hostile to Catholicism.
His mother, Alice Weiss, was a Bohemian woman of Jewish origin; his father, Albano, a man of socialist and liberal ideas, openly anticlerical, was related through his mother’s side to the Raffalovich family, a wealthy Russian family also of Jewish origin.
Lorenzo Milani’s family environment was distinguished by a high cultural level, but was uniformly hostile to the traditional vision of life and the world. Alice, already a student of James Joyce, possessed a remarkable intellectual background; his cousin Edoardo Weiss, a famous psychoanalyst of the Freudian school, introduced the Milani family to the thought of Sigmund Freud.
Despite the family atmosphere being far from favorable to the Catholic religion, indeed strongly marked by agnosticism and anticlericalism, Alice and Albano married according to the Catholic rite in 1930 and, in the same year, Lorenzo received Baptism. This choice was motivated by political prudence, in a Europe where hostility toward Jews was increasing.
After a sudden conversion in his youth (1943), he entered the seminary (the same year), where – by the admission of those who knew him – he soon manifested a temperament intolerant toward the ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and was finally ordained a priest (1947). Biographers speak of “conversion,” but it would perhaps be more appropriate to define it as an “adhesion” to a certain way of understanding Catholicism.
Unfortunately, it is very easy – especially today – to confuse an intellectual or moral adherence to certain principles proper to Catholicism, together with the identification of oneself with Catholicism, with conversion, which instead is, as Traditional theology teaches, a radical change of the intellect, namely an adherence to the revealed Truth in its entirety, but which also causes a change of heart, that is, of the will, to live according to what God – not man – asks.
In the case of Fr. Milani, the liberal-socialism preached by his mother Alice, to whom Lorenzo was deeply attached (unlike his father, who was entirely absent), was assimilated and reworked within his new Catholic identity, becoming the ideological matrix of his religious and social thought. In particular, Lorenzo absorbed from liberal-socialist thought a sociological principle that would become a cornerstone of his thinking.
This same principle, then, starting from the moral Revolution of 1968 (but in Italy it is a concept present at least since the Revolution of 1861), would achieve broad social diffusion: namely the idea that the moral elevation of the individual necessarily passes through school education, preferably directed by the State.
Rumors of Fr. Milani’s homosexual relationships became so widespread that, for a certain time in his life, he himself referred to them explicitly.
Tweet this quoteNo longer education in virtue and devotion transmitted by the family, but education transmitted by the State. The broader the individual’s body of knowledge, the greater his inclination toward moral elevation will be. This principle is an unconscious paradigm for the majority of people even today, although it is contradicted by everyday life.
As a priest, he therefore dedicated himself to the education of poor children or those coming from the lower-middle classes of the population. In December 1954, due to “misunderstandings” with the Curia of Florence that were never clearly explained, Fr. Milani was sent almost into exile to Barbiana, a tiny and remote mountain hamlet.
It is worth remembering that the Archbishop of Florence at the time was not an inexperienced man. He was, in fact, Elia Dalla Costa, cardinal since 1933, a man with great practical and religious sense, declared Venerable in 2017.
If a bishop of sound doctrine, today even declared Venerable, deemed it appropriate to isolate him, it is legitimate to ask what led that bishop to make such a decision and what has changed today in the criteria of ecclesial judgment.
As Milani himself candidly admitted to his mother, his exile was not caused by vague misunderstandings with his Curia, but rather “it was evident to everyone that I was being confined there as a f@ggot and a demagogic agitator, almost a heretic, and perhaps even officially declared as such, since I had not reacted” (cf. Lettere alla mamma, 1973, no. 84).
In Barbiana, the place of his “pastoral exile,” Fr. Milani founded his school and his pedagogical method. Fr. Milani’s teaching was imbued with a radical social rebelliousness, hostile to classical European culture and to the bourgeois class from which he himself came. His best-known work is entitled Lettera a una professoressa (“Letter to a Teacher”, 1967), a text of harsh class-based polemic, so much so that at the time it was viewed with suspicion by ecclesiastical authorities.
Rumors concerning homosexual relationships that Fr. Milani practiced even within his school became increasingly widespread over time, to the point that, at a certain moment in his life, he himself ended up referring to them explicitly in some of his letters. The best known is the following:
“How could I explain that I love my parishioners more than the Church and the Pope? And that if there is a risk I run for my soul, it is certainly not that of having loved too little, but rather of loving too much (that is, of taking them with me even into bed!).
And whoever does not teach school in this way will never teach a true school, and it is useless for him to argue about confessional and non-confessional schools, useless for him to worry about filling his school with holy images and edifying speeches, because people do not believe those who do not love, and it is useless for him to try to keep atheist teachers away from the school…
And who could ever love children to the bone without ending up putting it even in their ass, if not a teacher who, together with them, loves God and fears Hell and desires Paradise?” (cf. Giorgio Pecorini, Fr. Milani! Chi era Costui?, Baldini&Castoldi, 1996, pp. 386-391).
Francis, Leo XIV and the “Launch” of Fr. Milani
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This objectively problematic figure was immediately welcomed and promoted by Bergoglio. On April 23, 2017, Francis sent a video message for the presentation of Fr. Milani’s complete works, and a few months later, on June 20 of the same year, he personally went on pilgrimage to his tomb in Barbiana, stating that he wished to respond to the request – repeatedly made by Milani during his lifetime – to be officially recognized by the Hierarchy “in his fidelity to the Gospel.”
“I cannot remain silent about the fact that the gesture I have carried out today wishes to be an answer to that request repeatedly made by Fr. Lorenzo to his Bishop, namely that he be recognized and understood in his fidelity to the Gospel and in the rectitude of his pastoral action,” Bergoglio said on that occasion.
“From Cardinal Silvano Piovanelli, of dear memory, onward, the Archbishops of Florence have on various occasions given this recognition to Fr. Lorenzo. Today the Bishop of Rome does so. This does not erase the bitterness that accompanied Fr. Milani’s life… but it says that the Church recognizes in that life an exemplary way of serving the Gospel, the poor and the Church herself.”
Finally, on January 22, 2024, receiving in audience the committee for the centenary of Fr. Milani’s birth, Bergoglio again said: “We are here to express our gratitude to Fr. Lorenzo Milani, a restless and unsettling priest.”
Of all the progressive icons rehabilitated by Francis—Eugenio Scalfari, Emma Bonino, Marco Pannella, etc.—Milani is probably the most significant, because he was officially a priest of the Catholic Church.
Tweet this quoteInterestingly, moreover, in Esperienze pastorali (“Pastoral Experiences”, 1958), Fr. Milani anticipated the Bergoglian doctrine of the infinite dignity of man (which, in reality, as we know, certainly did not originate in Catholic circles, but rather in Masonic ones): “We,” Milani says addressing priests, “have as our only reason for living that of pleasing the Lord and showing Him that we have understood that every soul is a universe of infinite dignity.”
Throughout his pontificate, Francis recovered almost all the great symbols of Italian progressive Catholicism – and not only Catholic ones, as shown by his public relationships with figures such as Eugenio Scalfari, Emma Bonino and Marco Pannella. Milani is probably, among these symbols, the most significant, because he was officially a priest of the Catholic Church.
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This elevation of Fr. Milani as a symbol of a new pastoral approach (and consequently of a new morality, therefore of a new doctrine) is a process, if we may put it this way, particular but at the same time common to other analogous processes of reinterpretation that have involved more traditional figures of Catholic saints.
Let us think of Saint Francis of Assisi, interpreted in an environmentalist and pauperist key; Saint John Bosco, reduced to a “joyful” educator almost in a pre-Montessori sense; even the very figure of Jesus Christ, bent into a purely social icon or reduced to a great moral teacher sent by God.
Under Leo XIV, we are witnessing a full “Bergoglian continuity” from this point of view. On June 12, 2025 (approximately one month after his papal election), speaking to the Roman clergy, Leo said: “In recent times we have had the example of holy priests who have been able to combine a passion for history with the proclamation of the Gospel, such as… Fr. Lorenzo Milani, prophet of peace and justice.”
And again, on October 11, 2025, speaking to pilgrims from the dioceses of Tuscany, Pope Prevost cited the controversial priest-teacher of Barbiana in a very favorable manner: “Lorenzo Milani, prophet of the Tuscan and Italian Church, whom Pope Francis defined as a witness and interpreter of social and economic transformation.”
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| Bergoglio with Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey who just signed the bill for abortion up to birth |
The True Meaning of the Possible “Canonization” of Milani
This latter definition by Leo XIV (and at the same time by Bergoglio) is, in my view, the key to everything: “witness and interpreter of social and economic transformation.”
Canonizing Fr. Milani would mean, in practice, legitimizing together with him a certain idea of obedience more oriented toward social and state demands than toward ecclesiastical discipline; a certain idea of public schooling opposed to, or at least placed before, family education; a pastoral approach centered on the category of “marginalization” rather than on the salvation of souls; and an interpretation of Catholic social doctrine permeated by socialist categories.
His canonization would be functional to the “moral decriminalization” of homosexual acts and trans-sexuality.
Tweet this quoteHis canonization would therefore be functional to the legitimization, also in a liturgical and devotional sense, of two internal but overlapping currents within the post-Bergoglian Church: the normalization of the theology of the people as the founding theoretical matrix of the Church’s social doctrine, and the “moral decriminalization” of homosexual acts and trans-sexuality.
The reasoning could be outlined as follows: it would begin from the premise that Fr. Milani experienced inner tensions connected to his own homosexuality, also practiced. The narrative could therefore present such tensions and relationships not as sinful, but as privileged theological places of grace, where God would act “through human fragility,” as the expression commonly goes.
No longer, therefore, sins, and as such obstacles to the action of grace (as is traditionally stated in moral theology), but rather means of grace.
Once canonized, Fr. Milani would thus become an officially recognized model: LGBT lobbies could then argue that if the Church canonizes a man who lived a homosexual orientation, this also means that such a lifestyle – not merely the orientation – is not incompatible with sanctity.
From here comes the further deduction: what is not incompatible with sanctity cannot be considered intrinsically disordered. The next step would be a further attempt to reinterpret moral doctrine: no longer an “objective disorder,” but rather a “non-chosen anthropological variant to be accompanied.” Once the precedent has been established, it could be argued that moral discipline must be updated in order to reflect the lived reality of the “saints.”
It is a mechanism that does not require at all establishing whether Milani was truly homosexual: it is sufficient that his biography can be interpreted through this lens.
Now, Catholic doctrine has always clearly distinguished two levels: sexual attraction (which is not itself culpable) and acts (which can be morally evaluated).
The new pastoral approach shows a tendency to collapse these two aspects into a single category called sexual identity, drawing from the vocabulary and theories developed in secularized contexts. The linguistic signal used in the synodal Church is evident: one no longer speaks of “a person who experiences an attraction toward the same sex,” but increasingly of “an LGBT Catholic.” Language, in these cases, is never neutral: it precedes and prepares doctrinal change.
The debate on Fr. Milani, ultimately, does not concern Fr. Milani strictu sensu. The history of Catholic saints already knows many figures who, plausibly, may have experienced similar tensions, without this scandalizing the well-formed Catholic faithful morally.
Milani’s socio-political ideas – his classism, his hostility toward private property, the educational primacy of the school, his social theology permeated by liberal-socialism – are, objectively, far more dangerous.
What matters today is that a part of the Church has an interest in reinterpreting his figure as compatible with the new and revolutionary anthropology. The real issue at stake is not whether he deserves the altars – the answer, for the author of this article, remains negative – but a far more uncomfortable question: what idea of Catholicism would be canonized and promoted together with him? https://www.remnantnewspaper.com/fr-lorenzo-milani-pope-leo-xiv-lgbt-canonization/?fbclid=IwY2xjawTl3EpwZG9mAW
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