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Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò's latest essay concerns the Abrahamic Family House project, a structure that will host a synagogue, a mosque and a church in Abu Dhabi. The former papal nuncio warns against the dangers of syncretism and highlights the contradiction between this ecumenical project and traditional teaching of the Church. Dr. Aldo Maria Valli has granted us permission to republish Viganò's essay in full.

To the Venerable Brothers ... who have peace and communion with the Apostolic See in the defense of the truth revealed by Jesus Christ, health and Apostolic Blessing. Perhaps in the past it never occurred that the heart of human creatures was taken up as today by such a lively desire for fraternity. ... One easily understands ... how many are those who yearn to see more and more united with themselves the various nations, led by this universal brotherhood. (Pope Pius XI)

This is how the Supreme Pontiff Pius XI expressed himself in the debut of his encyclical Mortalium animos from distant 1928, signed on the day of the Epiphany, when the Church remembers three wise magi from the East, leaders of an endless processional caravan guided by a shining star that appeared in the firmament, when on earth the Son of God came in the Flesh, the One Savior, center of the cosmos and of History.

Proposed Abrahamic Family House project, featuring a synagogue, mosque and church

Ninety-one years later, last Friday, Nov. 15, 2019, as reported by Vatican News, Pope Bergoglio received the Great Imam Ahmed Al-Tayeb, accompanied by various personalities and representatives of the University of Al-Azhar and the Superior Committee, all animated by the desire to give form and substance to the contents of the "Document on Human Brotherhood for World Peace and Common Cohabitation," signed last August in the wake of the historic Emirate Declaration, signed by the pontiff and by the Imam during the Year of Brotherhood.

Regarding the aforementioned document, His Excellency Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, as a representative of the United Arab Emirates, had previously declared (Vatican News, Sept. 21, 2019) that "in a world where so many things divide, the Emirates are committed to uniting. Like a beacon of light, they want to bring light into a dark world, bringing to light this Document, the most important signed in recent times”; as if to say that "the Light from the East" came to visit us like the sun rising above (Lk 1:7–8) is now eclipsed by a new "Bright Lighthouse."

Church courtyard view (Photo: David Adjaye)

The talks at the Vatican meeting were cordial, with words and expressive gestures of a by-now consolidated friendship: We recall that this is the sixth meeting between the Pope and the Great Imam. Thus the Latin American warmth prevailed over the long and rigid "frost" that occurred between the Apostolic See and that of the highest leadership of Sunni Islam. The meeting also offered the opportunity to present the Pope with a singular project of which it is possible to get a certain idea through floor plans and 3D reconstructions.

Sir David Adjaye Obe is the creator of this architectural project, which will be built in opulent and extravagant Abu Dhabi. It deals with the House of the Abrahamic Family, a sort of New Tent of the Universal Brotherhood evoking that other Tent of Hospitality in which the Ancient Patriarch hosted three mysterious Angels (cf. Gen. 18), a prefigurement of the Trinitarian God fully revealed to the legitimate Abrahamic posterity, by faith in Jesus Christ.

Abrahamic Family House is therefore the name of this structure that will house a synagogue, a mosque and a church, naturally dedicated to the Poverello.

Sir David's project envisages that the three different places of worship should be joined together by unique foundations and placed within a garden, evocative of a New Eden, a recalling in gnostic and Masonic key to the paradise of the First Creation.

Church interior (Photo: David Adjaye)

As explained to Pope Bergoglio, this "structure ... will serve as a place of individual worship, but also for dialogue and interreligious exchange. In fact, a fourth building is also planned, home to the Center for Studies and Research on Human Brotherhood, whose objective, which can be seen from the Abu Dhabi document, will be to "make the three religions known." The ceremony for the awarding of the Human Brotherhood Award will also take place here.

The building of the House of the Abrahamic Family appears as a Babel-like enterprise, concocted by the enemies of God, of the Catholic Church and of the only true religion capable of saving man and all of creation from destruction, now and forever, and definitively. The foundations of this "House," destined to give way and collapse, arise where, by the hands of the builders themselves, the One Cornerstone is about to be incredibly removed: Jesus Christ, Savior and Lord, on which the House of God stands. As the Apostle Paul warns: "Let each man take care how he builds upon it. For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 3: 10).

In the garden of Abu Dhabi the temple of the world syncretic Neo-Religion is about to rise with its anti-Christian dogmas. Not even the most hopeful of the Masons would have imagined so much!

Pope Bergoglio thus proceeds to further implement the apostasy of Abu Dhabi, the fruit of pantheistic and agnostic neo-modernism that tyrannizes the Roman Catholic Church, germinated by the conciliar document Nostra Aetate. We are forced to recognize it: the poisoned fruits of the "conciliar spring" are before the eyes of anyone who doesn't allow himself to be blinded by the dominant Lie.

Pope Pius XI

Pius XI warned and warned us. But the teachings that preceded Vatican II have been thrown to the winds as intolerant and obsolete. The comparison between the pre-conciliar Magisterium and the new teachings of Nostra aetate and Dignitatis humanae, to mention only those, manifest a terrible discontinuity, which must be acknowledged and urgently amended as soon as possible. Adjuvant Deo ...

We listen to the words of the Supreme Pontiff Pius XI, when the Popes used to speak the language of Truth, chiseled with fire in the diamond.

For which reason conventions, meetings and addresses are frequently arranged by these persons, at which a large number of listeners are present, and at which all without distinction are invited to join in the discussion, both infidels of every kind, and Christians, even those who have unhappily fallen away from Christ or who with obstinacy and pertinacity deny His divine nature and mission. Certainly such attempts can nowise be approved by Catholics, founded as they are on that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule. Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it, and little by little. turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly follows that one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion. (Mortalium Animos, 2)

And from Dom Prosper-Louis-Pascal Guéranger's The Christian Meaning of History Today:

[M]ore than ever ... the Church needs strong and consistent doctrines. In the midst of dissolution ... the compromises become more and more sterile, and each of them takes away a piece of the truth. ... Show yourself then ... which in the end you are, convinced Catholics ... ! There is a grace linked to the full and complete confession of faith. This confession, the Apostle tells us, is the salvation of those who practice it, and experience shows that it is also the salvation of those who understand it.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI again broke his silence by making public his sorrowful plea for the Church in this deeply troubled in its history:

Even today our faith is threatened by reductive changes to which worldly fashions would like to subject it to take away its greatness. Lord, help us in this time of ours to be and to remain true Catholics — to live and die in the greatness of Your truth and in Your divinity. Give us always courageous bishops who guide us to unity in faith and with the saints of all times, and show us how to act adequately in the service of reconciliation, to which our episcopate is called in a special way. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us!

Carlo Maria Viganò

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