Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna has been the president of the Episcopal Conference of Italy since 2022. Recently, at a meeting of the bishops in Assisi, the Cardinal addressed his fellow clerics by throwing a spanner in the works of Christianity, or rather an ideological grenade, by claiming that the rise of secularism in the West is not to be deplored, but hailed. In his view, the old-fashioned Christianity — you know, the one that has existed in the world for the past two thousand years — is on its way out, giving way to a new and deeper kind of individual faith. He reminds me of that Flannery O’Connor character, Hazel Motes, in Wise Blood, who preaches the gospel of his very own “Church of Jesus Christ Without Christ,” and tells people who hear him preach while he’s standing on the hood of a jalopy “where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.”
More on Cardinal Zuppi can be found here: “Italian Cardinal Zuppi hails ‘end of Christendom,’ says it won’t be a defeat,” by Eric Utter, American Thinker, November 25, 2025:
The lands of Hitler and Mussolini have the wokest-of-the-woke cardinals in the Catholic Church, and now one of them has decided to hail the end of Christianity.
During the General Assembly of the Italian Bishops in Assisi, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, has decided to issue this whopper on the increasing secularization of the West.
According to LifeSite News:
“What is fading is an order of power and culture, not the living force of the Gospel. The believer of today is no longer the custodian of a Christian world, but the pilgrim of a hope that continues to make its way into hearts. In this horizon, the end of Christendom is not a defeat, but a kairòs: the chance to return to what is essential, to the freedom of the beginnings, to that ‘yes’ spoken out of love, without fear and without guarantees.”
To be clear, what is fading in the increasingly secularized West is the power of Christian churches, in large part due to their incessant pandering to secular culture.
The believer of today is no longer the custodian of a Christian world because that world’s leaders have willingly ceded it to everyone else.
The pilgrim sof hope in progressives’ hearts is fervently wishing that they will not be judged for any of their acts, no matter how detrimental to themselves, society, or the Christian Church.
The end of Christendom is not a defeat for the hyper-secular … it is a victory for Islam. One that the new pseudo-Christians have handed to them on the proverbial silver platter….
Cardinal Zuppi, a far-left prelate, has written of the need to welcome immigrants, claiming that the root causes of the opposition to recent mass migration in Europe are fear, individualism, and an unwillingness to see the “Other” as one’s brother. Of course, those Muslim “others” have no intention of treating Christians as their “brothers.” Zuppi has not a word to say about what the appearance of 50 million Muslims in Europe has meant for the people and civilization of Europe, and not a word about what is so menacing in the texts and teachings of Islam. It doesn’t interest him. He wants us to “welcome the Other” with one hand extended, while with the other hand we wave goodbye to Christianity as we once knew it.
Cardinal Zuppi reflects the defeatist spirit of the age. The threat — that he dare not recognize or name — of a triumphant Islam, with 50 million of its warriors already in Europe, has beaten him down. Instead of identifying that threat, and attempting to rally Christians “in hoc signo,” Zuppi chooses to celebrate a “personal Christianity” that accepts everything, denounces nothing. “Vsyo dozvoleno” — “All is permitted” — is the nihilistic message of Dostoyevsky’s hideous melodrama The Brothers Karamazov. Zuppi does not dare mention, not to his fellow cardinals and bishops, nor to his immediate flock of believers in Bologna, what is the real threat to the world’s Christians and to Christianity itself. When it comes to Islam, he is like Mr. Podsnap, who said about “disagreeable” matters that “’I don’t want to know about it; I don’t choose to discuss it; I don’t admit it!’ Mr Podsnap had even acquired a peculiar flourish of his right arm in often clearing the world of its most difficult problems, by sweeping them behind him (and consequently sheer away) with those words and a flushed face. For they affronted him.” And that is the way that Cardinal Zuppi deals with Islam.
Cardinal Zuppi, though he was Archbishop of Bologna before Pope Francis elevated him to the cardinalate, has apparently forgotten the attempt of Muslims in 2002 to destroy Giovanni da Modena’s fresco in Bologna’s Basilica of San Petronio, because it depicts Muhammad in Dante’s Eighth Circle of Hell (Malebolge), which is where “as a sower of discord” he is condemned to be continuously split in half from his chin to his colon, with his internal organs hanging out, by a demon with a sword.
Cardinal Zuppi, his mind soggy (“inzuppato”) with pieties (“everyone is fundamentally good”), needs to stiffen his spine, put paid to his goody-goodyism (“il buonismo”), quit this sentimental celebrating of the “Other,” take a good look at the Islamic threat to Christianity and to Christians, and stop finding a false solace in the decline in traditional Christian faith. And if he is unable to defend Christianity against its oldest and most monstrous of enemies, then perhaps he should retire for a life of meditation in a photogenic monastery high in the Dolomites.
40 rounds says
What a defeatist and cynical way to be, especially right before Christmas. I’m glad Jesus, who clearly and often was exasperated by the human condition, did not give up on us and gave himself up for us despite our horrible nature. Sir, read your scriptures sometime. You might have a better understanding what is and what will be.
somehistory says
Yes, 40, He asked, “How long must I put up with you…?” But, “put up with” us He did and continues to do. And He will keep every promise made.
Hugh Fitzgerald says
Read the Scriptures, that goes without saying. But even more important right now, every Christian cleric from the Pope on down, should be reading the Qur’an and the hadith contained in the two sahih recensions, along with an exegetical guide, like that provided by Robert Spencer.
JimJFox says
Sadly he’s right. Christianity is fading fast, supplanted by Islam with the support of our western leaders.
We need another Reconquista and very soon.
Kepha says
In Jehovah do I take refuge:
How say ye to my soul,
Flee [a]as a bird to your mountain;
For, lo, the wicked bend the bow,
They make ready their arrow upon the string,
That they may shoot in darkness at the upright in heart;
If the foundations be destroyed,
What can the righteous do?
Jehovah is in his holy temple;
Jehovah, his throne is in heaven;
His eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men.
Jehovah trieth the righteous;
But the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.
Upon the wicked he will rain snares;
Fire and brimstone and burning wind shall be the portion of their cup.
For Jehovah is righteous; he loveth [c]righteousness:
The upright shall behold his face. (Psalm 11, ASV)
If the foundations be destroyed—It sounds as if Cardinal Zuppi is among those who are cheerfully doing the destroying.
As a God-bless-King-Billy Presbyterian (Old School) and a former visit to the Church of San Petronio in Bologna, I believe that the time is ripe for a renewed Christian democratic vision, in which there is a renewed committment to Christ as ruler of the nations and a concommitant committment to both a Christian march through the institutions and a frank recognition of the limits of political power.
Cardinal Zuppi is one of the destroyers of the foundations. He looks back on the plain evils of Mussolini’s Fascism and Hitler’s National Socialism and, apparently, believes that the way to live down that past is not to confront and condemn the materialistic scientism (as opposed to science) that allowed that cancer to fester, and which also underlies the Communist ideology now in the political saddle in Zuppi’s own Bologna. The bankruptcy of that ideology is manifest not only in the economic failure of the Communist states (save in China and Vietnam, where the Party has learned far more from Mussolini’s corporatism than from Marx or Mao since the 1990’s); but also in the logical positivists’ admission that they had no way to get from the empirical “is” to the ethical “ought”; and finall in the Left’s blaming the failures of the Marxist system on the supposed backwardness of the Russians and Chinese. In short, blame the Slavic subhuman and Primitive Asiatic while denouncing everyone else as “racist”.
Zuppi, a host of cardinals like him, and the leaders of Europe’s established ex-Protestant churches (no, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and the lot did not teach a kind of facile, anything-goes, infinitely malleable moralistic deism) all need to be swept aside. They are too compromised with the ethical relativism of the rebellious culture and its leaders.
Why is it wrong for Muslims to treat the women and children of Western host countries as booty? Christ, ruler of the nations, has taught us peace, and that sex is for a committed, monogamous, heterosexual marriage. He has taught us not that “I’m-OK-You’re-OK”, but that we, even his disciples, are sinners in need of the grace which he gives. Hence Paul, faithful to his calling as an Apostle, calls us tp be at peace with all, as much as it is up to us.
Christ has also pointed us back to Genesis, where man is place here as God’s steward, working both to till and keep the garden (physical labor) and to name his fellow creatures (intellectual labor)–not as a playboy and looter, which, it seems, is the ethical stance of the dominant Muslim male.
We do not have to take up the gun (yet–and may God not enter into such a judgment with his servants). But we should stand up and speak. We, too, are America (and Europe). We will no longer take a condescending pat on the head for “people of faith” (as if the logical positivists, Marxists, postmodernists, and others do not reason from axioms, too) telling us “the complexities of modern life are too much for you, yada yada…”
Further, what has Islam created, after its critical mass of a Dhimmi population converted to avoid paying jizya? Empires of looters flowing from slums surrounded by deserts. If Christians do not stand up for the faith, they are traitors not only to themselves, but also to the Muslim, heathen, and materialists who need an escape from the rot they have made.
somehistory says
Thank you for the Psalm and its application to what this fool is spouting and encouraging in others by his foolish spouting.
Michael says
Well, what a giant festering asshole.
somehistory says
Jesus, our Loving Lord and Master, warned us about such creatures as this guy,
“There will come false shepherds, false Christs, misleading if possible, even the chosen ones.”
“wolves in sheeps’ clothing.”
Jesus gave ample warning about this “false shepherd.”
Pretending to speak for God and His Son, while spouting complete and evil balderdash, will not get him a place within God’s Kingdom. And any who listen to this “wolf,” and follow him, are making the greatest error of their lives.
WPM says
This rot should call for him to be demoted and possibly ex-communicated .If the Pope in effect is the general the leader of the Roman Catholic church should not have someone under him speak this blasphemy freely and not have a sit down with this blasphemer .As Christians in Africa are being slaughtered for their faith. As authorities in the UK are having people Christians who silently pray in their own heads not out loud arrest near Abortion mills ,(even if they pray or have praying groups indoors they can get arrested if reported).As medical assisted suicide increases in Canada and many European countries expand the practice to healthy ,but depressed people he calls for Christianity to embrace these secular government practices. As Moslem rape and grooming gangs go unpunished and authorities look away and even punish people who point it out in many western countries. The church according to him should embrace these practices or at least tolerate them as progress of the new secular church? Christ said love the sinner hate the sin not tolerate the sinner behavior as right or normal especial violent ugly behavior against fellow humans beings Christian or not.. This invasion of people who freely curse Christianity ,who want to either convert, enslave or kill all Christians as part of their instructions as “good” Moslems should not be tolerated by silence or APPEASEMENT by the church. THe current government leaders in most western Europe are on board with this ,does not mean the current church should be on board with this.
somehistory says
He should read your comment, but I think it would do no good.
He’s made himself a friend to the enemies of God and His Son. And an enemy of all things moral, righteous, good and kind.
Cathryn Paradise says
1 John 2:19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.KJB. He never was a Christian in any sense of the word. He rejects the authority of the Bible. If Jesus is not the center of your faith you are not a Christian.
James Lincoln says
Cardinal Zuppi doesn’t even sound like he’s a Christian.
somehistory says
James, I believe that he would sound more like a tree if he said he could produce acorns, than he sounds like a Christian. No True Christian would say what he said.
Jesus said, “Out of the heart, the mouth speaks.” And He said this regarding evil speech.
Wellington says
Well, James, that has been the point of pseudo-Catholicism since Vatican II killed the old Catholicism.
Truly, I don’t think to this day enough traditional Catholics (what’s left of them) realize how much destruction Vatican II opened up the way to the utter ruination of the Church. Pope John Paul II did to a fair extent (and was opposed) and Benedict XVI realized such even more (and was, I still strongly suspect, deposed—and I state this as one who is overwhelmingly not a conspiracy- thinking kind of person).
The old Roman Catholic Church is no more. There is no way of getting around this except for liars or the ignorant.
James Lincoln says
Wellington says,
“The old Roman Catholic Church is no more.”
Very tragically true.
Interestingly, there are still some excellent local parish priests who – privately – abhor the crap that now comes out of the Vatican.
I personally know some of these wonderful priests, as well as my cousin who is a deacon in the Catholic Church.
gravenimage says
Cardinal Zuppi Wishes Christendom a Fond Farewell
……………………………………………………
He also said, “Italy needs migrants to live”–even though Muslim invaders are *killing* Italians, Why Italian Infidels supposedly need this to live he has not said.
WPM says
Cardinal Zuppi wants from his words Christendom put to “sleep” like an old sick dog you brought to the vet ,because it does not fit his “ideas” of working in the modern one world government that this fool thinks should rule us. All cultures and religions are not equal or good ,this Cardinal thinks ,men if not lead or guide by good religions ,or at least good laws ,moral codes ,and cultural norms will act naturally with good intent ,If unguided or wrongly guided they turn to their base wants and needs of power, lust ,greed ,stupid violence with blind loyalty to tribes at all cost to just survived. This is how humans lived for thousands of years ,before western moral code in time outlawed slavery ,outlawed or made “morally repudiate ‘ mob rule ,stupid violence ,equality for all in rule of law , we still have free will .Did everyone follow every rule of law ,where all people good all the time ,where their no corrupt leaders in the west ,no we are deeply flaunted human beings. Without reasonable laws ,social guidelines ,some set rules based on Jewish -Christian roots we are just animals .Countries like Japan have accepted adopted these rules and norms incorporated them into their cultural and have done very well even though they are not a “Christian ” nations . Islam is not an accepting religion ,it is not a tolerant religion ,it is not equal under the law for all people under law religion ,it is deeply tribal violent warlord throw back to the way things where done back in the bad old days.!400 years it still operating on the highway robber mentality ,just now its leaders many of them wear good suits are educated in good schools ,study laws to bypast or subvert western norms ,laws cultural . The Moslem leaders bribe ,lie ,or hoodwink useful idiots, church leaders and elected officials in the west that they Moslems have good intentions for the non_ Moslems in the countries they immigrate legally and illegally in the millions in the west. It is not working well in the Americas or western Europe in spite what our leaders tell us ,we know what we see and hear everyday rust belt towns in America ,in blue collar towns in England ,Germany , France. Most of our leaders are selling us out ,I do not know if it it because of ignorance or money ,or because they want to appease these jihadist for votes to stay in power for a few extra years maybe a combinations of all these things. Unelected appointed Cardinals should be removed by the Pope if they cannot put Christ ,Christians ,Christianity first on the list to be protected and pushed as a true faith. It would be like a Fire Chief in a public statement saying putting out house fires is not important in his department or necessary because house can aways be re-built .What is the main purpose of having this Chief or his department ?Houses should be protected from burning down in a good society ,good social norms ,good cultural ,good civilization should be promoted and preached from the church pulpit ,what is purpose of the Christian church then to promote Christianity and protect Christians if not indeed at least in word ? Islam has no respect for the weak horse the weak leaders of other faiths will be bully by Islam if they try to appease these highway robbers with kind weak words .
Alkflaeda says
Those who say that we need migrants, do not seem to specify the sort of migrants we might need, and whether current consignments are up to scratch. It would certainly be possible to make a case that a country with an aging population would need young people who would contribute to its tax base and be positive additions to local communities; the alternative case that we have lots of unclaimed benefits and need people to take them up seems more difficult to justify, much less the one that we have prison places going begging, and are looking to disinfect the world be taking in its criminals.