Pope Francis greets Bishop Athanasius Schneider on January 20, 2025 at the Vatican (photo: Mario Tomassetti / Vatican Media)

    Letter #6, 2025, Wednesday, January 22: Top Ten 2024 #5    

    For our #5 Person of the Year 2024, we chose Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan.

    (If you do not want to miss any issue with this type of information, you may subscribe to Inside the Vatican at this link.)

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    Strikingly, just today the veteran Vaticanist, Edward Pentin of England, has published an interesting report on a meeting two days ago in the Vatican, on Monday, January 20, between Bishop Schneider and Pope Francis. (Schneider requested the meeting).

    The report is found at the website of the National Catholic Register at this link; and below also.

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    What is clear is that Bishop Schneider is carving out a nuanced position on the present controversies in the Church, consisting of three main elements:

    1) Schneider has been quite critical of some of the statements of Pope Francis (see the article below for specifics)

    2) Schneider has also opposed the excommunication on July 4, 2024, of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò (who turned 84 years old on January 16, just six days ago — for which we send him our best wishes)

    3) Yet Schneider has also opposed “the idea that Pope Francis is not validly elected, or that he has removed himself from office through pronouncing heresy.”

    The faithful, Schneider said in September 2023, must “keep a cool head and at the same time a true supernatural view and trust in Divine intervention and in the indestructibility of the Church.”

    Clearly, Schneider is trying to formulate a position that rejects theological errors and irregularities, defends those who point out such apparent errors (like Viganò), but also seeks to avoid the type of “institutional destabilization” (my own phrase) that any such effort to oust a sitting pontiff might result in.

    RM

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    Bishop Schneider Says Pope Francis Showed Him ‘Great Cordiality’ During Private Audience

    One of this papacy’s more outspoken critics called on the faithful to ‘pray for Pope Francis that he might confirm the Church in the Faith.’    

    By Edward Pentin

    January 21, 2025

    VATICAN CITY — Bishop Athanasius Schneider said Pope Francis“showed great cordiality” toward him during a private audience on Monday and that they “spoke about some important themes on the life of the Church.”

    In a short January 21 statement sent to the Register, the auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, called on the faithful to “pray for Pope Francis that he might confirm the Church in the Faith.”

    Bishop Schneider, who has often been critical of Pope Francis during his pontificate, disclosed that he had asked for the meeting.

    One of Bishop Schneider’s most recent criticisms related to Pope Francis’ comments in Singapore in September 2024 when he said “every religion is a way to arrive at God.”

    Bishop Schneider argued that the Pope’s claim contradicted divine Revelation and undermined the uniqueness of Christ as the sole Savior.

    (…)

    The Kazakhstan bishop, who grew up under Soviet Union communism, has also been unafraid to make other forthright criticisms. These have included his opposition to the Pope’s changes to allow divorced-and-civilly-remarried Catholics to receive Communion in some cases; the 2023 Vatican declaration Fiducia Supplicans allowing non-liturgical blessings of same-sex couples; and criticisms of Francis’ synodal reforms, including issuing a joint letter with Cardinal Raymond Burke just before the Amazon synod critical of an “almost general doctrinal confusion” in the Church today.

    He strongly condemned Pope Francis’ support for civil same-sex unions in 2020 and has consistently opposed Pope Francis’ limitations on the traditional Latin Mass, viewing them as an attack on Catholic tradition and a source of division within the Church.

    Last year, he opposed the excommunication of Archbishop Carlo Viganò, saying that while Viganò’s criticisms were “irreverent and disrespectful,” he believed excommunicating him would “increase divisions even more.”

    Although critical, Bishop Schneider has always tried to be respectful, saying his criticisms are “an expression of true and sincere love for the Pontiff” and part of a bishop’s duty to speak up when they believe the Pope is in error.

    And although his censures have been frequent, Bishop Schneider opposes the idea that Pope Francis is not validly elected, or that he has removed himself from office through pronouncing heresy. The faithful, he said in September 2023, must “keep a cool head and at the same time a true supernatural view and trust in Divine intervention and in the indestructibility of the Church.”

    Monday’s audience was not the first time Bishop Schneider and the Pope had met: They had an encounter during an ad limina visit of Kazakhstan’s bishops to the Vatican in 2019, and they met when Francis visited Kazakhstan in 2022.   

With the aid, and in the hope, of Christ, believers can
overcome any difficulties… 

Here are the testimonies of 10 of His people 

Top Ten 2024

    It was a difficult year. Around the world there were wars and rumors of wars; brutally contentious elections; assassinations and assassination attempts; deadly storms, earthquakes and mudslides. Conflicts within the Church — excommunications, criminal trials, continuing abuse allegations and the tug-of-war between modernism and tradition — were sometimes just as painful.

    Yet the Church is — in a way the world is not — consecrated and filled with grace by her divine Spouse, the Lord Jesus, who ever and always “makes all things new.”

    The grace and peace of Christ is available to all Christians of good will, and in 2024, as in every year, it was the antidote to the sickness of our modern age, and the leavening of our lives otherwise weighed down by the consequences of sin.

    Jesus did indeed, in 2024, somehow renew us and bring us joy and strength, and one way He accomplished this was through the lives and testimonies of His people. We have chosen 10 of them for your reflection here.

    Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Astana, Kazakhstan

    A Touchstone in Troubling Times

    Bishop Athanasius Schneider was born in 1961 in the Soviet Union, in an era marked by religious repression. Raised in a family of ethnic Germans in a region of the USSR where the Catholic faith was under tight government control, Bishop Schneider nevertheless developed a deep appreciation for the liturgy, catechism and spiritual life.

    After studying theology in Europe and entering the seminary, Schneider became a member of the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross, a traditionalist religious community. In 2006, he was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as auxiliary bishop for the Diocese of Astana, Kazakhstan, where he has served ever since.

    Many would be hard-pressed to locate Kazakhstan on a map. Yet from his somewhat remote see in Central Asia, bordered on two of three sides by the twin mammoths of Russia and China, Bishop Schneider has exerted an unmistakable influence, particularly among more tradition-minded Catholics.

    2024 was a particularly difficult year for those Catholics. Against a backdrop of ongoing “liturgy wars” between a Vatican seemingly determined to obliterate the Traditional Latin Mass and a segment of laity equally determined to preserve it, fresh affronts to tradition continued to emerge from Rome.

    For instance, the once-venerable Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, 83, a formerly high-ranking Curial official — and even a nuncio to the US, the most powerful nation on earth, before his retirement — was finally excommunicated. The reason: increasingly severe criticism of Pope Francis that evolved into total rejection of his legitimacy as Pope. Many Catholics who had sympathized with Viganò originally were left confused.

    As the year progressed, Pope Francis made several dubious remarks about the equality of world religions as paths to God. He authorized the “cancellation” of bishops for questionable reasons, much as he had the previous year with Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas. And he continued to host pro-LGBT activists like Fr. James Martin and Sr. Jeannine Grammick at the Vatican. Catholics were again left confused.

    Then the many-part, years-long Synod on Synodality finally concluded, and arguments immediately ensued over its significance — healthy or malignant? — to the Faith itself and to the institution of the Church. Catholics were more confused than ever.

    Through it all, the soft-spoken voice of Bishop Schneider has been one of the most steadfast, reassuring, consistently charitable and yet uncompromisingly rooted in unchanging truth. He is a rock to whom faithful Catholics have become accustomed to clinging in the stormy seas of 21st-century Catholicism.

    His assessment of the Synod on Synodality, in particular, has been a touchstone for the faithful looking for clarity.

    His main concern, reiterated again and again, has been that the Synod has sought to conform the Church to the current opinions of the secular world, and not vice versa. In one of his more pointed remarks, he stated, “The Synod on Synodality is leading the Church into a dangerous path of relativism, where personal experience is being placed above divine truth.”

    In interviews, he has repeatedly warned that the Church’s apparent softening on issues relating to divorce and remarriage, homosexuality and gender is creating a growing “disorientation” among the faithful and the erosion of doctrinal clarity.

    “The Pope has the duty to clarify the teachings of the Church, not to create confusion,” he lamented.

    Yet, he is no friend of the “sedevacantist” (literally, “empty chair”) movement which refuses to accept Francis as duly elected Pope. “I am not attacking the Pope,” he has said, “but defending the faith that has been entrusted to the Church.”

    It is in the era of Francis, in fact, that Bishop Schneider’s clarity on Catholic teaching has been most valuable. For better or worse, the Pope has energetically pursued his own vision for the Church, and Bishop Schneider has dutifully called him to account for it when necessary.

    As he wrote in his 2019 book with Diane Montagna, Christus Vincit, “The Pope is ultimately the person in the Church with the least freedom, because his authority is very limited, since he is only an administrator of something which does not belong to him, but to Christ. The Pope is the last person in the Church who could say, ‘Now I will do what I want!’”

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