‘CHRIST IS THE VICTOR’: Interview with Bishop Eleganti

As Remnant readers are no doubt aware, Bishop Marian Eleganti spoke at the 2025 Catholic Identity Conference (video library here). His Excellency addressed the topic of synodality, following upon his powerful statement on the subject released over the summer.

I was honored to host Bishop Eleganti on my new podcast channel for an interview during which we discussed a variety of topics, including his monastic background and tenure in the diocese of Chur (Switzerland), Vatican II and the Traditional Latin Mass, Pope Francis’s legacy, the invasion of the Church by the LGBT agenda, and more.

Following our live discussion, His Excellency graciously agreed to prepare written responses to the questions I had sent him, resulting in a condensed version of our video interview (see the video for our full discussion).

May God bless Bishop Eleganti and raise up more courageous shepherds like him — those who will nourish the flock with sound doctrine and a holy example (cf. Jer. 3:15).

Perhaps we could begin with some of your personal background. Prior to becoming a bishop, you spent many years as a Benedictine monk and abbot. In what ways would you say your monastic vocation has impacted your understanding of the Faith and your episcopal ministry?

Bishop Eleganti: It has greatly influenced my relationship with God and Christ. St. Benedict writes that monks should prefer nothing to love for Christ. It is about a bridal relationship with God. The monastic tradition has greatly shaped my way of praying — the Desert Fathers, the monastic movement. Even as a bishop, I have remained a very spiritual person with a penchant for mystics.

During your time as auxiliary bishop of Chur, you served under His Excellency Vitus Huonder (d. 2024), former bishop of the diocese (2007-2019), who was told by the Vatican to “start a dialogue with representatives of the Society of Saint Pius X” and then decided to spend his retirement years with the SSPX. Did Bishop Huonder ever share details with you about his dialogue with the SSPX? Did his spiritual journey towards Tradition have any impact on your views?

Bishop Eleganti: Bishop Vitus didn’t discuss these matters with me. They were not on the agenda in the diocese or in the diocesan administration. Nor did he influence me in this direction. I myself have relationships with members of the Society of Saint Pius X as well as with those of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter. Because of the latter, I relearned the old liturgy so that I could administer confirmation to them. They asked me to do so.

When Pope Francis accepted your resignation in February of 2021, you were only 65 years old, yet bishops typically do not submit their resignation until they have reached the age of 75 (cf. can. 401 §1, 411). Is there a reason you chose to resign well in advance of the ordinary age?

Bishop Eleganti: Of course. I didn’t want to be part of the diocese’s leadership after the resignation of Bishop Vitus. I also wanted to get away from the day-to-day business of the bishop’s conference and ecclesiastical committees and councils, where decisions are made by majority vote and one individual like me can do little to influence or change anything. All in all, I only lost time and energy there. My retirement freed me up for many new projects. I spend much more time with the faithful, in liturgy and proclamation, social media and accompaniment.

I no longer waste time and energy on Church structures that develop a momentum of their own and keep you constantly busy but ultimately bear little lasting fruit.

In an article for The Remnant, you recall being “an enthusiastic altar boy” prior to the Second Vatican Council and then getting swept up into the “euphoria of the Council” afterwards. “As a young man,” you explain, “I was unreservedly supportive of the Council, and later I studied its documents with faithful confidence. Nevertheless, since the age of 20, I have noticed a number of things: the desacralization of the choir room, the priesthood, and the Holy Eucharist, as well as the reception of Communion, and the ambiguity of some passages in the Council documents.” Which passages in the documents would you say are the most problematic? Is there a connection between those passages and the post-conciliar crisis in the Church?

Bishop Eleganti: A precise answer to this question requires a detailed re-examination of the texts. We cannot do that here. A central and very significant example of conciliar ambiguity or the need for interpretation is the ecclesiological key term “subsistit in” (Lumen Gentium, 8). Why don’t they say: This Church (the Church of Christ) is (est) the Catholic Church? This expression (subsistit in) requires explanation and must be interpreted correctly in order to avoid misunderstandings or instrumentalizations for other views. In general, the Council’s view of society and the world, of other Christian denominations and religions, was far too naïve, too optimistic, too uncritical and too euphemistic.

In the same article, you lament the “rather violent, provisional reconstruction of the Holy Mass in the years following the conclusion of the Council, which was associated with great losses that need to be addressed.” You mention that while you continue to “celebrate Holy Mass in the New Rite, even privately,” you have also “relearned the old liturgy of my childhood and see the difference, especially in the prayers and postures, and of course in the orientation.”

Pope Leo XIV, for his part, recently said that “if we celebrate the Vatican II liturgy in a proper way, do you really find that much difference between this experience and that experience?” How would you respond to his rhetorical question, in light of your own experience?

Bishop Eleganti: It’s not as simple as it seems. It can’t just be down to Latin, and everything is fine, or even that there is no longer such a big difference. The people’s altar is an enormous intervention, as is the reversal of the direction of prayer; the deletion of many priestly prayers in order to emphasize more the character of the meal and less that of the sacrifice and the central role of the priest; the misunderstood active participation (participatio actuosa), which for the Council Fathers meant more of an inner involvement, but not at all that lay people are constantly busy in the sanctuary and take over or supplant the tasks of the priest. All of this makes a big difference when you add it all up.

Speaking of Pope Leo, during his first formal address to the College of Cardinals, he called on the princes of the Church to “renew” with him their “complete commitment to the path that the universal Church has now followed for decades in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.” He then held up Evangelii Gaudium (Pope Francis’s first Apostolic Exhortation) as a masterful and concrete roadmap for moving forward, highlighting “several fundamental points” from that document. What are your thoughts about his call to “complete commitment” to Vatican II and the post-conciliar program?

Bishop Eleganti: Not everything attributed to the Council, its spirit, and its intentions is accurate. All of this would need to be examined in detail. I do not see a direct, thick line from the Council documents to Evangelii Gaudium — at most, a very thin one. Pope Francis had his own understanding of key conciliar terms such as “People of God,” “mission,” “collegiality” (synodality), “involvement of lay people,” “ecumenism,” and “interreligious dialogue and unity.” The historical context of Evangelii Gaudium is different. This Council is overrated. It was actually only intended to be pastoral. But now people act as if it were a matter of supreme, binding dogma.

This past summer, you released a powerful text against synodality, which “has not awakened love for Jesus Christ in a single soul,” you argue. Instead, you exhort the Church to “[p]roclaim the Gospel for the sake of Christ’s love! Proclaim Christ to a Europe that has turned away from Him! Proclaim Christ to a world that is apocalyptic and constantly waging new wars! Talk about Jesus Christ instead of synodality!”

Interestingly, the Synod on Synodality’s final document (n. 5) states that “the entire synodal journey took place in the light of the conciliar Magisterium. The Second Vatican Council was indeed like a seed thrown onto the field of the world and the Church. … The Synod 2021-2024 continues to draw upon the energy of that seed and develop its potential….”

Bishop Eleganti: No, I don’t agree with that. One tries to reinterpret the conciliar concepts of collegiality and “communio” unlike how the Council Fathers understood it, in the direction of today’s synodality. The post-conciliar synods were synods of bishops intended to support the papal magisterium through the collegiality of the bishops with and under Peter (una cum Petro et sub Petro). It’s not the anti-hierarchical equality of all the baptized and control of the bishops by majority votes.

The current synodality has nothing to do with this. It even constitutes a subversive act against the ecclesiastical-sacramental teaching and leadership office of bishops and priests, which was taken over from the Apostles. It is nothing less than a Protestantization (“Anglicanization”) of Church leadership based on the universal priesthood of all the baptised.

Prior to your text against synodality, you published an article in which you critique “[t]he idea of brotherhood among all people, regardless of their beliefs,” something which Pope Francis heavily promoted, for example, in the Document on Human Fraternity he signed with the Grand Imam (2019) and in his Encyclical Fratelli Tutti (2020).

Sadly, Pope Leo recently called the aforementioned Document “a clear blueprint for how religious synergy can advance global peace and coexistence,” despite its false claim that “[t]he pluralism and the diversity of religions … are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.”

Why do you think Pope Leo is promoting Francis’s heterodox legacy in this manner? As the Vicar of Christ, what should he be promoting?

Bishop Eleganti: To the aforementioned documents (2019 and 2020): This is a naturalization of childhood in God through faith and baptism without the mediation of Jesus Christ, as clearly expressed in the prologue to the Gospel of St. John. This brotherhood is an attack on the absolute position of the Son of God, Who mediates our new relationship with the Father as children of God on the basis of faith in Him and baptism in His Name — in the Name of the Holy Trinity. All people are my neighbors, as the parable of the Good Samaritan teaches. But to be brothers and sisters and children of God requires more than naturally belonging to the human family, especially as followers of religions that reject and fight against the divine sonship of Jesus and do not recognize his exclusive and universal mediation in our relationship with God, but are rather willing to kill me if I do not accept their false religion. “No one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:23).

In early September, a large group of LGBT people were allowed by the Vatican to process through St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome as part of a Jubilee Year pilgrimage. This spectacle took place five days after Fr. James Martin, SJ, a prominent proponent of all things LGBT, posted about his private audience with Pope Leo: “The message I received was that Pope Leo will be continuing with the same openness and that Francis showed to LGBTQ Catholics.” This so-called “openness” is epitomized by the Declaration Fiducia Supplicans (2023), which introduced “the possibility of blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex…” (n. 31).

The LGBT procession through St. Peter’s seems symbolic of the invasion of the Church by what Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò famously called “the homosexual current in favor of subverting Catholic doctrine on homosexuality,” especially among the hierarchy. You recently addressed this serious problem in an article for LifeSiteNews. What is your overall assessment?

Bishop Eleganti: The Vatican should not have allowed this crossing of the Holy Door, organized by an association of activists who seek to change Church teaching on homosexuality. There are also serious doubts about the inner disposition of these so-called pilgrims, especially when one considers that passing through the Holy Door is associated with a plenary indulgence. How is that possible if you don’t see the practice (not the inclination) of homosexuality as a sin, as the Church teaches? We should not challenge God. I think that Pope Leo XIV should not have remained silent on this issue. Homosexuality in the clergy is also a major problem that has never been openly addressed in dealing with the sexual assaults (abuse cases). The elephant in the room remains unseen.

During your speech at this year’s Catholic Identity Conference, you alluded to the fire that ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris (2019) and described the cathedral’s restoration as “border[ing] on a miracle. Will there by a spiritual miracle, as well?” you asked. “A turning towards the Christian cosmos which counters the chaos into which many parts of the Western world are sinking?”

What are some practical steps that need to be taken in the Church and civil society in order to facilitate “a spiritual miracle” of restoration?

Bishop Eleganti: “Jesus answered them: This is the work of God, that you believe in the One He has sent” (John 6:29). That is the answer on a religious level. We must return to faith in Jesus Christ. Christians should abandon their worldly thinking and shape their lives of faith in accordance with the teachings of the Church and receive regularly and correctly the sacraments. Pastors must teach with clarity and counter errors. Everyone should deepen their prayer life so that they can receive the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

On a social level, a return to common sense (reason and rationality, e.g., a table is not a chair) would be appropriate, as would the protection of marriage and family, and of young people who are being destroyed by theories propagated by adults (e.g., sexual diversity, early sexualization of children, false teachings and false theories at school).

Parents must exemplify what they want for their children. “Be holy as I, your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2). For us believers: Everyone must be holy in the place where God has placed him. Spend twice as much time in prayer as you are busy. Involve the Virgin Mary in all your decisions and spiritual struggles. Be confident of victory: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me” (Matt. 28:18). Christ is the Victor!

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