Posted on 02/15/2026 7:20:18 PM PST by ebb tide
Venerable by decree, scandal by his own pen
On 22 May 2025, Leo XIV authorized the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints to promulgate a decree recognizing the “offering of life” of Alejandro Labaka Ugarte, Capuchin, Apostolic Vicar of Aguarico, killed in Ecuador in 1987. That authorization is exactly what moves a cause forward in the Church’s official machinery, placing the man on the track that ends, in the public mind, with altars, liturgical cult, and imitation.
Now comes the part that makes the stomach turn. On 12 February 2026, InfoVaticana published lengthy excerpts attributed to Labaka’s own writings describing his missionary “method” among the Huaorani, including passages praising “blessed nudism,” recounting his own nudity with them, framing their state as “Paradise before sin,” and narrating episodes of explicitly sexualized behavior involving adolescents that he claims to have endured with “naturalness.”
This is not hostile gossip from enemies, but the man describing himself.
“Blessed nudism” and the anti catechism of inculturation
Labaka’s language, as presented, treats Christian modesty as a civilizational costume problem. “Rags” get sneered at. Nudity becomes “blessed.” The Fall becomes something you can suspend if the tribe feels “pure” enough.
Traditional Catholic moral theology never spoke this way because it understands something modern Rome loves to forget. Modesty is not a European fashion, it is an application of chastity. The priest has obligations that do not evaporate in the rainforest. The duty to avoid scandal does not dissolve because a culture has different customs. A missionary can learn a language, eat what is set before him, sleep in a hut, accept poverty, accept danger, accept martyrdom. He does not get to sanctify conditions that predictably invite sexual sin, especially in the presence of the young.
“Blessed nudism” is a sick slogan that lowers defenses and baptizes the very atmosphere that Catholic asceticism trains a priest to resist.
The diary scenes that should have stopped everything
According to the excerpts InfoVaticana published, Labaka recounts bathing in the presence of “young people and children,” allowing “natural curiosity” involving touching and seeing “how we differ,” and narrating situations with adolescent boys engaging in sexualized “games,” including attempts to arouse him, culminating in his decision to share a bed naked under the same mosquito net with a youth he had previously rejected because of “provocative homosexual attempts.”
A Catholic reaction begins with first principles. A priest does not “manage” near occasions of sin by leaning into them. He flees them.
A priest does not treat adolescent sexual aggression as a cultural curiosity. He stops it, leaves, reports it, removes himself, draws a bright line.
A priest does not permit minors to touch his body for “curiosity,” especially his genitals, then narrate the episode as a pastoral lesson in “naturalness.”
The conduct described is egregiously disordered and scandalous. The very telling of it, written as though the “difficulty” is maintaining composure while being touched, reveals the rot. Catholic sanctity has always been recognizable partly because it is allergic to this kind of self justifying intimacy. Saints do not flirt with fire and call the smoke “inculturation.”
What Leo’s approval signals about the Synodal project
Leo XIV authorized the decree that advances the cause, the institutional act that tells Catholics this life belongs on the shelf of heroic virtue and “offering.”
In an older Church, these revelations would have frozen the cause. In the Synodal Church, the reflex runs the other direction. The category “offer of life” becomes a theological solvent. It dissolves prudence, dissolves moral clarity, dissolves the obvious duty to avoid scandal, then replaces all of it with a soft headed narrative about “being with the people,” “accepting,” “esteeming culture,” “not making drama,” “laughing with them,” “sharing their reality.”
This is the same spiritual grammar Catholics keep seeing everywhere else. Boundaries get recast as coldness. Judgment gets demonized. Moral distinctions get treated as “exclusion.” The sixth commandment becomes forgotten. The priest becomes a social worker with a stole.
A Church that can look at a record like this and still say “advance the cause” has announced, without needing to publish a syllabus, what kind of sanctity it plans to canonize next.
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
This is the same spiritual grammar Catholics keep seeing everywhere else. Boundaries get recast as coldness. Judgment gets demonized. Moral distinctions get treated as “exclusion.” The sixth commandment becomes forgotten. The priest becomes a social worker with a stole.
A Church that can look at a record like this and still say “advance the cause” has announced, without needing to publish a syllabus, what kind of sanctity it plans to canonize next.
Ping
This Pope belongs in the public screwls!!
As for the theological side of this : we Agree. James 3. Priests should try to behave insofar as possible beyond reproach
(As for the lurid side of this, I can’t help wondering how the priest thought his fifth member differed so much from that of his parishioner- companions? From what I can recall from gym class, most guys are designed pretty similarly more or less —-??? It was, after all, just the one blueprint…) )
We are all sinners fallen short of God’s glory, but this one is an actual martyr for Christ. Those are not incompatible for any human, but the latter is rare.
He was no martyr for Christ.
Circumcision?
Regards,
Perhaps
Pope Leo is SICK....he’s a PURE DEMOCRAT!
soon to be the patron saint of fags and trans people no doubt that they can pray to for salvation
His diary celebrates “blessed nudism,” recounts sleeping naked beside adolescents, and normalizes sexualized touching as “natural curiosity” — yet Leo still advances his cause. Padre, I think your mind is messed up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.