Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a 5-part essay written by Father Enoch, a priest who writes under a pseudonym. To purchase his book The Trojan Horse, click here.

(LifeSiteNews) — In my book The Trojan Horse,[1] I explain how Pope Francis used his papacy to attempt to transform the Catholic Church into a New World Order institution that embraces a “woke” agenda. His two-pronged strategy: first, use the Final Document of the Synod on Synodality, issued on October 26, 2024,[2] to overturn the hierarchical structure of Holy Mother Church as Christ founded it, and second, replace it with a democratic form of governance like an inverted pyramid.[3] This inversion of the hierarchical structure and democratization of the Church will pave the way for the overturning of the entire moral order as established by God and revealed in Scripture and Tradition, and made known by the natural law, with the end game being acceptance of unnatural homosexual sodomy as a licit form of expressing human love and affection.

In fact, as his Eminence Gerhard Cardinal Müller, who attended every meeting of both sessions of the Synod on Synodality (October of 2023 and 2024) observed, “this new format – the ‘synodal process,’ as it is called – was used as a means to undermine the hierarchical-sacramental structure of the Church and replace it with an ‘inverted pyramid’ of governance.”[4] And in an October 27, 2023, interview with journalist Edward Pentin, Cardinal Müller said, “In the end, all of these so-called synodal reflections are aimed at preparing us to accept homosexuality.”[5]

So, the means to attain this “Great Ecclesial Reset”? Synodality – a newfangled term, along with its adjective “synodal,” which, as His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke astutely noted, “has no history in the doctrine of the Church”; it is a term “for which there is no reasonable definition. Synodality and its adjective, synodal, have become slogans behind which a revolution is at work to change radically the Church’s self-understanding.”[6]

READ: German bishops elect new leader who rejected Church teaching on homosexuality

As I meticulously demonstrate in The Trojan Horse, the plan for dismantling the Church’s hierarchical structure is plainly laid out in the Final Document (FD) of the Synod on Synodality, published on October 26, 2024 (at the end of the second session of the Synod). On that same day Pope Francis decreed the FD to be part of his “ordinary magisterium.”

According to the FD, the new synodal church will operate in democratic fashion, in which “everyone” – including non-Catholics and even non-Christians – will participate in a never-ending “journey” of “walking together” and engaging in endless “dialogue” and “shared listening,” all the while blasphemously claiming that they are being guided by the Holy Spirit – even though their “consensus” on various moral and doctrinal issues opposes the clear teaching of Christ and the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church under the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit. In theological terms, this violates the analogy of faith, as it contradicts what the Church has consistently held and taught: the unchanging faith of the Church.

Moreover, according to Pope Francis and the FD, in the new synodal church, bishops (along with their priests) are practically stripped of their pastoral authority to teach, govern and sanctify, so that instead of leading the flock, they will be required (in Modernist fashion) to follow it.[7] But this is all really a smokescreen, since those in positions of ecclesiastical power who control the “synodal process” while claiming to govern according to the “voice of the people” will, in Robespierre-like fashion, use the process to implement their own agenda – all while having no regard for the revealed word of God, the teaching of Christ that has come down to us through Scripture and Tradition. In reality, anti-Christic and anti-Church.

We have only to look at the machinations of the German Synodal Way to see how this will play out — something I discuss in The Trojan Horse.[8]

According to a directive by Pope Francis back in March of 2025,[9] the Church is now planning for a post-synodal Ecclesial Assembly in 2028 – in effect, Vatican Council III – to fully implement the Final Document from the Synod on Synodality and thus transform the Church of Christ into a synodal entity.[10]

With the death of Pope Francis the synodal baton was passed on to Pope Leo XIV, who fresh out of the gate of the papal conclave on May 8, 2025, in his first address to his worldwide flock from the Vatican loggia as the newly elected successor to St. Peter, spoke of how “we want to be a synodal Church.”[11] As I explain at the end of The Trojan Horse and will demonstrate in this five-part essay, Pope Leo XIV appears to be fully committed to implementing the Final Document of the Synod on Synodality.

Pope Leo expressed his whole-hearted commitment to implement the FD less than a month into his pontificate in a June 26 address to members of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, in which he said that “synodality is a style, an attitude that helps us to be Church, fostering authentic experiences of participation and communion.” Is your average bishop, priest or pew-sitting Catholic able to decode this “synodal newspeak”? What is meant by “fostering authentic experiences of participation and communion”? And how does this “synodal process” (as it is called) “helps us to be Church”? As opposed to – what? Not being Church?

Then, just two weeks later, on July 7, a summary of the FD was published by the authority of Pope Leo under the title “Pathways for the Implementation Phase of the Synod,”[12] which drones on – ad nauseam – about the need to grow in knowledge through “shared experience” and “listening to one another.” In this Pathways document we learn that Pope Leo commissioned two new “study groups” to treat (respectively) subjects of liturgy and episcopal conferences. These, together with a host of other study groups assigned to treat a variety of topics (e.g., see discussion below), all insist that the Holy Spirit will be guiding them in their discussions and in any proposals they put forward.

As a general rule, when those in positions of power and authority refuse to state clearly their intentions, their concrete objectives and specific goals, we should be very hesitant to place our trust in what they say. In fact, we should be distrustful and on guard. Is this not the purpose of a Trojan horse? To appear benign in order to get through the gates to inflict harm; in reality to be another thing entirely, a snake inside the garden?

Fast forward to Sunday, October 26, 2025. Pope Leo XIV offered Holy Mass for the “Jubilee of the Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies” at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. His homily deserves a careful, critical analysis – something I intend to offer in this essay, using the Synod’s Final Document as a hermeneutical key for understanding what he said to the synodal team participants who were present at Mass that day.

In the opening words of his homily, which was aired throughout the world (e.g., on EWTN in the U.S.), he spoke of how in the context of the Jubilee Year and synodality, “we are invited to contemplate and rediscover the mystery of the Church” and to be aware that the Church “is not … simply identified with hierarchies and structures.[13]”

While it is no doubt true that the Church encompasses more than its hierarchy and structures, what might be Leo’s motive for emphasizing this point at Mass on this occasion? Is it possibly to signal a plan to transform the Church as hierarchically constituted by Christ into a “synodal organization” where “everyone, everyone” (as Pope Francis was wont to say) has “a voice” on Church doctrine and governance?

READ: Bishop Schneider urges Pope Leo XIV: Grant ‘the episcopal consecrations of the SSPX’

I submit that Pope Leo’s words that follow in his homily lend themselves to such an interpretation. Consider, for example:

Contemplating the mystery of ecclesial communion … we can also understand the meaning of synodal teams and participatory bodies. They express what occurs within the Church, where relationships do not respond to the logic of power but to that of love.

Really, Holy Father? Contemplating the mystery of communion in the Church – that is, the union of the members of Christ’s Mystical Body with one another in the Holy Spirit and through Christ Himself in the Eucharist – enables us to “understand the meaning of synodal teams and participatory bodies”? Precisely how can contemplating the former help us to better understand the meaning of the latter, especially when we do not even have a clear definition of synodality (and its adjective, synodal), nor do we know what the goals of synodality are, other than to usurp the God-given authority of bishops to teach, govern and sanctify, and to undermine the authority of pastors and priests in parishes who assist the bishops in this holy task – all of which is spelled out in the Final Document?[14]

Is Pope Leo here truly asking us to believe that when these synodal teams (likely composed mostly of cherry-picked laity, after the model of the Synodal Way in Germany and the Synod on Synodality which followed in its wake) gather together and share their experiences and opinions, that it is they who authentically “express what occurs within the Church?” And that this is because when they gather together and share their experiences, their “relationships do not respond to the logic of power [read here: the authority of bishops and priests], but to that of love” – whatever this means!?

And are we to believe also that teaching and governing by the pope and bishops, assisted by their priests, as well as all that takes place in parish life – teaching the Catholic Faith, hearing confessions, offering daily and Sunday Mass, preaching, and administering the Holy Eucharist – that all this worthy activity is not done in loving service to Christ’s flock, but rather flows from a so-called “logic of power”?[15]

Pope Leo then proposes the process of synodality to circumvent this distasteful “logic of power”:

The former [“logic of power”] – to recall the constant warning of Pope Francis – is a ‘worldly’ logic. … The supreme rule in the Church is love. No one is called to dominate; all are called to serve. No one should impose his or her ideas; we all must listen to one another. No one is excluded; we are all called to participate. No one possesses the whole truth; we must all humbly seek it and seek it together.

How is one to make sense of these statements? Recall Pope Francis’ stated intention to invert the hierarchical structure of the Church through synodality;[16] and his plan to implement this evil scheme by changing the way that bishops and pastors exercise their pastoral authority, which includes “following that portion of God’s flock entrusted to [their] care”[17] – something explained concretely in the Synod’s Final Document.[18] Francis warned of “pitting the hierarchy against the lay faithful”; i.e., not “listening to” and “following” the laity in the new synodal paradigm.[19]

And Leo’s statement, “No one is called to dominate” or to “impose his or her ideas,” is a demeaning and unfair depiction of the exercise of pastoral governance by bishops in dioceses and by conscientious pastors in parishes. Moreover, to say that “all are called to serve … we are all called to participate” – understood to mean that no one is called to exercise authority in governance – is on the one hand a call to transform the Church into a popular democracy, the Protestantization of the Church; and on the other hand it is both naïve and unrealistic, for if “everyone” has an voice, then how does one ever reach a decision, or practically accomplish anything?[20]

To be continued…

To purchase Father Enoch’s book The Trojan Horse, click here.

References

[1] Father Enoch, The Trojan Horse in the Catholic Church, Synod on Synodality: The Attempt to Invert the Bride of Christ’s Hierarchy and Moral Order (Phoenix, AZ: Catholics for Catholics, 2025).

[2] “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission: Final Document”; avail. at https://www.synod.va/content/dam/synod/news/2024-10-26_final-document/ENG—Documento-finale.pdf.

[3] In his October 17, 2015, address commemorating the 50th anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops by Pope Paul VI, Pope Francis stressed: “Synodality, as a constitutive element of the Church, offers us the most appropriate interpretive framework for understanding the hierarchical ministry itself.” Then, after acknowledging that “Jesus founded the Church by setting at her head the Apostolic College,” Francis went on to refer to the Church as “an inverted pyramid,” in which “the top is located beneath the base (emphasis added); avail. at https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/october/documents/papa-francesco_20151017_50-anniversario-sinodo.html.

Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod on Synodality, in a March 4, 2021, address to the Bishops of Ireland on the topic of synodality, after quoting Pope Francis’ words in 2015 about the Church as an “inverted pyramid,” then quoted author Amanda Osheim who said: “By inverting the pyramid, Francis’ analogy recasts authority as being dependent upon reception – listening to and learning from others – within the church”; avail. at https://www.catholicbishops.ie/2021/02/03/address-of-cardinal-mario-grech-to-the-bishops-of-ireland-on-synodality/.

[4] Müller, Foreword to The Trojan Horse, 11.

[5] Avail. at https://www.ncregister.com/interview/cardinal-mueller-says-synod-on-synodality-is-being-used-by-some-to-prepare-the-church-to-accept-false-teaching. N.B.: Cardinal Müller quotes these same words in his Foreword to The Trojan Horse, 12.

[6] Foreword, xi, in José Antonio Ureta and Julio Loredo de Iczue, The Synodal Process is a Pandora’s Box: 100 Questions & Answers (Spring Grove, PA: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 2023).

[7] See Pope Francis’ Oct. 2, 2024, address to the second session of the Synod on Synodality; avail. at https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2024/october/documents/20241002-sinodo-vescovi.html#:~:text=This%20is%20because%20God%20always,experience%20of%20having%20been%20forgiven. See The Trojan Horse, 34-35.

[8] See my discussion of how the German Synodal Way is a paradigm for the “synodal church” at large in The Trojan Horse, 37-41, 84-86.

[9] Isabella Piro, “Pope approves convocation of post-synodal Ecclesial Assembly in 2028,” Vatican News (March 15, 2025); avail. at https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2025-03/pope-approves-convocation-of-l-ecclesial-assembly-in-2028.html.

[10] Per Francis’ directive, from June 2025 through December 2026 groups in local churches (dioceses) are to work to implement Synod decisions utilizing “local synodal teams composed of priests, deacons, consecrated men and women and laypeople accompanied by their bishop.” In 2027 “evaluation assemblies” will meet, first in dioceses and then at national and international episcopal conferences; and in early 2028 continental gatherings will take place. In June 2028 an instrumentum laboris (working document) will be published for the work of the Ecclesial Assembly, which will be held at the Vatican in October 2028.

[11] Pope Leo XIV, “Peace be with all of you,” Vatican News (May 8, 2025); avail. at https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2025-05/pope-leo-xvi-peace-be-with-you-first-words.html.

[12] “Pathways for the Implementation Phase of the Synod 2025-2028: For a synodal Church, communion, participation, mission,” General Secretariat of the Synod (July 7, 2025); avail. at https://www.synod.va/content/dam/synod/process/implementation/pathways/250102—ENG-Pathways-for-the-implementation-phase.pdf; also avail. at https://www.usccb.org/resources/250102—ENG-Pathways-for-the-implementation-phase.pdf.

[13] Avail. at https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/homilies/2025/documents/20251026-giubileo-equipe-sinodali.html.

[14] See, e.g., Final Document, nos. 77-78, 80-82, 87, 89, 92-94; and my discussion in The Trojan Horse, 44-47, 55-62.

[15] Would that Pope Leo have instead spoken of the most fundamental setting which is rooted in a relationship of love: the home and the family. It is here that the most important formation and education in love takes place: that of children by their parents. In God’s plan, the family exists and thrives on love; but for that love to take root and blossom in the lives of family members, there must be a proper ordering: the God-given structure of the family recognizes this ordering: with the father as head, and the mother as heart; see Pope Pius XI, encyclical Casti Canubii (On Christian Marriage), Dec. 31, 1930, nos. 26-29; avail. at https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19301231_casti-connubii.html.

[16] Avail. at https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/october/documents/papa-francesco_20151017_50-anniversario-sinodo.html.

[17] Pope Francis’ Oct. 2, 2024, address to the second session of the Synod on Synodality, op. cit.; see The Trojan Horse, pp. 34-35.

[18] See, e.g., FD nos. 77, 78, 80, 87.

[19] Francis’ Oct. 2, 2024, address to the second session of the Synod on Synodality; op. cit.

[20] See my discussion in The Trojan Horse, 42-45.