(LifeSiteNews) — As revealed today on LifeSite’s flagship show Faith & Reason, Robert Francis Prevost — while serving as an Augustinian priest in northern Peru — was photographed in 1995 participating in a Pachamama ritual. Thirty years later the same man would be elected Pope Leo XIV.

UNEARTHED: 1995 photo shows Pope Leo XIV participating in Pachamama ritual

In 2019, Pachamama idolatry took place in the Vatican Gardens. In front of Pope Francis and gathered cardinals and bishops, a group including Franciscan friars took part in a Pachamama ritual which included kneeling to and prostrating with foreheads to the ground before two wooden statues of the earth goddess Pachamama. The ritual was led by a female with painted face and headdress, who later processed to Pope Francis and placed rings on his fingers. A second woman brought to him the Pachamama statue and Francis blessed himself before it, blessed it, and took it as a gift from the woman.

Following the ceremony the Pachamama idols were processed into the Paul VI Hall, where the Pope and cardinals and bishops met for the Amazonian Synod discussions. Later the Pachamama idol would be processed into St. Peter’s Basilica, where again the Pope and cardinals stood around it praying.

The event shook the Catholic world, causing large-scale scandal roundly condemned by conservative members of the hierarchy.

The following are the most notable of the condemnations:

READ: Pachamama rituals linked to alleged human sacrifice in new report

Bishop Athanasius Schneider in an open letter of October 26, 2019, wrote:

In virtue of my ordination as a Catholic bishop… I condemn the veneration of the pagan symbol of Pachamama in the Vatican Gardens, in St. Peter’s basilica… The honest and Christian reaction to the dance around the Pachamama, the new Golden Calf, in the Vatican should consist in a dignified protest…

Cardinal Gerhard Müller in an EWTN interview with Raymond Arroyo on October 24 said:

To bring the idols into the Church was a grave sin, was a crime against the divine law… To put it out… can be against human law, but to bring the idols into the Church was a grave sin, a crime against the Divine Law.

Cardinal Raymond Burke in a TV Libertés interview which aired December 10, said:

Something very grave happened… An idol was introduced into St Peter’s Basilica – the figure of a demonic force… Therefore reparation is necessary… so that the diabolical forces that entered with this idol are vanquished…

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò commented in an interview with LifeSiteNews saying:

The abomination of idolatrous rites has entered the sanctuary of God and has given rise to a new form of apostasy…

Cardinal Walter Brandmüller issued a statement supporting the two young Catholic men who stole the Pachamama idols out of a Vatican church where they were on display and dumped them into the Tiber River. Cardinal Brandmüller stated:

These two courageous ‘Maccabees’ who have removed the ‘abomination of desolation in the holy place’ are the prophets of today.

And a bishop from Latin America also condemned the Pachamama scandal. In his homily of October 20, Bishop José Luis Azcona Hermoso said:

These are scandalous demonic sacrileges, especially for the little ones who are not able to discern… Pachamama is not and never will be the Virgin Mary… Let’s not create syncretistic mixtures.

The question is, do those condemnations now apply to Pope Leo XIV? What Francis scandalously permitted in front of him, Leo actually engaged in.

In presenting the evidence of this scandal of Leo, Fr. Murr wanted to inform Catholics of the roots of Leo’s scandalous appointments and statements – namely, liberation theology.