INTERVIEW: Cardinal Müller Raises Concerns Over Vatican Drone Display, Idolization of Pope Francis

In Part II of our interview, His Eminence critiques the World Meeting on Human Fraternity 2025, its “Grace for the World” concert in St. Peter’s Square, and efforts to reshape the Catholic Church.

Sep 23, 2025

VATICAN CITY, September 23, 2025—Recently I sat down in Rome with Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for a wide-ranging discussion.

In Part I of our interview, His Eminence reflected on the brutal assassination of Christian conservative and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

We also touched on the first months of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate, and discussed a range of pressing issues, including the growing threat of Islam, its relation to contemporary anti-Christian ideologies, and the recent scandal surrounding the Vatican-sanctioned “LGBT Jubilee pilgrimage.”

In Part II, our discussion turns to the World Meeting on Human Fraternity 2025, which concluded with the “Grace for the World” concert in St. Peter’s Square, featuring a drone display by Nova Sky Stories (owned by Kimball Musk).

Now in its third year, the World Meeting on Human Fraternity gathers religious leaders, political figures, scholars, and activists to explore concrete ways of advancing principles set out in Pope Francis’ 2020 encyclical on fraternity and social friendship, Fratelli Tutti.

That encyclical builds on the Document on Human Fraternity, which Francis signed in 2019, in Abu Dhabi, with the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, and which sparked controversy for its assertion that “the pluralism and the diversity of religions … are willed by God in His wisdom.”

Here is Part II of my interview with Cardinal Gerhard Müller.

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Diane Montagna: Your Eminence, let’s turn to the more recent World Meeting on Human Fraternity, held September 12–13 in Rome and organized by Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, Archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, the Fratelli Tutti Foundation, and the Be Human association.

The central focus of Friday’s program was a series of fifteen thematic roundtables, addressing subjects ranging from artificial intelligence to agriculture, from children to local governance. On Saturday, events included an “Assembly of Humanity” held on Rome’s Capitoline Hill, and an evening concert in St. Peter’s Square called Grace for the World. The event was broadcast on Disney+, Hulu, and ABCNews.

The lineup featured artists such as Andrea Bocelli and Jennifer Hudson, but also more controversial figures, including Colombian reggaeton and urban pop singer Karol G—who had performed at Madrid’s 2022 Pride March and whose work incorporates “queer themes”—, the American hip hop duo Clipse, and Thai rapper BamBam.

The Vatican announced that the evening would be “uniquely enhanced by a spectacular display of 3,500 drones illuminating the sky above St. Peter’s Dome.” Cardinal Gambetti noted that the drones would project Pope Francis’ face, along with images from the Sistine Chapel, onto the Dome itself. In the end, however, Pope Francis’ face was instead displayed in the air surrounding the Dome.

Cardinal Müller: This is hard to believe. As it was initially presented, it seemed reminiscent of antiquity’s Apotheosis, when the Roman Senate declared the emperor a pagan deity, or of Moscow’s Red Square, where enormous images of Stalin and Lenin loomed as the new idols. Yet in its final form, it evoked something different —the sense of being watched over by Big Brother.

They should let Pope Francis rest. As Christians we pray for the deceased, that their souls pass from Purgatory to Heaven. Even canonized saints are venerated for the glory of God, and not for their posthumous fame. We must avoid any cult of personality, which is a pagan attitude.

St. Peter’s Basilica stands as a symbol of the universal Church of Jesus Christ, who founded Her upon the rock of St. Peter. As the Successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome is called to be the humble “Vicar of Christ,” not the “Successor of Christ” (as L’Osservatore Romano once erroneously stated), who complements Divine Revelation with his own ideas or doctrines.

What message does the projection of Pope Francis’ face—rather than the face of Jesus Christ—send to the world? Such a display is wholly unfitting. Even the image of holy popes should never be used in this manner, treating them like idols of a climate religion or humanitarian brotherhood stripped of God’s fatherhood and of His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, the only Redeemer of the world.

When Catholic missionaries entered pagan lands, one of their first acts was to destroy the idols. Do you think there is a certain “smashing of idols” that needs to happen within the Church today?

Absolutely, they have once again abused St. Peter’s Basilica, this time just a week after the so-called “LGBT Jubilee pilgrimage.”

St. Peter’s Basilica is a Christian church, the very symbol of Catholicism. At its center is God Himself—the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Yet the organizers handed it over to a secularized world, turning it into a platform for an ideology that is ultimately opposed to the divinely revealed Catholic faith. Such compromise with the world stands in direct contradiction to God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. For, as the Lord said, “if the world loves you, you are not my disciples” (cf. Jn 15:18–19).

The “Grace for the World” concert included a performance of the Ave, Maria, the Magnificat, and Rossini’s Domine Deus, but it was mixed with secular music and what many regarded as confusing messaging. In comments read from the teleprompter, i.e. scripted by the organizers, Pharrell Williams asked: “What is grace? Grace is a light that lives in each of us waiting to be shared, not just a blessing that we receive but a force that we extend to one another. Beneath every culture, every language, every story, is the same breath, the same spirit, the same light, the light of the universe, the ‘all that is, all that ever will be’. […] Can we just hold hands for a moment and see the light that we have? You guys, put your cellphones in the air and turn your lights on.”

Grace is a supernatural gift that only comes to us from God, Our Father, through Jesus Christ, uniting us to Him and to one another in Him. We must avoid any use of Christian terms separated from their origin and end, namely, the Holy Trinity and the Word Incarnate. Such messages, especially when delivered against the backdrop of St. Peter’s Basilica, lead to confusion and end in Pelagianism or a merely horizontal humanism. Jesus said: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15: 5).

What does the Basilica of the Holy Roman Church have to do with all these programs of self-redemption? Such events seem aimed more at recasting the Catholic Church as a kind of leader of the United Nations with the Pope reduced to its secularized chaplain, than they do with the Church proclaiming the Gospel and standing alone beneath the Cross of Jesus Christ.

And when do these groups ever raise their voices against the persecution of Christians throughout the world or the systematic de-Christianization of historically Christian nations? There is no protest, there is only silence.

At a Vatican press conference ahead of the event, I referred the organizer, Cardinal Gambetti, to the recent address of Pope Leo to political leaders in which he stressed the centrality of Christ, telling them “it is no cause for surprise that the promotion of ‘values,’ however evangelical they may be, but ‘emptied’ of Christ who is their author, should prove powerless to change the world.’

I contrasted that with the event’s press release, which made no reference to Jesus Christ, and even went so far as to state: ‘We must look to the only horizon, that of humanity nourished by fraternity.’ Asked how these two visions are compatible, Cardinal Gambetti replied that they are compatible by virtue of the Incarnation, adding that we must “rediscover the divine” in every person’s life. To some, his response sounded distinctly Rahnerian.[1]

I don’t think that Karl Rahner’s transcendental theology is that well known. The Cardinal seems to believe that wherever people seek truth and goodness, the grace of God is already at work in Christ, even if those seeking are not yet aware of it.

The openness of nature to grace stands in direct opposition to the naturalization of supernatural grace found in a humanism without God, without Jesus Christ. The Church must always and everywhere confess Christ and lead people of good will to Him. The redemption of the world can be achieved only in Jesus Christ, who does not destroy nature but elevates it to God through the mission of His sacramental Church.

The Church must never allow herself to be instrumentalized by programs of self-salvation or by man-made liberal or socialist visions of a New World Order that contradict our faith in Jesus Christ, the one and only Savior of the world.

There was considerable secular and financial support behind the World Meeting on Human Fraternity.

Some of those who support these initiatives—and whose interests are not compatible with the Church—want to reshape the Catholic Church and leverage the authority of the Holy See to advance their Masonic, Socialist, or Capitalist agendas. This is not true fraternity. Genuine fraternity cannot exist without the paternity of God. And should one even slightly critique their ideology, fraternity is finished: dissenters are socially marginalized and punished.

The same people criticized both Benedict XVI and John Paul II.

It must also be said that Fratelli Tutti makes no real mention of Jesus as the only Redeemer of the world. While He is referred to as an example, He is not presented as Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Divine Redeemer of the world, through His Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Second Coming at the end of the world.

Human fraternity in the Christian sense is not merely a sentiment of belonging, but a real and sacramental participation in the relation of Christ the Son to the Father, in the Holy Spirit. “Fraternity” in a Masonic or Communist sense, by contrast, seeks to control and dominate humanity—like a “Big Brother” who is watching you—and this is diametrically opposed to the “glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rm 8:21).

The World Meeting on Human Fraternity had already been planned before the election of Pope Leo XIV. What did you think of the Pope’s address to its participants?

I believe Pope Leo employed an effective pastoral method by grounding his remarks in natural theology and shared convictions, much as St. Thomas Aquinas does in the Summa contra Gentiles, before leading his audience to God’s revelation in salvation history, attested in both the Old and New Testaments, and culminating in Jesus Christ, who gave us the new law of universal love.

By concluding with a quotation from the Gospel of John, the Pope opens the horizon to the Father and to His Son Jesus, the Incarnate Word, even for those who have not yet embraced the Christian faith. The mutual love of this universal brotherhood is not the one-dimensional, horizontal, sentimental love promoted by Masons or Socialists, but the love flowing from the Triune God. This is the decisive distinction between believers in Christ and men of mere good will, and even more, those who seek to create a New World Order according to their ideology.

Therefore, Jesus said to his disciples: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you” (John 14;15-17).

Part I of my interview with Cardinal Gerhard Müller may be read here.

[1] Karl Rahner (1904-1984) was a German Jesuit theologian posits that the “supernatural existential” is a God-given, intrinsic orientation in every human toward divine grace and communion with God, creating fraternity among all people, for it give us a common supernatural destiny, regardless of explicit faith.