Fifty days have passed since LifeSiteNews and Novus Ordo Watch, on March 18, published a 1995 photograph showing the man now known as Pope Leo XIV — then Father Robert Prevost — kneeling at what an Augustinian symposium volume captioned as the "Rito de la pachamama (madre tierra)." [1] The Vatican has issued no formal answer.

The image appears in the proceedings of the IV Simposio-Taller "Lectura de San Agustín desde América Latina" (São Paulo, January 23–28, 1995), published as Ecoteología: Una Perspectiva desde San Agustín (México, 1996). [1] Three Augustinian priests independently identified Prevost in the kneeling circle, according to Father Charles Murr, who released the high-resolution scans from the Salesian Central Library in Buenos Aires. [2] Italian Catholic site UCCR has examined the image set and concluded the gesture does not appear to constitute religious worship. [3] Taylor Marshall, on his X account that day, called the implication that the cardinals "elected an idolater and a syncretist to the papacy." [4]

The structural question is documentary, not theological. The Augustinians published the volume; the caption named the rite; the participants are identifiable. The Vatican press office's silence at Day 50, with the first anniversary of Prevost's election landing tomorrow, is the open item the religion-power-wartime thread has tracked for weeks.

A formal answer would close the question by either confirming the participation and contextualizing it, or denying the identification with documentary evidence. Neither is what fifty days of nothing has produced.

-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin