Cardinal Müller warns against Pope Francis ‘personality cult’ after Vatican drone display

A prominent cardinal has raised sharp concerns over the Vatican’s staging of a drone display above St Peter’s Basilica that included the projection of the face of Pope Francis onto the night sky during the “Grace for the World” concert earlier this month.

Speaking to journalist Diane Montagna in Rome, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said the spectacle risked evoking the apotheosis of emperors in pagan Rome or the personality cults of the 20th century.  

“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,” Müller observed. “Yet in its final form, it evoked something different – the sense of being watched over by Big Brother.”

The cardinal insisted that even the image of a holy pope should never be used in this way: “St Peter’s Basilica stands as a symbol of the universal Church of Jesus Christ, who founded Her upon the rock of St Peter,” he said.

“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.”

He added: “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.”

The concert concluded the World Meeting on Human Fraternity 2025, organised by Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, along with the Fratelli Tutti Foundation and the Be Human association. The event brought together religious leaders, politicians and artists, with performances by Andrea Bocelli, Jennifer Hudson and Pharrell Williams, alongside more controversial figures such as Colombian pop singer Karol G.

Müller accused the organisers of once again “abusing” the basilica, only a week after what he referred to as the “so-called LGBT Jubilee pilgrimage”.

He explained: “St Peter’s Basilica is a Christian church, the very symbol of Catholicism. At its centre is God Himself – the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Yet the organisers handed it over to a secularised world, turning it into a platform for an ideology ultimately opposed to the divinely revealed Catholic faith. As the Lord said, ‘if the world loves you, you are not my disciples’ (cf. Jn 15:18–19).”

While the concert featured sacred pieces such as the Ave Maria and Rossini’s Domine Deus, these were interspersed with secular performances and messaging that Müller described as confusing. In scripted remarks, Pharrell Williams defined grace as “a light that lives in each of us … the same spirit, the same light, the light of the universe”.

The cardinal countered: “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 language, he warned, “leads to confusion and ends in Pelagianism or a merely horizontal humanism."

Müller suggested that the broader program of the Human Fraternity meetings risked recasting the Catholic Church as “a kind of leader of the United Nations, with the Pope reduced to its secularised chaplain, rather than the Church proclaiming the Gospel and standing beneath the Cross of Jesus Christ”.

He then asked, referring to such secular international organisations: “And when do these groups ever raise their voices against the persecution of Christians throughout the world or the systematic de-Christianisation of historically Christian nations? There is no protest, there is only silence.”  

He recalled having challenged Cardinal Gambetti over a recent Vatican press conference for the World Meeting on Human Fraternity 2025. Müller contrasted Pope Leo XIV’s recent insistence on the centrality of Christ with the event organisers’ press release, which declared: “We must look to the only horizon, that of humanity nourished by fraternity.”

Gambetti replied that the two visions were compatible through the Incarnation, adding that humanity must “rediscover the divine” in every life. Müller, however, judged this to be a drift into Karl Rahner’s “transcendental theology” and “a humanism without God, without Jesus Christ”.

He added: “The Church must never allow herself to be instrumentalised by programs of self-salvation or by man-made liberal or socialist visions of a New World Order."

Genuine fraternity, he argued, “cannot exist without the paternity of God. And should one even slightly critique their ideology, fraternity is finished: dissenters are socially marginalised and punished.”

The cardinal nonetheless welcomed Pope Leo XIV’s address at the concert to participants, which he described as an “effective pastoral method". The Pope, he noted, had begun with natural theology and shared moral convictions before leading his audience to revelation in salvation history and culminating in the words of Christ from the Gospel of John.

“By concluding with a quotation from the Gospel, 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,” Müller said.

This approach, he argued, made a crucial distinction between a “horizontal, sentimental love” promoted by secular ideologies and the supernatural love flowing from the Triune God.

“The Church must always and everywhere confess Christ and lead people of good will to Him,” Müller concluded. “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.”

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‍Photo: People watch as a portrait of Pope Francis is created with drones during the 'Grace for the World' free concert and light show in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican, 13 September 2025. (Photo by FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP via Getty Images.)

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