The dominant culture has ‘permeated ecclesial circles,’ Cardinal Sarah warns in wide-ranging interview

August 08, 2026

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CWN Editor's Note: The prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments warned that “the dominant culture has permeated ecclesial circles, and even preachers are not immune to this influence.”

Lamenting “banal preaching, completely irrelevant, which does not meet the deep desires of man,” Cardinal Robert Sarah said in a wide-ranging interview that “man, even contemporary man, absolutely needs God, to hear about the Gospel, about eternal life, about spirituality.”

“It is never licit to reduce the Gospel to social and horizontal themes, however relevant, because it is a failure in the very will of Christ, who sent us to preach eternal salvation, and not social redemption,” Cardinal Sarah said. He added:

• “I think there can be a reciprocity between Africa and Europe: Africa with its contribution of young, fresh, enthusiastic faith, wide open to martyrdom, and Europe with its two-thousand-year-old strength of holiness and doctrine.”
• “I think that Europe is terribly afraid to recognize that anti-Christian persecution is taking place, and often, more generally, anti-religious persecution. But persecution is crueler in Europe. Faith is marginalized, moral and Christian values are fought. The West has killed God, or rather, despised him, or rather fought him openly.”
• “Pope Leo, in this first year of pontificate, has shown great balance, a great ability to listen, a concrete desire to mend those tensions that had been created.”
• “It is a tragedy, indeed a real shame, that on an essential issue like the liturgy there is a kind of war ... Rituals cannot be arbitrarily abolished, and no one can say that a rite no longer exists, from one day to the next. I think that the theme must be taken into serious consideration, recovering the balanced, pastoral, and theologically founded position of Benedict XVI, who allowed both forms of the Latin rite to live, to influence each other, to be known by the holy people of God who, over the decades, will be able to choose which form corresponds most to their need for faith, silence, spirituality.”
• “The faithful have the sacrosanct right to participate in Holy Masses celebrated as the Church wants, and not according to the arbitrariness or whim of the individual priest.”

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