Cardinal Sarah warns ‘paganism’ has infiltrated Church, reduced liturgy to ‘entertainment’

(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Robert Sarah has warned that paganism has infiltrated the Catholic Church and that the liturgy has been reduced to “entertainment” in some places.

In a May 4 interview with French magazine La Nef, the former prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments addressed the ills that the Church is facing today.

“When faith is reduced to sociological language, the liturgy to entertainment, morality to constant negotiation, and the Church to an institution that must adapt to the desires of the times, then something of paganism returns – not in ancient forms, but in the modern form of man placing himself at the center,” the African cardinal stated.

“This paganism is recognizable by several signs: the blurring of the sense of sin, discomfort with the affirmation of revealed truth, the trivialization of the liturgy, a fascination with worldly categories, and the forgetting of the Church’s supernatural purpose. When God is no longer first, even within the Church, everything else is corrupted.”

He said that this paganism is a “fluid ideology” which appears whenever “we turn away from God’s light to make a decision” and “worldly standards of popularity take precedence over the Beatitudes.”

Sarah observed that many in the Church have become susceptible to the zeitgeist. This tendency “is characterized mainly by the fear of displeasing the world,” Sarah said.

“Consequently, ambiguity is preferred over clarity, accompaniment without conversion over healing mercy, communication over contemplation, and horizontality over adoration,” the cardinal noted. “We end up believing that the Church will be better heard if it speaks like everyone else. Yet the world does not expect the Church to repeat its words; it expects her to open Heaven to it.”

“Permeability to the spirit of the world is the great heresy of our time,” he concluded.

Sarah argued that the Church was sometimes too closely tied to secular powers in the past, which prevented her “from preaching the Gospel in complete freedom.” He mentioned the “great Gregorian Reform around the year 1000,” which cracked down on simony and forbade secular rulers, such as kings and emperors, from appointing bishops.

Today, the world “no longer acts through military and political means; it seeks to confine the Church within a culture whose dogmas it would define itself.”

He stressed that the Church “must break free from media-driven dogmas to preach in complete freedom the Word of God transmitted by Christ. This reform is not institutional; it is internal.”

However, beside the seemingly bleak picture Sarah painted of today’s Church, he also recognized signs of spiritual renewal.

“I see it in young people who are not seeking a watered-down religion, but a whole faith; in priests who want to become men of God once again; in families who are willing to live against the tide; in religious communities where the liturgy is truly oriented toward the Lord,” he said.

“I believe that the internal reform of the Church has begun. It has not been decreed from above. It is inspired by the Holy Spirit in the souls of the faithful.”

“In Europe, we are seeing an increase in adult baptisms and returns to the faith,” the cardinal noted. “This is not a sociological triumph; it is a spiritual sign. When cultural certainties crumble, certain souls rediscover that God alone remains. In France, for example, the 2025 Easter Vigil had already confirmed an increase in adult baptisms, and this trend continued in 2026 according to numerous local church reports.”

“I see this less as a ‘return to Christianity’ than as a reawakening of the thirst for God.”

“Hope is also evident in young people seeking silence, in the renewed attraction to Eucharistic adoration, in certain large families, in fervent monasteries, and in priests who wish to give everything back to Christ,” Sarah concluded.