A quiet rebrand, a louder message, and a calculated campaign to curate a new kind of Catholic audience has hit social media.

In late 2025, a new Catholic media brand Sign of the Cross began circulating aggressively on Facebook, Substack, Instagram, and YouTube. Its aesthetic feels familiar – solemn gold crosses, serious fonts, a tone of urgency. And its message is, for better or worse, even more familiar: something has gone terribly wrong in the Catholic Church, and no one else is brave enough to say it.

But so what? Don’t online “apostolates” like this spin-off all the time? There’s lots of engagement to harvest and money to be made. What makes Sign of the Cross worth any special notice?

Well, to put it simply: this new brand is a paradigmatic case study in how digital religious authority is manufactured at scale, how untapped audiences are manipulated and engineered, and how ecclesial trust can be strategically dismantled under the banner of uber-fidelity. This same formula is being deployed by hundreds of social media “influencers” who have, sadly, succeeded in captivating the attention and anxieties of Catholics everywhere.

Sign of the Cross is the creation of John-Henry Westen (co-founder and longtime editor of LifeSite News) – a fact documented on the brand’s own YouTube channel. The timing of its launch is notable. Westen introduced the brand while he was temporarily removed from leadership at LifeSite during an internal investigation last summer. When he was reinstated, Sign of the Cross continued and began to scale rapidly.

But that sequence raises a question: Why build a new outlet while already leading an established one?

LifeSite’s Past – and the Problem of Brand Inheritance

Founded in 1997, Lifesite News was long understood as a pro-life and pro-family advocacy outlet aimed primarily at practicing Catholics. It emerged at a time when Catholic media was comparatively sparse online, and its early reporting filled a genuine informational gap for activists, parish leaders, and homeschooling parents navigating bioethics, religious liberty cases, and legislative threats to unborn life. It published activist journalism – sometimes tendentious, occasionally alarmist – but historically avoided the daily drumbeat of ecclesial conspiracism now associated with certain large (and growing) corners of Catholic social media.

For most of its existence, LifeSite’s institutional identity was shaped by its ecosystem. Its core audience included financially committed donors, “movement” Catholics, diocesan communications directors, sympathetic bishops, conservative philanthropies, and board members with ties to established Catholic apostolates. Many of these supporters believed the Church was embattled culturally, but they remained fundamentally loyal to the hierarchy and protective of the Church’s credibility. They wanted LifeSite to be aggressive – not nihilistic.

And because LifeSite operates as a nonprofit with a board, auditors, grant relationships, donor reports, and (sometimes) diocesan partnerships, there were natural constraints: reputational, financial, legal, and ecclesial. There were rhetorical lines the organization could not cross without jeopardizing IRS status, charitable funding, access to Church leaders, or its claim to be a pro-life news organization rather than a schismatic pressure group. Even its critics acknowledged that LifeSite, for most of its history, operated within recognizable (if occasionally stretched) Catholic boundaries.

A new brand, however, has no such inheritance.

Sign of the Cross did not launch with a donor base, advisory board, institutional memory, or reputational liabilities. It owed no loyalty to dioceses, bishops, philanthropy networks, or long-time readers. It had no decades-long archive of mission statements to contradict. It could adopt any tone, target any audience, and pursue growth through whatever messaging strategy the algorithm rewarded.

Yes, Sign of the Cross was ultimately subsumed under LifeSite News after Westen was rehired there. But the fact is that the Sign of the Cross brand is new and, after Westen was rehired, the LifeSite board that oversees it was emptied out of Westen’s critics.

Clarification, as requested: While it is accurate that board turnover coincided with Westen’s reinstatement, public reporting only allows us to say that the board’s composition changed in ways favorable to Westen; we cannot document the internal motivations behind those changes.

Based on the incredible volume of content it shares on social media, Sign of the Cross appears specifically engineered to reach an audience Westen could not openly cultivate under the LifeSite umbrella – a Catholic audience suspicious of the papacy, convinced the Church’s leadership is malicious (not just mistaken), and eager for daily emotional confirmation of grave ecclesial betrayal. This is not LifeSite’s legacy readership. It is a newer, digitally formed demographic that views ecclesial authority not as wounded but as fundamentally compromised.

Rebranding isn’t just marketing. It’s segmentation – a declaration of what kind of people you want listening, and what kind of people you no longer care about.

How the Distortion Works: Five Case Studies

The most revealing way to understand Sign of the Cross is not through its mission statement, but through its output. A brief sampling – drawn from just one single day of posts – shows a repeatable pattern: select a real event, remove the context, add an implicit moral accusation, and present the result as Catholic truth-telling.

1. Turning Ordinary Catholic Culture into Spectacle Panic

One recent post loosely reports on a projection-mapping light display across the façade of a European cathedral, accompanied by the caption:

“Light shows are for megachurches, NOT for Catholics.”

What the post omits is that cathedral illuminations have become commonplace across Europe for many years – often commissioned by dioceses themselves for feast days, historical commemorations, or evangelization efforts. Many have been praised by local bishops. And the sort of music that accompanied this show (and the lights themselves for that matter) has been, for many decades, far more popular in Europe than in the United States.

In this case, the display wasn’t a liturgical experiment or ideological statement at all. It was a youth-oriented birthday celebration for the local archbishop, planned and executed by diocesan priests. But in Sign of the Cross’s suggestive, engagement-optimized framing, the same event is recast as some kind of evidence that the Church is caving in the wake of Protestant entertainment culture.

The facts remain technically intact. The building, the lights, the music are all real. What changes is the interpretation. The event isn’t described inaccurately – it’s assigned a different meaning.

2. Reframing Thoughtful Theological Reflection as Civilizational Betrayal

Another post targets Archbishop of Bologna Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, claiming he believes “the END of Christian culture is a good thing.” The implication is clear: Church leaders now applaud the death of Christianity.

But that is not what Zuppi said. It’s a blatant mischaracterization. Zuppi’s actual remarks (which Sign of the Cross links to but does not summarize) are part of a long-running theological conversation about the collapse of political Christendom. Joseph Ratzinger, Romano Guardini, Charles Taylor, and even Augustine before them argued that Christianity flourishes not through cultural dominance but through authentic witness. Zuppi did not celebrate secularism. He noted the Church can no longer presume faith – it must propose it.

Here are Cardinal Zuppi’s actual remarks:

“Christendom is over, but not Christianity. What is waning is an order of power and culture, not the living force of the Gospel. Therefore, we must not be afraid, but renew our commitment to be joyful witnesses of the Risen One. By stating that ‘Christendom is over,’ we mean that our society is naturally no longer Christian. But this shouldn’t scare us! This is the moment in which the proclamation of the Gospel must be most luminous, like the lamp that burns in the night. Today’s believer is no longer the guardian of a Christian world, but the pilgrim of a hope that continues to make its way into hearts… The end of Christianity is not a defeat, but a kairos: the opportunity to return to the essential, to the freedom of the beginning, to that ‘yes’ said out of love.”

Sign of the Cross converted this thoughtful, pastoral, and uplifting reflection into a headline of cheerful apostasy.

3. Manufacturing Doctrine-Free Identity Tests

Another recent Facebook post shares a clipped video under the caption:

“Pope Leo demands respect for ALL religions, despite Catholicism being the only TRUE religion.”

At first glance, this seems like a bold defense of Catholic doctrine. But it relies on a sleight of hand: presenting two ideas that are not actually in tension as if they are mutually exclusive.

Catholic teaching has, for decades, affirmed both the Church’s claim to the fullness of truth and the moral obligation to respect religious liberty and human dignity. Documents from Dignitatis Humanae to Nostra Aetate to the Catechism explicitly state that Catholics must approach those of other faiths with goodwill, honor, and charity. Nothing in the quoted statement contradicts Catholic doctrine – yet the framing implies betrayal, relativism, or capitulation.

What the post performs is not theological clarification but emotional sorting. The audience is nudged toward the conclusion that respect equals compromise, that civility signals doctrinal surrender, and that Church leaders who restate longstanding magisterial teaching are secretly undermining Catholicism. The screenshots and captions do the work – not the substance. The Church’s universal call to charity becomes, through editing, a scandal.

4. Turning Pastoral Caution into Sacramental Warfare

Another Facebook post features Cardinal Robert Sarah alongside the quote:

“Widespread Communion in the hand is part of Satan’s attack on the Eucharist.”

Cardinal Sarah has repeatedly affirmed that receiving in the hand is licit and permitted by the Church. The same position is taken by the Vatican and reaffirmed by virtually every national bishop’s conference in the world. Sarah’s actual concern is Eucharistic unbelief – not the ordinary discipline through which the millions of practicing Catholics receive Communion every Sunday.

But moderation isn’t what generates clicks. So Sign of the Cross intentionally amplifies the most sensational interpretation, abuses and confuses Cardinal Sarah’s words and reputation, and renders their construal definitive. A legitimate pastoral warning becomes a battle cry against the Church’s own sacramental practice which permits, all around the world, communion in the hand.

5. Introducing Speculation, Then Reporting It as News

Another Facebook post suggests that an abuse survivor’s request for a meeting with Pope Leo “raises speculation of a Vatican cover-up.” But the article linked does not allege a cover-up, cite a whistleblower, reference a leaked document, or quote anyone making the claim.

The speculation originates exclusively from the caption – but once written, it becomes news. This tactic gives the brand plausible deniability (“We didn’t say it! We’re just reporting what people are wondering!”) while planting suspicion in the minds of readers. It weaponizes ambiguity and manufactures doubt without ever having to own the accusation.

The Common Structure

Each example above follows the same editorial blueprint – a formula so consistent that it begins to look less like stylistic preference and more like internal policy. It’s common among all tabloid brands, and it goes like this:

Step One: Begin with something technically true. A real quote, a real event, a real photograph, a real diocesan announcement. Accuracy at this stage is essential, because it becomes the shield against criticism later: We didn’t invent anything. We just reported it.

Step Two: Detach it from its pastoral, cultural, historical, or theological setting. What matters is not what was said, but what was left unsaid — the surrounding context that would transform alarm into understanding. The reader is not told why something happened, only that it happened, and therefore what it must mean.

Step Three: Add framing that implies crisis, betrayal, or institutional rot. The headline or caption does the heavy lifting. Words like “shocking,” “raises questions,” “sparks outrage,” “signals the end,” or “reveals corruption” convert neutral information into existential threat. The rhetoric presents the Church not as wounded or confused, but as actively turning against the faithful.

Step Four: Let the audience supply the condemnation. No explicit accusation is needed. The insinuation is enough. Outrage becomes user-generated content – free labor for brand expansion. Commenters, not editors, deliver the final indictment, and the editors remain blameless observers.

This method avoids outright falsehood while achieving the same practical result: Catholics come away believing their Church is collapsing, compromised, or hostile to the Gospel. The effect is cumulative, not episodic. Outrage itself becomes a worldview.

And yes, journalists sometimes get things wrong. Headlines oversimplify, nuance gets lost. That’s human. But what distinguishes Sign of the Cross is not the presence of occasional error, but the incredible consistency of the distortion. It’s systematic, scalable, and rewarded by social media algorithms. It functions less like reporting and more like audience conditioning.

The structure of social media amplifies this. Most followers never click the link (and many of their posts don’t even include a link). Most never read past the headline. Most encounter the post while multitasking – in a grocery line, between emails, half-watching Netflix. The framing becomes the fact. The caption becomes the claim. The emotional reaction becomes the memory. And Sign of the Cross’s editors know exactly how this works.

Scroll through the comments beneath these posts and a pattern emerges: Catholics despairing of their own Church, confident not because of evidence, but because an algorithm has trained them to expect betrayal. And once someone has been trained to distrust the Church (not because of evidence, but through repetition), it’s very hard to undo it. To admit the truth would require admitting emotional complicity in a lie.

So the narrative hardens. And this is why the tactic is so powerful: the lie never has to be spoken. It only has to be implied. Suspicion does the rest.

Why This Matters

It’s important that onlookers understand that Sign of the Cross functions less as a traditional Catholic media outlet and more as a growth laboratory – a controlled environment for testing provocative messaging, studying audience reactions, and refining which emotional triggers generate the fastest, angriest, most loyal engagement online. In practice, the page operates like a real-time A/B test: vary the headline, escalate the insinuation, intensify the grievance, and measure which posts produce the most outrage, shares, and comments. Some posts have links, others do not. Some posts make obviously false claims (which commenters unanimously call out), others simply report clips and half-truths that are hard to immediately dissect and analyze.

None of this is accidental. It’s a carefully-planned method.

Once that method identifies the “high-reactivity” demographic – Catholics already anxious, disillusioned, or suspicious of Church leadership – the algorithm does the rest. It clusters those followers together, repeatedly serves them similar content, and gradually reinforces their belief that the bishops, the Vatican, and even the papacy itself are untrustworthy. The audience becomes ideologically sorted, emotionally primed, and united by shared grievance.

And once that audience reaches sufficient scale, it becomes deployable – not merely informed, but mobilizable. It can be steered toward coordinated campaigns, petitions, email lists, fundraising drives, political activism, letter-writing efforts, diocesan disruption, public shaming of clergy, or pressure campaigns aimed at Church governance.

Nothing conspiratorial is required. This is not some cloak-and-dagger ecclesial overthrow. It’s all above water and successfully targets the especially gullible. This is standard digital influence strategy. It’s the playbook of populist politics, activist nonprofits, and disinformation networks across the ideological spectrum:

1. Create a morally panicked audience.
2. Teach them who the enemies are.
3. Position yourself as their only trustworthy narrator.
4. Convert loyalty into power — spiritual, political, or financial.

The only novelty here is the target: the Catholic Church itself.

And the irony is, frankly, stunning – Sign of the Cross frames its project as a defense of orthodoxy, tradition, and fidelity, yet its operational outcome is the steady erosion of trust in the Church’s apostolic structure (especially in the United States). It “protects” the Church by teaching Catholics to fear, resent, and oppose her visible shepherds.

Catholic moral theology already has language for what this kind of media ecosystem produces – and it predates Facebook by centuries:

• rash judgment: assuming guilt without evidence
• calumny: stating falsehoods that harm another’s reputation
• detraction: sharing true information to cause reputational harm
• discord among the faithful: fracturing communion
• scandal: leading others into sin through one’s words or actions

These are not rhetorical misdemeanors. They are grave sins. The Catechism devotes more paragraphs to sins of speech – gossip, slander, suspicion, divisiveness – than to sexual morality. Yet the accounts most eager to patrol doctrinal purity rarely acknowledge the moral obligations governing their own communication. And unlike ordinary sin, scandal multiplies – it replicates across comment threads, group chats, forwarded screenshots, retweets, family texts, parish conversations. The individual act becomes communal injury.

At this point, some will object:

“But Westen raises real concerns. There is confusion in the Church, doctrinal ambiguity, liturgical abuse, moral relativism. Aren’t those legitimate?”

Yes, and many Catholics across theological, political, and academic lines share them. Critique has a place in the life of the Church. Saints have done it. Journalists must do it. But being worried about the health of the Church does not grant permission to:

• distort headlines for emotional effect,
• omit context to imply deception,
• suggest conspiracies without evidence,
• or cultivate resentment as a growth strategy.

“Directionally correct” is not a Catholic moral category. Truthfulness is. Fidelity is. Charity is. Justice is.

Even the most sincerely-held ends do not justify these means – not in Catholic ethics, not in journalism, and not in evangelization. A lie told for Jesus is still a lie, and therefore not for Jesus at all.

What Catholic Media Must Remember

If the long history of such movements and brands tells us anything, at some point – perhaps after sufficient subscriber growth, donor cultivation, or institutional recognition – Sign of the Cross will almost certainly attempt to moderate its tone. Outrage-based brands always do once they gain enough market-share. Its posture will soften, the adjectives will cool, the headlines will become less apocalyptic. The project will present itself not as a disruptive outsider, but as a responsible, mainstream Catholic voice speaking for by-then hundreds of thousands (or perhaps even millions) of “ordinary faithful” followers they allege are ignored by the hierarchy.

And when that pivot comes, it will arrive with a request (explicit or implied) that the past be forgotten. The sensationalism was just “early branding.” The distortions were “misunderstandings.” The inflammatory captions were “poorly worded.” The audience was “overenthusiastic.” The tone was “unfortunate, but necessary for the moment.”

But we cannot allow collective amnesia to finish the job. Sign of the Cross’s terminally-outraged audience is not being built through catechesis, formation, sacramental imagination, or love of the Church. It’s being built through provocation, distrust, and strategic indignation. Through the daily implication that the successors of the apostles are not mistaken or human or flawed, but corrupt, dangerous, and perhaps illegitimate.

That matters. Method is not morally neutral.

No, this is not a call to silence critics of the Church. Criticism, when rooted in truth and charity, has always been part of ecclesial life. Saints have rebuked popes, laity have corrected bishops. The Church does not fear scrutiny. In fact, it has often canonized those who offered it.

The real danger is not to the Church’s survival, but to the hearts of the faithful. When suspicion becomes a business model and humiliation becomes entertainment, Catholics learn to see their own family with contempt. The Body of Christ becomes content – not communion.

The Church deserves better than an outrage algorithm dressed as apostolate. And if defending her requires half-truths, insinuation, manipulation, and for the faithful to hate even their own shepherds, then the defense itself is already a defeat. A Church “protected” by calumny is not being protected at all. She is being hollowed out from within, one headline at a time.

The crisis is not that Sign of the Cross exists. The crisis is that, because of opportunistic brands like this that feed on anxiety, anger, and vague notions of “conspiracy,” many Catholics no longer recognize the difference between evangelization and provocation, between fraternal correction and performative rage. Recovering that distinction may determine whether Catholic social media serves the Church or simply undermines the very communion it claims to protect.