In this engaging episode, we delve into the heart of faith and politics with Mercy Schlapp of CPAC and Father Andre, a relentless advocate for religious freedom. Explore their profound discussions on Psalm 44, personal experiences of divine signs, and the ongoing struggle for spiritual and political truth. Experience how their shared dedication to faith and leadership has ignited a movement for global freedom and justice.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
SPEAKER 02 :
At age 10, Father Andre escaped Christian massacres by living in caves in Mount Lebanon with his family. Today, Father Andre works tirelessly to encourage American leaders to keep God in the public square, defending religious freedom at home and abroad, so that all might live in peace for the glory of God. Founder and President of the Mission of Hope and Mercy, Father Andre has learned the secret to safety, joy, and peace. Love God and one another. Now, let us spend 33 minutes on the Lord’s Day, retuning ourselves to the truth of love in the hands of God.
SPEAKER 01 :
In the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, now and forever and ever. Amen. We heard with our own ears, oh God. Our fathers have told us the story. of the things you did in their days, you yourself in days long ago. Good Holy Sunday morning, my dearly beloved brothers and sisters in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and welcome to 33 Minutes on the Lord’s Day and to Irrevocable, this podcast through which we meet with people, people who stood up in their own lives for faith, for family, for freedom, for God, for this nation, and for our Holy Church. but not only defending their own family or promoting the values of their own personal families, but also standing for families as the home church, the families as the most sacred and intimate unit of humankind, the union between man and woman, and the children who together in their communion, in their love, in their relationship, they promote and they live like the Virgin Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus. And in such a sacred way, those people are irrevocable, unbreakable. And of course, in such a way, these are the people who also have grown resilience in their life. They have grown prudence. They have grown special graces of wisdom. And of course, in their lives as well, God provided them with enough charisma, professional skills, friends around them, and personal prayers that would support them across the Dead Sea, across the Red Sea, across the deserts, across the mountain, across the stormy seas, across every sort of environment through which they faced challenges, all the way that they never gave up, they always promoted through their faith, hope, and love, victory of God, the victory of the church, and the peace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. They told of the stories of God in their own personal faith. And without mixing religion with politics, they tried to always stand as faithful witnesses to the values of the Gospel, and to serve the Kingdom of Heaven, yet at the same time being faithful citizens to this beautiful and wonderful nation, our nation of the United States of America. With me on this great and beautiful Sunday, on irrevocable and 33 minutes on the Lord’s Day, is a wonderful guest, friend, and if I may call spiritual sister and daughter in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Mercy Schlapp. Of course, Mercy, I want to tell you good holy Sunday morning to you and to Matt and to your family.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you, Father. And good holy, blessed Sunday to you as well.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 03 :
And to all the listeners.
SPEAKER 01 :
And those who are watching us today, I want us to take off with this beautiful conversation, beginning with Psalm 44. And to just put you in the context of Psalm 44. Psalm 44 is some sort of a lamentation psalm that speaks about the misfortune of God’s people. Yet at the same time, it has three parts and it begins in the first part telling God, hey, we have seen your wonders. We have seen your power. We have seen your miracles. We have seen how you planted our forefathers by uprooting our nations. You gave us even a land to call home. You put us as a small kingdom amongst large empires. You are our king and you are our God. And then they say, actually, it wasn’t that in our bow we trusted, but we trusted you. You are the one who led this battle. Yet at the same time, the misfortunes began. And then in the second part, this beautiful thought tells the Lord the following. Yet now you have rejected us, degrade us. You no longer go forth with our armies. You make us retreat from the foe and our enemies plunder us at will. You make us like sheep for the slaughter and scatter us amongst the nations. You sell your own people for nothing and make no profit by the same. And then, on the third part, it speaks about the people’s emotions towards God in response to the misfortunes that they have faced every day. And then they say, This befell us, though we had not forgotten you, though we had not been false to your covenant, though we had not withdrawn our hearts, Though our feet had not strayed from your path, yet you have crushed us in a place of sorrows and covered us with the shadow of death. Had we forgotten the name of our God or stretched out our hands to another God, would not God have found this out? He who knows the secrets of the heart. It is for you that we face death all day long and are counted as sheep to the slaughter. And then it tells them, awake O Lord, why do you sleep? Arise, do not reject us forever. Why do you hide your face and forget our oppression and misery? For we are brought down low to the dust. Our body lies prostrate on the earth. Stand up, come to our help. Redeem us because of your love. So this is what defines the relationship between God’s people throughout a contradictory and opposing history. As you could tell from when we prayed this beautiful Psalm 44, it almost reminds us that the trust of the people in God should be like what St. Paul told us in his epistle to the Romans, chapter eight, verse 37, when he says, we triumph over all these things through him who loved us. Mercy. You, as a public worker and a public sphere in our country, as a mother, as a professional, as a co-leader of CPAC, And the partner of your husband, Matt, and many people working in the United States, in the White House, and in many other places in the world, just came back from European sea pack, you know, between Hungary and Poland. You suffered, both of you, as a couple, as a family, the normal suffering like every family, even from economic pressure or from political pressure or from persecution of some sort or from competitions. How do you define the relationship between you and God in all of this?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, Father, you were with us throughout that period of time, which was a time of a lot of darkness and suffering. But I knew and learned and listened. And really, it was truly the fact that God never abandoned us. He never abandoned us, not one day. when we went through that difficult time as a family. And He fortified us. He fortified us in our faith. He fortified us in our marriage and in our family to know that He sent us basically a signal to us that we need to be completely focused on Him and Him alone and focused on serving His will and glorifying him above all things. And the beauty of it comes because it’s God and it’s Jesus and it’s his beautiful, Jesus’s beautiful mother, Our Lady. And really Our Lady gives us so much of the consolation and looks down upon us in this sense of, I know what you’re going through, my child. I know the sorrow and pain that you’re experiencing, but I am with you and I am gonna protect you and I am gonna put my mantle over you. And we felt that presence time and time again. And it was very much what first really the true experience of what you would say would be, you know, demonic attacks on your family. And their goal, obviously, knowing that CPAC stands for what is right, for what is true, for what is that of freedom, standing against violence. what I say are authoritarian regimes and communist dictatorships and socialism, which is empty absence of God. And CPAC is the complete opposite of that. For CPAC, it’s about our faith, our family and our nation. And we know that those three components are critical for saving Western civilization and for living out God’s will in our country and across the globe. And so I think that it made us more battle ready than ever before. as a couple and in helping to also understand CPAC’s role in the world and knowing that there are true enemies that want to destroy you. I mean, we kind of, you know, I kind of laugh now, but there was Father Andre, when you came and prayed at CPAC at our offices and you left Benedict, St. Benedict medals everywhere. And then several months later, there was an article from the Daily Beast, which is interesting that they’re called the Daily Beast, Father, because it’s the beast, right? It’s the devil. And so I kind of call the Daily Beast the devil’s public, Satan’s publication. But they came out and we get this crazy call. They’re saying, there was an exorcism at CPAC offices. And it was this big story. And then they put my photo up and Matt’s photo up with these really dark red images. And I just kind of had to, so I look at Matt and I was like, you know, that’s when Father Andre came and prayed at our CPAC offices. And then he left these St. Benedict medals with us. And I have to say two things happen. All the bad people left after that blessing that you gave. And then secondly, Matt looked at me and he goes, Oh my goodness, because I was like, you know, he blessed the office. And then Matt looked at me and goes, oh my goodness, I think it might’ve been an exorcism. So it was kind of a, you know, we look now and really view this as we needed to make sure that even CPAC would be in a position to have, to be in a spiritually strong place to combat what I say are the, you know, the darkness, the enemies that are trying to take this organization down. And obviously this was all happening during a time When the Biden administration was in power, when the Department of Justice was going after conservatives, when you had a media that felt very arrogant, that this leftist media, this leftist propaganda media that was focused on destroying and taking down conservative leaders. And it was… You know, you really had to know that you were not alone in this battle and we weren’t. And, you know, because of it, when we went to Mexico and we actually met with Father Dan ahead of time because we started doing this work on combating human trafficking. And we met with this wonderful man, Father Dan, and he said, why don’t you consecrate your family and CPAC? and your business is to Our Lady of Guadalupe. And we did that. And we consecrated our family and CPAC to Our Lady. And it is, I think, partially why we have seen CPAC take off to become a global phenomenon where we have people calling us from all over the globe wanting CPACs in their country because they’re hungry for freedom. They are hungry to ensure that they can protect their families and that the governments are serving the family and the people and not the other way around where the governments are basically oppressing them and taking away their freedoms. So I think that’s been our big fight at CPAC, our big, I don’t say fight, I say mission at CPAC as you have your incredible mission with protecting Christians who are being persecuted through Mission of Hope. And it’s a critical part of what Matt and I do and our family, what we’re involved in every single day in our fight and our mission to bring freedom and protect families and end this crazy, woke ideology that we’ve seen penetrate so many countries across the globe.
SPEAKER 01 :
I want to remind you of something. I was in Rome and I sent you a small prayer about Our Lady. And then you leave in Mexico, you are mad. And all of a sudden, I believe in the tail of the airplane, you sent me a photo. There was this beautiful rainbow from the sky.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, yes. Actually, that one’s an even more interesting story. That was actually when we visited Our Lady of Akita yesterday. in Akita, Japan.
SPEAKER 01 :
In Japan.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. So this is interesting because I really do follow the Marian apparitions and really have learned a lot more about them. And and we so we have CPAC Japan every year. And as we know, Japan is not it’s a traditional country and in many ways, but not very Christian or not very Catholic. And so I had been following, obviously, through Our Lady of Fatima and her messages to us. And then I learned about Our Lady of Akita. And so I call over to… So Matt’s like, Mercy, you need to come with me to Japan. And I was like, Matt, that’s such a long trip. It takes 14 hours to get there. I don’t want to be away from the kids. I go, the only way I’m going to go is if we bring the two little girls, Eva and Lucia, who you know well. And… and that I go do a pilgrimage over to Our Lady of Akita and go pray in the church where she is. And so we call over, so we get, you know, we were talking to Jay, who runs a Japanese conservative union. He does, he could run CPAC Japan and Jay’s not even Catholic. So we’re like, Jay, can you get this done for us? And so he’s like, yes, I’ll call her on. So they call the sisters and the sisters are like, no, we’re closed. There is no way to get here. It snows too much. We cannot get to you know, it will be we you’re not they’re not allowing pilgrims to come, basically. So I was and I just kept praying and I was like, Our Lady, I know you’re going to I know you’re going to open a door. I know something’s going to happen. And so that so Jay, who again, we’ve known him for years. He’s a wonderful partner. He writes this beautiful letter saying how I’m devoted to Mary and that I really want to go visit with Our Lady of Akita. And that letter gets into the hands of one of the sisters. And the sister says, OK, we’ll make an exception. We’ll have you come. But the weather could be bad. You might not be able to get here because we do CPAC Japan early December. So we arrived, we go to do our event in Tokyo, Japan. It was hugely successful because CPAC Japan continues to grow every single year. And so when we get to the airport, the flight’s delayed to go to Akita. And so they’re like, there’s fog, there’s no way to get there. They delay, delay, delay, delay. So the girls and Matt and I are just praying and we’re like, if this is your will, we’ll make it to Akita. We finally get on the plane. There is no American there. It’s all Japanese. And then we had an interpreter with us, this wonderful Catholic Japanese woman. We finally get to Akita. It is very gray and just the sun was not out. We go and pray with Our Lady for an hour or so. It’s just beautiful. And she’s a tiny little, you know, there’s a tiny statue that was carved out by a Buddhist monk. And actually, the church itself almost looks like a Buddhist temple, but they converted it almost to a Catholic church to include everything there. And so we leave the church. We pray. We got to meet some of the sisters. And then you actually even have to take off your shoes, Father, to go inside the church. I mean, it’s very Japanese.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
So we leave and then, you know, it’s kind of great. And I don’t like to ever ask Mary for like a sign or something like that. I just kind of just do my thing. And but I was like, you know, it’d be great to have, you know, a sign that, you know, just just to know, like, you know, that you’re with us.
SPEAKER 01 :
So we get the consecration. I remember, actually.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. So we get to. uh the airport and there’s a lot of glass like it’s all glass there and right our airplane i’m not kidding you where our airplane is all of a sudden when we get there the sun it’s like the skies open up and there is a rainbow literally that has like right into our airplane It was the, even our interpreter starts to like, she got on her knees and started praying. She was like, this is, wow, this is amazing. So, you know, it’s these incredible signs that you, that you see this, that, that then, and you know, you don’t, that you’re just so like what God is with us at all times. Like he, You know, when you think about his presence and you think about the fact that, you know, yes, at times you feel like, why am I going through this horrific period of time? Why am I being persecuted? But then I sit back, you know, I sit back or I then think about, you know, the 11-year-old girl that’s being sexually abused or human trafficked. and who doesn’t have a voice, right? I think about those 3,000, 4,000 girls that we go visit in Mexico with our Sisters of Mary, who are these heroic nuns, these sisters, who go into the jungles of Latin America to save these young girls from the hands of human traffickers, from poverty, or being abused. They come to this incredible Catholic facility that has where they learn how to speak english they learn the arts they learn history they learn math and science and then for four or five years that they’re there they’re ready to go to college and or even to get a career and it’s just that that’s what you think about you you think about okay when things are bad for you okay there’s a lot of people who are suffering and we see what’s happened in the democratic republic of congo where they are massacring These are Islamic militants who are literally massacring Catholics, men, women, children. If the children give them a Christian name, they are beheaded, okay? And these people are carrying their rosaries, and no one is speaking up on their behalf. And you see this in Lebanon with your mission of Hope, Father, of how many Christians have been persecuted. We’ve seen this with our Jewish brothers and sisters as well, and what we’ve seen happen with these Hamas terrorists. It’s horrific. And so I feel like Yes, you know, you go through suffering and pain, but you always have to remember there’s others that don’t even have a voice, that don’t even, they don’t know where to turn to, and that we have to be the voice for those that are most vulnerable. And that is what I believe we are called to do every single day in our mission at CPAC.
SPEAKER 01 :
Mercy, many things come to my mind, and I know all of them are from the Lord while you were talking. First of all, usually a human being like you and like Matt, who have suffered a lot, and I know I suffered a lot. You know, we have many priests and friends of ours that you know that you assisted as well at many steps in our life in the United States. You have assisted as well, many of us. The experience of suffering, Now it became almost like this international experience of human suffering. It’s no longer a personal.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
President Trump took this personal pain that he himself was subjected to, that you as a family were subjected to. And then it seems he noticed more and more that there is actually human suffering and that the world needs peace.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
How much you and Matt, you think you have shaped through your beautiful relationship with President Trump and to fight against human suffering and in fact, to work for peace? Because I think I remember when when we would meet together many times, Matt would be in his own office actually speaking. Probably I do not know if I can nothing in the content, but he would be talking to the president. and who always showed admiration to you as a couple, actually, the way you went through struggles and the way you stood together.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, I think there’s an empathy of President Trump that I don’t see, I don’t know that many people get to see. And I really have seen an enormous spiritual growth in President Trump. I think before he just wanted to fight and battle and just do what he had to do, and he couldn’t believe that people were going after him all the time. Even his closest, some of his friends betrayed him terribly. And he couldn’t quite understand why this was happening. And then he goes through this horrific persecution where literally he would go from one court to the next, the next, being completely humiliated. They were trying to throw him into jail. They were trying to kill him, which they attempted twice. And I think that there was this moment that God shook him and said, all right, you’re going to have a second chance at this, but you’re going to do it my way.
SPEAKER 01 :
And you’re going to do it. When God somehow not shook the president, I think the president was being educated, honestly, through many people, including he has his own pastor, I believe, you know, the Faith Council for America or Faith Leaders for America. You, your presence in the White House, strategically allowing prayer in the White House. You know, what does it mean to you that the first Catholic mass ever to be celebrated? And then there was a series of masses after that. Yeah. On October 12th, 13th of 2018, actually, you have set up this mass, which I had the privilege to celebrate, and Our Lady of Fatima was in the White House. Did God make it to the White House, you think, as an achievement when you were working in the White House?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I you know, that’s interesting. I don’t know if I view it as an achievement as more as because we were dealing with so many so much conflict within the White House. There was always the power circles within the White House. There was always you know, there was those that were really honing in on trying to solve problems. And then those that were you know, there was a lot of internal strife during that first administration. And on top of that, you had. The FBI, you know, the Department of Justice, like special counsel, like they were going after the president. You had the Russian help. You had all this incoming and you literally had to have your shield up at all times and your sword basically saying, OK, where’s my next attack coming? And so I think it was critical, at least for me to understand. know that I needed to live out my faith in the White House. I needed to fight for what was right and give the president the best advice possible when it came to matters of family, of life, of dealing with very complicated, even sometimes controversial issues that I would try to give the best advice possible. I remember sitting in the Oval Office and we were having this discussion. Are we going to give federal money to fetal tissue research. And it was one of those things that you had the surgeon general, you had the secretary of HHS, Health and Human Services, all wanting to say, yes, we have to put taxpayer dollars into this fetal research. and tissue research, and it was several of us in the room. And I remember the president looked at me and said, what do you think, Mercedes? I said, absolutely not. I go, you had Catholics who voted for you, Christians who voted for you. The pro-life community voted for you, Mr. President. They don’t agree with this. You got to stand for what is right on this issue. And quite frankly, you don’t need to do this fetal tissue research. And so I think it was those types of conversations that we were able to, you know, helping to make sure that the Title 10 money wouldn’t go to abortion, to the abortion practitioners and to Planned Parenthood. You know, we had to do a lot of maneuvering there to make sure that that would be changed. So we really worked hard. We had a lot of great Catholics in the White House at the time in very key positions. And he listened. He really did listen. And that’s what I love about the president. He’ll ask you a lot of questions. But I think he, for the most part, comes up for what is morally the right thing to do. And I really admire that about him. And one of the changes that I have seen is one of the last times I saw the president, he kind of came up to me And he just looked at me straight in the eye. He goes, are you doing okay? And I was like, like, it was just shocking. Like he cared about, normally I’m there to work and help him and, you know, tell him this is what’s coming next is what we’re going to do. And he kind of just stopped to be like, I want to know how you’re doing. And literally, I was like, I’m fine. Let’s just move on. Like, I was like, I’m fine. We’re doing good. Family’s great. Let’s go. So I think that he is very much has evolved spiritually. I think he’s closer to God now than ever before. I think and pray that God keeps working through him. And I do pray that those that are in the administration, that they realize their tremendous task and that they stay humble in this process because you have all this power and you have to realize You know, you got to be careful that it doesn’t become about you. It’s got to be about what is right and doing good for the American people.
SPEAKER 01 :
And you’ve been always like this. You and Matt have always surrounded yourselves with wonderful advisors, by the way, wonderful priests, and even including pastors as well. They always carried with them spiritual conversations. You live at home, like, I do not want to say like a holy family, but you live a very humble life. and a beautiful big home, but you live a very humble life. You live a real life. You’re a mother. You’re a woman of career. You are a politician. You are a media personality. You are a co-leader of a major organization that is influencing in the whole world conservative values, Christian values, and most closely also a Catholic action in order to install the peace of Christ in the world. Mercy, describe for us your day. We have about five minutes before our… Describe the day. So I would love for them to hear a little bit from you about the way, describe a day for us.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I don’t think there’s ever a typical day. I think, you know, after the girls get up and they’re out the door to go to school, you know, my goal is always to make it to daily mass. That’s critical for me. It sets the day for me. If I can’t go to daily mass and I have my morning prayers, my morning offering prayers, I do my meditation, catholic meditation read through some of the readings of the saints and just really try to center myself and have that quiet time and remind myself why am i here what am i doing am i you know i’m here to serve god am i doing what i can to serve god and obviously we’re very imperfect in in so many ways um and then from there it’s it’s pretty much depending on what’s coming in what what work has to be done and making sure that We’re moving forward with CPAC. As you know, now with CPAC, we have so many international events, as well as the big CPAC in America, which is our big one. But our events are critical. I’ll tell you a perfect example. We did CPAC Poland right before the Polish election. And even from, I would say, anyone who was one of the major leaders in Poland would tell you that CPAC Poland was critical in shifting the election so that President Karol Noworski would win that election. And there’s so much excitement in Poland that they want us to come back to do another CPAC Poland as we’re seeing these parliamentary elections next year. And then we have these critical elections coming up in places like Colombia and Brazil. So we’re looking to do a CPAC Colombia in February and then a CPAC Brazil in exile here in the U.S. just because the situation in Brazil is very tricky with what they’ve done against the bolsonaros but just from now to the end of the year we have cpac paraguay matt and i will also be going to spain to address the vox party which is a growing party they are a faith family based party they are all about ensuring that there is um that that basically they fight the socialists every single day uh then we’re heading after that matt’s heading to cpac australia and then we’ve got cpac Argentina and CPAC Japan by the end. That’s all this year alone. And that doesn’t even include the CPAC USA, which is you’ve been to multiple times and prayed there multiple times. That’s in Dallas, Texas next year, which if even if you’re if you’re in colorado wherever you are please please please come father knows he’s done mass there we try to do mass every single day when we are at cpac it’s a very powerful event it brings together not only the american leaders across the globe here in america but leaders across the globe as well and we really It’s such a, I call it, it’s networking, but it’s more than networking. It’s really building this movement that is a freedom movement. And that freedom movement is critical. It is the freedom for you to worship freely here in your country, to raise your family in your Catholic faith. to make sure that we’re promoting policies that are pro-family and pro-life. And also we work in other areas, including ending Christian persecution and combating anti-Semitism and combating human trafficking. That’s a very big issue that we work on as well. And criminal justice reform is another issue we work in, as well as economic regulation, freedom, regulatory freedom. So there’s so many different areas and people kind of pick what they really feel passionate about, you know, and I think we’re all called, Father, to find what, you know, God wants us to work on while we’re here on earth.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you for listening to 33 Minutes on the Lord’s Day. To hear previous programs, visit the show page at missionofhopeandmercy.org. Listen to Father Andre every Sunday morning at 7.30 on KLZ as he speaks on the unity of Christians, religious freedom, and the biblical foundation of Judeo-Christian values and traditions. Join him in bringing hope and freedom to people across the globe while also strengthening your own faith, family, and community right here in Colorado. Reawaken the spiritual strength of America. Go to missionofhopeandmercy.org.
