The Voice of the Mother
Reflections on Pope Leo XIV, Ancestral Rites, and the Rise of Matriarchy
The Madonna Di Pompeii painting that was mentioned in Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural speech today.
As the great-great-granddaughter of a Spanish Catholic priest, I carry both the burden and the blessing of understanding Catholic tradition and colonization from within. My paternal lineage is marked by the very hands that once evangelized my people. The Philippines, colonized under the name of Christ, has felt both the violence and the reverence of that legacy. I’ve wrestled with it my whole life. For years, I rejected the Church. The trauma, the control, the loss of indigeneity—it was too much to ignore. But something shifted when my paternal grandmother, Maria Clara, passed away on Easter Monday, April 21, 2025—the same day Pope Francis died.
As a family, we returned to the ritual of the novena. Nine days of prayer. Nine days of Hail Marys. Nine days of holding space for her soul’s journey, weaving love through the beads of the rosary. I began to see it differently. The mysteries of the Rosary—the Joyful, the Sorrowful, the Glorious, the Luminous, and so on—weren’t just dogma. They were life itself. The Rosary, like time, isn’t linear. It’s a circle. A spiral. A return. The cross at its center? It’s a symbol of the sacrifice ego, but also standing in presence. Suddenly, everything I had learned through esoteric teachings, and remembered through it, mirrored what I was now seeing in the church. This was never about religion. It was about returning to LOVE.
My maternal grandmother, Rufina, was a devout woman of faith. She prayed her rosary every morning and night. She passed away on May 15, 2012 and left me with her rosary and prayer book. In 2023, during a mentorship journey called Aloha Mā, led by my dear friends and mentors Ke’oni Hanalei and Kelly Sears, Rufina came to me in a meditation. She handed me her rosary and prayer book, held me, and with her presence, a single word echoed: “Matriarch.” It felt like a passing of the torch. Since then, I’ve been on an eye-opening journey full of “aha” moments, seeing the unraveling of remembrance happening in front of me.
Then came the synchronicity. Maria Clara—Lola Mary— my paternal grandmother, was laid to rest just yesterday, on May 7, 2025. Today, the Vatican announced Pope Leo XIV. The first American Pope. Talk about a full-circle moment for my Lola Mary, from passing away on the same day as the former Pope Francis, and being buried the day before the emergence of a new Pope… it was truly a completion of her ceremony. Thank you Lola, what a way to “drop the mic”.
Unlike Pope Francis, who wore all white during his inauguration, Pope Leo XIV was adorned in a red cape that immediately struck me. It was a mantle of sacrifice. The colour of blood. Of devotion. Of menstrual wisdom and womb memory. Of my Filipino indigenous people’s offerings to the gods. This was the robe of the Mother.
In his inaugural address, Pope Leo XIV invoked the name of Our Lady of Pompeii. “Our Mother Mary always wants to walk with us, to be close, to help us with her intercession and her love”, he said. I heard this as a prophecy and deep truth.
Leo. The lion. The roar of truth. The courage to lead. My maternal grandmother Rufina is a tropical sun in Leo, born near the Lion’s Gate portal. I am a true sky Leo. My voice, I’ve come to learn, is here to speak not just for me, but for the rising Matriarchy. And Pope Leo’s chosen number, XIV—14—holds its own resonance. Ke’oni shares in his teachings that 14 corresponds to the vertebrae of the feminine energy, the ‘unihipili. The aspect of the self that is ancestral, intuitive, the one who leads and holds us in belonging. In Aloha Mā, we learn that she is the grounding force, the Omega. To me, she holds and nurtures the ceremony of light like a loving mother.
I don’t believe the second coming is a person. I believe it’s a presence. One that is already rising in each of us. Back in October 2023, when the war in the middle east took a horrific turn, during meditation, I asked Jesus about the state of the world. He appeared in a long purple robe, flanked by people. He turned to me and said: “The second coming is through all of you.”
This is it. We are the second coming. We are remembering through the return to love. Through the Hail Marys. Through the grandmothers. Through the women who fed families on scraps and still gave praise to God. Through the prayer beads passed from hand to hand.
What does Matriarchy mean? It doesn’t mean replacing men or patriarchy. It means restoring balance. It means leadership rooted in compassion. Systems that honor life, land, and lineage. It means holding council with patriarchy, not to dominate, but to let them know their time is up, and the world can no longer sustain itself under its governance . It means returning to the sacred, to the body, to the Earth.
Astrologically, we are in a powerful portal: the Moon is in Virgo—the Virgin, the Priestess, the archetype of Mother Mary. And we are in Pluto retrograde, a time for dismantling old systems and rebirthing new ones.
So what does this all mean?
To me, it means the Voice of the Mother is calling us back. Not just the feminine voice, but the matriarchal remembrance. She is reminding us: before the return of Christ or Pure Love, we must honor she who bore him and the humans on this Earth. The Womb Space. Our mothers. The gateway between realms. The sacred vessel of life. The significance of all of this, just in time for Mother’s Day this weekend in May, and May being short for “Mary”.
Here, we sacrifice the stories and actions that separate us from love. Here we return to our wholeness.
Christ Consciousness. Mū frequency. To me, they are one and the same.
This is the time of the Great Birth, that will bring forth the Golden Age. The Sat Yuga.
This is not the return of a saviour, Jesus Christ… but that the saviour is also US - human and spirit.
As a granddaughter, a mystic, a priestess and babaylan of the line of Maria Clara and Rufina: the Mother is not coming.
She is already here. And she speaks through you.
The convergence of the Sisterhood of Mū has been established. The council members are gathering. Matriarchal governance is being established within and without.
Below is a symbol I designed for “Matriarchy”, after completing the Aloha Mā mentorship. I’ll let you feel into what it means for you.
