Mel Gibson on Mount Athos: 'I Have Never Felt Such a Strong Connection With God'

Photo: Holy Monastery Hilandar

MOUNT ATHOS — Mel Gibson arrived to the Holy Monastery Hilandar on Mount Athos today, according to the monastery's official Facebook page.

The famous actor, director, and producer will stay at the Serbian monastery for the next few days. According to several sources close to the situation, Gibson said, "I have never felt such a strong connection with God anywhere like I did here."

Photo: Fr. Borjan Vitanov/X

Tomorrow, June 28/15, is Vidovdan, or St. Vitus Day, which is one of the most important religious holidays for Serbians. The Serbian Church designates it as the memorial day to St. Prince Lazar and the Serbian holy martyrs who fell in the Battle of Kosovo against the Ottoman Empire on that same day in 1389.

Gibson is a Catholic who appears to adhere to sedevacantism, which is the belief that the papacy, or Seat of St. Peter, has been vacant since Vatican II in the 1960s. 

In a recent podcast with Joe Rogan, while Pope Francis was still living, Gibson said:

"Vatican II happened, and they took the church and reformed it and they changed things in it, and it didn't necessarily agree with everything that went before it. Up to that point, you could find it agreed with itself. All of a sudden you got something else, to the point where, now, we have a pope who brought a South American idol into the church."

Gibson later followed that up by saying that's an apostasy, and that it's a departure from the faith. 

Photo: Fr. Borjan Vitanov/X

"The very nature of apostasy means that you have to be part of it to fall away from it," he said. "So it's an inside job."

"The Resurrection of the Christ," the long-awaited sequel to Gibson's 2004 film, "Passion of the Christ," has been confirmed and is expected to begin filming in Rome in August.

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