I do find Bishop(?) Athanasius Schneider to be very likable as a person, and respected him for his stand during COVID, where he would send out signed objections of conscience to any Catholic who asked (unlike SSPX, who refused).

Nevertheless, it's sad to say that I think we have no choice but to conclude that Athanasius Schneider is a Gatekeeper and Controlled (Non-)Opposition.

Here's another clue.  Today, 12/18/2025, Athanaius Schneider is at the very top of the list of those having an audience with Bob Prevost.
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2025/12/18/251218b.html

Now, why would an obscure Auxliary Bishop from Kazakhstan, a Diocese boasting of an estimated whopping 53,000 Catholics, have become de facto the veritable "face" of Traditional-minded Catholics in the Conciliar Church?.  Does Astana even need an Auxiliary?  By contrast, only 30 of the 193 Diocese in the United States have fewer Catholics, 163 of them being larger, with the top 12 having over a million, and the top handful with 2, 2.5, 4.5 million Catholics.  But Schneider flies around the world, and seems to be the one they trot out on the Trad Inc interview circuit every time Vigano makes a move, or there's some impending movement regarding SSPX.

Schneider had regularly criticized Bergoglio, calling him out for error, even close to heresy, has criticized the New Mass and Vatican II.  So why wasn't Schneider punished like others were, others who said much less, such as Strickland?

But the final tipping point was when after +Vigano had declared Bergoglio to be an Anti-Pope, they trotted out Schneider to refute this assertion, and in those interviews he stated that the only Catholic opinion regarding the question of a heretic pope is that a pope can never lose office in any way, shape, or form ... not ipso facto (Bellarmine), nor by ministerial deposition (Cajetan).  Since I can't believe that Schneider is so ignorant and uninformed as to be unaware that of the 5 Opinions mentioned by Bellarmine, this was the Opinion that has been adopted by the fewest theologians ever.  I had not found a single one after Bellarmine's refutation ... until some obscure Frenchman I had never heard of before was cited.  So, to claim that by far the least popular opinion is the only Catholic one ... we have no choice but to conclude that it was just a flat-out bald-faced LIE.  There's no other explanation for this.

Then it makes sense why this obscure Auxliary is trotting around the world acting like the face of Conciliar Traditionalist sentiment, criticizing Bergoglio and Vatican II and the New Mass with complete impunity, where at the very least you'd have expected him to be silenced, told to stay put in Astana and help with Confirmations once or twice per year.  Strickland was stripped of his office for saying MUCH LESS than Schneider ever did, and one of the charges was that he left his diocese to participate in a protest in another bishop's diocese.  But Schneider is a veritable globe-trotter.

Putting that together with his lies about the heretical pope issue, his appearance at the top of Prevost's itinerary suggests that they are plotting their next moves regarding how to re-absorb SSPX or perhaps even Traditionalists in general into the Conciliar collective.  Prevost has been under some pressure from Trad-ish groups to free up the Tridentine Mass.

I can't see any other reason that Schneider would be in audience with Prevost, since I doubt the pressing matters of Astana are at the top of his agenda.

Not sure if it's coincidence that Astana has this bizarre Illuminati Temple in it.

There was a video on utoob that covered all the symbolism in Astana and the narrator also commented how it was fitting for a place that might as well be called Satana.

There was a video on utoob that covered all the symbolism in Astana and the narrator also commented how it was fitting for a place that might as well be called Satana.

I think I watched that myself some years ago but can't recall the details.  But it's strange that such a backwater would have a gigantic Illuminati facility like that.  I wouldn't be surprised if they have some plans for it.