The document “Bergomensem inter,” dated 10 December 1958 and signed by John XXIII shortly after his election, is a brief Latin decree conferring on the parish church of Somasca—dedicated to St Bartholomew the Apostle and St Jerome Emiliani—the title and privileges of a minor basilica. It rehearses the historical bond between Venice and Bergamo, recalls the life and cult of St Jerome Emiliani, notes the transfer of his body to Somasca, the growth of pilgrimages and alleged miracles, the entrusting of the church to the Somascan Clerics Regular, later embellishments and solemn consecration, and then, “out of benevolence,” elevates the church juridically, invoking the fullness of “Our” apostolic power and declaring all contrary acts null.
A Ritualized Usurpation: Pseudo-Pontifical Self-Assertion in “Bergomensem inter”
From the First Line: The Signature of Illegitimate Authority
Already the incipit exposes the heart of the problem. John XXIII, the inaugurator of the conciliar revolution, issues an act in the style and with the formulae of true Apostolic Letters, ending:
«certa scientia ac matura deliberatione Nostra deque Apostolicae Nostrae potestatis plenitudine» (“with sure knowledge and mature deliberation of Ours and from the fullness of Our Apostolic power”).
This solemn claim to the plenitudo potestatis (fullness of power) is not a decorative flourish: it is a juridical act of self-identification as Roman Pontiff. From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine, this is precisely the point at which the mask drops. A man who would shortly convoke the Second Vatican Council, exalt religious liberty, inaugurate the cult of man, and prepare the destruction of the visible bastions of the *Regnum Christi* cannot simultaneously be received as the guardian and organ of that same infallible Tradition he will then systematically subvert.
The document is short, but the poison is concentrated: an apparently innocuous concession is used as a ceremonial enthronement of a usurped authority.
Factual Level: Pious Ornament Covering a Juridical Pretence
On the surface, the text moves within familiar pre-1958 categories:
– Recollection of the sanctity of Jerome Emiliani, his Venetian origin and Somasca labours.
– Mention of the transfer of his body to the parish church of St Bartholomew and the spread of pilgrimages.
– Note of miracles attributed there and the church’s regional fame.
– Historical references to:
– The parish title and embellishments,
– Entrusting the church in perpetuity to the Clerics Regular of Somasca by Clement VIII,
– The 1893 consecration by Andrea Ferrari,
– Final juridical clause: the parish church is raised to the dignity of a minor basilica with corresponding honours and privileges; all contrary acts are null and void.
Each factual element is, taken in itself, compatible with Catholic practice. The problem is not that a venerable church is honoured; the problem is quis loquitur—who speaks—and to what end.
Key factual and doctrinal distortions emerge when read in continuity with what John XXIII immediately began to enact:
1. The act presupposes John XXIII as true successor of Pius XII wielding real Apostolic jurisdiction. Yet according to the perennial teaching reaffirmed by theologians like St Robert Bellarmine and summarized in pre-conciliar canon law, “a manifest heretic cannot be Pope”, since he cannot be head of a body of which he is not a member. His subsequent deeds—calling an aggiornamento council that enthroned errors condemned by Pius IX in the *Syllabus*, and by St Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi—manifest the incompatibility between his “pontificate” and the Catholic rule of faith. A juridical act that rests on a false supposition of office is, in se, void, regardless of its mild content.
2. The decree uses the classical form of papal legislative language to normalize a new regime: it functions as liturgical theatre, signalling to clergy and faithful that nothing has changed, that all proceeds as before, while the architect of aggiornamento silently assumes papal majesty.
Thus the factual narrative—history of Somasca, devotion to a saint, canonical title—is instrumentalized to consecrate the person of John XXIII as “Pope” in the consciousness of the faithful. That is its real function.
Linguistic Level: Traditional Forms as a Veil for Revolution
The rhetoric precisely imitates authentic Apostolic Letters:
– «Ad perpetuam rei memoriam» (“For perpetual memory of the matter”),
– Evocation of local piety,
– Formal clauses: «ex consulto Sacrae Rituum Congregationis», «certa scientia ac matura deliberatione», «Contrariis quibuslibet minime obstantibus», nullity clauses.
This linguistic mimicry is not innocuous. It is emblematic of the conciliar strategy: retain the shell, empty the substance. *Formam tenere, fidem evertere* (to hold the form while overturning the faith).
Notably:
– The tone is warm, patriotic, and sentimental regarding “our beloved Bergamo region,” underscoring John XXIII’s personal attachment. This personalization of the act shifts the axis from the objective authority of the See of Peter to the feelings and biography of the signer. Such anthropocentric tone, embryonic here, will become the hallmark of the conciliar sect, culminating in the cult of the “pope’s” personality and of humanity itself.
– There is a meticulous insistence on the binding force and legal stability of the concession, but absolute silence on the higher and eternal realities: no reference to the *Regnum Christi* as public social kingship (so solemnly taught by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*), no admonition regarding penance, sin, or the supernatural end of ecclesiastical honour. Legalism is preserved; supernatural combat is muted.
In classical Catholic acts, juridical favours are frequently tied—explicitly or implicitly—to the exhortation to greater fidelity to revealed truth and moral reform. Here, the rhetoric is horizontal: heritage, devotion, miracles, honour, papal benevolence. It is the courtly language of a sacralized bureaucracy, not the virile voice of Peter warning against wolves.
Theological Level: Silent Eclipse of the Social Kingship of Christ
We must confront what is most damning: not what is said, but what is systematically omitted. The text:
– Does not once invoke the duty of civil society to submit to Christ the King.
– Does not call the faithful of Somasca and Bergamo to deeper adherence to the integral Catholic faith amidst the already advancing modernist crisis (which Pius XII had seen and warned against).
– Does not mention the dangers of secularism, liberalism, or the condemned errors enumerated by Pius IX in the *Syllabus*.
– Does not exhort the Somascan Clerics or pilgrims to guard against false doctrines, to defend the purity of the *Most Holy Sacrifice* and the sacraments, or to resist the encroachment of naturalism in education and morals.
In isolation, a minor papal rescript might not be expected to carry the full weight of anti-modernist teaching. But context is everything. In 1958:
– The revolutionary currents identified and anathematized in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi had not mysteriously vanished.
– The sects and masonic conspiracies denounced by Pius IX and Leo XIII were intensifying their assault.
– The doctrinal and liturgical subversion that would soon erupt at the council was already being prepared.
In such a context, a genuine successor of St Pius X, granting a public honour to a shrine linked with miracles and pilgrimages, would naturally:
– Reaffirm the exclusive truth of the Catholic faith against indifferentism (*Syllabus* 15–18).
– Call attention to the supernatural end of all ecclesiastical dignity.
– Explicitly subordinate all local devotion to the universal reign of Christ the King over individuals, families, and states, as Pius XI demanded: peace and order only in Christ’s kingdom, not in an amorphous religiosity.
Instead, “Bergomensem inter” restricts itself to administrative praise and affective reminiscence. The omission is not neutral; it is symptomatic of a new mentality that will later enthrone the doctrine Pius XI condemned: the separation of public order from the rights of Christ and His Church.
Symptomatic Level: Anodyne Rescripts as Architecture of the Neo-Church
Some may object: “This is only a technical decree about a minor basilica; no heresy, no innovation, no danger.” Such thinking is precisely how revolutions advance unnoticed.
We must read this act as one brick in the construction of the conciliar edifice:
1. Legitimization through Continuity Theatre
By issuing classically styled Apostolic Letters on familiar devotional themes, John XXIII projects himself as a seamless successor of Pius XII. The “continuity of forms” becomes psychological evidence of legitimacy for the masses. Later, this habitual acceptance of his “papal” acts will be exploited to impose the council, the new theology, and the new rites. The faithful, anesthetized by such harmless-seeming favours, are less prepared to recognize that the same hand which signed “Bergomensem inter” will inaugurate the *abomination of desolation* in the sanctuary.
2. Subtle Redirection of Piety
By emphasizing:
“hoc monumentum, ob res ibi gestas fideliumque pietatem tam insigne”
(“this monument, so outstanding because of the deeds accomplished there and the piety of the faithful”),
the document reinforces a devotionalism easily detachable from doctrinal militancy. Piety is praised, but not armed. Shrines are decorated, but not mobilized against heresy, secular power, or the enemies of Christ’s social reign. This fosters the pseudo-spiritual climate in which the faithful are satisfied with pilgrimages and church titles while the faith is gutted at the doctrinal and liturgical core.
3. Abuse of the Petrine Formulas
The repeated assertion that this act proceeds:
“deque Apostolicae Nostrae potestatis plenitudine”
(“from the fullness of Our Apostolic power”),
and that it is:
“firmas, validas atque efficaces iugiter exstare ac permanere”
(“to stand and remain firm, valid, and effective forever”),
functions as a juridical self-consecration of a usurped authority. According to integral Catholic ecclesiology, such formulas are sublime when emanating from a true Vicar of Christ; from the mouth of one who will promote doctrines and practices previously condemned, they are a blasphemous simulation.
The older Magisterium had already shown the principles by which such a situation is judged:
– Pius IX, in condemning liberal errors, upholds that the Church is a perfect society with rights not deriving from the State and not revocable by any human power; these rights are guaranteed by the office of the Roman Pontiff precisely insofar as he defends the depositum fidei.
– St Pius X confirms that modernism, the synthesis of all heresies, cannot be reconciled with the Catholic magisterium, and imposes excommunication on its defenders.
– Theologians of unimpeachable standing explain: a manifest heretic cannot hold pontifical jurisdiction; he is deposed ipso facto by divine law, even if a declaration by the Church is lacking.
Thus when a man who will soon publicly inaugurate a council that enthrones religious liberty, collegiality, and false ecumenism—errors directly opposed to the *Syllabus* and to *Quas Primas*—uses the very formulas of papal indefectibility to underwrite his administrative favours, his acts cannot be naively read as benign. They are instruments of camouflage.
The Silence More Terrible Than Words: No Call to Battle, No Warning of Apostasy
Integral Catholic faith demands that every ecclesiastical act—especially those tied to relics, miracles, and public cult—be ordered toward the salvation of souls in the concrete historical situation.
What, then, does this Letter omit at the very threshold of the conciliar apostasy?
– No mention that miracles and pilgrimages should confirm souls in adherence to all dogmas defined by Trent, Vatican I, and the anti-modernist Magisterium.
– No admonition to the Somascan Clerics to resist doctrinal novelties and philosophical errors condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi.
– No word that the glory of a basilica is inseparable from fidelity to the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* in its traditional, propitiatory Roman rite, soon to be attacked and replaced.
– No affirmation that the veneration of St Jerome Emiliani must include imitation of his unworldly spirit in opposition to liberalism, naturalism, and the worship of progress.
– No denunciation of the masonic and liberal forces that Pius IX and Leo XIII showed as the sworn enemies of the Church; forces which, by 1958, were far more entrenched.
This is not mere accidental brevity; it is a programmatic reticence characteristic of post-1958 pseudo-magisterial texts: where previous Popes unmasked the “synagogue of Satan” and the sects undermining Church and society, John XXIII begins a reign of “optimism,” diplomatic language, and “good feelings,” which disarms the faithful just as the attack intensifies.
In light of *Quas Primas*, this silence is a dereliction. Pius XI taught that:
– Peace and order will not return until states and societies acknowledge the reign of Christ the King.
– The feast and cult of Christ the King must condemn the secular apostasy and recall rulers and peoples to public subjection to Christ.
But here, though honour is publicly conferred, no word recalls that all temporal and ecclesiastical dignity is void if not subject to Christ’s kingship and the unchanging doctrine of His Church. A modernist-friendly ecclesiastical politics replaces militant Catholic clarity.
Minor Basilica, Major Illusion: Decoration in the Shadow of the Coming Destruction
We must also note the tragic irony: the very type of church honoured in this act—a venerable sanctuary, enriched with sacred art, relics, and a history of miracles—is exactly the sort of temple that the conciliar revolution would later desecrate:
– altars destroyed or turned into tables,
– relics sidelined,
– confessionals emptied,
– the Most Holy Sacrifice replaced by a horizontal assembly rite,
– saints reinterpreted as social humanitarians rather than confessors of integral Catholic truth.
“Bergomensem inter” thus appears, in hindsight, as a ceremonial calm before the storm: a last use of Catholic ceremonial language by the man who will open the door to a systematic devastation of the very realities that make a basilica what it is.
The Letter’s self-confident declaration that its provisions are to remain “forever firm, valid, effective” only underscores the deeper contrast: the legal continuity of honorary titles is asserted while the true continuity of doctrine and worship is about to be betrayed. The faithful are offered a shiny seal of favour, while the foundations are quietly prepared for demolition.
Conclusion: Anodyne Paper, Apocalyptic Context
“Bergomensem inter” contains no explicit doctrinal proposition contrary in itself to the pre-1958 magisterium. It is precisely this that makes it so revealing.
– It showcases the method of the conciliar sect’s first phase: preserve all the ceremonial trappings, exploit the faithful’s trust in familiar formulas, multiply harmless favours, and through this, secure universal recognition of a man and a system that will then overturn the substance.
– It exemplifies the displacement of supernatural combat with sentimental ecclesiastical administration; of militant confession with touristic piety.
– It invokes the august language of papal authority while preparing its profanation in service of modernism.
Read in the full light of integral Catholic teaching, the Letter stands as a small but clear sign of usurpation: a pseudo-pontifical act in which the voice claiming the plenitude of Peter is already oriented toward the conciliar dismantling of everything that plenitude exists to defend.
Source:
Bergomensem Inter (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025