The document, issued by John XXIII on October 16, 1959, designates Saint John Bosco as heavenly Patron of all Colombian young trainees and workers (“los Aprendices Colombianos”) of the SENA system, extending to them liturgical honors and privileges proper to patronal titles. It presents this act as a pastoral encouragement for youth formation through professional training placed under Don Bosco’s protection, in continuity with a similar decision of Pius XII for Italian youth workers.
A Pious Veil over a Revolutionary Usurpation
The text is short, devout, and apparently harmless: an act of patronage, praise for Saint John Bosco, a request from the Colombian hierarchy, a benevolent response from Rome. Precisely for that reason it is a perfect specimen of how the conciliar revolution cloaks its deformation of the Church under sentimental gestures, exploiting authentic saints as ornamental seals to mask a new, man-centred religion.
Here we are dealing not with an innocent flourish of Marian or hagiographic piety, but with one of the early juridical acts of John XXIII, the first in the line of antipopes who inaugurated the conciliar sect. The entire efficacy, authority, and supernatural meaning of this act stand or fall with the question: is John XXIII a true Pope or an intruder? From the perspective of immutable Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, his subsequent deeds — convocation of Vatican II, protection and promotion of condemned currents, systematic favour toward religious liberty and ecumenism — reveal precisely that rupture which the pre-conciliar Magisterium anathematized. An intruder cannot clothe his usurpation with legitimacy by sprinkling it with pious vocabulary.
What must be exposed is the mechanism: seemingly orthodox, limited acts are used to normalize obedience to a new authority already oriented toward subversion. This brief Apostolic Letter functions as a sacramentalized propaganda piece: it invites the Colombian youth to subject their lives, education, and work to a hierarchy that, by 1959, is already preparing the demolition of the social Kingship of Christ and the infiltration of modernist principles everywhere.
Instrumentalizing a True Saint for a Neo-Church Agenda
The document opens by hailing Saint John Bosco as iuventutis praeceptorem ac parentem eximium, an “excellent teacher and father of youth,” especially of those preparing themselves, “in the flower of age,” for crafts and professions. On the factual level, this recognition corresponds to Catholic truth: Don Bosco was indeed a confessor of the Faith, an educator dedicated to the salvation of young workers, entirely supernatural in his aims, his pedagogy ordered to the sacraments, Marian devotion, and fidelity to the Roman Pontiff of his time.
However, the Letter subtly abstracts Don Bosco from the integral context of his mission:
– There is no explicit mention that the primary goal of Don Bosco’s work was the salvation of souls from mortal sin, heresy, and hell through confession, Holy Communion, catechism, and obedience to the true Church.
– There is no stress on the necessity of the *integral* Catholic Faith as the non-negotiable foundation of education.
– There is silence about the danger of liberalism, secularism, socialism, and the masonic and revolutionary forces which the authentic Magisterium consistently denounced, particularly with regard to workers’ movements and state-controlled formation.
This silence is not accidental. It reflects an incipient shift from the explicitly supernatural framework, so clearly taught, for example, in the Syllabus of Errors and in Pius XI’s *Quas primas*, to a humanistic rhetoric wherein saints are reduced to inspirational figures for naturalistic projects of social uplift.
When the text identifies the beneficiaries as SENA apprentices, it implicitly ratifies a state-technocratic model of formation. Yet:
– The Syllabus (esp. condemned propositions 45–48, 55–56, 79–80) rejects schooling and social organization detached from the Church’s doctrinal and moral authority.
– Authentic Catholic teaching insists that education of youth, particularly workers, must be subjected to Christ the King and His Church, not to neutral technocratic agencies or secular ideologies.
The Letter utters none of this. It simply overlays a saint’s patronage upon a structure that is not defined or safeguarded as thoroughly Catholic, thereby encouraging the illusion that a civil-institutional apparatus becomes Christian merely by receiving a patron.
Factual Level: Patronage without Safeguards
Let us dissect the key elements:
We, with certain knowledge and mature deliberation and from the fullness of Apostolic power, by force of these Letters in a perpetual manner, choose, make and declare Saint John Bosco, Confessor, heavenly Patron before God of all Colombian young apprentices and workers… adding all liturgical honors and privileges.
On the surface this resembles traditional papal acts of patronage. But three factual problems arise:
1. The act is grounded on the authority of John XXIII’s “Apostolic power.” If the man is an antipope — as demonstrated by his doctrinal orientation and his role as progenitor of the conciliar revolution — then:
– He cannot validly legislate for the universal Church.
– His use of the saints and of liturgical law is an abuse, aiming to bind consciences to a pseudo-magisterium.
2. The Letter gives no doctrinal conditions for the application of Don Bosco’s patronage:
– No insistence that the SENA and analogous institutions preserve catechetical orthodoxy.
– No condemnation of secularist or socialist infiltration.
– No mention that youth formation severed from the Most Holy Sacrifice, sacramental life, and sound catechism is spiritually lethal.
3. The continuity argument with Pius XII is purely formal:
– Pius XII (a true Pope acting before the visible eruption of the post-1958 revolution) placed Italian youth workers under Don Bosco’s patronage in order to protect them from Marxist and laicist seduction.
– John XXIII reuses this gesture but in a context where the Roman authority itself is becoming the vector of liberalism and false “opening” to the world. The same saint is retained; the supernatural intention is emptied and replaced.
The Letter’s apparent orthodoxy thus serves as a bridge: from the era of integral doctrine to the era of its systematic betrayal.
Linguistic Level: Pious Rhetoric as Sedative
The vocabulary merits close attention. It is devout, legalistic, ostensibly traditional. Yet its omissions and tone already betray the conciliar mentality.
Key traits:
– Sentimental and purely honorific language:
– Don Bosco is spoken of as “teacher and father of youth” and as “heavenly patron,” but the text is devoid of his concrete spiritual program: frequent confession, Eucharistic devotion, fear of sin, Marian piety, militant fidelity against liberalism and impiety.
– Bureaucratic-juridical solemnity:
– Phrases like certa scientia ac matura deliberatione… deque Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine, and the long clause on nullity of contrary acts, are technically standard, but here they function as a juridical cage to force obedience to a power that is in fact preparing doctrinal subversion.
– Total absence of the language of militant Catholicism:
– No exhortation to fight errors condemned by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X.
– No reminder that labor, art, and profession must submit to Christ the King as defined in *Quas primas*: that public life, institutions, and laws must explicitly recognize His reign.
This stylistic combination is typical of the early conciliar epoch: traditional forms emptied of their dogmatic edge, preserving the shell of continuity to smuggle in the substance of rupture. The rhetorical piety is an anaesthetic.
Theological Level: Displacement of the Social Kingship of Christ
From an integral Catholic standpoint, any ecclesiastical act concerning youth and workers must be read under two non-negotiable doctrinal axes:
– Unicitas Ecclesiae (the uniqueness of the Catholic Church and her Magisterium).
– Regnum Christi sociale (the social Kingship of Christ over individuals, families, institutions, and nations).
Pius XI teaches in *Quas primas* that peace and order cannot exist until individuals and states recognize and submit to the reign of Christ in public life. He condemns laicism and the exclusion of Christ from laws, education, and institutions as the root of modern disasters.
This Apostolic Letter:
– Does not invoke Christ the King as the binding norm for Colombian institutions educating youth workers.
– Does not declare any obligation of SENA and national authorities to subject their programs to Catholic doctrine.
– Does not warn against the naturalistic deformation of vocational training detached from the Faith.
Instead, by silently presupposing that a decorative patronage suffices, it effectively cooperates with the progressive idea that gestures, slogans, and “spiritual accompaniment” are enough, while the structural apostasy of states and institutions is tolerated, even blessed.
The shift from doctrinal demands to devotional cosmetics is itself a theological perversion. A saint’s patronage becomes a talisman masking the abandonment of the non-negotiable principles affirmed in the Syllabus and in condemnations of modernist errors (*Lamentabili sane exitu*, *Pascendi*, etc.).
Symptomatic Level: Early Symptom of the Conciliar Pseudomorphosis
This text, dated in the first year of John XXIII’s usurpation, appears before Vatican II but already:
– Promotes a cultic act that strengthens the bond of youth and episcopate to the emerging neo-church.
– Reassures the faithful that “Rome” continues as before, canonically precise and piously worded.
– Carefully avoids all friction with modern states, technocratic institutions, and “neutral” educational systems.
It is symptomatic of the conciliar method:
1. Continuity of forms, discontinuity of substance.
– Use of Latin, of juridical solemnity, of reference to a true saint.
– Omission of hard doctrinal content about Church, state, heresy, and social sin.
2. Pastoral sentimentalism instead of militant supernaturalism.
– Don Bosco is presented not as a hammer against liberalism, Freemasonry, and impiety, but as a kindly supervisor of apprentices.
3. Subordination of spiritual reality to sociological categories.
– The object of the act is defined not in terms of baptized faithful struggling for sanctity, but in terms of socio-professional groupings (“iuvenes tirones opifices,” SENA “aprendices”).
– This anticipates the conciliar obsession with “workers,” “youth,” “the poor,” as sociological blocks detached from explicit concern for their dogmatic adherence and sacramental life.
4. Use of true saints to legitimize the counterfeit structure.
– By placing Don Bosco’s name on a conciliar trajectory, the neo-church attempts to monopolize his memory and reinterpret him as a patron of its humanistic, state-cooperative youth policy.
Silences that Accuse: No Word on Sin, Heresy, Judgment
The gravest indictment comes from what is not said.
In a text about the formation of youth and workers, the Letter is entirely silent on:
– Mortal sin and the danger of losing one’s soul.
– The necessity of being in the state of grace.
– The Most Holy Sacrifice as the center of Christian life.
– The need for sound catechism, faithful to the pre-existing Magisterium.
– The reality of hell, judgment, and the wages of sin.
– The condemned systems—socialism, Freemasonry, laicism—actively targeting youth.
Given the pre-existing magisterial clarity on these themes, such silence is not a neutral omission; it is a betrayal of pastoral duty. As *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi* emphasize, it is precisely by undercutting supernatural realities, by historicist and practical relativization, that Modernism operates. Here, in miniature, we see:
– Replacement of supernatural urgency with institutional recognition.
– Replacement of militant vocabulary with bland encouragement.
– A confessor saint transformed into a sort of celestial mascot for vocational schooling.
Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent is seen to consent): silence about the war on the Kingship of Christ in Colombia and in the world implicitly consents to it.
The Abuse of Liturgical Authority by a Revolutionary Usurper
The juridical paragraph invokes the full weight of supposed papal authority:
We declare and decree that these present Letters are to stand firm, valid and effective in perpetuity; that they are to obtain and accomplish their full and entire effects; that they must wholly assist all whom they concern… and that anything to the contrary attempted knowingly or ignorantly by anyone, of whatever authority, is null and void.
From the perspective of integral Catholic theology:
– Such formulae are instruments of the Petrine office when exercised by a legitimate Pope guarding Tradition.
– When uttered by an innovator who will soon convoke a council to “update” the Church, rehabilitate ideas and persons previously condemned, and prepare religious liberty and false ecumenism, they become an arrogant mimicry of authority.
An antipope cannot secure obedience by the very solemnity of formulas which, under true Popes, served to protect Tradition. Instead, he weaponizes them to bind souls to a paramasonic structure that will subsequently:
– Dismantle the Roman liturgy.
– Promote indifferentism and democratization of the Church.
– Subjugate doctrine to “dialogue” with error.
Thus, even when the content of an individual act seems pious, its author and its role in the broader revolutionary strategy render it spiritually poisonous: it habituates the faithful to receive every act from the usurping “Holy See” as unquestionably Catholic, creating the psychological precondition for their later seduction.
Defense of True Authority against Both Modernists and Self-Appointment
One further point must be emphasized with precision. The betrayal evident in this and later acts of the conciliar hierarchy does not justify a descent into lay anarchism or private self-appointment of authority.
Integral Catholic doctrine, expressed by theologians and in canonical tradition before 1958, insists:
– The Church is a visible, hierarchical society founded on Peter and the Apostles, with real jurisdiction, sacraments, and public worship.
– Judgment on heresy and on papal legitimacy is doctrinally guided by principles such as:
– A manifest, pertinacious heretic cannot be Head of the Church because he is no longer a member.
– Public defection from the Faith implies loss or invalidity of office.
However:
– This objective truth does not authorize each individual to erect a parallel, democratized “church” based on private feelings, nor to pretend that sacramental and judicial authority migrates automatically to any lay or self-styled group.
– Potestas iurisdictionis (power of jurisdiction) is a gift of Christ to His Church, not created by popular acclamation or internet conclaves.
Thus:
– We must uncompromisingly unmask the conciliar sect and its antipopes.
– We must likewise reject all attempts by {those pretending to be traditional Catholics} or laicized enthusiasts to set themselves as a substitute magisterium.
– True authority endures only where the integral Catholic faith and valid sacraments endure; outside of that, we see either the neo-church of apostasy or the chaos of private judgment.
This Letter of John XXIII is a paradigmatic case of the first: a pseudo-pontifical act, adorned with a true saint, deployed by a structure already oriented against the very doctrines which gave meaning to the saint’s life.
Conclusion: Don Bosco Belongs to the Integral Faith, Not to the Conciliar Sect
Saint John Bosco dedicated his existence to leading young workers to Heaven, arming them against liberalism, revolution, and impurity, anchoring them in confession, Communion, Marian devotion, and uncompromising obedience to the true Roman Pontiff and the perennial Magisterium. To seize his name and graft it upon a trajectory culminating in Vatican II, religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the cult of man is an act of spiritual counterfeiting.
The 1959 letter:
– Says nothing explicitly heretical.
– Yet strategically:
– Detaches Don Bosco from his integral doctrinal context.
– Blesses a socio-technocratic apparatus without demanding its total submission to Christ the King and the pre-existing Magisterium.
– Accustoms the faithful to recognize authority and legitimacy in one who would soon preside over the conciliar revolution.
Therefore, from the standpoint of unchanging Catholic doctrine before 1958, this text must be read not as a benign devotional flourish, but as a calculated step in the normalization of the conciliar usurpation: a pious mask placed over the face of an emerging anti-church.
Source:
Iuventutis praeceptorem (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025