In this Latin letter of 25 January 1959, John XXIII addresses the apostolic vicars of Vietnam, praising their decision to hold in Saigon a Marian Congress at the close of the Lourdes centenary celebrations and for the tercentenary of the establishment of the first apostolic vicariates in those regions. He extols Vietnamese Catholics’ fidelity, lauds the fruits of the missions, highlights the numerical growth of Catholics and indigenous clergy, expresses paternal solidarity with the faithful in Northern Vietnam suffering difficulties, and appoints Gregory Peter Agagianian as his legate to the celebrations, attaching spiritual favours and his “apostolic blessing.” The entire text, apparently pious and Marian, functions as a subtle manifesto of the nascent conciliar revolution: it instrumentalizes a dubious apparition, glorifies a colonial-missionary model already being emptied from within, silently shifts the axis from the social Kingship of Christ to a pacifist-naturalist rhetoric, and consolidates obedience to a usurped authority in the structures occupying Rome.
Mary Co-opted for a New Religion: The Program Hidden in “Animo nostro”
Glorification of a Usurped Magisterium under Marian Ornament
From the first lines, the letter is framed as a serene pastoral encouragement, yet its theological presupposition is deadly: it presumes John XXIII as Roman Pontiff and his structure as the Catholic Church. This is the nerve of the entire operation.
– The letter’s signature, IOANNES PP. XXIII, claims papal authority. But a man who convokes and inaugurates a council that will systematically contradict the constant Magisterium on religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, and the relationship between Church and State, has by that fact embraced doctrines condemned by the pre-1958 papacy (Pius IX, Syllabus; Leo XIII; Pius XI; Pius XII). Such public adhesion to condemned propositions, if pertinacious, is incompatible with holding the papal office (cf. the doctrinal synthesis presented in the pre-conciliar theologians, such as St. Robert Bellarmine; canon 188.4 CIC 1917).
– The text demands, implicitly but firmly, the adhesion of Vietnamese Catholics and clergy to this “Pope” as visible centre of unity. This is employed not to confirm them in *immutabile depositum fidei* (the immutable deposit of faith), but to tie their Marian devotion and martyr tradition to the conciliar agenda that John XXIII is about to unleash.
Therefore the letter must be read as an early ideological consolidation of the conciliar sect in a strategically sensitive mission territory. Marian language is here the sugar coating for a poison: “unity” with a new authority that will shortly enthrone religious liberty, ecumenism, and the cult of man.
The Lourdes Axis: Suspect Apparition as Foundational Symbol
Central to the letter is the insistence on the Lourdes centenary:
“ut nempe saecularia sollemnia ad commemorandum Deiparae Virginis Mariae in Lapurdensi specu mirabile visum indicta festo exitu terminarent”
(“that you might bring to a close with a solemn feast the centenary celebrations convened to commemorate the wondrous vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the grotto of Lourdes.”)
Several grave problems emerge:
– The letter elevates Lourdes, a private apparition, to a quasi-constitutive axis of missionary identity and Marian piety in Vietnam. But as recalled in the provided document “False Fatima Apparitions,” private revelations—even if tolerated—belong to the periphery of the faith and never to its structural foundation. When they are used to reshape ecclesial consciousness or to prepare acceptance of doctrinal novelties, they become vehicles of deception.
– Lourdes in the narrative of John XXIII becomes a symbolic gateway for the new Marian style of the conciliar revolution: sentimental, therapeutic, centered on miracles and mass gatherings, useful for a pacifist-humanitarian message, detached from the uncompromising call to conversion to the one true Church and subjection of nations to Christ the King.
– This letter integrates Lourdes seamlessly into official identity-building. This is methodologically identical to the later exploitation of other dubious phenomena by the conciliar sect: apparitions and “messages” are instrumentalized to soften resistance and redirect piety toward obedience to post-1958 usurpers.
In light of authentic doctrine:
– True Marian devotion is inseparable from the full confession of Catholic dogma, the rejection of all errors, and complete submission to the perennial Magisterium. Pius XI in Quas primas insists that peace and order flow only from the public recognition of Christ’s Kingship and the rights of His Church; he does not build the Church’s authority upon apparitions, but upon Christ’s institution and revealed truths.
– Here, on the contrary, we see an inversion: the usurped magisterium borrows aura and affect from a spectacular apparition to strengthen its own acceptance.
Thus, the Lourdes focus is not innocent: it is a tactical deployment of a popular cult to anchor adherence to John XXIII and his impending council.
Silence on the Kingship of Christ and the Social Order: A Naturalistic Peace Program
The letter speaks of the hoped-for grace of peace:
“ut nova beneficia caelestia, praesertim illud quod optatissimum et auspicatissimum est, solidae restituendae pacis scilicet, impetrent.”
(“that they may obtain new heavenly benefits, especially that which is most desired and most auspicious, namely the restoration of solid peace.”)
This vocabulary seems pious, but note the omissions:
– No mention that true peace is the fruit of submission of individuals and states to Christ the King and His law, as taught explicitly by Pius XI: peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ, not in a pluralistic “peaceful coexistence” of religions and ideologies.
– No assertion that communist and Masonic persecutions in Asia are instruments of a global revolt against the reign of Christ, as clearly diagnosed by Pius IX’s Syllabus and his condemnations of secret sects.
– No admonition that rulers who deny the rights of the Church will be judged by Christ; no call for public profession of the Catholic faith by states; no denunciation of liberalism or religious indifferentism.
Instead, “peace” is left vague, a sentimental horizon detached from the integral doctrine of the Kingship of Christ. This anticipates the conciliar sect’s naturalistic cult of dialogue, ceasefire, and human fraternity—a peace without conversion, without doctrinal clarity, without the Cross as juridical and social principle.
Measured against Quas primas (1925):
– Pius XI teaches that society’s misfortunes flow from “many having excluded Jesus Christ and His most holy law from their lives, from the family, from public life,” and insists that rulers must publicly honour Christ, and that it is an error to “remove God and Jesus Christ from laws and states.” Peace is conditioned by this return.
– John XXIII’s letter never recalls these demands. His “peace” is compatible with the emerging Vatican II paradigm of religious liberty and coexistence of cults, condemned in the Syllabus (errors 15–18, 77–80).
The strategic silence is itself doctrinally significant: to omit Christ’s social Kingship in a context of persecution and geopolitical struggle, while speaking of peace in purely generic terms, is to betray Quas primas in practice.
Instrumentalizing Martyrs While Preparing Doctrinal Surrender
The letter honours Vietnamese martyrs and missionaries:
“christianae fidei sanguine multorum vestratum Martyrum sacratae… labores et cruciatus, interdum cruentos, Evangelii Christi operariorum…”
This remembrance is objectively good, but watch the subtle shift:
– The martyrs shed their blood for an integral Catholic faith that explicitly rejected pagan cults, false religions, syncretism, and state control over the Church’s doctrine and appointments. Their faith is the faith of Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII.
– John XXIII venerates them verbally while leading the structures occupying Rome toward a council that will recognize, in practice, religious liberty and esteem for false religions, and that will weaken precisely the exclusive claims for which those martyrs died.
This is moral and theological exploitation:
– The martyr tradition is used as capital to grant credibility to a new line that will dilute their confession. The faithful are taught to think: “The same authority who honours our martyrs guides us now,” while in reality that “authority” prepares to contradict in principle the thesis for which the martyrs died: that outside the Catholic Church and her faith there is no salvation, and that the State has duties toward the true religion.
Pius IX in the Syllabus explicitly condemns:
– the thesis that Protestantism is simply another form of true Christianity (error 18),
– that man may find salvation in any religion (16),
– that all cults should enjoy equal civil rights (77–79).
The future line of the conciliar sect will embrace these condemned positions in softened language. The letter is a bridge: it binds the heroic blood of soldiers of Christ to the banner of a new, pacified, relativized “Church of the New Advent.”
Rhetoric of Numbers and “Success”: Quantitative Naturalism
The text underlines with satisfaction:
“Ferme quindecies centena millia istic nunc catholicorum hominum numerantur.”
(“There are now almost one million and five hundred thousand Catholics there.”)
This purely quantitative accent is revealing:
– No mention that what matters is not demographic mass but *status gratiae* (state of grace), fidelity to doctrine, rejection of superstition and indifferentism, reverent participation in the Most Holy Sacrifice, and Christian morals.
– The success narrative is driven by numbers and visible structures, lacking the patristic and traditional insistence on the narrow path, the remnant, the necessity of doctrinal purity and sacramental integrity.
This anticipates the conciliar sect’s obsession with statistics, visibility, pastoral strategies, and “presence in the world,” while dogmatic exactitude and sacramental validity are neglected or actively undermined. Such a mentality is at odds with the sober supernatural realism of the pre-1958 Magisterium and with the anti-modernist decrees of St. Pius X (Lamentabili sane exitu, Pascendi), which reject the reduction of the Church to a sociological phenomenon.
Manipulation of Obedience: North Vietnam and the Theology of Surrender
The letter addresses with pathos the Catholics in the North, prevented by political circumstances from attending the celebrations:
“Paterni animi Nostri caritas patet… fidelibus septemtrionalis patriae vestrae regionis, qui… in difficultatibus versantur, quae ex eorum voluntate profecto nusquam pendent.”
He praises their attachment to the “Roman Pontiff,” bishops, and priests, and exhorts them to persevere with hope in God’s promises.
But what is not said is crucial:
– No condemnation of the communist system as intrinsically anti-Christian, as previous popes did regarding socialist and Masonic conspiracies.
– No explicit doctrinal line guiding bishops and faithful on the impossibility of compromise with an atheistic state demanding control over the Church. Instead, we have a sentimental comfort that easily morphs, in the conciliar praxis, into an accommodating Ostpolitik, surrendering hierarchical and doctrinal independence.
Measured against the pre-conciliar doctrine:
– Pius IX, in the Syllabus and in his letters, teaches that the Church cannot accept state control over episcopal appointments or doctrine, and declares null state laws that usurp ecclesial rights.
– Pius XI in Quas primas and in condemnations of totalitarian ideologies affirms the irreconcilability of Christ’s Kingship with systems that negate God.
John XXIII’s letter replaces this clarity with affective reassurance and a vague hope, preparing the path for the conciliar sect’s later betrayals, where “dialogue” and “coexistence” with anti-Christian regimes become the norm. Obedience is demanded, but to men who will systematically dismantle the public rights of Christ and the liberty of the Church.
Agagianian as Legate: Liturgical Spectacle Serving a Program of Subversion
The nomination of Gregory Peter Agagianian as legate is presented as an honour:
“Legatum Nostrum… Dilectum Filium Nostrum S. R. E. Card. Gregorium Petrum Agagianian… delegisse et constituisse.”
Beyond the ceremonial:
– The legate embodies the submission of the Vietnamese hierarchy to the new Roman line. The Marian Congress becomes a stage for propagating the person and program of John XXIII: the council to come, the new orientation of missions (from conversion to “dialogue”), and the insertion of local churches into a neo-church already departing, in intention, from its own dogmatic tradition.
– The text promises “spiritual favours” mediated through the dicastery for the Propagation of the Faith: a sacramental economy increasingly detached in practice from doctrinal integrity, as the same authority is preparing to dilute anti-modernist discipline and praise those very tendencies condemned in Lamentabili.
In authentic ecclesiology, legates are extensions of the true Supreme Pastor, guardians of the deposit. Here, the role is inverted: an emissary of the conciliar project is cloaked in the forms of tradition to secure assent of clergy and people to a betrayal not yet fully unveiled.
The Linguistic Fabric: Pious Verbiage Masking Programmatic Omissions
The rhetoric of the letter is crafted to disarm critical intelligence:
– Continuous use of affective expressions: “singularis oblectamenti causa,” “valde probatum est,” “magnum Nobis solatium,” “paterni animi Nostri caritas.” This emotive excess diffuses the sense of doctrinal vigilance.
– Language of gratitude and optimism: everything is read as sign of “singular benevolentia” of Providence, without mention of the grave crisis of modern errors—liberalism, socialism, rationalism, indifferentism—that Pius IX and St. Pius X denounced as organized conspiracy against Christ and His Church.
– Bureaucratic-benign tone in speaking of “spiritual favours,” “religious fruits,” and “solemn celebrations,” while the world enters the most radical doctrinal and liturgical revolution in Church history. The juxtaposition of gentle style and historical context is itself accusatory.
According to the anti-modernist Magisterium:
– One key mark of modernist writing is precisely the attempt to retain Catholic vocabulary while emptying it of its original, dogmatic content, replacing it with imprecise sentiments and historicist or pastoral relativizations (cf. Pascendi’s description of modernist style).
– This letter exemplifies that mechanism: Christ, Mary, martyrs, blessings are named; but crucial doctrinal points—exclusive truth of Catholicism, condemnation of false religions, duties of states, reality of heresy and Modernism—are carefully excluded.
What is silenced here is louder than what is said.
Suppression of Anti-Modernist Doctrine: A Programmatic Amnesia
The letter wholly ignores the anti-modernist bulwark that immediately precedes John XXIII’s reign:
– No reference to Lamentabili sane exitu or Pascendi, which condemn the very principles that Vatican II and its preparatory circles will adopt: evolution of dogma, reduction of faith to experience, reinterpretation of Scripture and dogma according to modern thought, religious relativism.
– No allusion to the Syllabus of Pius IX, though Vietnam is precisely a locus where the errors listed (religious liberty, subordination of Church to State, secularization of education) are dramatically relevant.
– No citation of Quas primas, though peace and social order are central themes.
This triple absence is not ignorance; it is deliberate. The letter belongs to a new regime that intends to bury the anti-modernist magisterium under layers of pastoral verbiage. By confirming missionaries and faithful in generic devoutness, it subtly invites them to detach their obedience from concrete doctrinal content and to trust the “living” leadership, which will then pivot.
Such suppression itself fulfills the pattern condemned by St. Pius X: modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies” advances under the pretext of development, while in reality it denies the immutability of revealed truth (cf. condemned propositions 58–65 in Lamentabili).
The Conciliar Sect’s DNA Manifest: Marian Congress as Proto-Event of Spectacle Religion
The envisaged Marian Congress in Saigon, with legate, solemnities, and “spiritual favours,” prefigures the later mega-events of the neo-church: spectacular gatherings, processions, and congresses that project a powerful image of unity and vitality while the doctrinal foundation is being altered.
Key features:
– Emphasis on collective emotion and identity-building; Marian and missionary themes are mobilized horizontally (national, cultural pride) rather than vertically (subjection to divine law and rejection of error).
– Faithful are taught that fidelity consists chiefly in adhesion to the central structures and participation in mass events, instead of vigilant adherence to defined dogma and sacramental orthodoxy.
– The spectacular dimension becomes a substitute for the austere, doctrinally-grounded, sacrificial worship which the true Church upholds in the Most Holy Sacrifice.
In this light:
– The letter is not a neutral piece of encouragement; it is an act of programming: it attaches good and devout Catholics of Vietnam to the conciliar sect at the precise threshold of its revolution, using Marian and missionary rhetoric as a psychological and spiritual hook.
Conclusion: A Gentle Mask for Systemic Apostasy
When measured exclusively by the pre-1958 Catholic doctrine—the only reliable gauge—the letter “Animo nostro” is gravely deficient and spiritually dangerous:
– It presupposes and reinforces obedience to an authority that will soon promulgate contrary doctrines on religious liberty, ecumenism, and Church-State relations, already condemned by Pius IX and his successors.
– It deploys a suspect apparition and a Marian Congress to legitimize and emotionally root this obedience.
– It speaks incessantly of peace, blessings, and gratitude, but is rigorously silent about:
– the exclusive truth of the Catholic faith and the necessity of explicit conversion,
– the social Kingship of Christ and the obligations of rulers,
– the mortal danger of Modernism, liberalism, socialism, Masonry,
– the doctrinal content for which the martyrs died.
– It exemplifies the modernist method: keeping traditional words while evacuating their doctrinal bite, substituting naturalistic humanism and sentimental religiosity for the militant, objective, sacramental supernaturalism of the true Church.
Therefore, far from being a harmless pastoral note, this document must be recognized as an integral component of the conciliar sect’s strategy: to appropriate Catholic signs—Mary, martyrs, missions, papal blessing—to mask and facilitate the transition to a new religion in which the rights of God and the Kingship of Christ yield to man-centred pacifism, interreligious coexistence, and the cult of institutional continuity.
Catholics faithful to the unchanging doctrine must, accordingly:
– Reject the underlying claims of authority of John XXIII and his successors in the conciliar structure, inasmuch as they deviate from defined teaching.
– Anchor their Marian devotion exclusively in dogma and the secure pre-1958 Magisterium, not in post-conciliar emotionalism or apparition-driven pseudo-prophecy.
– Measure every “peace,” every “unity,” every “blessing” against the absolute norm: lex credendi immutabilis (the unchangeable law of belief) and the public reign of Christ the King over persons, families, and nations, as taught by Pius IX and Pius XI.
– Recognize in texts such as “Animo nostro” a gentle but real betrayal: the smile that prepares the sword against Tradition.
Source:
– Ad Exc.mos Vicarios Apostolicos Vietnamensis Regionis, in urbe Saigon Marialem Conventum celebraturos ad terminanda saecularia Sollemnia ob Apparitionem Deiparae Virginis Mariae in Lapurdensi Specu … (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025