The letter “Sacra Palaestinae Loca” (17 April 1960), issued by antipope John XXIII to Augustine Sépinski, then Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor, commemorates the 400th anniversary of the stable establishment of the Franciscan seat at the Monastery of Saint Saviour in Jerusalem. It praises the Franciscans’ historical custody of the Holy Places, exhorts renewed generosity among the faithful for the maintenance of these sanctuaries, and confirms norms already given by Leo XIII and Benedict XV for an annual collection in parish churches in favour of the Holy Land. The entire text clothes itself in traditional piety toward the Holy Places, but precisely through its silences and calculated selectivity it functions as a preparatory instrument of the conciliar revolution, instrumentalizing venerable devotions to accustom Catholics to the authority and “pastoral” program of a man and a regime already departing from integral doctrine.
Jerusalem Language, Roman Betrayal: Piety as a Veil for the Conciliar Usurpation
Factual Reframing of Authentic Merits under a Usurping Authority
On the factual surface, several elements appear “orthodox”:
– John XXIII recalls with pathos the Holy Places as “cradles of our religion” and as a “common patrimony” of Christians.
– He extols the heroic perseverance of the Franciscans after their expulsion from the Cenacle, and the spiritual and charitable works emanating from St. Saviour’s in Jerusalem.
– He urges continued and increased material support for the Holy Places and confirms prior norms requiring that once a year the needs of the Holy Land be presented in every parish, especially on Good Friday or another appointed day.
These facts, historically considered, contain much that is objectively good:
– The custody of the Holy Places entrusted to the Friars Minor is a genuine glory of the pre-conciliar Church.
– The sanctuaries of the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection are legitimate objects of Catholic veneration.
– Collections for the Holy Land, as already encouraged by true popes, can be an authentic act of charity.
However, the letter is not a neutral repetition of perennial teaching. It is an act of appropriation: the antichurch, already in gestation, seizes upon the unimpeachable prestige of the Holy Places and of the historic Franciscan Custody to cloak its own authority and to habituate souls to recognize the conciliar usurper as the authentic voice of Peter.
Key factual distortions and manipulations:
1. Appropriation of pre-conciliar merits:
– Authentic sacrifices and martyrdoms of Franciscans, earned under the authority of true Roman Pontiffs, are rhetorically annexed under the signature of John XXIII, as if their fruit authenticated his “pontificate”.
– The letter acts as a bridge: the heroic past is used as a moral capital to be quietly transferred to the emerging conciliar sect.
2. Subtle universalization in ambiguous terms:
– The Holy Places are called a “patrimony of Christians” in a way that prepares the later ecumenical leveling, rather than explicitly affirming them as the visible proof of the Incarnate Word and the exclusive inheritance of the one true Church.
– The text omits any clear, dogmatic reiteration that only the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation, has the right and duty to guard and interpret those Places.
3. Silence on the real enemies:
– In 1960 the true Magisterium had long unmasked Freemasonry and liberalism as mortal enemies (Pius IX, Syllabus; Leo XIII, multiple encyclicals; St. Pius X, condemnation of Modernism).
– Yet John XXIII speaks of “difficult circumstances” and “growing needs” in the Holy Land without naming the anti-Christian ideologies, the Masonic and Zionist-political pressures, or the Islamic environment.
– This diplomatic vagueness is not supernatural prudence; it is the conciliar style of evasion, the refusal to condemn, which St. Pius X already recognized as a note of Modernism.
In short, the letter is factually parasitic: it leans on authentic Catholic works, while carefully avoiding those very doctrinal accents that made those works meritorious.
The Soft Venom of the Language: Sentimental Piety without Supernatural Steel
The rhetoric of this document exemplifies the new conciliar idiom:
1. Emotive exaltation, doctrinal anemia:
– The text dwells on “solemn joy,” “consolation,” “glory written in golden letters,” “filial devotion,” “generosity,” “pious liberalities.”
– What is almost entirely absent is a robust, dogmatic proclamation: no insistence on the necessity of the *vera fides catholica* (the true Catholic faith), no explicit recall of the Four Last Things, no warning about false religions that profane the same Holy Places.
– This imbalance—abundant sentiment, scarce dogma—is a typical mark of the neo-church’s discourse.
2. Carefully curated citations:
– A single pious image from St. Jerome is invoked, but there is no deployment of the anti-liberal, anti-modernist magisterium that should necessarily frame any appeal connected with the Holy Places in the 20th century.
– There is no reminder of the stern condemnations of indifferentism and liberalism in the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX, which directly concern the political and religious situation of the Holy Land and the nations.
– There is no evocation of St. Pius X’s *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi*, even though Modernism had already attacked the historicity of the Gospels, the reality of the Holy Places, and the divinity of Christ—errors flourishing in the very academic and ecclesiastical circles that John XXIII would soon elevate.
3. Bureaucratic piety:
– The confirmation of norms for an annual collection is framed as a calm administrative reminder.
– There is no trumpet blast of *lex orandi, lex credendi* anchored in the absolute kingship of Christ over Palestine and the nations, as proclaimed by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*: *“Peace is only possible in the Kingdom of Christ”* (paraphrasing Quas Primas).
– The entire tone is that of a benevolent manager of devotions, not of a Vicar of Christ commanding in the name of divine law.
The language thus reveals its underlying program: keep external devotions, empty them of militant doctrinal content, and channel them toward obedience to a new, “pastoral” authority. It is the anesthetic before surgery.
Doctrinal Omissions: Holy Places without the Exclusive, Public Reign of Christ the King
From the perspective of integral Catholic teaching prior to 1958, the gravest accusations against this letter lie in what it refuses to say.
1. No proclamation of the Social Kingship of Christ:
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* solemnly declared that Christ’s Kingship extends over individuals, families, and states, and that public recognition of this Kingship is necessary for true peace and order.
– This letter, while dealing with the very land where Christ walked, is silent about His rights as King over that territory and over the powers that contradict Him.
– It speaks of “gratitude” toward the land, but not of the obligation that nations and rulers have to submit to Christ and His true Church—the precise point Modernism seeks to bury.
2. No denunciation of religious indifferentism:
– The Holy Land is precisely where Jews, Muslims, schismatics, and heretics contest the true Faith.
– Pius IX condemned the idea that all religions lead to salvation or may be equally tolerated as if indifferent (Syllabus, propositions 15–18, 77–79).
– Yet this letter fails to assert that only the Catholic Church possesses the true worship of the God who sanctified those Places, and that all other cults there are objectively offensive to Him.
– This omission foreshadows the later conciliar glorification of “dialogue” and “Abrahamic” relativism.
3. No warning against Modernism and biblical skepticism:
– At a time when heretical exegetes deny the historicity of the Gospels, the miracles, the Resurrection, and even the authenticity of the Holy Places, the letter utters not one doctrinal anathema.
– St. Pius X, in *Lamentabili sane exitu*, condemned propositions that reduce Scripture to myths and deny the reliability of the sacred narratives.
– A genuine Catholic document on the Holy Places in 1960 should have thundered against such errors. Instead, the letter prescinds from any dogmatic defense of the historicity of Christ’s life, death, and Resurrection in those Places.
4. No supernatural stakes:
– There is no mention of:
– the *state of grace* as necessary for meritorious pilgrimage;
– the danger of sacrilege or superstition;
– the Last Judgment, Purgatory, Hell, or the need for penance.
– The faithful are urged to generosity but not to conversion. The Holy Places are treated more as a heritage to be curated than as battlefields of the supernatural war for souls.
This is the essential mark of the conciliar mentality: a naturalized piety, speaking much of places, memories, emotions, and “solidarity”, but little or nothing of dogma, sin, supernatural judgment, and the absolute necessity of the one true Church.
Theological Diagnosis: A Document of the Conciliar Sect in Nuce
Despite its external continuity of style, the letter reveals at multiple points the mentality later codified at Vatican II and in the ongoing post-1958 apostasy.
1. Subordination of doctrine to “pastoral” utility:
– The appeal for offerings is unmoored from strong doctrinal foundations; it relies on sentiment, history, and institutional loyalty.
– This anticipates the conciliar inversion whereby doctrine becomes fluid “background” and concrete “pastoral” measures become the real substance.
2. Cult of structures rather than of truth:
– The entire letter implicitly strengthens the authority of the structures occupying the Vatican.
– By smoothly presenting John XXIII as the natural successor of Leo XIII and Benedict XV, it blurs any awareness that a radical doctrinal and liturgical rupture is being prepared.
– The Friars Minor, celebrated for historical fidelity, are indirectly enlisted to confer legitimacy on a regime that would within a few years unleash liturgical and doctrinal devastation.
3. The Holy Land as laboratory of false ecumenism:
– Though this letter predates the open explosion of conciliar ecumenism, its omissions are symptomatic:
– No clear denunciation of schism and heresy.
– No clear affirmation that the Holy Places belong, in strict right (*iure divino*), to the Catholic Church alone.
– This rhetorical vacuum opens the door to later post-conciliar abuses: joint prayers, interreligious spectacles, and the reduction of the Holy Land to a neutral “spiritual space” shared among religions.
4. The betrayal of *lex credendi*:
– Authentic pre-1958 Magisterium on such a subject would:
– Affirm explicitly that Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, sanctified with His Blood specific sites in Palestine.
– Reiterate that His Church alone, indefectible and exclusive, is the custodian of this grace.
– Recall the condemnation of liberalism, Modernism, and Freemasonry as direct enemies of Christ’s visible kingdom, especially in those contested territories.
– Here we find instead a gentle, undogmatic, intermediately toned text that carefully avoids strong confessional claims. That is not accidental. It is theology by subtraction.
Symptomatic Reading: How This Letter Serves the Conciliar Revolution
Seen in continuity with the pre-1958 Magisterium, the letter is gravely deficient. Seen as a piece of conciliar strategy, it is coherent:
1. Legitimation through continuity-theater:
– By praising long-standing, unquestioned Catholic devotions, John XXIII appears traditional and pious, quieting suspicions while preparing to convoke the council that would dissolve doctrine into “pastoral” ambiguity.
– This is precisely how the conciliar sect operates: *simulatio* and *dissimulatio*, preserving forms while evacuating content.
2. Conditioning of religious orders:
– The Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, historically bound by heroic obedience to the true Papacy, is here flatteringly recognized—and subtly enlisted—to cooperate with the conciliar agenda under the usurper’s banner.
– Once such orders accept the legitimacy of the new regime, their venerable names become instruments of false obedience, used to drag the faithful into participation in the neo-church.
3. Economic and psychological leverage:
– The appeal for intensified financial support is tied to obedience to the contemporary “Apostolic See.”
– Thus, aid to genuinely sacred places is made to pass through the hands and structures of the abomination of desolation, normalizing its mediating role in the religious life of the faithful.
4. Reduction of supernatural combat to philanthropy:
– The Holy Places are presented largely as objects of preservation, culture, and generic Christian feeling.
– The true battle—between the Kingdom of Christ and the synagogue of Satan, between the Church and Masonry, between truth and Modernist heresy—is methodically concealed.
– This concealment is itself a mark of complicity with the enemies condemned by Pius IX and St. Pius X, who explicitly unmasked Freemasonry and Modernism as organized forces against the Church and against the Papacy.
Contrast with Pre-1958 Magisterium: The Indictment
Measured against the unchanging teaching of the Church before 1958, the deficiencies of “Sacra Palaestinae Loca” are not accidental; they are indictments.
1. Against the Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX):
– The silence on the exclusive rights of the Church and the public duty of states to honour Christ (errors 15–18, 55, 77–79) aligns practically with liberal theses the true Magisterium had anathematized.
– A document truly in harmony with the Syllabus would have insisted that no civil or religious power has any legitimate right in the Holy Land except in subordination to Christ’s Church.
2. Against Quas Primas (Pius XI):
– Pius XI established the feast of Christ the King as an antidote to laicism and the exclusion of Christ from public life.
– A document on the Holy Places written in that spirit should proclaim Christ’s temporal and spiritual Kingship over Palestine and condemn the secular and interreligious usurpations.
– John XXIII’s letter does not. It substitutes a warm devotionalism for the militant assertion of Christ’s rights.
3. Against Lamentabili and Pascendi (St. Pius X):
– At a time when Modernists deny the historicity of the Gospel events precisely in the Holy Places, John XXIII avoids any vigorous reaffirmation of their objective, historical reality.
– He does not denounce Modernist exegesis, does not warn the faithful against those who, under the guise of “science,” undermine belief in the very mysteries commemorated in those shrines.
– This silence sides, in practice, with the enemies condemned by St. Pius X.
4. Against the constant condemnation of secret sects and Masonic machinations:
– Pre-1958 popes explicitly identified Freemasonry as the “synagogue of Satan” at work to destroy the Church and seize the Holy Land spiritually and politically.
– John XXIII’s letter, in a context of growing Masonic and Zionist influence, says nothing.
– By omitting any mention of these forces, while asking for support channeled through the new regime, the document operationally collaborates with the same networks the true Popes unmasked.
Holy Places and the Crisis of Authority: Where Authentic Obedience Ends
A final and crucial point: the document leverages the rightful esteem Catholics have for the Holy Land to reinforce submission to a counterfeit authority.
– Integral Catholic theology recognizes:
– *Prima sedes a nemine iudicatur* (the First See is judged by no one) applies to a true Roman Pontiff, not to a manifest modernist or to a line of usurpers who overthrow the Faith.
– A manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church, as classical theology and canon law (including the 1917 Code’s canon 188.4) affirm.
– The conciliar sect depends on conflating:
– the visible structures now pervaded by apostasy,
– with the indefectible Mystical Body of Christ.
“Sacra Palaestinae Loca” participates in this conflation:
– It treats the acts and voice of John XXIII as seamless continuity with Leo XIII and Benedict XV, while his subsequent deeds—opening to Modernism, convoking the council that would enthrone religious liberty and false ecumenism—prove rupture.
– It demands from religious the acceptance of his authority as the guarantor of their mission in the Holy Land, thereby binding venerable works to an apostate program.
Authentic obedience cannot be used to sanctify apostasy. When an authority systematically suppresses the proclamation of Christ’s exclusive rights, tolerates or promotes condemned errors, and retools Catholic devotions for a naturalistic and ecumenical agenda, the faithful must recognize that they confront not the voice of Peter, but the voice of another.
Conclusion: Jerusalem Cannot Legitimize Babylon
“Sacra Palaestinae Loca” is not primarily scandalous for what it overtly states; many of its praises of the Holy Places and of the Franciscan Custody could be uttered by a true Pope. Its poison lies in its function:
– It canonizes sentimental, non-combative piety.
– It omits the hard, supernatural claims of the pre-1958 Magisterium.
– It co-opts genuine Catholic heroes and shrines into the orbit of a nascent conciliar sect.
– It prepares clergy and laity to see in John XXIII’s smiling diplomacy nothing more than a continuation of Tradition, while in reality he inaugurates its systematic demolition.
The Holy Land belongs to Christ the King and to His one true Church, not to interreligious committees, not to liberal diplomats, and not to a paramasonic “neo-church” that prattles about devotion while evacuating dogma. No invocation of Jerusalem can legitimate Babylon. The more a text speaks of “Sacred Places” while silencing the exclusive rights of the Incarnate Word and His immutable doctrine, the more clearly it unmasks its complicity in the great deception of our age.
Source:
Sacra Palaestinae Ad Augustinum Sépinski, Ordinis Fratrum Minorum ministrum generalem, quarto exeunte saeculo, ex quo sodalium eiusdem ordinis sedes in Hierosolymitana urbe stabiliter est constituta (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025