The apostolic constitution “IQUIQUENSIS (ARICENSIS)” of John XXIII, dated 17 February 1959, is a juridical act whereby the Chilean ecclesiastical territory “Departamento civil de Arica” is detached from the diocese of Iquique (with a small exception around Camina) and erected as a new territorial prelature nullius, titled Arica, assigned its cathedral (St Mark the Evangelist), boundaries, subjection to the metropolitan of La Serena, norms for its revenues and seminary, transfer of documents, and execution clauses entrusted to Sebastian Baggio.
It appears as a modest, administrative text, but in reality it is a symptom and instrument of the emerging conciliar revolution, in which ecclesiastical structures are manipulated by an usurper to prepare the future neo-church in Latin America, severed from the integral reign of Christ the King and from the true Catholic understanding of ecclesiastical authority.
Administrative Engineering in the Shadow of Usurpation
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the first and decisive datum cannot be ignored: this act is promulgated by John XXIII, the initiator of the conciliar upheaval and the first in the line of usurpers who inaugurated the paramasonic structure that would later publicly manifest itself as the “Church of the New Advent.” The entire text presupposes his legitimacy as Roman Pontiff and legislator. This is not a neutral formality; it is the foundational poisoned root.
The document opens with the standard formula of papal constitutions, presenting John XXIII as:
“Quibus a Deo catholicorum hominum agmina ducendi eaque pascendi datum est…”
(“To whom it has been given by God to lead and pasture the ranks of Catholic men…”).
From an integral perspective, this is precisely the contested point.
– According to *Cum ex apostolatus officio* of Paul IV, if one who is advanced to the papacy had fallen into heresy before or deviated from the Catholic faith, his elevation is ipso iure nulla, invalida, irrita (null, void, without effect). This is not a dead disciplinary curiosity; it expresses the perennial theological principle reaffirmed by classical theologians and reflected in the 1917 Code.
– The doctrinally certain principle, expressed for example by St Robert Bellarmine (as cited in the provided Defense of Sedevacantism file), is that a public, manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church because he is not a member of the Church. “A manifest heretic is not a Christian; therefore a manifest heretic cannot be Pope.”
Thus, an apparently “small” constitutional act cannot be read as innocent: it is part of a corpus of laws issued by one whose authority is gravely impugned in light of the pre-1958 magisterial and theological criteria. If the legislator is illegitimate, the law is a juridical mirage.
This is the first exposure of bankruptcy: the entire text rests on the unspoken dogma of the conciliar sect—automatic recognition of a modernist usurper as Vicar of Christ, while pre-conciliar doctrine made such an assumption impossible once heresy and rupture with Tradition became manifest.
Naturalistic Territorial Pragmatism without Supernatural Zeal
On the factual level, the constitution describes:
– Separation of territory from Iquique.
– Definition of the new prelature’s borders (Peru, Bolivia, Iquique, Pacific).
– Designation of Arica as see city, St Mark as prelatial church.
– Assignment of rights, duties, revenues.
– Obligation to establish at least a minor seminary, following norms of the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries.
– Transfer rules for clergy and archives.
– Delegation for execution to Sebastian Baggio.
What is striking is not what is present, but what is absent.
An authentic Catholic erection of a new ecclesiastical circumscription—especially in missionary or border regions—traditionally is suffused with:
– the explicit aim of saving souls from eternal damnation;
– insistence on the preaching of the integral faith, rejection of error, conversion of non-Catholics;
– emphasis on the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the heart of the new jurisdiction;
– calls to penance, sanctification, confession, Eucharistic life in the state of grace;
– clear confession of the Kingship of Christ over the civil order of the region.
Pius XI, in *Quas primas* (1925), teaches unambiguously that peace and order can only arise where individuals and states recognize and submit to the reign of Christ the King, and he explicitly condemns laicism and religious relativism as a “plague.” From that doctrinal lens, any ecclesiastical reorganization that presents itself as purely technical, as if the Church were a neutral NGO adjusting administrative boundaries, is already suspect.
In this constitution:
– There is no mention of error, heresy, Freemasonry, or anti-Christian ideologies ravaging Latin America, despite the explicit warnings of Pius IX in the *Syllabus Errorum* and subsequent papal condemnations of liberalism and secret societies.
– There is no call for the conversion of Freemasons, communists, Protestants, or sects present in the region.
– There is no insistence that the civil authorities of Chile must publicly acknowledge Christ as King and recognize the rights of the Church.
Instead, we have a bloodless, bureaucratic tone which reduces the founding of a local Church structure to a cartographic and financial operation.
This discretion is not evangelical prudence; it is the early language of conciliar naturalism: a Church that silently accepts the secularist framework, no longer clashing with liberal states, no longer reminding rulers that “it is not lawful that the Church be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (cf. condemned proposition 55, *Syllabus*). The omission is the accusation.
The Linguistic Mask of Technocratic Ecclesiology
On the linguistic level, the constitution is a revealing specimen:
– The vocabulary is canonico-bureaucratic: *territorium separamus*, *condimus praelaturam*, *mensam praelaticiam*, *documenta transferantur*.
– The only stronger exhortation concerns the establishment of a seminary and sending chosen students to the Pontifical Latin American College.
Nowhere does the text speak of:
– *fides catholica integra* (the integral Catholic faith),
– *salus animarum* (salvation of souls) as the supreme law in any substantive, concrete articulation,
– the danger of modern errors,
– the necessity of resisting secularism, condemned by Pius XI as the root of social decay.
Instead, the act reads like the minutes of a transnational corporation adjusting its regional branches. This style is not innocent. The Church’s traditional juridical Latin, even in technical acts, remained theologically dense, explicitly subordinating legal measures to supernatural ends. Here, we see the embryonic tone of the conciliar sect: serenity of form, void of militant confession.
Such linguistic sterilization serves a purpose: to habituate clergy and laity to an ecclesial authority that speaks the language of neutral management instead of the sharp supernatural language of the Fathers, Trent, and anti-modernist popes. The silence on doctrinal combat betrays the replacement of militant Catholicism with harmonious coexistence with the world.
Theological Inversion of Authority and the Usurper Problem
On the theological level, several layers of inconsistency emerge.
1. The constitution attributes to John XXIII full apostolic authority:
“de apostolica Nostra potestate haec quae sequuntur decernimus et iubemus.”
(“By our apostolic power we decree and order what follows.”)
However, according to the principles articulated in the Defense of Sedevacantism file:
– A manifest heretic, or one who publicly promotes or prepares the very principles condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium (religious liberty, ecumenism indifferentism, dialogue as an end in itself), cannot wield this apostolic power.
– The fact that under his authority the Second Vatican Council was convoked towards a “pastoral aggiornamento” which would institutionalize many condemned errors (religious freedom, collegiality used against papal primacy, ecumenism denying the unique identity of the Catholic Church as the one true Church) retroactively highlights the radical suspicion surrounding all his acts.
The contradiction is stark:
– Pre-1958 doctrine, from Pius IX to Pius XII, decisively crushes the modernist program.
– John XXIII is objectively the doorway through which that program enters under official colours.
– Therefore, the acts of such a figure must be weighed not as neutral continuity, but as part of the strategic re-engineering of ecclesiastical structures for a future neo-church.
2. The constitution presupposes the full legitimacy of the conciliar system of territorial prelatures designed to be flexible interfaces with modern states. But:
– *Quas primas* demands that every structuring of ecclesiastical life aim at the visible, public acknowledgment of Christ’s kingship over civil orders.
– The *Syllabus* condemns the idea that civil authority is the source of rights or that the Church must adapt to liberal regimes as neutral partners.
Yet the text never reminds the Chilean state of its obligations to Christ and His one true Church. It functions within the liberal paradigm instead of challenging it.
3. The document’s insistence on seminaries and studies, in itself traditional, becomes ominous in context:
– It channels candidates into Roman institutions that, within a few years, will be permeated by the conciliar ideology and new rites.
– Thus, what appears as zeal for vocations is, in fact, the planned capture and reformatting of future clergy into the theology of the “abomination of desolation.”
Theologically, we face a pseudo-apostolic act: traditional in form, revolutionary in intent and context.
Symptom of the Coming Conciliar Subversion in Latin America
On the symptomatic level, this constitution is an early brick in a vast construction project: the recasting of Latin American Catholicism into a laboratory for conciliar humanism, liberationist tendencies, and ecumenical relativism.
Key symptoms:
– The choice of Sebastian Baggio as executor:
– Baggio later emerges as a central figure in the post-conciliar promotions and restructuring that favoured progressive elements and weakened remaining bastions of authentic Catholicism.
– Assigning to such a diplomat the foundation and configuration of the new prelature shows the nexus between territorial reorganization and the coming doctrinal shift.
– The wording:
– The text claims its measures aim that all men be “illuminated by the light of divine truth, communicated with Christian charity.” Yet it studiously avoids specifying that this truth is inseparably the integral Catholic faith, against which all error is to be rejected.
– This soft phrasing easily mutates into conciliar “dialogue” and respect for pluralism, as later seen in the documents of the “Church of the New Advent.”
– Submission to the metropolitan of La Serena and archdiocese of the same name is presented as normal. But once the hierarchy itself is captured by modernist theology and invalid or doubtful rites, the entire chain becomes an administrative skeleton devoid of sacramental blood.
– The sacraments simulated within the conciliar sect, especially with the post-1968 rites of ordination and episcopal consecration, cannot be presumed valid in the same way as before; therefore, the prelature structure becomes a hollow shell when divorced from valid orders and integral faith.
This constitution thus exemplifies how the conciliar sect operates:
1. Retain canonical forms (dioceses, prelatures, seminaries).
2. Install an usurper as apex, whose orthodoxy is in grave doubt.
3. Use neutral, legalistic acts to reshape territories, clergy, and institutions.
4. Prepare a network perfectly suited to later receiving the new liturgy, new theology, and new ecumenical-charismatic agenda.
The foundation looks pious; the trajectory is towards apostasy.
Silence about the Public Reign of Christ: A Grave Omission
Perhaps the gravest theological bankruptcy in the constitution is its silence regarding the social kingship of Christ in the newly delimited territory.
Pius XI in *Quas primas* insists:
– True peace will not shine until individuals and states recognize and submit to the reign of Christ.
– The feast of Christ the King is instituted precisely to condemn secular apostasy and to remind rulers and nations of their duty to honour Christ publicly.
– The Church must demand full liberty and independence, not as a concession of the state, but by divine right, and must insist that laws, education, and public life conform to God’s law.
In stark contrast, the 1959 constitution:
– Treats the Chilean Republic as a merely geographic descriptor, not as a moral subject obliged to Christ and His Church.
– Never urges the new prelature’s shepherd to strive for the conversion of public life.
– Reduces the mission to internal management: property division, seminary regulation, archival logistics.
This silence is not an oversight; it reveals functional acceptance of the condemned thesis that the state and Church should be separated (Syllabus, 55) and that Catholicism may exist as one religion among others in a religiously neutral framework. Such omission, in a solemn foundational act, manifests an anti-doctrinal posture by omission: the dethronement of Christ the King from the public order is quietly normalized.
Instrumentalization of Clergy and Faithful in the Neo-Church Framework
The constitution’s provisions on clergy and faithful also betray its logic.
It decrees that:
– Priests holding benefices or offices within the new territory will be considered attached to the new prelature.
– Other clerics are incardinated according to lawful domicile.
– Administration of temporal goods is in accordance with canonical norms.
On the surface, this is standard.
But:
– There is no admonition concerning doctrinal fidelity, anti-modernist oath, or rejection of condemned propositions, although only two years earlier Pius XII was still reigning, and the anti-modernist stance remained in force.
– There is no reminder that all teaching and pastoral activity must adhere strictly to the definitions of Trent, Vatican I, and the condemnations of modernism in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*.
– The priests and faithful are moved like pieces on a board, while the fundamental question—whether the one moving them is a true successor of Peter or a modernist intruder—is never even posed.
Here appears the emerging conciliar praxis: the clergy and laity are treated as resources to be redistributed under an assumed legitimacy, while the content of the faith is silently prepared for mutation. It is precisely this abuse of seeming canonical normality that anesthetized many into following the revolution: if the same “authority” that created a harmless prelature later imposes a new Mass and new doctrines, many will accept it purely on habituation to juridical obedience.
Continuity of Form, Rupture of Substance: The Conciliar Dialectic
This constitution is a textbook example of the conciliar dialectic:
– Form: classical Latin; references to apostolic power; alignment with 1917 Code; structural continuity with diocesan/praelatural tradition.
– Substance: tacit accommodation to liberal state order; no militant affirmation of exclusive Catholic truth; presupposition of a dubious pontiff; integration into a network later used to disseminate modernist theology and praxis.
The hermeneutic trick of post-conciliar apologists (the so-called “hermeneutics of continuity”) thrives on such texts: they point to technical continuity to conceal doctrinal inversion. But from the standpoint of unchanging pre-1958 teaching, *continuity of bureaucratic forms without continuity of faith is a fraud*.
The integral Catholic response must therefore be:
– To refuse the illusion that every act signed by an usurper is automatically part of the Catholic Magisterium.
– To distinguish between legitimate ecclesiastical organization in service of the true faith and the manipulative use of canon law to prepare an anti-church.
– To insist that any ecclesiastical measure is judged first by fidelity to prior dogma and anti-modernist condemnations, not by sentimental or positivist obedience.
Conclusion: A Small Stone in the Architecture of Apostasy
The apostolic constitution “IQUIQUENSIS (ARICENSIS)” appears minor, even dull. That is precisely its danger.
– It normalizes the authority of John XXIII at the threshold of the conciliar catastrophe.
– It habituates clergy and faithful to accept territorial and institutional changes from a regime that soon will overthrow the liturgy, doctrine of religious freedom, ecumenism, and Church-State relations in open contradiction to Pius IX, Leo XIII, St Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
– It speaks in a language emptied of the supernatural militancy characteristic of the true Church, silently accepting secularist premises and omitting the rights of Christ the King.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the constitution is not a heroic act of pastoral care, but an early, calculated step in configuring the ecclesiastical map of Latin America according to the needs of the conciliar sect—a territorial chess move by one who, lacking the marks of orthodox Catholic continuity, cannot be recognized as a true legislator of the Church of Christ.
To expose such acts is not to despise ecclesiastical order, but to defend its only legitimate foundation: fides integra et immutabilis (the integral and immutable faith). Where that faith is betrayed or instrumentalized, the most pious-seeming administrative decree becomes evidence in the indictment of a system that dared to replace the reign of Christ with the regime of man, dialogue, and diplomatic coexistence with error.
Source:
Iquiquensis (Aricensis) E Dioecesi Iquiquensi quibusdam detractis territoriis, nova efficitur Praelatura Nullius, « Aricensis » appellanda, die XVII m. Februarii A.D. 1959, Ioannes PP. XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025