In this 1959 constitutional act, Angelo Roncalli, styling himself “John XXIII,” claims to exercise supreme apostolic authority to detach portions of the Berberati diocese in French Equatorial Africa (Bossangoa, Bouca, Batanfago, Paoua) in order to erect a new apostolic prefecture of Bossangoa, entrusted to the Capuchin Friars Minor. The text outlines jurisdictional boundaries, subordination to the metropolitan of Bangui, procedural norms for implementation by Marcel Lefebvre as Apostolic Delegate, and asserts the perpetual validity and binding force of this institutional reconfiguration under “pontifical” authority. Already in its premises and juridical claims, this document exposes the nascent conciliar revolution: a human-engineered administrative rearrangement presented as an act of Petrine authority at the very moment when that authority was being emptied and weaponized against the integral Catholic faith.
The African Laboratory of a Counterfeit Authority
The text must be read in its historical and theological context: 1959, in the first year of Roncalli’s usurpation, immediately before the announcement and convocation of the so‑called “Second Vatican Council.” Here we see the mask of apparent normalcy: Latin, canonical form, missionary vocabulary, references to the *Salus animarum*, all deployed to cloak a deeper subversion.
Key elements of the document:
– It claims the “gravissimum onus” (most grave burden) of governing all peoples.
– It asserts that nothing is more important than to “facilior in dies facultas cunctis detur Dei verbum audiendi” (that all may have easier access to hear the word of God), as the motive for territorial division.
– It separates specific territories from the Berberati diocese to form the Apostolic Prefecture of Bossangoa, entrusted to the Capuchin Friars.
– It appoints Marcel Lefebvre, then Archbishop of Dakar and Apostolic Delegate in French Africa, to implement the division.
– It clothes the act in solemn canonical language: perpetual force, nullity of contrary acts, penalties for disobedience.
On the surface: an ordinary piece of missionary governance.
In reality: an act of a man who lacks papal authority, instrumentalizing Africa as a proving ground for the very ecclesiology that would soon enthrone *religious liberty*, *collegiality*, and *ecumenism* in defiance of the pre‑1958 Magisterium. This text is not neutral; it is juridical theatre built on usurped power.
Illegitimate Jurisdiction: A Null Act Presented as Petrine Law
The entire structure rests on the repeated claim of Roncalli’s “summa potestas” and on obedience owed to his commands. But integral Catholic doctrine, articulated by the very theologians and canonists cited in the Defense of Sedevacantism file, establishes a principle: *hereticus manifestus non potest esse Papa* (a manifest heretic cannot be Pope), because he is no member of the Church, and the head cannot be severed from the body and remain the head.
Prior to and during his pseudo-pontificate, Roncalli:
– Was deeply entangled with condemned currents of liberalism and “opening to the world,” the same naturalistic and modernist tendencies that Pius IX condemned in the *Syllabus Errorum* (1864), especially propositions 15–18, 55, 77–80.
– Prepared and then convoked a “pastoral council” aimed at aggiornamento, explicitly contrary to the anti-modernist stance of St. Pius X, reaffirmed in the condemnation of Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies” (Lamentabili; Pascendi).
If a man publicly favors the very tendencies solemnly anathematized—religious relativism, reconciliation with liberalism, exalting “modern civilization”—he falls under the logic of Bellarmine’s and Pius X’s teaching: he is cut off, *ipso facto*, from the Body of Christ. His decrees, therefore, lack the assistance of Christ’s promise and bind no one in conscience.
This “constitution” is thus doubly void:
– Void of authority: issued by one who cannot possess the Petrine munus according to the pre‑1958 doctrinal criteria.
– Void of spirit: animated not by the supernatural zeal for the Social Kingship of Christ, but by the preparatory mentality of the conciliar sect that would soon enthrone the opposite errors condemned by Pius IX and Pius XI.
The document’s own legal absolutism—declaring all contrary acts “irritum atque inane”—ironically testifies against its author: a usurper threatening penalties for disobeying a usurped authority.
Administrative Expansion without Doctrinal Backbone
On the factual level, the document speaks incessantly of structures—territory, prefectures, jurisdiction, execution of decrees—but never of the doctrinal and sacramental content that alone justifies missionary expansion.
Indicative absences:
– No mention of the obligation of non‑Catholic peoples to abandon false religions and submit to the one true Church of Christ, as taught by Pius IX (condemnation of indifferentism, propositions 15–18).
– No recall of the Social Reign of Christ the King as articulated in Quas Primas: that states and peoples, including nascent African nations, are bound to recognize publicly the kingship of Christ and conform civil life to divine law.
– No insistence on guarding against the “synagogue of Satan” and masonic sects, which Pius IX explicitly identifies as waging war on the Church, particularly through subversion of Catholic nations and institutions.
– Absolute silence about Modernism and its infiltration—precisely the inner enemy denounced by St. Pius X that would in the 1960s take full control of the same missionary structures being so neatly perfected here.
This silence is not accidental; it is symptomatic.
True Catholic missionary constitutions in the 19th and early 20th centuries are steeped in supernatural vocabulary: conversion, repentance, the one Ark of Salvation, the danger of heresies, the authority of the Roman Pontiff as guardian of immutable doctrine. Here, we have an antiseptic, bureaucratically sober text that treats mission as a matter of organizational optimization.
This reveals the underlying principle: mission is being subtly redefined from *bringing all nations into the obedience of the Catholic faith* to *ensuring access to religious services within an ecclesial administration*—a neutral, proto-conciliar framework ready to embrace later the idolatries of ecumenism and religious liberty.
Linguistic Sterility as Symptom of Theological Naturalism
The language is telling: apparently traditional, but drained of militant supernatural content.
Notable features:
– Emphasis on “facilior facultas… Dei verbum audiendi”: language of “facilitation” rather than command, exhortation, or urgency of salvation.
– The new prefecture is described primarily in terms of territory and canonical privileges; there is no insistence that its purpose is to uproot paganism and false creeds, despite Pius IX’s condemnation of latitudinarianism and the teaching that outside the Church there is no salvation in the proper sense.
– The formulae of nullity and penalties are purely juridical and formal, detached from doctrinal clarity. They read as the self-protection of an institutional structure, not the jealous defense of Christ’s flock against wolves.
This is the rhetoric of the soon-to-emerge conciliar sect: formal continuity of language masking a real rupture in intention. *Lex orandi, lex credendi*: when mission documents cease to sound like Quas Primas and the Syllabus, and begin to sound like neutral administrative circulars, the underlying faith has already shifted.
Subversion Hidden under Canonical Forms
From the standpoint of integral Catholic theology, the gravest element is not what is said, but what is implied and prepared.
1. Preparation for the Conciliar Ecclesiology
By 1959, the “Church of the New Advent” is not yet fully unmasked, but its principles are in gestation. Missionary expansion is detached from:
– The uncompromising assertion that the Catholic Church is the only ark of salvation.
– The obligation of temporal powers to recognize Christ’s kingship.
– The militant opposition to liberalism, socialism, and Freemasonry so solemnly condemned by Pius IX and his successors.
Instead, we see a technocratic partition: territories moved, ecclesiastical districts erected, all as if the Church’s primary mission were better management. This administrative mindset will culminate in a conciliar ecclesiology in which churches are “local communities,” all religions are “partners in dialogue,” and the purpose of jurisdiction is “accompaniment” rather than salvation from eternal damnation.
What is absent is the ringing judgment of Quas Primas: that peace and order are impossible until individuals and states submit to Christ the King and His law. Silence here is not neutral; it is complicity in the coming apostasy.
2. Instrumentalization of Catholic Religious Orders
Entrusting the new prefecture to the Capuchins is, on its face, traditional. Yet under Roncalli’s illegitimate regime, venerable orders are gradually transformed into instruments of conciliar ideology. Their missionary charism is co-opted for:
– Inculturation diluted into syncretism.
– Social projects detached from the primacy of supernatural faith.
– Experimentation that will later harmonize seamlessly with the post‑conciliar “neo-church” and its abdication of dogmatic exclusivity.
By inserting these orders under the authority of an usurper whose doctrinal trajectory contradicts the anti-modernist Magisterium, the document covertly severs their work from the guarantee of Catholic orthodoxy. The apparent continuity of habit and Latin masks the underlying displacement of faith.
Lefebvre’s Role: An Early Fault Line in a Systemic Collapse
The document assigns execution to Marcel Lefebvre, then still an integral part of the official apparatus, described as Dakar Archbishop and Apostolic Delegate.
From the perspective of unchanging doctrine:
– Lefebvre operates under obedience to Roncalli, treating him as Pope, thereby already accepting in principle that a man imbued with modernist tendencies can legitimately occupy the See of Peter.
– His later stance—“recognize and resist”—shows the inherent contradiction rooted already here: acknowledging the authority of those he would eventually accuse of poisoning the faith, while never resolving the fundamental canonical-theological question that a manifestly heterodox “pope” cannot be head of the Church.
Thus this constitution is a snapshot of the transition:
– A usurper exercising apparent papal power.
– A future pseudo-opponent (Lefebvre) loyally implementing the orders of that usurper.
– The groundwork laid for a future in which those pretending to be traditional Catholics will attempt to keep the old Mass while accepting a false hierarchy, thereby legitimizing the conciliar sect they supposedly oppose.
This is not merely historical trivia. It unveils a systemic pattern: the same ambiguous acceptance of illegitimate authority that undergirds both the official neo-church and its controlled opposition.
Suppression of the Battle against Modernism and Freemasonry
Compare the silence of this constitution with the burning clarity of Pius IX and St. Pius X:
– Pius IX in the *Syllabus* identifies socialism, secret societies, and liberal states usurping Church rights as instruments of a war against Christ, attributing the vast anti-Catholic offensive explicitly to masonic machinations.
– St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi denounces the infiltration of modernist ideas into Catholic institutions and disciplines severe measures to extirpate them, insisting on submission even to non-infallible condemnations as an obligation of faith.
Here, in 1959:
– No warning against masonic or modernist penetration of missionary territories.
– No admonition that colonial and post-colonial powers, if liberal or secular, are in objective rebellion against Christ the King.
– No insistence that clergy be rigorously vetted for modernist tendencies as a condition for such ecclesiastical promotions and partitions.
This silence, in light of the pre-existing papal warnings, constitutes a practical repudiation of them. It suggests that the leadership behind this act either disbelieves or chooses to ignore the magisterial judgment that these forces are “the synagogue of Satan” warring against the Church. To act as if one can serenely rearrange dioceses while preparing a council that will reconcile with liberalism and religious freedom is to side, in practice, with the enemies denounced by Pius IX.
A Pseudo-Papal Threat Emptied of Real Authority
The closing juridical formulas merit special scrutiny:
We desire that these Letters be effective now and in the future… so that what has been decreed through them be religiously observed… whatsoever contrary prescriptions are hereby abrogated… if anyone, endowed with any authority, knowingly or unknowingly acts against what We have laid down, we order it to be considered totally null and void.
Such formulas are traditional in authentic papal legislation. Yet when pronounced by a usurper:
– They become an inversion: a counterfeit authority calling down canonical sanctions on any who would question his usurpation.
– They reveal the new regime’s reliance on formal legalism to conceal its doctrinal apostasy. The more the substance of faith is betrayed, the more inflated becomes the language of jurisdiction.
Integral Catholic doctrine teaches that all jurisdiction in the Church is ordered to the safeguarding of the true faith and the salvation of souls. When the apparent holder of supreme authority systematically undermines that faith—by preparing aggiornamento, courting “modern civilization,” and suppressing anti-modernist vigilance—his use of these formulas becomes a parody. The threats of penalties are themselves void, because the lawmaker lacks the necessary *fides* and communion with the perennial Magisterium.
From Bossangoa to the Abomination of Desolation
The Bossangoa constitution, taken alone, might seem a minor technical act. But its significance is emblematic and symptomatic:
– It shows the conciliar usurper functioning in the external forms of Catholic governance just before unveiling the council that would enthrone condemned errors.
– It enlists key figures (like Lefebvre) into practical cooperation with his apparent authority, laying the psychological and canonical groundwork for decades of confusion, pseudo-opposition, and the normalization of a hierarchy that no longer teaches the integral Catholic faith.
– It transforms missionary Africa into a testing ground for a new ecclesiology that will soon refuse to demand conversion, reduce “evangelization” to dialogue, and subordinate the Social Kingship of Christ to the United Nations dogmas of human rights, religious freedom, and interreligious fraternity.
The true horror is not in the redrawing of a map, but in the principle: once one accepts that a man steering the Church toward Modernism can validly promulgate laws and demand obedience, one has already accepted the essence of the conciliar sect. From such premises flows, in straight line, the “Church of the New Advent,” the “paramasonic structure” occupying Rome, the “abomination of desolation” in which the Unbloody Sacrifice is replaced with assemblies, and the language of kingship replaced with the cult of man.
An act like Berberatensi (Bossangoaënsis) is therefore to be rejected on two convergent grounds:
– Because the one who issued it could not be the Roman Pontiff according to the unchanging principles defended by the pre‑1958 Magisterium and classical theologians.
– Because its spirit, tone, and omissions prefigure and serve the conciliar program: an administratively efficient, theologically anemic, and eventually apostate structure that ceases to demand the submission of nations and souls to Christ the King and instead fraternizes with the very errors solemnly condemned.
Any true Catholic conscience, formed by Pius IX, St. Pius X, and Pius XI, must look at such a document not with naïve reverence for its Latin and seals, but with supernatural discernment, recognizing in it one more stone in the edifice of a neo-church which supplants, rather than serves, the spotless Bride of Christ.
Source:
Berberatensi (Bossangoaënsis) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025