John XXIII’s Latin letter to Maurilio Fossati, written on 16 December 1959 for the centenary celebrations of St. Joseph Cafasso, briefly praises the “holiness” of priests, exalts Cafasso as a model of sacerdotal virtue (zeal, counsel, fortitude, charity, work among prisoners and the condemned), commends priestly associations and seminaries inspired by his example, and expresses the wish that such initiatives strengthen clergy and society so that “the law and love of Christ” may protect and purify social life. The entire text appears pious and edifying, yet it functions as a rhetorical veil normalizing the new conciliar project under the sentimental cult of a pre-conciliar saint, while issuing from the very author of the coming revolution.
Sanctity as Smoke Screen: John XXIII’s Cafasso Letter and the Programmed Neutralization of Catholic Priesthood
Context: The Architect of Rupture Draped in Pre-Conciliar Piety
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, every line issued by John XXIII in 1959 must be read sub specie concilii: immediately before convoking Vatican II (announced 1959) and launching the aggiornamento that unleashed the conciliar sect. The letter on St. Joseph Cafasso is not an innocent devotional scrap; it is an ideological instrument.
Instead of openly denying doctrine, John XXIII employs a more insidious method:
– Wrap his authority in reverent Latin and in the cult of an unquestionably holy, pre-1958 priest.
– Isolate selected, harmless traits of Cafasso (organizational zeal, formation of clergy, comfort to prisoners) stripped of their doctrinal density (the horror of sin, the necessity of conversion to the one true Church, the reality of hell, the rights of Christ the King).
– Shift emphasis from supernatural combat and dogmatic clarity to sociological uplift, “ecclesiastical associations,” and a vague moral influence on “social life.”
Thus this letter is a concise specimen of proto-modernist strategy condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi: retaining Catholic vocabulary while inverting its substance. The man who soon would inaugurate the “abomination of desolation” in the Temple prepares the way by canonizing a narrative of priesthood easily assimilable to the new naturalistic religion.
Level I – Factual and Structural Deconstruction of the Cafasso Narrative
John XXIII highlights in Cafasso:
– diligence in affairs,
– prudence in counsel,
– swiftness in execution,
– fortitude in trials,
– charity in priestly duties,
– delicate pastoral care for prisoners and the condemned,
– promotion of an ecclesiastical college and priestly associations.
All of these, in themselves, correspond to authentic virtues traditionally praised by the Church. However:
1. Omission of Cafasso as confessor of St. John Bosco and as a militant priest of the Counter-Revolution:
– No mention that Cafasso’s zeal was anchored in hatred of sin, defense of the one true Church against liberalism, and preparation of priests to combat errors specifically condemned later by Pius IX in the Syllabus Errorum.
– No indication that true priestly charity includes warning about hell, judgment, and the necessity of entering and remaining in the Catholic Church for salvation.
– This silence is not accidental: it amputates Cafasso’s virtues from their doctrinal root to recast him as a “safe,” affective and social figure compatible with the conciliatory ethos of the coming neo-church.
2. Redefinition of priestly associations:
– John XXIII praises ecclesiastical associations under the “guidance and auspices of bishops” as precious auxiliaries in governance.
– On the surface, this mirrors older forms of priestly unions. In context, however, it anticipates exactly those post-1958 structures of clerical collectivism that would be used to:
– dissolve personal sense of doctrinal responsibility,
– channel obedience away from perennial doctrine towards the aggiornamento program,
– create a networked apparatus for the diffusion of modernism under pretext of community, formation, and pastoral adaptation.
3. Vague social outcome:
– The letter culminates with the claim that by imitating Cafasso, an age will be hastened in which Christ’s law and love protect individuals and purify society.
– This formula is formally orthodox; yet, crucially, John XXIII avoids the categorical demand of Pius XI in Quas Primas: the public, juridical reign of Christ the King, and the subordination of states to His law.
– Instead of asserting that states must reject liberalism, religious indifferentism, and Masonic domination, the text dissolves into irenic generalities—fully compatible with the condemned thesis 80 of Pius IX’s Syllabus that the Roman Pontiff should reconcile himself with “progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.”
This is the operative pattern: selective praise, strategic silence, atmospheric piety. It prepares the faithful emotionally for the very revolution that Cafasso, if alive, would have combatted.
Level II – Linguistic Symptoms: Sentimentalism Against Dogmatic Precision
Language reveals intent. The letter’s rhetoric is carefully chosen:
– Persistent emphasis on “holiness of the sacred order’s men” and “solemn celebrations,” without a single concrete doctrinal warning.
– Warm, fluid phrases about virtues: labor, counsel, celerity, fortitude, charity. All true, yet framed as humanly admirable qualities rather than as fruits of adherence to precise dogma and sacramental asceticism.
– Celebrations and commemorations dominate; sin, error, heresy, hell, divine wrath are obliterated.
Where the integral Magisterium speaks in hard, objective categories—*vera et falsa religio*, *ius divinum Ecclesiae*, *regnum Christi in societate*—John XXIII reduces to emotive generalities:
– “calamitous times” are mentioned, but without identifying the real calamity: the infiltration of modernism and Freemasonry into clergy and hierarchy, already denounced by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– There is no explicit call to oppose liberalism, socialism, religious indifferentism, or the “sects” that Pius IX calls the “synagogue of Satan.”
– The entire tone is bureaucratically uplifting, avoiding any clash with the world’s errors—precisely the pastoral style later weaponized to legitimize the conciliar sect.
This stylistic softening is not neutral. It is the operational language of doctrinal disarmament. *Lex orandi, lex credendi* applies analogously to the Magisterial style: a Magisterium that ceases to condemn and define, and only “encourages” and “hopes,” is already betraying its office.
Level III – Theological Exposure: Cafasso Is Used Against Cafasso
Measured against pre-1958 doctrine, the letter’s theological bankruptcy becomes evident not in what it affirms (mostly unobjectionable at face value) but in what it systematically refuses to say.
1. The Nature of Priesthood: Sacrifice and Propitiation Silenced
Authentic Catholic teaching: The priest is essentially the man of the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary, a mediator who offers propitiatory sacrifice for sins, absolves, teaches with authority, and combats error.
John XXIII’s presentation:
– Highlights organizational and pastoral traits.
– Speaks of “duties of sacred ministry” and “helping others,” but omits:
– the centrality of the propitiatory Sacrifice,
– Cafasso’s role in forming confessors who preached repentance, feared hell, and demanded firm purpose of amendment,
– the priest as guardian of orthodoxy.
This is a functional reduction: the priest becomes an efficient social-pastoral operator with spiritual overtones. That naturalistic reduction will later justify the transformation of priests into social workers of the conciliar sect, presiding over invalid rites and preaching humanism.
2. No Condemnation of Modern Errors: Complicity by Silence
By 1959, the doctrinal landscape is clear:
– Pius IX’s Syllabus has condemned religious liberty, indifferentism, separation of Church and state, and reconciliation with “modern civilization” understood as liberal, secular, and Masonic.
– St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi anathematized the very modernist presuppositions—historicist relativism, evolution of dogma, reduction of supernatural to experience—that will soon dominate the Council John XXIII is preparing.
– Pius XI in Quas Primas has solemnly asserted that peace is possible only under the public reign of Christ the King, and explicitly exposed laicism as a plague.
Faced with “calamitous times,” what does John XXIII say?
– No mention of modernism.
– No mention of Freemasonry.
– No mention of condemned liberal or socialist ideologies.
– No reminder of duties of rulers toward Christ the King.
– Only a generic hope that Christ’s “law and love” may protect social life.
This silence is itself doctrinally accusatory. It signals a willful sidelining of the Church’s anti-liberal, anti-modernist magisterium, making room for the “hermeneutics of continuity” fiction and the subsequent enthronement of human rights, false ecumenism, and religious liberty in the Church of the New Advent.
3. Instrumentalizing Sanctity: The Classic Modernist Immunization Tactic
Modernism, as St. Pius X explains, prefers not to confront doctrine frontally but to:
– surround innovation with citations of Saints and Fathers,
– quote orthodox fragments to smuggle in heterodox developments.
Here, Cafasso is weaponized:
– invoked as “pure gem” of Turin clergy,
– used to endorse “priestly associations” and structures that, under the guidance of future modernist “bishops,” will serve to disseminate post-conciliar novelties,
– depersonalized into a safe, undogmatic symbol.
The saint who, in reality, embodied rigorous fidelity to confession, clear moral theology, and supernatural realism is reduced to a mask under which the architect of Vatican II reassures the faithful.
This is not veneratio sanctorum; it is exploitation. It evacuates the saint’s doctrinal mission to canonize the authority of one who soon will betray that doctrinal mission.
Level IV – Symptomatic Reading: A Miniature Blueprint of the Conciliar Sect
This seemingly minor letter condenses the DNA of the post-1958 paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican.
1. From Militant Church to Therapeutic Community
– Authentic Catholic view: The Church is the societas perfecta, divinely instituted, militantly defending revealed truth, condemning error, demanding conversion, subjecting nations to Christ.
– In this letter: the Church is implied as a network of priestly associations fostering virtues, consoling miseries, inspiring social improvement.
The missing elements—militancy, exclusive truth, condemnation of errors, demand for conversion—are precisely what will be systematically excised in the conciliar sect’s discourse.
2. From Supernatural Absolutes to Naturalistic Optimism
John XXIII’s rhetoric of hope that the remembrance of Cafasso will:
“contribute not a little to hastening the age in which Christ’s law and love will protect individuals and communities and purify them like a health-giving remedy”
sounds pious. But:
– “Age” is presented as emerging from commemorations and organized initiatives, not from conversion, penance, and submission of public life to Christ’s kingship.
– The stress falls on moral uplift and psychosocial “remedy,” in tune with the later cult of man exposed by the conciliar sect, where Christ is reduced to guarantor of human dignity and fraternity.
This corresponds exactly to the naturalistic tendencies condemned in the Syllabus and in Pascendi: religion as moral and social leaven, not as binding supernatural order demanding obedience under pain of eternal damnation.
3. From Juridical Clarity to Elastic Pastoralism
The integral Magisterium distinguishes sharply:
– between Church and sects,
– between true priesthood and invalid, schismatic rites,
– between Catholic dogma and condemned propositions.
John XXIII abstains from all such distinctions here. Instead, he promotes:
– generic “ecclesiastical associations”,
– under the authority of bishops whose own doctrinal integrity is not even rhetorically bound to anti-modernist norms.
Once such language is normalized, it is a short step to:
– “episcopal conferences,”
– collegial bureaucracies,
– synodal structures,
all used to relativize the papal and episcopal office and to democratize doctrine in the Church of the New Advent.
The Gravity of the Omission: No Warning Against the Conciliar Deformation of Priestly Life
Read in the light of what followed—invalid rites, new “Mass,” sacrilegious “Communions,” ecumenical betrayals, the enthronement of religious liberty and human rights above Christ the King—this letter’s omissions acquire a terrifying strategic clarity.
– There is no warning that without doctrinal vigilance, priestly associations can become laboratories of heresy.
– There is no affirmation that priestly sanctity is inseparable from unconditional adherence to the anti-modernist Magisterium.
– There is no indication that the gravest threat to priests is doctrinal corruption, not merely “calamitous times” in a vague sociological sense.
In short, while praising a model priest, John XXIII refuses to arm future clergy against the very revolution he is about to unleash. This is not pastoral negligence; it is the methodical disarming of the flock.
Contrast with Pre-1958 Magisterium: Direct Condemnations Versus John XXIII’s Evasion
To expose fully the spiritual bankruptcy of this letter, juxtapose it with the perennial teaching it silently suppresses (presented here in faithful paraphrase and sense):
– Pius IX, Syllabus Errorum: condemned the notion that:
– all religions are equally paths to salvation,
– the Church must reconcile herself with liberalism and modern civilization understood as autonomous from Christ,
– Church and state should be separated as a principle.
– Leo XIII and successors:
– exposed Freemasonry as the articulated enemy of the Church, warring to subject her to secular power and dissolve her dogma.
– Pius X, Lamentabili and Pascendi:
– condemned the reduction of Revelation to religious experience,
– condemned the idea that dogmas evolve to fit modern consciousness,
– imposed the anti-modernist oath, recognizing modernism as the synthesis of all heresies.
– Pius XI, Quas Primas:
– taught that there is no true peace except in the Kingdom of Christ,
– demanded public recognition of Christ’s rights by individuals and states,
– denounced laicism as a mortal plague.
Against this coherent, militant front, John XXIII offers, in this letter:
– zero mention of Freemasonry,
– zero mention of modernism,
– zero mention of hell or eternal loss,
– zero mention of the unique necessity of the Catholic Church,
– only decorous, sentimental invocations of Cafasso as an exemplar of priestly virtue and as patron of associations.
This is why the letter must be judged, in doctrinal terms, as symptomatic of a consciousness already alienated from the integral Catholic spirit. By what it refuses to affirm, it reveals a will to mute and eventually overturn the anti-modernist line.
Conclusion: A Polite Facade for an Impending Betrayal
The letter to Fossati is short, but it is not harmless. It is a crafted fragment of the ideological scaffolding for the conciliar sect:
– It uses a genuine saint as protective coloration.
– It praises priestly holiness in abstract, carefully untouched by the burning anti-liberal, anti-modernist doctrine essential to that holiness.
– It suggests that flourishing associations under episcopal auspices will strengthen the Church—when in fact those very structures would soon be harnessed to spread the new religion of the “abomination of desolation.”
– It speaks of “Christ’s law and love” purifying social life while omitting the concrete obligation of nations to submit publicly to Christ the King, and without denouncing the liberal systems condemned directly by prior Popes.
Therefore, far from being a simple edifying text, this letter appears as a smooth, pious component of a larger program: the gradual neutralization of Catholic militancy, the sentimentalization of priesthood, and the quiet burial of the anti-modernist Magisterium—preparing the faithful to accept the usurping neo-church and its invalid rites as a natural “development.”
Those who, holding fast to the unchanging doctrine before 1958, read this letter cannot be deceived by its elegance. The greatest accusation against it is its silence: no defense of the integral faith, no warning against the wolves already at the gate, no explicit submission to the uncompromising condemnations of Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI. This silence, at that precise historical hour, is not innocence; it is complicity in the coming devastation of the sanctuary.
Source:
Magnopere Nobis – Ad Maurilium Tit. S. Marcelli S. R. E. Presbyterum Cardinalem Fossati, Archiepiscopum Taurinensem, ob sollemnes illic celebritates indictas in honorem S. Iosephi Cafasso, saeculo exe… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025