This Latin letter of John XXIII appoints Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira as papal legate to the dedication ceremonies of the new Brazilian capital, Brasília, clothing the political founding of a modernist capital in pious language about “public utility,” invoking divine blessing so that the city may radiate “Christian civilization,” concord, justice, and peace. The entire text is a paradigmatic instance of how the conciliar usurpers sacralize naturalistic state projects, replacing the reign of Christ the King and the mission of the Church with an empty civil religion that flatters temporal power while remaining silent on sin, the Social Kingship of Christ, and the exclusive rights of the true Church.
Sacramentalizing Naturalism: John XXIII’s Blessing of the New Brazilian Capital
A Civil Religion Without Christ the King
From the first lines, John XXIII frames the dedication of Brasília as a noble act simply because “public works” are solemnly surrounded with religious ceremony:
“To consecrate undertakings of public utility by religion, and to propitiate heavenly grace, by invoking the most august name of God upon those works which human industry has accomplished on a vast scale, is exceedingly salutary and honorable for any people.”
This is not Catholic doctrine; this is the blueprint of a naturalistic civil cult.
Measured against the perennial magisterium before 1958, several points emerge:
– The Church teaches that the temporal order is good only insofar as it is subordinated objectively and concretely to the true religion, not by generic invocations of “God” over technocratic projects. Pius XI in Quas primas declares that peace and order will not shine upon nations “as long as individuals and states” refuse to recognize and obey the reign of Christ the King, and he explicitly condemns laicism which merely tolerates religion as an ornament of the state.
– Here, John XXIII praises as “perquam salutare et honorificum” the mere act of religious consecration of “public utility” works, without requiring that the Brazilian state profess the Catholic faith, reject religious indifferentism, or bind its laws to Christ’s doctrine. He applauds symbolic religiosity detached from binding Catholic truth.
– This is the essence of liberal “civil religion”: a sacred varnish poured over any political undertaking, without any demand for conversion, without doctrinal conditions, without condemnation of error.
The crucial omission: there is no mention of the obligation of the state to be Catholic, no affirmation that Christ is rex omnium nationum (King of all nations), no reference to the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX which condemns precisely such liberal theses (notably propositions 55, 77–80). There is only vague talk that “Christian humanism” should shine from Brasília as an “example.”
By refusing to assert the exclusive rights of the true Church and the duty of public subordination of law and institutions to Christ, this letter functions as an ecclesiastical benediction of religiously neutral, secular modernity. It is not a minor detail: it is a symptom of systemic apostasy.
Factual Level: Political Capital, Not Catholic City
Notice what is being celebrated in the document:
– The inauguration of Brasília as the new capital of a modern federal republic.
– The architectural, administrative, and symbolic achievement of a “novum caput” brought forth by “humana industria praegrandia.”
Notice what is not even once specified:
– That Brasília should be explicitly Catholic in constitution.
– That its laws, schools, courts, and public morals should be subject to the doctrine and discipline of the Church.
– That false worship should be excluded; that religious indifferentism is condemned; that the Masonic, socialist, or secularist forces in Latin American politics are mortal enemies of Christ’s kingdom.
Instead, John XXIII reduces the Church’s role to dignifying the event by sending a legate, and to offering vague blessings that Brasília may cultivate:
christianae humanitatis cultus (the cultivation of Christian humanism), moral nobility, concord, justice, hospitality, joy, and trust in a better age.
This is doctrinally evasive:
– Pius IX solemnly rejected the thesis that the state can or should be religiously neutral or that all forms of worship have equal civil rights (Syllabus, 77–79).
– Pius XI, in Quas primas, affirms that not only individuals, but “rulers and governments” are bound to publicly honour and obey Christ; he warns that the exclusion of Christ from public life is the root of modern social ruin.
– Pius X, in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi, unmasks as Modernism any attempt to transpose Catholic terms into a merely immanent, evolving “religious sense” used to sanctify secular projects.
Here, John XXIII uses the Church’s prestige in precisely this modernist way: he blesses a secular-national undertaking without demanding the formal social Kingship of Christ. That silence, measured against pre-1958 teaching, is accusatory. It is not neutrality; it is betrayal.
Linguistic Level: Soft Rhetoric as Veil for Liberalism
The rhetoric of the letter is deliberately sweet, euphemistic, and vacuous. This is not accidental; language expresses theology.
Key linguistic features:
1. Ambiguous invocation of “God”
– The “most august Name of God” is invoked, but not Dominus noster Iesus Christus Rex as legislator of nations, nor His Church as the one ark of salvation.
– The vocabulary could be accepted by any generic theist or Masonic deist: “superna gratia,” “tutela,” “praesidium,” attached to “publicæ utilitatis molimina.”
2. Ideological emptiness behind “Christian humanism”
– The central aspiration is that Brasília be a beacon of christianae humanitatis cultus.
– But “Christian humanism” absent doctrinal precision easily means anthropocentric optimism: the cult of man baptized with Christian terminology.
– Pre-1958 Popes warned against precisely this: Pius X condemns in Pascendi and Lamentabili the reduction of the supernatural to human progress and ethical refinement.
3. List of virtues severed from dogma and sacrament
John XXIII calls for:
– Concord of citizens
– Strength with gentleness
– Justice as guardian of integrity
– Courtesy to foreigners
– Serene festivity
– Confidence in a better age
– Fraternal service
– Peace
All desirable in themselves—but the cause and condition are not the Social Kingship of Christ, the true Faith, and the state’s submission to the law of God. They are presented as civic virtues for a modern democratic capital, not as fruits of a publicly Catholic order.
Virtus sine veritate est simulacrum (“virtue without truth is an idol”). This text canonizes that idol.
4. Boilerplate flattery of the nation-state
– The letter ends with exaltation that Brazil’s name may grow “venerable and lovable” even among distant peoples, that Brasília’s beginnings be “felicia et fausta,” that it may always flourish.
– It is worldly praise, perfectly aligned with nationalist rhetoric, devoid of warnings regarding sin, corruption, impiety, Freemasonry, socialism, or indifferentism—real threats rigorously denounced by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
This artificially irenic, courtly style is not innocent. It is the diplomacy of a conciliar sect that has already accepted liberal principles and now serves as chaplain to secular power.
Theological Level: Silence on the Social Kingship as Positive Apostasy
The gravest indictment is not what John XXIII says, but what he refuses to say.
1. No assertion of Christ’s sovereign rights over Brasília
Quas primas (1925), which John XXIII could not ignorantly ignore, solemnly teaches:
– Christ’s kingship is universal, objective, and must be recognized by states in their constitutions and laws.
– The Church has a right and duty to insist that public law conform to divine law; secularism is a “plague.”
– Public denial or neglect of Christ’s reign shakes the foundation of authority and leads to social collapse.
Yet this letter:
– Makes no mention of Christ the King as ruler of Brazil and Brasília.
– Makes no mention of the duty of lawmakers, judges, and administrators to submit to Catholic teaching.
– Treats the Church as a benign presence offering blessings and symbolic consecrations to “public utility” ventures, rather than as *societas perfecta* with jurisdiction to judge and correct the state (contra Syllabus errors 19–21, 39–42, 55).
2. No condemnation of liberal errors
By 1960, the liberal principles condemned in the Syllabus of Errors and other documents were entrenched in the political and legal life of many nations:
– Religious liberty understood as the equal right of truth and error (Syllabus 15–18, 77–79).
– Separation of Church and state (55).
– The state as source of rights (39).
– Autonomization of education, marriage, and morals from the Church (45–48, 71–74).
A Catholic pontiff faithful to his predecessors, invited to “consecrate” a new capital, would:
– Recall the condemned errors.
– Demand constitutional and practical recognition of the Catholic religion as the one true faith.
– Urge the state to conform its institutions to Christ the King and His Church.
John XXIII does none of this. Thus his silence is not pastoral discretion; it is practical denial of magisterial doctrine.
3. Instrumentalizing religion for the state
The letter frames religious ceremony as something that:
– Honours the people.
– Gives auspicious beginnings to a political project.
– Enhances national prestige.
This reverses the order established by God:
– The state exists for the temporal common good subordinated to the eternal end; religious ceremonies are not ornaments of the state but acts of worship owed to God in His true Church.
– The magisterium prior to 1958 repeatedly condemns submission of the Church’s public acts to political utility (see Pius IX, Leo XIII).
Here, the usurper presents religion as a useful blessing for “public utility enterprises.” This is not Catholic theology; it is the theology of state civil religion.
4. Erasure of judgment, sin, and final ends
The text is completely void of:
– Any mention of mortal sin, divine law, hell, or judgment.
– Any call for personal or national conversion, reparation, or penance.
– Any reference to the Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiation, to the necessity of the sacraments, or to the Church as the unique ark of salvation.
Instead, it speaks exclusively of temporal prosperity, mutual concord, human virtues, and a “better age.”
This silence about supernatural realities in a formal doctrinal-practical context is, as per the instructions of integral Catholic theology, the gravest accusation: it reveals a mentality for which religion’s purpose is to ennoble temporal affairs, not to save souls from eternal damnation.
Qui tacet consentire videtur (“he who is silent seems to consent”). Silence regarding the last ends, when blessing a project of secular modernity, is consent to practical atheism.
Symptomatic Level: Fruits of the Conciliar Revolution and the Neo-Church
This letter is not an isolated oddity; it is:
– A recognizable specimen of the paramasonic, post-1958 rhetoric which:
– Replaces doctrine with sentiment.
– Replaces Christ’s kingship with “Christian humanism.”
– Replaces calls to conversion with diplomatic goodwill.
– Replaces militant defence of the rights of the Church with subservient flattery of secular authorities.
From the perspective of unchanging theology before 1958:
1. John XXIII as vector of Modernism
Pius X identified Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies” and condemned:
– The naturalization of the supernatural.
– The evolution of dogma according to historical circumstances.
– The reinterpretation of the Church as an inner religious sense of humanity rather than the visible, juridical, divine society.
In this letter:
– The supernatural mission of the Church is reduced to providing sacred aura to a temporal enterprise.
– The Social Kingship of Christ is suppressed in favor of a vague “Christian humanism” compatible with pluralistic liberal democracy.
– The legal and doctrinal claims of the Church over society (as in Pius IX’s Syllabus and Pius XI’s Quas primas) are simply absent.
The absence is doctrinally eloquent: it manifests the new “hermeneutic” that would culminate in the conciliar sect’s cult of man, false religious liberty, ecumenism, and dialogue with error.
2. Sacralizing the liberal city
Brasília, as a planned modernist capital, embodied:
– Architectural rupture with tradition.
– Centralized technocratic administration.
– Ideological projection of a “new era.”
John XXIII’s letter:
– Offers no warning against Masonic, socialist, or secularist ideologies.
– Provides a papal legate and blessings, effectively sacralizing the new liberal order.
This pattern would recur: the conciliar sect blessing the institutions of laicized states while methodically dismantling the doctrinal defences erected by Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, and Pius XI.
3. The role of “cardinals” and “patriarchs” of the neo-church
The fact that the legate chosen is Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira, a figure of the conciliar reorientation, underlines the new alliance:
– Men clothed in Catholic vestments but aligned with the aggiornamento, instrumentalized as diplomatic envoys to harmonize the Church of the New Advent with the liberal order.
The letter’s praise of his “dignity” and eloquence is not spiritual; it is political. Nothing is demanded of him beyond ceremonial presence and edifying words about civic virtues. Here we see the conciliar sect transforming the hierarchy into chaplains of secular power.
Public Utility Against the Divine Constitution of the Church
The letter exalts “public utility” as something that, when consecrated, becomes almost a sacramental sign of God’s favour. This is a perverse inversion.
1. True Catholic principle
Salus animarum suprema lex (“the salvation of souls is the supreme law”).
– Public works, cities, and political enterprises have value only insofar as they serve, or at least do not obstruct, the salvation of souls.
– The Church’s blessing is not a decorative honour; it presupposes conformity—actual or intended—with the law of Christ and His Church.
2. The letter’s inversion
John XXIII:
– Adopts the perspective of the state: religious ceremonies are an honour for the people and a hope for “future growth.”
– Ignores whether the legal and moral order of the new capital will conform to Catholic teaching.
– Effectively lends ecclesiastical approval without doctrinal conditions.
This contradicts the stance of Pius IX, who explicitly declared null and void laws that usurp rights of the Church (see the Syllabus and his letters against liberal legislation), and of Pius XI who condemned secular states that expel Christ and His law from public life.
The so‑called “consecration” of Brasília thus appears as an attempted sacramentalization of political modernity. That is doctrinally bankrupt.
Concluding Judgment: A Benign Mask for Systemic Apostasy
Assessing this document strictly by pre-1958 doctrine:
– It never affirms:
– The exclusive truth of the Catholic faith.
– The duty of the Brazilian state and its capital to recognize and submit to Christ the King and His Church.
– The condemnations of liberalism, indifferentism, and secularism.
– The primacy of the salvation of souls over “public utility.”
– It consistently:
– Employs vague theistic and “Christian humanist” language acceptable to a laicized order.
– Serves the prestige of a secular national project rather than summoning it to the obedience of faith.
– Reduces the Church’s visible role to that of spiritual ornament of the state.
– Omits any mention of sin, conversion, judgment, or sacramental life, as if the chief concern of the Church were that Brasília be prosperous, harmonious, and esteemed in the world.
Therefore, from the perspective of integral Catholic theology, this letter is not a harmless ceremonial nicety. It is a small but clear piece of evidence of the broader revolution:
– The conciliar sect, beginning with John XXIII, abandoning the uncompromising doctrine of the Social Kingship of Christ.
– Transforming the visible structures into a humanitarian, diplomatic, paramasonic organism that blesses the very liberal and secular regimes solemnly condemned by true Popes.
– Substituting supernatural Catholic faith with a polite cult of “public utility” and “Christian humanism” emptied of dogma.
Where Pius IX and Pius XI spoke with the steel of divine authority, John XXIII speaks with the velvet of liberal appeasement. The contrast is irreconcilable. One voice is that of the Church; the other is that of the neo‑church.
Source:
Publicae utilitatis – Epistula ad Emmanuelem tit. Ss. Marcellini et Petri S. R. E. Presbyterum cardinalem Conçalves Cerejeira, patriarcham lisbonensem, quem legatum mittit ut novae urbis capitis « Bra… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025