Dated 12 October 1961, this brief Latin letter of John XXIII (“Semper exspectatus”) is addressed to Antonio María Barbieri, “cardinal” and “archbishop” of Montevideo, on the 25th anniversary of his episcopal consecration. It congratulates him on his “merits,” his attachment to the Roman See, his preaching and social concern for the poor, encourages him to persevere as a “good shepherd” and Franciscan religious, grants him the faculty to impart, in the “pope’s” name, a blessing with a plenary indulgence to the faithful on a chosen day, and concludes with an Apostolic Benediction upon him, his auxiliary, and his flock. Behind this apparently harmless compliment letter stands a counterfeit authority, a manipulated notion of episcopal ministry, and a sacrilegious use of indulgences that presupposes the very conciliar revolution which would soon devastate the Church.
Laudation of a System: How “Semper exspectatus” Manifests the Neo-Church’s Counterfeit Authority
The Hollow Congratulation of a Counterfeit Pontiff
From the first words, the document exposes its essence: a gesture of paternal favor flowing from John XXIII, the initiator of the conciliar upheaval, toward a pre-aligned member of the emerging conciliar bloc.
Key elements:
– John XXIII recalls Barbieri’s episcopal consecration, presenting twenty-five years of office as an occasion of “just joy” and solemn thanksgiving.
– He praises Barbieri’s merits, especially:
– his attachment to the “See of Peter,”
– his pastoral zeal,
– his preaching of the word of God,
– his attention to the poor.
– He exhorts him, with conventional spiritual phrases, to grow in wisdom, to be an ever more exemplary “good shepherd” and Franciscan, to exercise power as service to God and the “Church.”
– He grants the jubilarian the faculty to impart, in the “pope’s” name, a blessing with plenary indulgence to the faithful on a chosen day.
– He imparts his own benediction to Barbieri, his auxiliary, and the whole flock.
On the surface, this seems indistinguishable from pre-1958 papal correspondence: respectful Latin style, themes of grace, virtue, pastoral care. But precisely this superficial similarity serves to mask the radical rupture of authority and doctrine already underway. The letter functions as a liturgical-polished seal of legitimacy for a hierarchy that is, in fact, detaching itself from *integral* Catholic faith and preparing the terrain for Vatican II and its destructive aftermath.
Here the first and fundamental thesis appears: what is presented as paternal confirmation of a Catholic bishop is in reality the internal consolidation of a parallel structure—the conciliar sect—under the smiling patronage of an antipope.
Factual Level: The Manipulated Premises of “Merit” and “Communion”
Let us dissect the factual claims implicit in the text.
1. “Huic Petri Sedi arcte addictus” – “closely attached to this See of Peter.”
– This phrase is decisive. From an integral Catholic perspective, *communion with the Roman See* is indeed constitutive of episcopal legitimacy (cf. Vatican I, *Pastor Aeternus*). But it presupposes that the occupant of the See is:
– a true Catholic,
– not a manifest heretic,
– not an innovator corrupting faith and worship.
– The pre-1958 theologians (e.g. St. Robert Bellarmine, quoted in the Defense of Sedevacantism file) teach unequivocally that a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church:
– “Manifestus haereticus… statim desinit esse Papa.” (“A manifest heretic immediately ceases to be pope.”)
– John XXIII, architect of the “aggiornamento” and convoker of Vatican II on a program of reconciliation with “modern civilization” explicitly condemned by Pius IX in the *Syllabus Errorum*, cannot be assumed as a neutral Catholic pontiff. His programmatic orientation—religious liberty, irenic ecumenism, optimism toward modern errors—is a direct clash with Quanta Cura, the Syllabus, and Quas Primas.
– Therefore, Barbieri’s praised “attachment” is not proof of fidelity, but evidence of alignment with a nascent anti-doctrinal project. The letter canonizes—not sanctity—but institutional complicity.
2. “Merits” in preaching and charity.
– The text commends Barbieri’s zeal for the word of God and the poor. It is silent, however, on:
– defense of the integral faith,
– combat against liberalism, socialism, Freemasonry,
– condemnation of modernist errors.
– Pre-1958 Magisterium (e.g. Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI) constantly binds charity and preaching to doctrinal militancy against error. St. Pius X in the decree “Lamentabili sane exitu” and encyclical “Pascendi” sees the toleration of Modernism as betrayal. Charity without doctrinal combat becomes humanistic philanthropy.
– The letter’s selection of “merits” is revealing: social concern, generic preaching, administrative stability; no word about defending the Kingship of Christ against secular apostasy, as demanded by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*, no word about resisting laicism condemned by the Syllabus. This is factual by omission: a filtered portrait of the episcopal office as primarily horizontal and consensual.
3. Faculty to grant a plenary indulgence “in Our name and by Our authority.”
– Indulgences are an exercise of the power of the keys; their credibility hinges entirely on the legitimacy of the authority granting them. If the authority is a manifest heretic or an antipope, such grants are devoid of supernatural guarantee; they become a pious-looking simulation.
– Pius IX and Pius X insist that authority in the Church presupposes adherence to the unchanging deposit of faith. When the same current that will shortly endorse religious liberty and false ecumenism (Vatican II) distributes indulgences, it instrumentalizes the treasury of the Church to decorate its rebellion with traditional forms.
– Thus this letter uses indulgences to legitimize a hierarchy being co-opted into the conciliar revolution—a sacrilegious exploitation of what earlier popes exercised to strengthen resistance to liberalism and Masonry, not to reconcile with them.
Conclusion of this level: the factual structure of the letter is anodyne only if one accepts John XXIII’s papacy and project as Catholic. Once measured against pre-1958 doctrine, it documents the inner bonding of a counterfeit “pope” with compliant “episcopate,” using traditional forms to cement an anti-traditional agenda.
Linguistic Level: Pious Ornament as Veil of Doctrinal Emasculation
The rhetoric is classical ecclesiastical Latin: solemn, affectionate, with ascetical exhortations. But the poison of the conciliar mentality manifests itself less in what is said than in what is carefully not said.
Characteristic expressions:
– “Semper exspectatus et colendus, qui quotannis tibi redit dies, quo consecratus es Episcopus…”
– “Iusta erit causa laetitiae… locum dabit reddendi Deo… gratiarum actiones…”
– “Divino igitur fultus auxilio et lumine… fac in monte Domini… ad celsiora usque dirigas gressum…”
– “Tuum praeesse magis magisque sit prodesse…” – “Your presiding may be more and more to be of benefit.”
The tone is:
– benign,
– irenic,
– motivational,
– utterly non-combative.
What is missing is precisely what pre-1958 papal language contains when addressing bishops in a time of doctrinal, moral, and political crisis:
– No warning against Modernism, despite St. Pius X’s explicit condemnation of those who, under the pretext of new methods, corrupt dogma.
– No allusion to the Masonic and liberal anti-Christian offensive so powerfully exposed by Pius IX in the Syllabus and the passages (in the file provided) where he denounces the “synagogue of Satan,” secret societies, and the war against the Church.
– No call to defend the social reign of Christ the King against secular laws (Quas Primas), no insistence that states and rulers must publicly acknowledge Christ and submit to His law.
– No reminder that bishops must reject religious indifferentism and condemn the false thesis that any religion can lead to salvation.
The key syntagm “praeesse… sit prodesse” (to preside is to benefit) encapsulates the new humanistic vocabulary. While true in a traditional sense if grounded in objective supernatural ends, here it is isolated from truth and combat. It anticipates the conciliar redefinition of authority as “service” detached from juridical and doctrinal rigor, a pretext later used to dissolve binding teaching into consultative dialogue.
This rhetorical strategy:
– clothes a revolutionary orientation in familiar formulas,
– anesthetizes resistance among clergy and faithful,
– replaces the virile, dogmatic precision of Pius IX and St. Pius X with diplomatic blandness.
The language is not neutral; it is part of the Modernist tactic of infiltration: preserve the shell, empty the content.
Theological Level: Episcopal Office Severed from the Kingship of Christ and Militant Orthodoxy
Measured by the norms of immutable Catholic doctrine, the letter is theologically gravely deficient. Its defects are systemic, not accidental.
1. Silence on the Social Kingship of Christ.
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches that true peace, order, and justice depend wholly on the public recognition of Christ’s Kingship by individuals, families, and states. He denounces laicism and the dethronement of Christ as the root of modern calamities.
– This letter, written in 1961—when secularism and anti-Christian legislation were ravaging nations—says nothing about Barbieri’s duty to defend the rights of Christ the King in the public order.
– Instead of arming a bishop to confront liberal governments and Masonic powers (as Pius IX does forcefully in the texts on Prussia and America cited in the Syllabus file), John XXIII offers gentle encouragements entirely disconnected from the concrete doctrinal and social battles demanded by the faith.
This is not a neutral omission; it reveals a shift from *regnum Christi* to pastoralist immanentism.
2. No mention of Modernism, condemned as “synthesis of all heresies” (St. Pius X).
– By 1961, Modernist tendencies had long been active. St. Pius X’s *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi* exposed and anathematized them, and he attached excommunication to their defense.
– A true successor of Pius X, writing to a leading bishop in Latin America, should:
– recall the absolute duty to reject historicism, evolution of dogma, biblical relativism, ecumenical syncretism;
– warn against clergy infected with these errors;
– demand vigilance in seminaries and pulpits.
– John XXIII’s letter mentions none of this. It treats episcopal ministry as if the dogmatic front were at peace, as if Modernism were no longer a mortal threat.
– This quietistic silence amounts, in practice, to tacit abandonment of St. Pius X’s anti-Modernist program.
3. Absent is any reference to the integral notion of the Church as a perfect society with rights over states.
– Pius IX condemns the errors that:
– deny the Church’s perfection and freedom (Syllabus 19),
– subordinate her to civil power (20),
– claim she cannot be the only true religion (21),
– demand separation of Church and State (55).
– The bishop of Montevideo, in a region increasingly under liberal and secular influence, should be reminded of these non-negotiable truths.
– Instead, by merely praising “pastoral solicitude” and social charity, the letter encourages an adaptation to the liberal order, preparing the ground for the acceptance of religious liberty and pluralism later promulgated by the conciliar sect.
4. Sacramental and juridical authority instrumentalized.
– The grant of a plenary indulgence is theologically momentous when authentic. But its use here serves:
– not to confirm resistance to error,
– but to reward institutional loyalty to an authority steering toward that very error.
– Pre-1958 doctrine: *potestas iurisdictionis* is intrinsically ordered to the protection of the deposit of faith. When jurisdiction is invoked to encourage submission to a program that will demolish the confession of “no salvation outside the Church” in practice, that invocation becomes internally contradictory.
– The letter presupposes the indefectibility of an institution whose leaders are already preparing to institutionalize precisely those positions anathematized by Pius IX and St. Pius X. This is an implicit theological incoherence.
Theology is not what this letter says, but what it deliberately prescinds from: Christ no longer reigns concretely, Modernism is no longer named, liberalism is no longer fought. The episcopate is encouraged to be kind, not combative; social, not doctrinal; decorative, not judicial.
Symptomatic Level: Early Symptom of the Conciliar Sect’s Self-Legitimation
This short letter is a micro-document of a macro-apostasy.
1. Integration of local hierarchs into the conciliar system.
– By extolling Barbieri as a model of fidelity and by associating his jubilee with indulgenced celebrations, John XXIII weaves him more tightly into the conciliar network.
– Such letters:
– create emotional bonds,
– confer prestige,
– encourage a conception of obedience as unconditional submission to the reigning “pontiff” irrespective of his doctrinal orientation.
– Thus, when Vatican II is opened and the destructive decrees on religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality emerge, these bishops, already gratified and recognized, more easily betray the pre-1958 magisterium in the name of “loyalty” to the new leadership.
2. Replacement of militant Catholicity with pastoral sentimentalism.
– Contrary to the robust energy of Pius IX and St. Pius X, who name enemies (secret societies, liberalism, rationalism) and command resistance, this letter offers a non-specific spirituality.
– The repeated insistence on being a “good pastor,” “Franciscan,” “service,” “benefit” becomes the matrix for:
– democratic collegiality,
– horizontal “people of God” ecclesiology,
– a Church reduced to NGO-style social work and interreligious dialogue.
– Silence about:
– state of grace,
– necessity of the true faith for salvation,
– eternal judgment,
– horror of heresy,
is precisely the gravest accusation. A shepherd who does not speak of heaven, hell, and the exclusive necessity of the Catholic Church is not continuing the mission of the divine Founder.
3. Abuse of traditional forms to consolidate a paramasonic structure.
– The letter uses:
– Latin,
– references to God’s grace,
– the concept of indulgence,
– the vocabulary of “Apostolic Benediction.”
– But the same John XXIII will:
– announce an ecumenical council explicitly oriented to “opening to the world,”
– redefine the Church’s stance toward the very liberalism and secularism condemned by his predecessors,
– inaugurate a process which leads to:
– the sacrilegious “Novus Ordo” cult replacing the Most Holy Sacrifice,
– false ecumenism,
– religious liberty as a “right,”
– the cult of man.
– The strategy is transparent: maintain the appearance of continuity while preparing the mutation—*forma retenta, res mutata* (the external form retained, the reality changed).
This letter thus is not an innocent compliment; it is one brick in the edifice of the “Church of the New Advent,” wherein a counterfeit hierarchy blesses itself and rewards its own, using the language and symbols of the very Tradition it is nullifying.
Contradiction with Pre-1958 Catholic Doctrine: A Brief Mapping
To see the doctrinal bankruptcy more sharply, contrast the underlying mentality of “Semper exspectatus” with key pre-1958 teachings:
– Pius IX, Syllabus 15–18:
– Condemns religious indifferentism and the idea that each can choose any religion by reason alone;
– Yet the conciliar orientation (into which this letter fits) softens the exclusive claims of the Church and prepares ground for later recognition of “elements of salvation” in false religions.
– Pius IX, on secret societies and Masonic plots:
– Denounces them as the “synagogue of Satan” waging war on the Church;
– John XXIII’s benign tone, absence of militant denunciation, and subsequent ecumenical initiatives represent an effective halting of this combat, contrary to earlier commands.
– St. Pius X, Lamentabili and Pascendi:
– Condemns Modernists who:
– subordinate dogma to history,
– speak of evolving doctrine,
– reduce Revelation to religious experience.
– John XXIII explicitly sponsors an “aggiornamento” open to such tendencies; his letter shows no trace of guarding against them.
– Pius XI, Quas Primas:
– Insists earthly rulers and laws must submit to Christ the King and to His Church.
– The new line, embodied in this letter’s abstractions, is to accommodate pluralistic democracies and to be silent on their duty to be Catholic.
Thus the letter’s theology-by-omission is not faithful to these documents, but anticipates their practical sidelining. It is an *effective contradiction* clothed in courteous phrases.
On Authority, Heresy, and the Invalidity of the Conciliar Claims
From the integral Catholic standpoint, the core issue is authority:
– If John XXIII:
– favored principles (religious liberty, ecumenism, esteem for non-Catholic religions) incompatible with the Syllabus and Quas Primas;
– tolerated or promoted Modernist currents condemned by St. Pius X;
then:
– According to the classical doctrine (cf. synthesized in the Defense of Sedevacantism file):
– a manifest heretic cannot be pope (*non potest esse caput qui non est membrum*);
– by public defection from the faith, an ecclesiastic loses office *ipso facto* (1917 CIC can. 188.4);
– a promotion of a heretic to the papacy is null (Paul IV, *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio*).
If the conciliar “popes” beginning with John XXIII lack true authority:
– Their letters, indulgences, appointments, and praises, including “Semper exspectatus,” have no binding force in the Church of Christ.
– They are acts of a parallel structure—abominatio desolationis—which occupies Catholic buildings while teaching and legislating against Catholic doctrine.
Therefore:
– The “merits” praised here are merits within the conciliar sect.
– The “attachment to the See of Peter” is, concretely, attachment to an usurped institution.
– The faculty to grant a plenary indulgence in this context is, at best, an illusion; at worst, it is used to bind souls emotionally to an authority that leads them away from the deposit of faith.
Pastoral Consequences: Spiritual Disarmament of the Faithful
One must finally expose the spiritual damage implicit in such documents:
– The faithful of Montevideo are told:
– their “archbishop” is exemplary;
– their local structure is closely united with the “pope”;
– they may receive a plenary indulgence through his ministry;
– all is harmonious and blessed.
– They are not told:
– that Modernism has been anathematized,
– that their eternal salvation depends on adherence to the whole Catholic faith,
– that states and societies must publicly recognize Christ the King,
– that liberalism, secularism, and interreligious relativism are mortal errors,
– that sacraments outside the integral faith are endangered or null.
Silence on these supernatural and doctrinal necessities is not mere negligence; it is a systemic spiritual disarmament. It habituates Catholics to a Church that never condemns, never names enemies, never calls for the conversion of nations, never warns against false religions and false rites. This is the precise opposite of the pre-1958 Magisterium’s mission.
Conclusion: A Polite Seal on the Conciliar Revolution
“Semper exspectatus” must be read, not as an isolated congratulatory letter, but as:
– a fragment of the self-referential praise-circuit of the conciliar hierarchy;
– a use of traditional tokens (Latin, indulgence, “Apostolic” blessing) to stabilize allegiance to an anti-traditional program;
– a symptom of the shift from dogmatic militancy to humanitarian, diplomatic, and sentimental rhetoric;
– a tacit repudiation—by omission—of the vigorous condemnations issued by Pius IX, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
Under the smooth phrases lies the essential inversion: authority without orthodoxy, blessings without truth, compassion without conversion, unity without the Kingship of Christ. Measured by the unchanging Catholic theology prior to 1958, this letter is not a sign of ecclesial vitality but an early, perfumed exhalation of the doctrinal decomposition that would soon, through the conciliar pseudo-magisterium, plunge countless souls into confusion.
Source:
Semper expectatus – Epistula ad Antonium Mariam tit. S. Chrysogoni S. R. E. Presbyterum Cardinalem Barbieri, Archiepiscopum Montisvidei, quinque lustra implentem ex quo consecratus est Episcopus, d. 1… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025