John XXIII’s apostolic letter “Quemadmodum” (1 July 1960) designates St Patrick, bishop and confessor, as heavenly patron of the newly erected diocese of Ibadan (1958). In a few solemn paragraphs, it appeals to the “approved custom” of entrusting dioceses to celestial patrons, praises St Patrick’s missionary zeal in Ireland, accedes to the request of Richard Finn, described as bishop of Ibadan, and, invoking “the fullness of apostolic power,” officially proclaims St Patrick heavenly patron of the diocese with the usual liturgical rights and privileges, declaring anything to the contrary null and void.
Instrumentalizing St Patrick: A Token Piety Masking the Conciliar Usurpation
From Authentic Devotion to Patron Saints to a Legalistic Facade of Authority
At first glance, this brief letter appears harmless, even edifying: a “pope” invokes a great missionary saint to protect an African diocese. But precisely here the perfidy of the conciliar revolution reveals itself. A sacred reality is exploited to consolidate the counterfeit authority of John XXIII, the first usurper in the line of the conciliar sect occupying Rome.
The text’s core claim is juridical: that John XXIII, acting ex plenitudine Apostolicae potestatis (“from the fullness of apostolic power”), establishes for Ibadan a heavenly patron and imposes liturgical rights binding on clergy and faithful. Yet if the one issuing this decree is, in reality, a manifest modernist preparing the demolition of Catholic doctrine and worship, then this appeal to “apostolic power” is not an act of the Church, but the parasitic use of the Church’s language by a paramasonic structure seeking legitimacy.
Pre-1958 Catholic doctrine, canon law, and the unanimous teaching of theologians provide the key principle: *a manifest heretic cannot hold ecclesiastical office, still less the papacy.* St Robert Bellarmine, synthesizing the Fathers, affirms that a pope who becomes a manifest heretic “by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the Church,” and that manifest heretics are already cut off from the body of the Church and deprived of all jurisdiction. This is not a novelty, but the application of the perennial axiom: *he who is not a member cannot be the head*.
Moreover, *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio* of Paul IV explicitly nullifies the pretended elevation of one who had deviated from the faith, even if accepted by all. The 1917 Code (can. 188.4) confirms that public defection from the faith empties an ecclesiastical office by the law itself. The conciliar project that John XXIII unleashed—modernist council, religious liberty, false ecumenism, the cult of man—was not an accidental aberration but the public manifestation of the very apostasy that Catholic doctrine had foreseen and anathematized.
Thus the primary, radical problem of “Quemadmodum” is not its selection of St Patrick, but its implicit doctrinal claim: that the man signing as “Ioannes PP. XXIII” truly holds the fullness of Apostolic power. If he does not, then this text is a juridically void simulacrum—a bureaucratic ornament in the construction of the neo-church.
Linguistic Cosmetics: Pious Formulae Serving a New Ecclesiology
The letter’s vocabulary is traditional in appearance:
– It invokes the “approved custom” of assigning a celestial patron to dioceses.
– It speaks of the faithful being protected from dangers and stirred by the saint’s example to Christian virtue.
– It employs the solemn legal language of papal acts: certa scientia ac matura deliberatione, “in perpetuum,” and strong nullity clauses.
This linguistic shell has a calculated function.
1. Appropriation of Catholic Continuity
By deliberately mimicking genuine papal style, John XXIII seeks to appear as one more link in the chain of true pontiffs. This is the classic modernist tactic condemned by St Pius X in Pascendi: to retain the outer forms while subverting the inner substance. He signs decrees like this while preparing a council that will enthrone condemned errors: religious liberty (denounced in the Syllabus, propositions 15–18, 77–80), separation of Church and state (55), and the exaltation of “modern civilization” as a partner of Truth.
2. Sentimental Devotion as a Shield for Revolution
The tone is sweet, restrained, administrative; it lacks any militant affirmation of the integral reign of Christ the King over nations, of which Pius XI taught that true peace comes only in *Regnum Christi* and that secular apostasy is the root of social ruin (Quas Primas). Instead of exhorting Ibadan to combat paganism, Islam, Protestantism, Freemasonry, and syncretism with the exclusive claim of the Catholic Church, this act quietly assumes that the mere juridical assignment of St Patrick as patron suffices—while, in parallel, the same regime will endorse religious liberty and false “dialogue.”
3. A Technocratic Ecclesiality
The rhetoric is that of a religious administration: a prefecture of cult managing “patronages” as files. The saint is treated as an asset allocated to a region, not as a supernatural captain in the war for souls under the banner of Christ the King. The language betrays a post-war, bureaucratic mentality typical of the conciliar sect: forms are kept, substance is bled out.
The absence of any doctrinal edge is itself damning. In an age already ravaged by socialism, Freemasonry, laicism, and Protestant sects in Africa, a true pope, following Pius IX and Leo XIII, would recall:
– the exclusive truth of the Catholic Church,
– the duty of rulers and peoples to profess the true religion,
– the mortal danger of secret societies and naturalistic education,
– the necessity of the Most Holy Sacrifice and the sacraments for salvation.
Instead, we find a muted, purely devotional notice, perfectly compatible with the coming aggiornamento.
Theological Inversion: The Usurper’s Appeal to “Apostolic Power”
The central theological claim comes in the formula:
“…certa scientia ac matura deliberatione Nostra deque Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine…”
(“…with certain knowledge and mature deliberation of Ours and from the fullness of Apostolic power…”)
This is where the entire document collapses under pre-conciliar Catholic doctrine.
1. Plenitudo potestatis Belongs Only to the True Roman Pontiff
The fullness of power is strictly tied to the munus Petrinum as received from Christ and recognized in the uninterrupted tradition of the Church. It cannot coexist with manifest adherence to condemned principles. Pius IX, in the Syllabus and related allocutions, rejects the notion that the Roman Pontiff can reconcile himself with liberalism and modern civilization understood as emancipation from Christ and His Church. Proposition 80—“The Roman Pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself with progress, liberalism and modern civilization”—is explicitly condemned.
John XXIII, by convoking and steering a “council” that would precisely attempt this reconciliation, aligns with the condemned thesis; thus he reveals a will contrary to the faith previously defined. The rule set forth by the Fathers and classical theologians applies: one publicly professing positions incompatible with defined dogma morally demonstrates defection.
2. A Defective Intention Toward the End of Ecclesiastical Power
The highest authority in the Church exists *propter salutem animarum* (for the salvation of souls), through the guarding and expounding of the deposit of faith, not its relativization. When the one claiming to act as pope uses his position to inaugurate a program of doctrinal dilution, liturgical vandalism, religious indifference, and dialogue with enemies of Christ, his acts, though clothed in canonical formulas, lack the supernatural form that binds consciences in the name of Christ.
Therefore, the invocation of Apostolic power in such a mouth becomes blasphemous: a usurpation of Christ’s authority to promote an ecclesiology that Pius X accurately described as *Modernismus, omnium haeresum conlectus* (Modernism, the synthesis of all heresies).
3. The Void Nature of Acts Issued by a Manifest Usurper
Catholic principles (as highlighted in the defense of the automatic loss of office by manifest heresy) lead to a sober conclusion: juridical acts of a non-pope, insofar as they presuppose papal authority, are null. The verbose nullity clause in this letter—annulling any contrary attempt—ironically underscores its own impotence. Quod ab initio vitiosum est, non potest tractu temporis convalescere (what is vitiated in its origin cannot be healed by the passage of time).
Thus, while the choice of St Patrick as protector is in itself consonant with Catholic devotion, the act by which this is imposed is the theatrical gesture of a structure already inwardly separated from the Church it mimics.
Silence on Christ the King, Mission, and the Supernatural Battle
One of the gravest indictments of this document lies not in what it says but in what it does not say. In the integral Catholic faith:
– Every diocese exists to extend the visible reign of Christ the King, as Pius XI solemnly teaches: there is no hope for peoples unless they submit to the sweet and sovereign rule of Christ.
– The patronage of a saint is not a sentimental ornament, but a rallying of heavenly intercession for the triumph of the true faith over error—paganism, Islam, schism, heresy, and the anti-Christian sects denounced by the Popes.
– The erection of a diocese in mission territories is a declaration of war against idols and demons, calling men to baptism, the state of grace, and perseverance in the one true Church.
In “Quemadmodum”:
– There is no explicit confession that outside the Catholic Church no one is saved.
– There is no assertion that St Patrick is invoked so that Ibadan may remain free from false creeds and sects.
– There is no reference to the Most Holy Sacrifice as the heart of diocesan life, nor to the necessity of the sacraments as means of grace.
– There is no mention of judgment, hell, sin, or the need for conversion from error.
This aseptic tone prepares precisely the conciliar rhetoric where “patronage,” “mission,” and “dialogue” are drained of dogmatic content and submitted to a naturalistic humanitarianism. What should be a proclamation of Christ’s royal rights becomes a neutral administrative assignment of a name. The omission of the supernatural combat is not accidental; it is programmatic.
Symptomatic of the Conciliar Program: Harmless Piety, Hidden Revolution
Seen in the broader context of John XXIII’s agenda, this letter is a textbook specimen of how the conciliar sect advances:
1. Preserve benign devotional forms from pre-1958 Catholicism (saints, patrons, ceremonies), to reassure the naïve that “nothing essential has changed.”
2. Simultaneously, initiate a global transformation:
– Elevating religious liberty and pluralism.
– Diluting the obligation of states to recognize the true religion.
– Engaging in ecumenical gestures that implicitly deny the dogma of the one Church.
– Undermining traditional liturgy, culminating in the replacement of the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary with an assembly “meal,” opening the door to sacrilege and idolatry.
3. Never openly repudiate the Syllabus, Quas Primas, Lamentabili, or Pascendi in formal terms; rather, contradict them in practice and in “pastoral” documents whilst leaving their words in the archives as decor.
“Quemadmodum” perfectly fits this pattern. It is not a battlefield document, but a perfumed corridor along which the usurpers carry the treasures of the Church into captivity, using the names of saints to credential their betrayal.
Misuse of Saintly Symbolism: St Patrick as a Conciliar Mascot
St Patrick, in authentic Catholic memory:
– Destroyed idols, opposed druidic paganism, and preached the one true faith with miracles and austere zeal.
– Was a model of missionary intransigence: no syncretism, no “dialogue of religions,” but conversion to the Catholic Church.
To invoke such a saint, while preparing and then executing a program that:
– Places Catholicism alongside false religions as dialogue partners,
– Accepts states’ religious neutrality,
– Suppresses the traditional Mass that nourished the very sanctity of Patrick,
is a grotesque irony.
The letter claims that, under Patrick’s patronage, “res catholica illa in regione laetis augeretur incrementis” — “the Catholic cause in that region may rejoice in happy growth.” But what “Catholic cause” is meant? The soon-to-be “Church of the New Advent,” where:
– Truth is relativized in ecumenical encounters,
– Mission is reinterpreted as mutual exchange,
– The unique necessity of baptism and Catholic faith for salvation is obscured,
cannot claim Patrick as its standard-bearer. The conciliar sect seeks to harness the moral capital of saints forged by the traditional faith to decorate its anti-doctrinal edifice.
The Nullity of Conciliar Patronage Acts and the Perpetuity of True Devotion
Given the doctrinal principles reasserted before 1958:
– *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio* and common theological doctrine: an heretical intruder cannot validly acquire or retain papal jurisdiction.
– Canon 188.4: public defection from the faith nullifies office by tacit resignation.
– The Fathers and theologians: a manifest heretic is outside the Church, deprived of all jurisdiction.
It follows:
– Acts which presuppose the papal power, issued by one who lacks it, have no binding canonical force in the Church.
– The designation of a heavenly patron by a usurping structure is, as a juridical act, void in the order of the true Church, though God in His providence can still hear the prayers of the faithful who invoke a saint in simplicity.
– The use of solemn nullity clauses (“irritumque ex nunc et inane…”) only underscores the parody: that those who themselves stand in objective opposition to the constitution of the Church dare to annul any resistance to their decisions.
This does not mean that devotion to St Patrick for the protection of Ibadan—or any place—is wrong. On the contrary:
– Faithful who adhere to the integral Catholic faith can and should invoke St Patrick and all saints as patrons and protectors, ordered to the triumph of Christ the King and the preservation of the true doctrine.
– What must be rejected is the illusion that the paramasonic conciliar structures, by reproducing papal phrasing on headed paper, possess the authority they have forfeited.
Reasserting the Integral Catholic Criterion Against Modernist Masquerades
From the perspective of the unchanging pre-1958 Magisterium, this letter becomes a case study in discernment:
– On the surface: apparently orthodox, conventionally pious, canonically tidy.
– At its root: grounded in the claimed plenitude of authority of a man whose program conforms not to Pius IX and Pius X, but to the liberalism they condemned.
The integral Catholic criterion is simple and devastating:
– Any ecclesiastical act must be measured by the immutable doctrine previously taught *semper, ubique, ab omnibus* (always, everywhere, by all) under the guidance of the true hierarchy.
– Any “magisterium” that proposes principles incompatible with that doctrine, yet claims the same authority, unmasks itself as a counterfeit.
– Devotional and administrative acts issuing from such a counterfeit, even when not materially heretical in themselves, serve as camouflage and must be unmasked.
Therefore this text, “Quemadmodum,” should be read not as a benign decree of a legitimate pope, but as part of the soft preparatory tissue of the conciliar revolution: an instance of how the usurping neo-church wraps itself in the saints’ mantle while chiselling away at the very foundations those saints lived and died to defend.
To respond faithfully:
– Recognize St Patrick as a true saint of the Catholic Church and invoke his intercession for Ireland, Africa, and the world—specifically for the restoration of the public reign of Christ and the destruction of Modernism.
– Reject the fraudulent authority-claims of the conciliar sect and its usurping heads from John XXIII onwards, including the present antipope Leo XIV.
– Conform one’s judgment to the solemn condemnations of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St Pius X, and Pius XI, which stand in irreconcilable opposition to the principles embodied in the conciliar revolution.
Only in this light are the faithful shielded from the seduction of harmless-looking documents that, by presupposing a false papacy, participate objectively in the architecture of apostasy.
Source:
Quemadmodum, Litterae Apostolicae Sanctus Patricius, Ep. et Conf., caelestis Patronus dioecesis Ibadanensis declaratur, d. 1 m. Iulii a. 1960, Ioannes PP. XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025