The document issued by the usurper John XXIII, titled “Potiora inter,” declares the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary venerated as “Nuestra Señora de El Soto” (Our Lady of the Grove) as the principal heavenly patroness of the Toranzo region in Spain, recounts the local history of the shrine at Iruz, praises the devotion of the faithful and the pastoral role of religious orders, and authorizes the canonical coronation of the image with a golden crown. Its tone is outwardly pious, institutional, and devotional. Yet exactly in this apparently harmless Marian act we see the polished surface of a deeper rupture: the instrumentalization of Marian cult to legitimize an incipient conciliar revolution that would shortly attempt to dethrone Christ the King and replace the Catholic Church with a conciliatory cult of man.
Marian Ornament Used as a Veil for the Coming Usurpation
Factual Embedding of a Local Devotion into a Counterfeit Authority
First, let us state clearly what this text does in verifiable terms (AAS 51 [1959], 805–807):
– It:
– Describes the sanctuary in Iruz (Diocese of Santander), dedicated to the Blessed Virgin under the title “Nuestra Señora de El Soto.”
– Notes its historical development: an ancient image, a chapel, later a larger temple with convent (completed 1687), formerly served by Franciscans, then by Discalced Carmelites (since 1898).
– Mentions alleged graces and even “prodigious” interventions attributed to Our Lady’s intercession there.
– Recounts the desecration of the image during the Spanish Civil War and its subsequent restoration and renewed veneration.
– States that devotion is particularly intense in the “Valle de Toranzo” (thirty towns).
– On the petition of Bishop José Eguino Trecu and the Discalced Carmelites and faithful, John XXIII:
– Declares the Blessed Virgin under this title as principal patroness of the Toranzo region.
– Grants the liturgical honors proper to a principal regional patron.
– Delegates the diocesan ordinary to perform a canonical coronation of the image in Iruz in his name and by his “authority.”
– Issues the usual canonical clauses on validity and nullity of contrary acts.
Each of these elements, taken in isolation, could have been found in authentic pre-1958 pontifical acts concerning legitimate local devotions. That is precisely why “Potiora inter” is dangerous: it cloaks a counterfeit authority in the familiar vestments of Marian piety, providing a devotional anesthetic for the coming doctrinal and liturgical mutilation.
From the perspective of unchanging Catholic doctrine, the core problem is not the local Marian devotion as such—traditional local cults predate the conciliar catastrophe—but the fact that such devotion is here explicitly tied to the “apostolic authority” of one who inaugurates the line of conciliar usurpers, and is embedded into the paramasonic project that would soon attack everything Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII had defended.
Linguistic Cosmetics: Devout Rhetoric as a Systemic Sedation
The Latin text deploys a well-crafted, traditional-sounding style:
– References to the sanctuary as “potiora inter pietatis domicilia” (among the more important places of piety).
– Praise of the “Alma Deipara” lavishly bestowing favors.
– Respectful mention of Franciscans and Discalced Carmelites.
– Evocation of sacrilegious desecration during the civil war and Catholic repair afterward.
– Juridical solemnity: “certa scientia ac matura deliberatione… deque Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine…” (“with certain knowledge and mature deliberation… and by the fullness of Apostolic power”).
On the surface, this imitates the diction of authentic pontifical acts. Yet this imitation functions as theological camouflage.
Key symptoms:
1. Sterile institutional Marianism:
– The text is entirely horizontalized in effect: it reads as an administrative enhancement of a regional “identity marker” rather than a militant proclamation of the Queenship of Mary ordered to the social Kingship of Christ.
– There is no robust call to conversion from sin, to restoration of Catholic social order, to reparation for offenses to the Sacred Heart, or to defense against modern errors.
– Mary is invoked in a way that is emotionally pious yet strategically neutral: perfectly compatible with the liberal-democratic regimes condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, perfectly adaptable to a future ecumenical and religiously indifferentist setting.
2. Bureaucratic sacralization of a geographic micro-unit:
– The emphasis on the thirty municipalities of the “Valle de Toranzo” and on patronage formulas is saturated with administrative precision but emptied of doctrinal urgency.
– It reduces Marian patronage to a localized ecclesiastical branding exercise, detached from the duty of cities and nations to confess the true faith.
3. Absence of confessional clarity:
– There is no reaffirmation that salvation is found solely in the Catholic Church, no echo of Pius IX’s condemnation of indifferentism (Syllabus, prop. 15–18), no reminder of the obligation of rulers and peoples to recognize the one true religion.
– By 1959, after two centuries of liberal and masonic assault on Spain and Europe, an authentic successor of Pius X would have seized every Marian act as a weapon against *laicismus* and Modernism. Here, silence reigns.
The tone is carefully calibrated to appear impeccably Catholic while avoiding all conflict with the modern world—the very attitude Pius IX condemned in Syllabus prop. 80, where he rejects the notion that the Roman Pontiff can or should “reconcile himself” with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization understood in the masonic sense.
Theological Evasion: Marian Patronage Severed from the Kingship of Christ
Measured by pre-1958 magisterial doctrine, the gravest problem is not what is said about Mary, but what is strategically unsaid:
1. No subordination to the objective social Kingship of Christ:
– Pius XI taught unambiguously that the disasters of nations flow from “very many having removed Jesus Christ and His most holy law from their customs, from private, family, and public life,” and he instituted the Feast of Christ the King to proclaim that “the state must not ignore the commandments of God nor legislate contrary to them” (Quas Primas, 1925).
– In “Potiora inter” there is no least indication that the Toranzo region, Spain, or any civil authority is bound to subject itself publicly to Christ the King and to His one Church.
– Patronage is treated purely intra-ecclesially, as a devotional prerogative; the public ordering of society to God’s law—central to Quas Primas—is erased in practice.
2. No denunciation of liberalism, socialism, or masonic subversion:
– Pius IX explicitly identified masonic sects as the core engine of the “synagogue of Satan” warring against the Church and Christian society, and condemned the laicist separation of Church and State as an error (Syllabus, prop. 55).
– The Spanish Civil War desecrations mentioned in the letter are described in bare terms of “religion vexata ac foede deturpata.” There is no naming of the underlying anti-Catholic ideologies, no doctrinal condemnation, no call to Catholic militancy.
– Such attenuation is not accidental; it is characteristic of the conciliar mentality that would soon entrench itself: condemn nothing clearly, avoid stigmatizing modern errors, leave room for “dialogue.”
3. Marian devotion without doctrinal edge:
– Authentic Marian cult is inseparable from doctrinal clarity and from the rejection of heresy. St. Pius X’s battle against Modernism was profoundly Marian; he spoke of Mary as the destroyer of all heresies, and under him, condemnations (Lamentabili, Pascendi) were explicit, precise, and binding.
– “Potiora inter” isolates a Marian title and coronation from any engagement with Modernism or doctrinal struggle, as if Marian veneration were an aesthetically pleasant but dogmatically declawed ornament.
This is the inversion: Mary, who in Catholic tradition is the terror of demons and vanquisher of heresies, is here employed as a ceremonial seal for a hierarchy already moving to reconcile itself with the very forces condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
Symptom of the Conciliar Revolution: Piety as a Tool of Disorientation
To understand this document as an integral symptom, we must situate it in its historical-theological context:
– 1959: John XXIII has already announced the calling of the so-called Second Vatican Council (January 25, 1959).
– The same individual who here speaks in venerable Latin about crowning an image of Our Lady will open the door to:
– Ecumenism that relativizes the dogma “outside the Church no salvation.”
– Religious liberty theories in direct contradiction to the Syllabus and Quas Primas.
– The reform trajectory culminating in the new “Mass,” doctrinally evacuated sacramental rites, collegiality, and the practical dismantling of Catholic statehood.
Seen from the perspective of integral Catholic faith, “Potiora inter” functions as:
1. Psychological pacification:
– The faithful are offered familiar forms—Latin decrees, Marian coronations, references to miracles and religious orders—while the underlying authority structure is already in usurpation and preparing a violent doctrinal mutation.
– This is the classic method of subversion: preserve appearances long enough for the revolution to root itself.
2. Liturgical-institutional capture:
– By binding the local devotion’s canonical status, patronage, and coronation directly to the person of John XXIII and his “Apostolic authority,” the neo-church welds authentic popular Marian piety to its own counterfeit magisterium.
– This creates a psychological equivalence: to question the usurper or the conciliar program appears, to simple faithful, as questioning Mary’s patronage herself.
3. Shift from supernatural combat to pastoral sentimentalism:
– The document contains no call to penance, no reference to the Four Last Things, no warning against sacrilege, no emphasis on the necessity of being in a state of grace, no doctrinal teaching on Marian mediation ordered to the Cross.
– Instead, it speaks of Mary attracting hearts and dispensing graces, while reducing the whole to an ecclesiastically administered honorific system.
– Silence about the supernatural stakes is, as indicated, the gravest accusation: it disarms souls.
In light of Pius X’s condemnation in Lamentabili and Pascendi of those who would historicize, dilute, or sentimentalize dogma, and of Pius IX’s condemnation of liberal Catholicism, this soft, purely celebratory Marian act is symptomatic of the coming apostasy: an ecclesial establishment that preserves emotional devotions while preparing to betray their doctrinal substance.
Contrast with Pre-1958 Magisterial Pattern: What Is Missing Speaks Loudest
When authentic Popes engaged Marian patronage or coronations, they organically inserted:
– Clear confessional teaching:
– Affirmation of the unique truth of the Catholic Church.
– Exclusion of other religions as salvific paths.
– Doctrinal and moral exhortation:
– Calls to conversion, penance, defense of chastity, fidelity to the Most Holy Sacrifice, and adherence to the Magisterium.
– Social doctrine:
– Demands that civil laws and institutions conform to divine and natural law.
– Rebukes to governments that persecuted the Church or enthroned secularism.
“Potiora inter” is conspicuously devoid of:
– Any explicit insistence that the faithful of Toranzo must reject the principles condemned in the Syllabus: indifferentism, separation of Church and State, subjecting the Church to civil power, freedom of cults, etc.
– Any warning against the modernist errors systematized by St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi.
– Any doctrinal anchoring of Marian patronage in the Kingship of Christ as taught in Quas Primas.
– Any insistence on the necessity of sanctifying grace, confession of sins, and adherence to the immutable dogma for obtaining Mary’s intercession.
This systematic omission is not theological innocence; it is tactical silence. The paramasonic structure occupying Rome could not openly repudiate Pius IX and St. Pius X in 1959; it therefore spoke a language that sounded Catholic while omitting precisely those elements that would soon be repudiated in practice.
Usurped Jurisdiction and the Abuse of Marian Language
A crucial point, often obscured, must be addressed: the document’s juridical style presupposes that John XXIII possessed the *plenitudo potestatis* (fullness of Apostolic power). However:
– Traditional theologians (e.g., St. Robert Bellarmine) hold that a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church, since he is not a member of it; he loses all jurisdiction *ipso facto* (*as such, by the fact itself*).
– Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code declares ecclesiastical offices vacant by tacit resignation in cases of public defection from the faith.
– The very conciliar program later spearheaded under this line of claimants—religious liberty divorced from truth, ecumenism that treats false religions as salvific partners, liturgical abuses that undermine belief in the Sacrifice and Real Presence—reveals an objective rupture with prior teaching.
While the detailed juridical conclusion about John XXIII’s status relies on broader evidence than this one document, “Potiora inter” must be read as an act of a structure already in doctrinal drift, leveraging Marian devotion to reinforce obedience to that drift.
Thus its solemn claims:
“harum Litterarum vi perpetuumque in modum… praecipuam apud Deum Patronam… confirmamus vel constituimus ac declaramus…”
are theologically parasitic: they borrow a style whose authority they no longer truly share. The piety expressed becomes an adornment for an authority which, by its subsequent fruits, manifests opposition to the integral Catholic faith.
Pious Appearances Masking the Road to the Abomination
Summarizing the layers:
– Factual:
– A traditional-looking local Marian decree; historically plausible shrine; customary canonical coronation.
– Linguistic:
– Smooth, “safe,” devout Latin; avoidance of controversial doctrinal or social assertions; no clash with liberal powers.
– Theological:
– Marian devotion isolated from doctrinal militancy, from the Kingship of Christ, from opposition to Modernism.
– No echo of Quas Primas, the Syllabus, Lamentabili, Pascendi, or the anti-masonic warnings of the true Popes.
– Symptomatic:
– Model example of early conciliar methodology: preserve external forms, empty their fighting spirit, gently reorient the faithful to trust the new orientation.
– Use of Marian coronation to anesthetize resistance and to make obedience to a future revolution appear as continuity with tradition.
What appears as a harmless and even “beautiful” act of honoring Our Lady of El Soto thus belongs to the tragic strategy by which the conciliar sect domesticated, neutralized, and then redirected genuine Catholic devotions to serve an anti-doctrinal agenda.
Authentic integral Catholic faith must therefore:
– Distinguish rigorously between:
– The legitimate, pre-conciliar rooted Marian devotion of the faithful of Iruz and Toranzo;
– And the counterfeit imprimatur imposed upon it by a structure that would soon promote religious liberty, collegiality, false ecumenism, and liturgical demolition.
– Reclaim Marian cult from its exploitation by modernist authorities:
– Mary must be honored as Queen who commands conversion, penance, uncompromising adherence to the one true faith, and public recognition of Christ the King.
– Any Marian devotion instrumentalized to habituate souls to the conciliar revolution must be purified of that contamination.
The ultimate indictment of “Potiora inter” is that it uses the Virgin’s crown as a decorative prelude to crowning man in her Son’s place. Those who truly love the Mother must refuse to let her name and image be used to authenticate the slow construction of the abomination of desolation in the holy place.
Source:
Potiora Inter (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025