The text under review is a short Latin congratulatory letter from John XXIII to Amleto Giovanni Cicognani on the occasion of Cicognani’s approaching 80th birthday, sent in February 1963, praising his diligence in handling the “public affairs of the Church,” recalling his curial and diplomatic services (especially as Delegate in the USA and in matters concerning the Eastern Churches and Vatican II), and imparting an “Apostolic” blessing. It is a self-referential, courtly panegyric that silently presupposes the legitimacy of the conciliar revolution it serves.
Panegyric as Manifesto of Usurpation: John XXIII’s Cult of the Apparatus
Glorification of a System Detached from the Kingship of Christ
Already the occasion and structure of this letter expose its underlying pathology. John XXIII, the inaugurator of the conciliar catastrophe, addresses Cicognani as the faithful executor of “public affairs of the Church” and, in doing so, unveils the spirit with which the conciliar sect reorganized the visible structures of Catholicism.
He extols him as:
“Adiutor sane es Noster sedulissimus, quem non solum magni ducimus, sed apprime etiam diligimus.”
(“Indeed you are Our most diligent helper, whom We not only esteem highly, but also love exceedingly.”)
This is not mere etiquette. From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine before 1958, several grave elements emerge:
– The text is obsessed with bureaucratic efficiency, diplomatic seniority, and curial service, while remaining absolutely silent about:
– The defense of the integral faith against heresy;
– The duty to uphold the exclusive social Kingship of Christ;
– The salvation of souls, the horror of sin, the necessity of the *status gratiae* (state of grace);
– The objective betrayal being prepared under the label of “Vatican II.”
Such silence, in a document that pretends to be pontifical, is not accidental. It is the very mark of the new religion: a cult of administrative loyalty replacing zeal for the *regnum Christi*.
Pius XI in *Quas Primas* taught with crystalline clarity that peace and order come only from recognizing Christ’s royal rights over individuals and nations and that laicism is a plague corroding society at its roots. Here, by contrast, the one who unleashed the pseudo-council glorifies a functionary of the nascent neo-church without the slightest reminder that every ecclesiastical office is ordered *per se* to the public confession of Christ the King and the condemnation of error. The contrast is doctrinally decisive.
The Omission that Condemns: No Mention of the True End of Ecclesiastical Office
The pre-1958 Magisterium taught unambiguously:
– The Church is a perfect and sovereign society with divine rights, not subject to civil power (Pius IX, *Syllabus*, especially propositions 19, 39, 55 condemned).
– The hierarchy exists for one supreme purpose: *salus animarum* (salvation of souls) through guarding doctrine, administering true sacraments, and condemning heresy.
– Any ecclesiastical dignity severed from doctrinal fidelity and sacrificial ministry is a caricature.
In this light, the entire letter is theologically damning by what it does not say:
– No mention that Cicognani’s function is to defend the Catholic faith against the very modernist tendencies later enthroned by Vatican II.
– No mention of the need to resist the secular powers and Masonic sects unmasked by Pius IX as the “synagogue of Satan” waging war against the Church (see the appended teaching in the Syllabus context).
– No mention of the Most Holy Sacrifice as the heart of priestly and curial life.
– No exhortation to persevere in combating error; instead, a serene celebration of a career embedded in the machinery that would soon promulgate documents on “religious liberty” and “ecumenism” directly contradicting prior condemnations.
This silence is not benign. According to the constant teaching reaffirmed by St. Pius X in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi*, Modernism manifests itself not only by explicit heretical theses but by systematic suppression of dogmatic clarity, the evacuation of supernatural finalities, and the replacement of the fight for truth with activism, organization, and sentiment. Here we see exactly that: a spiritually empty exaltation of a man because he serves the structures of a revolution.
Linguistic Flattery as Symptom of a New Humanistic Religion
The tone of the letter is revealing. John XXIII writes with effusive, almost sentimental praise:
“Etenim religionis studio, generosa et simplici indole, rerum agendarum prudentia exornatus et praeditus, numquam intermissis curis, consilii maturitate et multiplici navitate Nos iuvas.”
(“Indeed, endowed and adorned with zeal for religion, noble and simple character, prudence in affairs, you help Us by unceasing efforts, maturity of counsel and manifold activity.”)
Critical observations:
– “Zeal for religion” is asserted, but never defined as zeal for the integral Catholic faith against condemned errors.
– “Prudence in affairs,” “maturity of counsel,” “manifold activity” are praised, but without any reference to defending dogma or opposing liberalism, naturalism, or false ecumenism.
– The rhetoric is that of a secular chancery: performance review plus affectionate compliments.
Pre-1958 popes, when praising collaborators, constantly linked such praise to doctrinal firmness and militant opposition to error. Here, the deliberate abstraction from doctrinal combat signals a shift: ecclesiastical office is reinterpreted as technocratic management within a religious NGO.
The style betrays what Pius X condemned: replacing *veritas revelata* with a fluid “religious sentiment,” substituting precise dogmatic language with vague ethical-psychological attributes. This bureaucratic humanism is the linguistic clothing of apostasy.
Theological Inversion: Service to Vatican II as Criterion of Merit
One passage unmasks the heart of the text:
“…itemque, ad Oecumenici Concilii Vaticani secundi celebrationem quod attinet, tibi commissas praegraves sustinens partes, praeclara tibi comparasti et comparas merita.”
(“…and also, as regards the celebration of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, by bearing the very weighty roles entrusted to you, you have acquired and are acquiring distinguished merits.”)
Here the cancer is named. “Merit” is explicitly tied to service rendered to the Second Vatican Council. From the unchanging doctrine:
– *Vatican II* taught religious liberty and collegiality in forms irreconcilable with the condemnations of Pius IX in the *Syllabus* and with the doctrine of the unique rights of the true Church.
– It propagated “ecumenism” that contradicts the axiom *extra Ecclesiam nulla salus* rightly understood and reduces the Church to one element among many.
– It introduced the principles later used to deform the liturgy, ecclesiology, and moral teaching.
Therefore, to proclaim as “distinguished merits” the logistical support of this council is to canonize the betrayal of prior dogma. It confirms the modernist principle condemned in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*: that doctrine and Church structure evolve under historical “needs,” and that those who engineer this mutation are benefactors.
In authentic Catholic theology:
– No “merit” exists in serving a project that disseminates propositions previously condemned.
– *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio* of Paul IV, together with the explanation of St. Robert Bellarmine and classical canonists, affirms that a manifest heretic cannot hold authority in the Church and that any promotion obtained in heresy is null. When one publicly glorifies as “merit” one’s essential role in a revolution against received doctrine, this constitutes at least moral proof of adhesion to heresy.
Thus this letter is a self-accusation. It shows John XXIII publicly rewarding complicity in the conciliar enterprise that structurally contradicts the pre-1958 Magisterium; such behavior is incompatible with the office of a true Roman Pontiff, whose first duty is to guard and transmit, not innovate and subvert.
Public Affairs Reinterpreted: From Defense of the Faith to Diplomatic Accommodation
John XXIII praises Cicognani for his role in:
“In Romanae Curiae gravioribus usque in annos fungendis officiis, ac praesertim Apostolicus in Foederatis Americae Civitatibus Delegatus, Sacri Consilii Ecclesiae Orientali praepositi a secretis…”
(“Fulfilling for years serious offices in the Roman Curia, especially as Apostolic Delegate in the United States of America, secretary to the Sacred Congregation for the Eastern Church…”)
Key issue: how is “public affairs of the Church” (*publicis Ecclesiae negotiis*) conceived?
– Before 1958, such affairs were doctrinally subordinated to Christ’s sovereignty and to the Church’s right to direct states and societies according to divine law (Pius XI, *Quas Primas*; Pius IX, *Syllabus*).
– Under the emerging conciliar mentality, “public affairs” increasingly meant:
– Diplomatic coexistence with secularist regimes;
– Soft-pedalling of condemnations;
– Opening to “religious liberty” and “dialogue” with false religions and schisms.
This letter fits precisely the latter pattern. It glorifies the tools of accommodation without reminding them of their obligation to confess:
“Non est alia salus, non est aliud nomen… in quo oporteat nos salvos fieri.”
(“There is no other salvation, no other Name in which we must be saved.”)
The mutilation is qualitative: those occupying the Vatican speak as if the Church’s mission were primarily diplomatic and humanitarian, with supernatural ends reduced to pious background noise. This is the mentality that prepared and executed the replacement of the Catholic order with the conciliar sect.
Cheap Benediction: The Hollow Seal of a Counter-Magisterium
The letter culminates in bestowing an “Apostolic Blessing”:
“Huius rei causa Apostolicam Benedictionem, superni praesidii et muniminis auspicem, tibi, Venerabilis Frater Noster, perquam libenter impertimus.”
(“For this reason we very gladly impart to you, our Venerable Brother, the Apostolic Blessing, as a pledge of heavenly protection and defence.”)
In itself, the formula is traditional. But its theological weight depends entirely on whether the one who pronounces it is in fact a Catholic pope or a usurper propagating condemned doctrines.
Measured solely by the pre-1958 standard:
– A pontiff who convenes and drives a council that legitimizes religious liberty, false ecumenism, and doctrinal evolution directly contradicts the Magisterium of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
– A blessing that seals “merit” in promoting Vatican II is objectively a pseudo-blessing, for God does not authenticate betrayal of His own prior teaching.
The contrast with Pius XI in *Quas Primas* is particularly sharp. Pius XI institutes the feast of Christ the King precisely as an antidote to secularism and liberalism, recalls the binding condemnations of modern civilization’s apostasy, and commands public recognition of Christ’s reign. John XXIII, instead, confirms and encourages operatives of a project that subverts those very condemnations in practice. The so-called “Apostolic Blessing” here functions as the liturgical ornament of a different religion.
Structural Fruits of the Conciliar Sect: Bureaucracy over Sacrifice, Human Esteem over Truth
This brief text, read in continuity with the acts of John XXIII, manifests several structural characteristics of post-conciliarism:
1. Substitution of bureaucratic fidelity for confessional fidelity.
– The letter praises loyalty to the apparatus, not fidelity to integral doctrine.
– The “good and faithful servant” is the man who facilitates Vatican II, not he who defends the dogmas anathematized by the modern world.
2. Naturalistic and horizontalist outlook.
– The whole text moves on the plane of human recognition, career, age, and emotion.
– No evocation of judgment, hell, necessity of perseverance in orthodoxy; no reminder that an 80-year-old prelate approaches the tribunal of God and must give account of the faith guarded or betrayed.
3. Systemic silence on the enemies exposed by the pre-1958 Magisterium.
– While Pius IX and his successors denounced Freemasonry, liberalism, and the pseudo-rights of man, this letter does not even hint at the ongoing war against the Church. Instead, it congratulates a high functionary in a moment when the real enemies are being invited as “observers” to a council that will accommodate them.
4. Implicit redefinition of “merit” and “virtue.”
– Merit is no longer measured by adherence to the deposit of faith (*depositum fidei*), as Trent and Vatican I demand, but by effective participation in its mutation.
These are not accidental emphases; they are coherent fruits of the modernist spirit condemned in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*, now enthroned as praxis.
Contrast with the Pre-Conciliar Norm: Why This Letter Is Spiritually Empty
To grasp fully the bankruptcy of this text, one must set it against genuine papal teaching:
– Pius IX in the *Syllabus* denounces religious indifferentism, the subjugation of the Church to the state, the cult of progress and liberalism, and the separation of Church and State. None of these are reaffirmed or even faintly echoed.
– Pius X in *Lamentabili* condemns the reduction of doctrine to evolving religious consciousness, the subjection of Scripture and dogma to history, and the denial of the Church’s right to impose doctrinal assent. Yet the man praised here as a key operator of Vatican II is being rewarded precisely for assisting in a council that operationalizes those condemned errors.
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* insists that civil and ecclesiastical authorities must acknowledge and publicly honor Christ’s Kingship, and that any politics without Christ is ruin. This text, however, exalts a diplomat of compromise without reminding him that his first duty is to bring nations under Christ’s law, not to reconcile Christ’s Church with the principles of 1789.
In other words: the panegyric is not “neutral piety.” It is the expression of a new hierarchy of values: continuity of office titles without continuity of faith; solemn phrases without supernatural content; blessings poured out on those who help dismantle the very order authentic popes had established.
Symptom of the Counterfeit: Courtiers of a New Religion
From an integral Catholic standpoint, the portrait of Cicognani crafted here is deeply symptomatic:
– A lifetime career in diplomacy and curial management presented as unambiguously “meritorious” without any criterion of doctrinal militancy;
– His central role in preparing and sustaining Vatican II exalted as proof of excellence;
– His services regarding the Eastern Churches praised without any mention of calling schismatics back to the one true fold, thereby hinting at the ecumenical relativism that would flourish after the council.
This is precisely how a paramasonic, neo-Catholic structure self-legitimizes: by showering mutual praise on its architects, invoking traditional vocabulary emptied of its substance, and never once recalling that divine judgment will measure them not by their support for a revolutionary council but by their fidelity to the perennial Magisterium they helped to bypass.
The letter thus serves as a small but clear window into the conciliar sect’s psychology: the religion of institutional self-congratulation, not the religion of the Cross; the beatification of administrators, not of confessors of truth.
Conclusion: A Hollow Benediction over the Machinery of Apostasy
The text of 24 February 1963 is short, but the omissions are thunderous:
– No explicit heresy needed to expose its spirit; it suffices that every supernatural note required of a true pontifical exhortation is absent or subordinated to bureaucratic flattery.
– The only concrete theological point is the praise of Cicognani’s role in Vatican II, which, measured by the pre-1958 standard, is praise for cooperating in a project of doctrinal subversion.
– The habitual refusal to invoke the Kingship of Christ, the duty of states and clerics to submit to His law, and the obligation to condemn modern errors, confirms the modernist displacement of Catholic order.
Thus this “letter” stands as a minor but crystalline artifact of the new regime: a sacralized memorandum of a usurping structure, in which “merit” is defined as zeal in serving the conciliar revolution, and “Apostolic Blessing” is invoked as a decorative seal upon infidelity.
Under the unchanging criteria of the pre-1958 Magisterium, such a text is not the benign courtesy of a true pope but the courtly language of a counterfeit hierarchy solidifying its own apparatus while leading countless souls away from the authentic reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King.
Source:
Octogesimum mox – Ad Hamletum Ioannem tit. Ecclesiae suburbicariae Tusculanae S. R. E. Cardinalem Cicognani, publicis Ecclesiae negotiis praepositum, octogesimum diem natalem celebraturum (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025