The analyzed constitution, issued under the name of John XXIII on 25 April 1959, formally erects two new ecclesiastical provinces in British Central Africa (Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland), transforms existing vicariates into dioceses, designates metropolitan sees (Lusaka and Blantyre), assigns Latin-rite cathedrals and local ordinaries, and subordinates them all to the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith – ostensibly to consolidate Catholic hierarchy where “the faith has greatly increased.”
Yet precisely in this seemingly pious act we see the maturing strategy of a man already preparing the conciliar revolution: transforming true missionary hierarchy into a scaffold for the coming neo-church, masking political-religious subservience and ecclesiological corruption under canonical formalities.
Colonial Cartography of Souls: Hierarchy as Pre-Conciliar Shell for a Coming Usurpation
At the factual level, the document:
– Establishes:
– The ecclesiastical province of “Rhodesiae Septemtrionalis” with:
– Metropolitan archdiocese of Lusaka
– Dioceses of Abercorn, Fort Jameson, Kasama, Livingstone, Ndola
– The ecclesiastical province of “Nyassaland” with:
– Metropolitan archdiocese of Blantyre
– Dioceses of Dedza, Lilongwe, Zomba
– Maintains dependence on the Congregation de Propaganda Fide.
– Transfers then-titular bishops to the newly erected sees.
– Orders erection of seminaries and (if possible) cathedral chapters or at least diocesan consultors.
– Regulates execution and authentic copies; annuls contrary provisions.
On the surface, this looks like a typical pre-1958 missionary consolidation. But read in the full light of what followed — the convocation of Vatican II by this same John XXIII, the doctrinal demolition denounced by St. Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili, and the post-1958 betrayal of Christ’s Kingship condemned by Pius XI in Quas Primas — it becomes the juridical pre-structuring of African Catholic life for capture by the conciliar sect.
The constitution reveals four interwoven pathologies:
– A geopolitical, not supernatural, logic of “growth” and promotion.
– An implicit preparation for episcopal collectivism and democratized governance.
– A colonization of African Catholicism by European missionary elites soon to be standard-bearers of Modernism.
– A silent, but decisive, subordination of the Church’s mission to emerging secular-national orders, in open contradiction to the Syllabus of Errors.
Each aspect must be dissected without illusions.
Administrative Expansion without Supernatural Depth
Factual level: The text speaks repeatedly of the “great increase” of the faith as the sufficient motive for erecting provinces:
“Cum christiana fides his praesertim temporibus magna cepisset in Rhodesiae Septemtrionalis oris atque in Nyassaland incrementa…”
Translation: “Since in these times especially the Christian faith had made great progress on the coasts of Northern Rhodesia and in Nyasaland…”
But how is “progress” understood?
– No mention:
– of catechetical depth,
– of extirpation of pagan superstition,
– of confession of the integral Roman faith against Protestantism and masonry,
– of the social reign of Christ the King over colonial and emerging national regimes.
– Purely quantitative vocabulary: more faithful, more structures, more sees.
This is an early symptom of that naturalistic and sociological notion of “Church growth” which Pius IX condemned when he rejected the idea that truth is determined or vindicated by numbers or historical success (Syllabus 3, 77–80). Authentic Catholic missionary reasoning is supernatural:
– The Church exists ad salutem animarum (for the salvation of souls).
– Structures follow doctrine and sanctity; they do not constitute them.
Here, however, the constitution presupposes that the multiplication of dioceses is almost self-evidently virtuous. There is not one serious doctrinal admonition against:
– Protestant sects then aggressively active in Central Africa.
– Freemasonic, socialist, or nationalist ideologies which Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius XI denounced.
– Syncretistic cults and superstition.
Instead of the language of supernatural militancy, we get bureaucratic rearrangement. This is the mentality that would soon cheerfully hand these structures to the conciliar revolution.
Technocratic Latin: The Rhetoric of a Juridical Machine Emptying the Faith
Linguistic level: The constitution is written in formal curial Latin, but its style is telling.
Characteristic traits:
– Hyper-formal, impersonal verbs: “condimus,” “erigimus,” “transferimus,” “concedimus,” “imponimus.”
– Mechanical enumeration of sees, titles, cathedrals, and privileges.
– Repeated concern for:
– procedural execution,
– sending authenticated copies,
– guaranteeing canonical form.
What is almost entirely absent?
– Any explicit call to preserve Catholic doctrine intact against the errors of the age.
– Any warning against Modernism, although St. Pius X had very recently condemned it as “omnium haeresum collectum” (“the synthesis of all heresies”).
– Any solemn insistence on the necessity of the integral Roman faith for salvation in these regions, in the spirit of Pius IX’s condemnation of indifferentism (Syllabus 15–18).
– Any reminder that civil authorities must publicly recognize Christ’s Kingship (Pius XI, Quas Primas).
The rhetoric is that of an efficient international organization distributing jurisdictions — the vocabulary of a para-state apparatus, not of the Church Militant confronting paganism, Protestantism, and masonry. This is precisely the tonal drift that would culminate in the anthropocentric verbiage of Vatican II: the vocabulary betrays the doctrinal disease.
Silence about:
– the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as propitiatory,
– confession,
– the state of grace,
– the Four Last Things,
is not a mere omission. Within Catholic tradition, such silence at the moment of erecting entire provinces is itself accusatory. In the age of the Syllabus and Pascendi, a papal act touching such strategic missions should resound with doctrinal clarity. Here: nothing. The constitution treats dioceses as administrative districts of a neutral religious corporation.
Ecclesiological Engineering in Service of the Coming Conciliar Sect
Theological level: We must ask what kind of ecclesiology is presupposed.
The constitution:
– Elevates missionary vicariates to full dioceses and metropolitan sees.
– Pads the hierarchy with European religious superiors and a token indigenous bishop.
– Binds all to the Congregation of Propaganda Fide.
– Encourages erection of seminary and chapter structures modeled on European canonical form.
None of this is wrong in itself, if ordered to safeguarding integral doctrine and the Roman Primacy as defined at Vatican I (Pastor Aeternus). But the historical and doctrinal context, now fully visible, reveals another logic.
1. The timing:
– 1959: John XXIII is already steering toward Vatican II.
– The same hand that signs this constitution will convoke the council that:
– undermines the exclusive truth of the Catholic Church,
– enthrones religious liberty (condemned in the Syllabus),
– and operationalizes episcopal conferences as semi-autonomous political bodies.
2. The chosen personnel:
– Men formed in an environment increasingly tolerant of the very Modernist trends Pius X anathematized.
– These bishops will become the local transmission belt of conciliar errors in Africa: ecumenism, religious liberty, liturgical subversion, inculturation degenerating into syncretism.
3. The implicit ecclesiology:
– By constructing fully “mature” provinces immediately before Vatican II, John XXIII effectively locks African Catholics into a hierarchy that will, within a few years, cease to profess the integral Roman faith publicly.
– Thus, the appearance of continuity is maintained: “the same” dioceses, “the same” sees, now simply updated by the council — a textbook instance of the Modernist hermeneutica continuitatis myth.
This operation is exactly what St. Pius X warned against: Modernism that does not destroy institutions overnight, but infiltrates and then mutates them from within. The constitution is a structural prelude to that mutation.
From Quas Primas to Neo-Colonial Obedience: Christ the King Silenced
Symptomatic level: Pius XI, in Quas Primas, teaches that peace and order can only be restored when individuals and states publicly recognize Christ’s Kingship; he condemns laicism and the relegation of religion to the private sphere as the root of modern catastrophe.
In contrast, this 1959 constitution:
– Never once demands from colonial authorities or emerging African elites:
– recognition of the social Kingship of Christ,
– conforming civil laws to divine and natural law.
– Speaks as if ecclesiastical reshaping could be carried out in a political vacuum, as if the Syllabus’s condemnation of liberalism, indifferentism, and Masonic conspiracies did not apply in British Central Africa.
Yet:
– These territories were laboratories of:
– Protestant influence,
– freemasonic networks,
– decolonization processes saturated with secular nationalism and socialism.
To erect provinces without doctrinally arming them is to send them to battle unarmed — or worse, to hand them over in advance to the enemy. The constitution’s human-resources tone tacitly accepts the liberal order Pius IX and Pius XI condemned:
– No explicit rejection of separation of Church and State, which Pius IX branded an error (Syllabus 55).
– No condemnation of secular school systems; yet Pius IX denounced exactly such systems that exclude the Church from education (48).
– No warning about masonry, though the Holy See had repeatedly exposed its anti-Catholic plots.
Silence here is complicity. It trains the new African hierarchy to live comfortably within secular frameworks, making them later receptive to the conciliar cult of “religious freedom” and “dialogue.”
Seminaries without Dogma: Manufacturing Future Apostates
The constitution orders:
“Curent Ordinarii Antistites ut in sua quisque Sede Seminarium saltem elementarium, si desit, construat…”
“Let the Ordinaries take care that in each See an elementary seminary at least, if lacking, be built…”
On its face, this is standard. But consider:
– The command is purely structural: build seminaries.
– No insistence that:
– professors adhere strictly to pre-1958 papal condemnations of Modernism,
– candidates be formed in Thomistic doctrine (as required by the Magisterium),
– books condemned by Lamentabili, Pascendi, and the Index be excluded.
By 1959, the infiltration of Modernist theology into seminaries in Europe was notorious. To propagate seminaries under bishops who will soon be subject to conciliar “renewal” is to create factories where African clergy are to be re-educated in:
– ecumenism,
– evolution of dogma,
– religious liberty,
– liturgical deconstruction.
Thus, under the guise of prudent institution-building, John XXIII furnishes the conciliar sect with an indigenous clergy cadre ready to embrace the neo-church.
Token Indigenization as Pretext for Doctrinal Dilution
The document highlights the appointment of Cornelius Citsulo, “of the indigenous clergy of Nyasa,” as bishop of Dedza. Superficially, this is laudable: the Church has always encouraged native clergy and hierarchy, provided they are formed in the same integral faith.
However, in the conciliar context that John XXIII is about to unleash, this “indigenization” is weaponized:
– to detach local churches psychologically from Rome as the doctrinal center,
– to relativize doctrine under the guise of “inculturation,”
– to present Catholicism no longer as one supernatural and supra-cultural faith, but as a mosaic of local “churches” dialoguing with culture.
The 1959 constitution pre-structures the narrative: “See, Africa has her own bishops and provinces, therefore the local ‘church’ can adapt doctrine and worship.” This is precisely contrary to the perennial Magisterium, which insists that:
– Doctrine is one, immutable, supra-cultural.
– Rites and disciplines may vary, but the faith professed is identical.
Instead of strongly affirming this, the constitution’s silence allows later Modernists to reinterpret these new provinces as laboratories of inculturated post-Catholicism.
Episcopal Collegiality in Embryo: Conferences over Catholicity
The document states that certain jurisdictions, though not part of a province, may attend episcopal meetings:
“Nyassae Septemtrionalis, Arcis Rosebery, et De Solwezi… poterunt tamen earum Antistites conventibus episcopalibus interesse.”
Translation: “As regards the ecclesiastical circumscriptions of Northern Nyasa, Fort Rosebery, and Solwezi, although belonging to no province, their Ordinaries may nevertheless take part in episcopal meetings.”
This seemingly minor clause is in fact significant:
– It anticipates the conciliar and post-conciliar exaltation of episcopal conferences and collegial bodies.
– It habituates bishops to conceive authority horizontally (through meetings) rather than vertically (through the Primacy of a true Roman Pontiff safeguarding tradition).
Pius IX and Vatican I clearly affirmed:
– The Pope’s jurisdiction is full, immediate, and ordinary over every church.
– Councils and conferences are subordinate and cannot reconfigure doctrine or governance against tradition.
Here we see the pre-conciliar shell of collegiality: gatherings that later will be used to coordinate liturgical wreckage and doctrinal dilution across entire regions in obedience to the conciliar sect. The African episcopate, as reorganized here, becomes structurally apt to become a block-voting instrument at Vatican II and a relay station for the neo-church.
The Irony of “Perpetual Memory”: A Null Seal for a Future Usurper
The document closes with solemn formulae:
“Datum Romae… Pontificatus Nostri primo.”
“Given at Rome… in the first year of Our Pontificate.”
Along with:
– Threats of penalties for those who despise these decrees.
– Declarations that contrary acts are null and void.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this double irony emerges:
1. The same John XXIII who here postures as guardian of canonical order will convoke a council that:
– disregards the Syllabus of Errors,
– subverts the social Kingship of Christ taught in Quas Primas,
– encourages the very Modernist evolution of dogma condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi.
2. These African provinces, solemnly established “for all time,” are within a few years integrated into the conciliar sect — the “Church of the New Advent” which:
– embraces religious liberty,
– promotes false ecumenism with heretics and pagans,
– replaces the Most Holy Sacrifice with a man-centered rite,
– collaborates with Masonic and globalist projects.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (“the law of prayer is the law of belief”): the sees and cathedrals “erected” here will, after the introduction of the new rite, largely cease to offer the authentic Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary and will instead stage the neo-rite that embodies doctrinal rupture. Thus, the canonical structures described in painstaking detail are hollowed out from within.
When a so-called apostolic constitution prepares ecclesiastical containers that will be handed to a future antipope and his conciliar sect, its pathos of “perpetual memory” reveals itself as juridical hubris masked as Catholic continuity.
Subservience to the World against Pius IX’s Syllabus
Connecting to the Syllabus of Errors:
– Pius IX condemned:
– the subjection of the Church to the State (19–21, 55),
– secular control of education (45–48),
– indifferentism and equalization of religions (15–18),
– reconciliation with “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (80).
Yet this constitution’s entire approach is:
– Harmonious with colonial administrative logic.
– Politically aseptic, as if the Church can be planted without confronting liberal, Masonic, and Protestant domination.
The omission is damning:
– Where pre-1958 popes unmasked anti-Catholic systems, John XXIII’s act refuses to name them.
– This rhetorical neutrality is already an alignment with the very “progress” Pius IX declared irreconcilable with the Church.
Thus we see: the Rhodesia–Nyasaland jurisdictional grid is not a bastion against liberal modernity; it is a grid ready-made for the modernist occupation.
The Spiritual Cost: Souls Delivered to a Counterfeit Hierarchy
From the perspective of salvation, the gravest element is not the canonical detail, but the spiritual consequence:
– By 1959, the warning lights were blazing:
– Modernist theology resurfacing,
– biblical criticism overturning inspiration and inerrancy (see the propositions condemned in Lamentabili),
– ecumenical relativism fermenting.
A truly Catholic pontiff, raising new provinces in such a context, would:
– Reiterate uncompromisingly:
– Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus rightly understood.
– The authority of the pre-existing Magisterium over all novelty.
– The necessity of Thomistic doctrine in seminaries.
– The obligation of rulers and peoples to submit to Christ the King publicly.
Instead, this constitution chooses:
– bureaucratic neutrality,
– procedural solemnity,
– and a blindness that history proves was no accident.
Result:
– Millions of sincere African faithful were welded into diocesan structures whose leadership would, within a few years, collaborate in:
– the destruction of the traditional liturgy,
– the diffusion of false ecumenism,
– the acceptance of religious liberty,
– and the muting of the Syllabus and Quas Primas.
The ecclesiastical machine created here becomes the very instrument for leading souls away from integral Catholic faith.
Conclusion: An Empty Edifice Prepared for Occupation
The 1959 constitution on Rhodesia and Nyasaland, read merely as a technical act, may seem innocuous or even admirable. But under sober scrutiny against the unchanging doctrine of the pre-1958 Magisterium, it is:
– a paradigmatic instance of hierarchical institutionalism detached from doctrinal militancy;
– a careful consolidation of structures that would soon be absorbed into the conciliar sect;
– a silent betrayal of the Syllabus, Pascendi, and Quas Primas by refusing to assert their principles at the moment when new churches in Africa most desperately needed them.
The gravest indictment is its silence: silence about Modernism, silence about Masonic and liberal assaults, silence about the Kingship of Christ over nations, silence about the necessity of guarding seminarians and faithful from condemned errors. In that silence, long before the council opened, the program of the neo-church was already operative.
Source:
Rhodesiae Septemtrionalis et Nyassaland (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025