On 28 March 1960, in a secret consistory, John XXIII delivered an allocution in which he: praises the Roman Curia; laments persecutions of clergy (especially recalling Aloysius Stepinac); expresses satisfaction over the recent Roman diocesan synod; presents the creation of new cardinals from various continents (Japan, the Philippines, Tanganyika, etc.) as a sign of the Church’s universality; links this expansion of the “Sacred College” to the preparation of the Second Vatican Council; and concludes with a prayer that bishops, clergy, and peoples be led to unity, peace, and collaboration under his leadership and that of the newly created cardinals. The entire speech, however clothed in pious Latin, is a carefully staged manifesto of the coming conciliar revolution and of the construction of a new, naturalistic, globalist religion under the usurped authority of a man already at war with the integral Catholic order.
Conciliar Stagecraft and the Construction of a Neo-Church
Elevation of a Manifest Modernist as “Supreme Pastor”
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the very fact that this allocution proceeds calmly under the presidency of John XXIII is already the central datum: a public propagator of aggiornamento, ecumenism, religious liberty, collegiality, and the “opening to the modern world” speaks as if he were the guardian of the faith of Trent and Vatican I. The contradiction is objective.
Before entering into detailed levels of analysis, one must recall the Catholic principles (unchanged up to 1958) that render such a figure incompatible with the Papal office:
– *Lex orandi, lex credendi* (“the law of prayer is the law of belief”): when one systematically subverts belief through new worship, new discipline, and new rhetoric, one reveals a new religion.
– *Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus* (“outside the Church there is no salvation”): dogmatically defined at Florence and repeatedly reaffirmed; directly opposed to the relativising ecumenism and implicit universalism already permeating John XXIII’s program.
– *Syllogism of membership*: as articulated by St. Robert Bellarmine, a manifest heretic is not a member of the Church; therefore he cannot be its head. This principle is reinforced in the material you have provided: Bellarmine and later theologians insist that open defection from the faith severs jurisdiction; Canon 188.4 (1917) codifies that public defection vacates ecclesiastical office by the law itself.
The allocution must be read with this in mind: not as the voice of the Catholic Papacy, but as the voice of an intruder—already orienting structures and personnel toward the Second Vatican Council, the matrix of post-1958 apostasy.
Factual Level: What This Allocution Truly Does
1. It rehearses a conventional praise of the Roman Curia and of “orderly” administration.
2. It evokes persecution of bishops and clergy, focusing on the memory of Aloysius Stepinac.
3. It congratulates itself on the outcome of the First Roman Synod.
4. It announces a new group of cardinals, deliberately extending representation: Japan (Doi), the Philippines (Santos), Tanganyika (Rugambwa), and others, plus three “in pectore.”
5. It explicitly connects this remodeling of the College of Cardinals with preparations for an Ecumenical Council, presented as a great work requiring wide international participation.
6. It ends with a desire for peace, social concord, and harmonious collaboration between peoples and leaders.
All this appears benignly “Catholic” at first glance. In reality, it is a strategic retooling of the hierarchy in order to impose the conciliar agenda, while employing language that carefully sidesteps the hard doctrinal frontality demanded by the pre-1958 Magisterium against liberalism, naturalism, and modern errors (cf. Pius IX, Syllabus; Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII).
The gravest fact: the allocution stands at the threshold of the Second Vatican Council and reveals the method: personnel reshaping, sentimental appeals, rhetorical universality, and moralistic humanitarianism instead of clear doctrinal militancy.
Linguistic Level: Sweetened Latin as a Vehicle of Revolution
The rhetoric warrants close attention. Several traits expose the modernist mind beneath the traditional idiom:
1. Sentimentalism and bureaucratic optimism
The text overflows with phrases of “vehement joy,” “holy tranquility,” “serene confidence,” and “sweet consolation,” even as it vaguely acknowledges “miseries, dissensions, uncertainties” among nations.
– There is no clear denunciation of the doctrinal roots of these evils: liberalism, socialism, communism, Freemasonry, and, most centrally, modernist apostasy—precisely those identified and condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus of Errors), Leo XIII, St. Pius X (Lamentabili sane exitu; Pascendi), and Pius XI.
– Instead, we hear soft language about “mutual suspicion,” about the need to “seek truth and justice” in temporal matters, detached from explicit affirmation of the rights of Christ the King and the duty of States to submit to His law.
This is the language of a new religion of benevolent humanism. The silence on precise doctrinal condemnations is not accidental; it is programmatic.
2. Universalist, horizontal tone obscuring the supernatural order
The allocution highlights that “God calls all peoples to holiness without distinction of language, race, color” and that the Gospel must be preached “to every creature.” In itself, that formula is orthodox; but observe the surrounding choices:
– Emphasis falls on sociological extension, geographic inclusion, and representation in the College of Cardinals.
– There is no corresponding emphasis on the necessity of conversion to the one true Church, the rejection of errors, and subjection of nations to Christ’s social Kingship, as taught lucidly by Pius XI in Quas Primas: peace only in the Kingdom of Christ, and the state sins gravely if it does not publicly recognize His sovereignty.
The lexicon of this allocution prepares the conciliar notion of a “people of God” scattered through various “Churches” and religions, where structural plurality is praised while doctrinal exclusivity is quietly relativized.
3. Ambiguous appeals to “peace” and “collaboration”
The conclusion invokes examples that would lead “peoples and their leaders” to unite in harmonious peace. Yet there is no mention of:
– the duty of rulers to recognize the Catholic religion as the sole true religion (condemned proposition 77 in the Syllabus),
– the evil of religious indifferentism and of state neutrality in matters of worship (propositions 15–18, 55),
– the condemnation of liberalism and “modern civilization” understood as emancipation from Christ and His Church (proposition 80).
Instead, the language of “uniting plans and designs” for concord prefigures the conciliar slogan of “dialogue,” condemned implicitly by pre-1958 teaching whenever it means parity of truth and error.
4. The calculated use of traditional formulas
The allocution invokes the four marks of the Church and the Canon’s petition: “pacificare, custodire, adunare, regere toto orbe terrarum.” But these phrases are instrumentalized as a backdrop for the introduction of new personnel and for the Council, not as a call to doctrinal militancy.
This is classic modernism in practice: retain vocabulary, alter its practical orientation. *Verba manent, res mutantur* (the words remain, the realities are altered).
Theological Level: Contradictions with Pre-1958 Catholic Doctrine
Now we confront specific theological axes where this allocution, in its content and strategic omissions, collides with integral Catholic teaching.
1. Universality without Confession: A Pseudo-Catholic Internationalism
The selection of cardinals from Japan, the Philippines, and Tanganyika is trumpeted as an epoch-making sign that the Church “confirms” the ancient practice of gathering all peoples. What is being smuggled in?
– The idea that the College of Cardinals, as an administrative body, must mirror geopolitical pluralism as a value in itself.
– A subtext that the prior Eurocentric composition was a deficit to be corrected by “diversity” rather than by doctrinal firmness and missionary zeal.
Catholic universality is not demographic decor, but dogmatic unity: one faith, one sacramental order, one submission to the See of Peter as defined by Vatican I. Pius XI in Quas Primas insists that Christ’s Kingdom is already universal in right; the task is to subject individuals and states to it, not to represent every sociological segment.
The allocution never states that these promoted figures must:
– be uncompromising opponents of paganism, Islam, Protestantism, communism, and masonry;
– enforce discipline against error;
– resist secularization and false religious liberty.
Instead, their origin from various nations is self-evidently presented as a good, independent of doctrinal clarity. This anticipates the conciliar sect’s policy: filling the hierarchy with men selected for openness to ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, and democratic collegiality.
2. Silence on the Social Kingship of Christ: Betrayal of Quas Primas
At precisely the moment when Pius XI’s teaching on Christ the King demanded stronger reaffirmation—against atheistic communism, liberal democracy, and the masonic assault recognized by Pius IX—the allocution offers diluted reflections on social conflict, urging that:
“not only truth and justice be sought, but that initiatives of all kinds be carried out concerning temporal life.”
What is missing is decisive:
– No reminder that laws must conform to divine and natural law (condemned proposition 56 denies it).
– No proclamation that states sin by erecting religious indifferentism as principle (Syllabus 55).
– No assertion that public sovereignty belongs to Christ and that temporal authority must “publicly honor Christ and obey Him,” as Quas Primas commands.
Instead, we see a humanitarian moralism: generic truth, justice, and peace, with Christian inspiration left vague. This is the embryonic “human rights” religion that enthrones man where Quas Primas enthrones Christ.
3. The Ecumenical Council as Engine of Doctrinal Dilution
The allocution presents the forthcoming Council as:
– a “great work,”
– requiring “men of ample authority belonging to various nations,”
– to clarify doctrine and discipline and promote Christian life and apostolate.
Measured against pre-1958 doctrine, this rhetoric is deeply suspect for several reasons:
– An Ecumenical Council, as understood by Tradition, is fundamentally called to condemn errors and define truths, not to function as a pastoral congress of varied “experiences” and sociological inputs. The speech exalts breadth of representation and “needs of different places,” which later became the pretext for doctrinal relativization and national episcopal conferences undermining papal and Roman authority.
– The stress on gathering opinions from all bishops, universities, and institutes to prepare the Council sounds like consultation of a democratic assembly. But the Church teaches that doctrine is transmitted, not democratically constructed. Lamentabili sane exitu condemns the thesis that the “teaching Church” should merely approve the common opinions of the “listening Church.”
By celebrating this consultative, pluralistic process, the allocution endorses precisely what St. Pius X proscribed: the democratization of dogma and the elevation of academic and pastoral opinion above the fixed deposit of faith.
4. Glorification of the Roman Synod: A Prelude to Liturgical Subversion
The allocution takes “true consolation” from the First Roman Synod’s completion, treating it as a sign of clerical zeal and a harbinger of renewal.
Historical fact: that synod, under John XXIII, was already a laboratory for liturgical and disciplinary tendencies later unleashed in the conciliar sect—loosening of discipline, new pastoral orientation, erosion of traditional safeguards. While the speech does not detail these acts, its tone of unqualified approval and its placement alongside the Council’s preparation is revealing.
By contrast:
– St. Pius X’s reforms were aimed at restoring sacramental life and safeguarding against modernism, never attenuating dogma or the sacrificial nature of the Most Holy Sacrifice.
– Pius XII, in Mediator Dei, warned against liturgical “archaeologism” and arbitrary experimentation.
The allocution’s silence about the protection of the Unbloody Sacrifice’s sacrificial character, the dangers of novelty, and the threat of profanation, even as it praises local synodal reforms, is a grave omission and a sign of doctrinal negligence.
5. The Mystification of Stepinac and the Inversion of Priorities
The mention of Aloysius Stepinac and persecuted clergy is outwardly commendable. Yet even here, the rhetoric is instructive:
– It focuses on “religion,” “Christian civilization,” and “due liberty,” a triad that blends supernatural and natural elements without hierarchical clarity.
– It refrains from identifying and condemning the theological enemies within: those prelates and theologians (modernists) who were, as St. Pius X warned, the worst foes of the Church precisely because they operate inside her structures.
Instead of using Stepinac’s example to denounce internal doctrinal betrayal, John XXIII leverages persecuted clergy as moral capital for his own image and for the Council—while in fact promoting figures and ideas diametrically opposed to the intransigent Catholicism for which many truly suffered.
Silence about modernism here is the loudest voice. The text effectively diverts attention from the inner apostasy already fermenting in seminaries, universities, and episcopal conferences.
Symptomatic Level: Manifest Fruits of the Conciliar Revolution
Read retrospectively in the light of what followed, this allocution reveals itself as a programmatic text of the conciliar sect.
1. Personnel as vectors of apostasy
Those elevated and their milieu later participated in or submitted to:
– endorsement of religious liberty as a civil right,
– participation in ecumenical and interreligious rites,
– erosion of catechesis, modesty, discipline,
– practical denial of Christ’s Kingship over states.
This is not an accidental drift but the organic fruit of the criteria of selection implied here: international representation, political symbolism, “openness.”
2. Replacement of doctrinal militancy with pastoral sentimentalism
The speech reduces the Church’s visible mission to:
– offering consolation,
– encouraging collaboration,
– accompanying national developments.
The hard language of the Syllabus, of Pascendi, of Quas Primas disappears. Yet those documents had not been revoked. This silence is itself a practical repudiation, a modernist tactic: not frontal contradiction, but burial under new emphases.
3. Prelude to the Cult of Man
Pius IX attributes the worldwide war on the Church heavily to masonic sects; he commands vigilance, separation, and condemnation. Pius XI warns that secularism and laicism are the plague of our times and insists that it is a crime to banish Christ from laws and public life.
By 1960, instead of renewing these condemnations, the allocution speaks in conciliatory tones, deliberately avoiding to name Freemasonry, liberalism, or modernism as structural enemies. The stage is set for the famous conciliar and post-conciliar glorification of human dignity, religious liberty, and pluralism—the cult of man formally manifested later by the usurpers occupying Rome.
Exposure of Core Errors and Omissions
To summarize the central points where this allocution, read in continuity with the acts it inaugurates, is theologically and spiritually bankrupt:
– Substitution of Christ the King with a vague moral inspiration: The speech refuses to assert the absolute, public rights of Christ and His Church over nations, contrary to Quas Primas and the Syllabus. It reduces the supernatural order to a supportive backdrop for temporal peace and cooperation.
– Instrumentalization of universality for a pluralist hierarchy: The promotion of cardinals from various continents is presented as an end in itself, detached from the requirement of militant doctrinal orthodoxy. This anticipates the conciliar sect’s multi-cultural episcopate united not by faith, but by adherence to conciliar humanism.
– Democratizing and relativizing the Council: The emphasis on wide consultation and representation prepares the notion that doctrine and discipline will be “updated” in response to the “needs of the times,” directly condemned by Lamentabili and Pascendi as the modernist theory of evolving dogma.
– Calculated silence on modernism: At a time when the poison denounced by St. Pius X had deeply penetrated theology and seminaries, the allocution does not utter a single word against this “synthesis of all heresies.” Silence here is complicity.
– Abandonment of magisterial severity toward liberalism and Freemasonry: Unlike Pius IX, who sees in masonic sects the “synagogue of Satan” waging war on the Church, John XXIII’s speech views contemporary crises primarily as mutual suspicions to be healed by dialogue and cooperation. This is a categorical divergence.
– Use of traditional forms to serve a new religion: Latin, curial formulas, mentions of the Canon and four marks—all are retained externally, while the practical message reorients the Church toward a council that will enshrine collegiality, religious liberty, ecumenism, and the dethronement of Christ from public life.
In light of pre-1958 doctrine, such a program cannot be reconciled with the Catholic Faith. It is not a mere prudential miscalculation; it is the initiation of a systemic reconfiguration of the visible structures into a conciliar sect—“abomination of desolation” seated where it ought not, usurping the language and insignia of the true Church while undermining her foundations.
Conclusion: Return to the Immutable Magisterium
The allocution of 28 March 1960 must therefore be named for what it is: an elegant manifesto of transition from the Church of Christ the King to the Church of man; from doctrinal intransigence to pastoral relativism; from supernatural militancy to diplomatic accommodation. It exemplifies that tactic so clearly condemned by St. Pius X: to corrupt from within, under the guise of continuity.
Against this counterfeit, the only Catholic response is:
– unwavering adherence to the pre-1958 Magisterium: Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of Errors, Pascendi, Lamentabili, Quas Primas, Mortalium Animos, and the entire consistent doctrinal stream;
– categorical rejection of the conciliar revolution and the pseudo-hierarchy it installed;
– perseverance in the Most Holy Sacrifice and sacraments as handed down, under validly ordained clergy who profess the integral Catholic Faith without compromise.
Anything less capitulates to the soft phrases and diplomatic ambiguities exemplified in this allocution, which, far from shepherding souls to Christ the King, paved the way for a paramasonic neo-church that enthrones man and silences the voice of the true Spouse of Christ.
Source:
Consistorium Secretum – Allocutio in consueta aula Palatii Apostolici Vaticani (die 30 mensis Martii, A.D. MCMLX) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025