Canonization as Propaganda: John XXIII’s Cultic Machinery on Display
On 30 May 1960, in a semi-public consistory in the Apostolic Palace, John XXIII convened the assembled “cardinals” and “bishops” to receive their unanimous opinion on the proposed canonization of “Blessed” Juan de Ribera, Patriarch of Antioch and Archbishop of Valencia. The cited speech presents this act as the fulfillment of the “institute of the Apostolic See,” notes prior discussions in secret and public consistories, recalls the examination of virtues and miracles, and then, after soliciting and hearing the concordant votes, John XXIII declares his intention to inscribe Juan de Ribera among the saints on Trinity Sunday, 12 June 1960, in St Peter’s Basilica with great liturgical solemnity, exhorting prayers that this decision serve the glory of God and the good of the Christian people.
This short allocution, outwardly clothed in traditional Latin and ceremonial gravity, in fact epitomizes the usurping conciliar apparatus: a paramasonic structure weaponizing canonization to legitimize its authority, while already severed in doctrine and spirit from the integral, pre-1958 Catholic faith.
Canonization Without Authority: The Void Sentence of a Usurper
From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine, the central, decisive fact is not the elegance of the Latin nor the apparent continuity of Roman ceremonial, but the subject who speaks and commands.
Here we face John XXIII, the first public architect of the “Council of aggiornamento,” whose subsequent acts, teachings, and promotion of condemned principles (religious liberty, false ecumenism, rapprochement with Freemasonry and socialism) constitute, by the perennial standard of the Church, a manifest rupture with the faith defined by the Magisterium prior to 1958.
Key doctrinal principles (all verifiable in pre-1958 sources):
– *Nemo potest dare quod non habet* (“No one can give what he does not have”): A man who defects from the Catholic faith and promotes doctrines previously condemned by the Church cannot exercise true papal jurisdiction nor the charism of infallibility attached to the Roman Pontiff.
– Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, solemnly condemns the very liberal and indifferentist theses later favored and canonized in spirit by Vatican II and its forerunners (for example, propositions 15–18, 55, 77–80). A “magisterium” that moves in the opposite direction is not authentic continuity but usurpation.
– Pre-Vatican II theologians, as recalled in the Defense of Sedevacantism file, summarize the constant doctrine: a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church; he loses or cannot obtain the office. St. Robert Bellarmine and others teach that a notorious heretic is outside the Church and therefore cannot be her Head.
Applying this to the allocution:
– The entire act of “canonization” announced here is juridically and theologically null, because it proceeds from a claimant whose later teaching and program clearly align with errors solemnly rejected by earlier popes.
– When John XXIII states that he acts according to the “institute of this Apostolic See,” he implicitly presupposes his own legitimacy as Roman Pontiff. This presupposition, considering his role in launching the conciliar revolution, is precisely what must be repudiated. A usurper invoking the See of Peter does not make his judgments acts of the Church; they are only the exploitation of her external forms.
Therefore, the speech is not an edifying exercise of papal authority, but an instance of the conciliar sect cloaking itself in the vestments, language, and procedural forms of the true Church to confer a counterfeit stamp of sanctity and to normalize its own claim to power.
Formalism Without Faith: The Mechanized Canonization Procedure
The text affects a strictly procedural tone:
“Quid sit, quod vos, Venerabiles Fratres, Nobis hodierna die advocaverimus, in promptu sane vobis manifestumque est: ut videlicet, pro Apostolicae huius Sedis instituto, in causa de decernendis Beato Ioanni de Ribera… Sanctorum Caelitum honoribus versemur.”
(“What it is for which We have convoked you, Venerable Brothers, today is clearly known to you: namely, that, according to the institute of this Apostolic See, we should deal with the cause of decreeing to Blessed John de Ribera… the honors of the heavenly Saints.”)
The rhetoric is juridical, measured, apparently pious. But precisely here lies the problem: a pure formalism, a cult of process, detached from the deeper supernatural reality of the Church’s indefectible faith.
Key observations:
– The allocution stresses prior sessions, reports, examinations, and the unanimous suffrages of the assembled hierarchy. All of this presupposes that those structures and men are Catholic in the full sense. Yet within a few years, this same body collaborates in the promulgation, application, or silent acceptance of Vatican II’s novelties: religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, the demolition of the social kingship of Christ. This reveals that the unanimity praised here is not a sign of holiness, but of systemic infection.
– John XXIII appeals to the Holy Spirit as the source of counsel in causes of saints. But the same claimed “Spirit” will soon be invoked to justify the aggiornamento that Pius IX and St. Pius X had identified and condemned as Modernism and liberalism. To attribute to the Holy Spirit both the Syllabus’ anathemas and the Council’s practical reversal is blasphemous.
The theological principle:
– Authentic canonization in the true Church is an infallible act of the Roman Pontiff, presupposing that he is truly the Vicar of Christ and intends to bind the universal Church to veneration of a soul whose heroic virtue and orthodoxy have been morally certainly established.
– Once the claimant is a public promoter of errors condemned by the Magisterium, his act loses the guarantee of the assistance of the Holy Spirit. The act becomes an ideological proclamation of his regime, not an act of the indefectible Church.
Thus the speech’s ceremonial solemnity functions as a mask: an empty shell of Catholic procedure deployed by a paramasonic structure to legitimize its continuity.
The Linguistic Veil: Traditional Latin in the Service of Revolution
One must analyze not only what is said, but how it is said.
Characteristic features:
1. Use of venerable formulae:
– References to the “Apostolic See,” “Beatissimus Pater,” “Venerabiles Fratres,” “Sanctorum Caelitum honores,” “Basilicae Vaticanae maiestas,” etc.
– Invocations of the Holy Spirit and the glory of God.
2. Omission of all reference to:
– The necessity of the integral Catholic faith as the condition for authentic sanctity.
– The doctrinal battles central to the 16th and subsequent centuries: Protestantism, Islam, Freemasonry, liberalism — themes that, in the true pre-1958 Church, are not decoratively optional but structural.
– The duty of the saints to witness against heresy and error, especially in defense of the social reign of Christ the King, so solemnly taught by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*: peace and order are only possible under the public reign of Christ over individuals and states.
3. Exalted but abstract spiritualization:
– The speech ends with a request for prayers that the decree be “in Dei ipsius gloriam… inque solidam christiani populi utilitatem.”
– Yet there is absolute silence on what truly constitutes the “solid utility” of the Christian people: defense of the true faith against Modernism, rejection of indifferentism, and public submission of nations to Christ the King.
This silence is eloquent. The language is impeccably Catholic in form yet already modernist in omission: it avoids the concrete doctrinal content that would expose the later conciliar direction as treasonous.
In light of *Lamentabili sane* and *Pascendi*, Modernism disguises itself precisely through traditional formulas emptied of their dogmatic substance. This is exactly what we see: ceremonial Latin and canonical forms are used as an ecclesiastical aesthetic while the deeper trajectory (toward Vatican II) runs counter to the integral doctrine.
Theology of Sanctity Degraded to Institutional Self-Congratulation
The allocution attributes to Juan de Ribera “multa et non dubia excellentis virtutis indicia” and “miranda quaedam opera supra naturae ordinem patrata.” For the purposes of this critique, the personal figure of Juan de Ribera is not the central object; the decisive issue is how sanctity is instrumentalized.
Central problems:
– The text treats canonization as a foregone conclusion once procedure and consensus are in place: “Quod vos, nulla cuiusquam discrepante opinione… dignum iudicavistis… id quidem Nobis admodum accidit iucundum, qui idem… maxime optamus.” (“That you, with no dissenting opinion, have judged him worthy… is very pleasing to Us, who for Our part also greatly desire the same.”)
– The decisive criterion becomes harmony within the apparatus and the personal desire of John XXIII, not the solemn fear of binding the universal Church. The emphasis on how “pleasing” this unanimity is for him betrays a subtle anthropocentrism, already resonant with the later cult of man solemnized by Paul VI.
– Under the integral Catholic understanding, canonization is not an institutional ornament nor an opportunity for liturgical spectacle, but a grave act in which the Church, under pain of blasphemy, declares that this soul is certainly in glory and is a model of doctrine and life.
– Once a structure that is doctrinally deviating claims this power, “saints” become signatures beneath its own revolution. Canonization turns into propaganda: each new “saint” is an implicit endorsement of the new line.
Theologically:
– If the head and a large portion of the hierarchy are infected with condemned errors, their unanimous vote is not evidence of the Holy Spirit but of shared apostasy. *Consensus in malis* (agreement in evils) does not bind the Church.
– The allocution never recalls that holiness is inseparable from adhesion to the unchanging faith, as defined and defended by prior popes against liberalism, rationalism, and Modernism. Sanctity without explicit doctrinal clarity becomes an empty halo available for political reuse.
Thus, the speech participates in and foreshadows the systematic abuse of canonization later seen in the conciliar sect, where figures promoting ecumenism, religious liberty, and anthropocentric spirituality are elevated as “saints” to impose their errors as the new norm.
Silence on the Kingship of Christ and the Social Order: A Symptom of Liberal Contagion
A striking omission, especially read in light of Pius XI’s *Quas Primas* (1925):
– Pius XI teaches that true peace and order are only possible when individuals and states publicly recognize and submit to Christ the King; that secularism and laicism are a “plague” destroying society; and that rulers and governments sin gravely when they refuse public homage to Christ.
– He insists that the Church has not only the right but the duty to demand that civil law conform to divine and natural law, and condemns as erroneous the separation of Church and State understood as State’s moral neutrality.
In the allocution:
– There is no mention of Christ’s social kingship.
– No call that the canonization of a bishop and patriarch be a sign for nations to subject their laws and institutions to Christ.
– No denunciation of the liberal, Masonic, and socialist forces that, already in 1960, were openly shaping European and global politics, and infiltrating ecclesiastical circles.
This silence is not accidental. It is perfectly in line with the subsequent conciliar orientation:
– Replacement of confessional state with religious liberty.
– Refusal to condemn communism at Vatican II.
– Adoption of “dialogue” terminology and abdication of the Church’s public rights.
The speech’s pious generalities, devoid of integral social doctrine, are an early symptom of this capitulation. *Quod tacet, consentire videtur* (“He who is silent is seen to consent”): by refusing to reaffirm truths most hated by the world—especially the rights of Christ the King over states—the speaker already bends to liberal expectations.
Mechanized Invocation of the Holy Spirit: Pious Formula or Blasphemous Cover
John XXIII claims awareness of the Holy Spirit’s guidance in such causes, yet professes a desire to follow “translaticium morem” (the traditional custom) by again hearing the opinions of the “cardinals” and “bishops.”
In the integral Catholic understanding:
– To invoke the Holy Spirit as the author of an act requires that the act be consonant with previously defined doctrine. The Holy Spirit does not contradict Himself; *non est Deus dissensionis sed pacis* (“God is not the God of dissension but of peace”) in truth.
– If a structure later uses that same claimed inspiration to push condemned doctrines (religious pluralism, ecumenical pan-heresiology, collegial undermining of papal primacy, practical acceptance of laicism), then attributing such acts to the Holy Spirit becomes a grave abuse.
Thus, the formal appeal to divine assistance in this allocution becomes theologically suspect:
– It conditions the faithful to accept that whatever emerges solemnly from this structure—even if later it erodes what Pius IX and St. Pius X defended—is ipso facto “from the Spirit.”
– This is the perfect inversion identified by St. Pius X: Modernism penetrates the Church by claiming to be the maturation of her life and the work of the Holy Spirit, while in reality it dissolves dogma, sacraments, and sanctity into historical evolution.
The allocation’s tone of serene certainty thus masks a moral hazard: teaching the faithful to conflate the voice of a man steering toward Modernism with the voice of the Holy Ghost.
Systemic Apostasy: A Consistory as Microcosm of the Conciliar Sect
Seen in isolation, the allocution might appear merely as one of hundreds of technical acts regarding canonization. But Catholic judgment is not sentimental or naïve; it is doctrinal and historical.
Placed in its real context:
– 1958 marks the starting point of a line of claimants (from John XXIII to the current antipope Leo XIV) promoting, tolerating, or canonizing principles and practices anathematized by prior magisterium.
– Under Pius IX and St. Pius X, the Church explicitly identified Freemasonry, liberalism, Modernism, and the cult of man as instruments of the “synagogue of Satan” waging war against Christ and His Church. The Syllabus of Errors and *Lamentabili sane* are precise and uncompromising.
– The conciliar revolution, prepared by John XXIII, is in perfect harmony with the aims attributed by Pius IX to anti-Christian sects: subjection of the Church to the “rights of man,” dissolution of her public authority, relativization of dogma, and alliance with the world.
Therefore:
– A semi-public consistorium in 1960, with unanimous consent of a body about to inaugurate that revolution, is not the triumph of Catholic unity but the liturgical prelude to institutional apostasy.
– The ceremony mimics the external forms of the papal monarchy while internally reorienting authority toward democratic collegiality and humanistic self-celebration.
The allocution’s insistence on unanimity, formalism, and visible splendor is emblematic: the conciliar sect consolidates its self-confidence and authority by staging acts that appear indistinguishable from those of the true Church, so that later, any challenge to its dogmatic novelties can be dismissed as rebellion against a “sanctified” continuity.
Reaffirming the Only Catholic Criterion: Pre-1958 Magisterium as Norm
Against this theater we must reassert the only secure criterion, as required by integral Catholic faith:
– *Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus* (that which has been believed everywhere, always, by all) in the sense articulated by the Fathers and dogmatically defined by the pre-1958 Magisterium.
– The Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX), *Quanta Cura*, *Quas Primas*, *Immortale Dei*, *Satis Cognitum*, *Pascendi Dominici Gregis*, *Lamentabili sane*, and the solemn decrees of Trent and Vatican I: these define the doctrinal framework within which any legitimate papal act must stand.
– Any so-called “pontificate” that systematically contradicts, relativizes, or silently suppresses these teachings reveals itself, by objective criteria, as foreign to the Chair of Peter.
Applied rigorously:
– A claimant who ushers in a council that will effectively neutralize the Syllabus, reinterpret *Quas Primas* into a purely spiritual kingship, and accept the separation of Church and State and “religious liberty” as a right, cannot be exercising the same papal authority that condemned those positions.
– Consequently, his “canonizations” lack the infallible note. They are not acts of the spotless Bride of Christ, but decrees of a parallel structure.
Thus, this 1960 allocution is doctrinally bankrupt in its presuppositions:
– It rests on the self-assertion of a man whose program tends toward the very errors anathematized by his predecessors.
– It reduces canonization to a confirmation of institutional solidarity, detached from the doctrinal battles that define true sanctity.
– It is silent where it should thunder: against liberalism, indifferentism, Modernism, and the impending deformation of the liturgy and faith.
And precisely this silence, combined with liturgical splendor, makes it a refined instrument of deception.
Conclusion: Unmasking the Conciliar Canonization Cult
The semi-public consistory of 30 May 1960, far from being a harmless historical curiosity, is a concentrated sign of the conciliar sect’s method:
– Preserve external rites; hollow out doctrinal substance.
– Invoke the Holy Spirit; prepare a council that will favor the very errors once branded as the “synthesis of all heresies.”
– Celebrate “saints”; use them to endorse a new orientation, severed from the integral Magisterium.
From the perspective of unchanging Catholic doctrine, the verdict is unavoidable:
– An authority corrupted by Modernism and liberalism cannot supply infallible judgments of canonization.
– The allocution’s apparent piety conceals the deeper spiritual and theological bankruptcy of a structure already at the service of the cult of man and the disintegration of Christ’s social kingship.
True Catholics must therefore:
– Reject the spurious authority of the conciliar sect and its counterfeit canonizations.
– Cling to the pre-1958 Magisterium as the normative expression of the Church’s faith.
– Recognize in such texts not a secure guide, but a warning sign: a polished ceremonial mask covering the face of the modern apostasy.
Source:
Feria secunda, die XXX mensis Maii anno MCMLX, in consueta Aula Palatii Apostolici Vaticani, Consistorium semipublicum habitum est de Canonizatione Beati Ioannis de Ribera, Patriarchae Antiocheni et A… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025