The Latin text issued under the name of John XXIII, titled “Bukavuensis (Gomaënsis),” announces the erection of a new apostolic vicariate of Goma in Belgian Congo, by detaching territory from the existing Vicariate Apostolic of Bukavu, assigning jurisdictional boundaries, entrusting it to indigenous clergy, and delegating execution to the then apostolic delegate and competent dicastery. It presents this purely juridical act as an instrument to “better” care for souls and expand the Church’s presence in Central Africa.
Geopolitical Engineering Masked as Missionary Zeal
At first glance, this constitution appears as a routine act of ecclesiastical administration: redrawing borders, creating a vicariate, empowering “local clergy.” But from the perspective of integral Catholic faith, it is a revealing early symptom of the conciliar revolution incubated under John XXIII: a subtle replacement of supernatural, dogmatic, hierarchical Catholic mission with ecclesiastical cartography, bureaucratic voluntarism, and alignment with decolonial geopolitics.
The very fact that this juridical initiative emanates from John XXIII — the inaugurer of the conciliar catastrophe and a man whose program culminated in the neo-church of Vatican II — places the document under the mark of rupture. Here already one sees the seeds of the *ecclesia nova*: structural activism divorced from explicit dogma, silent on the rights of Christ the King, mute on the necessity of the Catholic faith for salvation, and eager to synchronize missionary policy with the categories of emerging secular nation-states.
The constitution speaks of God “who wills all men to be saved” as justification for multiplying vicariates, yet nowhere confesses the exclusive necessity of incorporation into the one true Church, nowhere recalls the dogma *extra Ecclesiam nulla salus* (outside the Church no salvation), nowhere warns against paganism, Islam, Protestant sects, Freemasonry, or nascent revolutionary ideologies. The silence is the indictment.
Factual Level: Technical Precision in Service of a Mute Supernatural Vision
On the factual surface, the text:
– Recites 1 Tim 2:4 as a pious preface.
– Cites the “Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith” (Sacrum Consilium de Propaganda Fide) proposing the division of Bukavu.
– Hears Alfred Bruniera and Louis Van Steene.
– Carves meticulous borders using rivers, civil territories, kilometers of road, and international boundaries:
“a fontibus fluminis Utsu linea recta… usque ad centesimum octavum kilometrum viae quae a civitate Bukavuensi Gomam ducit… limites civiles inter Congum Belgicum et Ruanda Urundi.”
– Establishes that the new vicariate has the same rights and obligations as others of its type.
– States that its governance and administration are entrusted to priests chosen from the local population.
– Provides standard execution clauses, canonical form, derogation of contrary norms, requirement of observance, and penalties for disobedience.
These “facts” are in themselves theologically neutral as juridical mechanics. The problem is precisely that they stand alone, severed from explicit reiteration of immutable Catholic doctrine, thereby becoming instruments of another project.
Pre-1958 pontiffs, when engaging missionary or territorial acts, characteristically wove them into:
– Affirmations of the unique truth of the Catholic faith.
– Condemnations of errors endangering souls.
– Calls to enforce catechesis, sacramental discipline, moral conversion, and social acknowledgment of Christ the King.
Compare this document’s bloodless cartography with Pius XI in Quas primas, who teaches that peace and order are possible only where Christ publicly reigns; or Pius IX in the Syllabus, who condemns religious indifferentism, laicism, and the subjection of the Church to worldly powers. Here, instead, we find a sterile, technocratic recital of lines on the map, as if the multiplication of vicariates were itself a sacrament.
This is the first mark of spiritual bankruptcy: ecclesiastical structure without explicit supernatural content.
Linguistic Level: Bureaucratic Piety and the Eclipse of Dogma
The rhetoric of the text is “pious-bureaucratic”:
– It opens with a devout formula and citation of Scripture.
– It then immediately submerges into administrative jargon, territorial coordinates, legal clauses, and technical delegations.
– It mentions “christifideles et indigenae” (the faithful and natives), but without a single word about their conversion from error, extirpation of superstition, or rejection of false worship.
Note the carefully “benign” passage:
“novus alius excitaretur: per hoc enim frequentes ibi iuvari christifideles et indigenae clero iustam tribui potestatem”
“that another new [vicariate] be erected: through this, the faithful there might be more frequently helped and just power given to indigenous clergy.”
Key symptoms:
– “Indigenous clergy” are emphasized not as Catholic priests formed in the full Thomistic and anti-modernist tradition, but as a category—ethnic, sociological, political.
– Nothing is said about their doctrinal formation according to the anti-modernist magisterium, their duty to fight paganism, Islam, Protestantism, communism, or Freemasonry.
– Nothing is said about the obligation to preach the social kingship of Christ, denounce syncretism, or guard against secular nationalism.
– The entire text cultivates a tone of administrative self-sufficiency: *si facimus novum vicariatum, salus animarum melius consulitur* — “if we draw new lines, souls will be better served.”
This rhetoric manifests the nascent modernist mentality condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi dominici gregis: the substitution of pastoral structures for doctrinal clarity; the reduction of mission to “pastoral services;” the silence about heresy and idolatry; the optimism about human development detached from combat against error.
By contrast, authentic papal language before the conciliar turn consistently speaks with:
– Dogmatic sharpness.
– Clear denunciation of false religions and sects.
– Assertion of the rights of the Church over temporal powers.
– Insistence that jurisdictional acts visibly serve the confession of the integral faith.
Here, the tone is anesthetized. The bureaucratic legalese does not accidentally omit doctrine; it reveals a mentality in which dogma has already been relegated to implicit background, making room for the coming cult of dialogue and human development.
Theological Level: A Vicariate Without the Kingdom of Christ
The gravest defect of the constitution is theological by omission. Silence where doctrine must be explicit is not neutrality; it is betrayal.
1. Silence on the Unique Truth of the Catholic Faith
– No affirmation that only the Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ, contrary to the error condemned in the Syllabus proposition 21.
– No word against indifferentism (Syllabus 15–18).
– No indication that the purpose of the new vicariate is to convert pagans and heretics to the one flock and one shepherd.
This omission aligns with the future conciliar apostasy: the transition from *missio ad gentes* to “interreligious dialogue”, from conversion to coexistence.
2. Silence on the Social Kingship of Christ
Pius XI teaches unequivocally in Quas primas that:
– Civil society, rulers, peoples must publicly submit to Christ the King.
– The Church must fight laicism and demand laws conform to divine and natural law.
The Bukavuensis text:
– Mentions civil boundaries with precision.
– Never once mentions the obligation of the emerging African political orders to acknowledge the reign of Christ.
– Never exhorts the missionaries and clergy to form Christian states, but only to “extend Christian interests” in a vague sense.
This is a practical denial of Christ’s kingship: *tacere ubi confiteri debes est negare* (to be silent where you must confess is to deny).
3. Naturalization of Missionary Policy
The focus on:
– “Indigenous clergy” as a structural goal.
– Adjusting to civil territories.
– Technical “care” language.
All this prefigures the conciliar ideology:
– Localization of authority to politically convenient entities.
– Ethnicization and democratization of the hierarchy.
– The idea that “inculturation” and local empowerment are primary, while doctrinal intransigence is secondary or omitted.
Authentic Catholic doctrine demands:
– That pastors be chosen above all for sound doctrine and fidelity to the magisterium as defined “eodem sensu eademque sententia” (in the same sense and same judgment), and that they ruthlessly reject modernist novelties.
– That missionary circumscription be transparently ordered to the destruction of idolatry, superstition, Freemasonry, and revolutionary ideologies, not merely to administrative efficiency.
The document’s theological void is thus not innocent: it is programmatic.
Symptomatic Level: Early Fruit of the Conciliar Sect’s Systemic Apostasy
This constitution, dated 1959, stands at the threshold of the conciliar usurpation. Several symptomatic elements reveal it as a proto-document of the Church of the New Advent:
1. Alignment with Decolonization and Humanitarian Rhetoric
The careful adjustment of ecclesiastical boundaries to colonial and proto-national frontiers, and the insistence on “indigenous clergy,” reflect less the perennial missionary doctrine of the Church and more the desire to harmonize with the decolonization agenda and emerging secular powers.
Pius IX had firmly rejected the subjugation of the Church to state boundaries and national ideologies (Syllabus 39–42, 55). Yet here, the act quietly assumes that ecclesiastical geography should mirror civil-unpolitical lines, without one word of warning that political powers are subject to Christ and His Church.
2. Structuralism Without Dogma as Precondition for Vatican II
By:
– Treating jurisdictional engineering as self-validating.
– Forgetting explicit anti-modernist guarantees (oath, Thomistic formation, condemnation of liberalism).
– Elevating “procedural” language and pseudo-pastoral optimism.
This text participates in the disarming of the Church’s immune system against Modernism that St. Pius X had built. It is exactly what Lamentabili implicitly condemns: the idea that structures and pastoral adjustments can be detached from the immutable doctrinal framework without consequence.
Such acts erode the instinct of the faithful: they are taught to see whatever comes from “Rome” as benign, even when Rome is being occupied by men preparing to enthrone religious liberty, collegiality, ecumenism, and the cult of man.
3. Use of Traditional Formulas as a Mask
The text threatens penalties for those who disregard its provisions, in classic papal style:
“Quae Nostra decreta in universum si quis vel spreverit vel quoquo modo detrectaverit, sciat se poenas esse subiturum iis iure statutas, qui Summorum Pontificum iussa non fecerint.”
“Whoever despises or in any way rejects these Our decrees, let him know that he will incur the penalties established by law for those who do not obey the orders of Supreme Pontiffs.”
Here lies a deep irony:
– The juridical self-assertion mimics authentic papal authority.
– But that asserted authority is already being deployed to guide the Church toward a new orientation—one that will soon contradict the prior magisterium (on religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, the nature of the Church, liturgy).
The mask of “continuity” is being forged. The form is preserved, the content is emptied. This is the hermeneutic of rupture in embryo.
Suppression of the Anti-Modernist Guardrails
From the perspective of the integral magisterium:
– St. Pius X forbids any notion of doctrinal evolution that changes meaning.
– The Syllabus condemns:
– The equality of religions.
– The idea that the State should be divorced from the Church.
– The subordination of the Church’s rights to civil powers.
– Pius XI in Quas primas commands the public reign of Christ.
Yet this constitution:
– Speaks as though it were enough to draw lines, appoint local clergy, and mechanically “extend” ecclesiastical presence.
– Never invokes:
– The Anti-Modernist Oath.
– The duty to reject errors condemned in the Syllabus and Lamentabili.
– The obligation to secure Catholic confessional identity of territories evangelized.
Such silences function practically as a repudiation. By not reaffirming what is under assault, the drafters side with the assault.
Instrumentalization of Souls to Consolidate the Conciliar Power-Structure
What, concretely, does this juridical act accomplish in the historical arc?
– It strengthens the network of territories obedient to John XXIII and his successors in the structures occupying the Vatican.
– It embeds in mission lands the authority of a man who would convoke a council to enthrone religious freedom and ecumenism, and of the paramasonic apparatus that would fabricate a new rite and a new theology.
– It uses the vocabulary of salvation and pastoral care to bind African Catholics into the orbit of a regime already preparing to dilute Catholic dogma.
The repeated insistence that anyone resisting this act incurs penalties is revealing. The constitution is not simply about Goma; it is about demanding unconditional submission to the will of a man and machinery that will soon promulgate doctrines and rites incompatible with pre-1958 Catholic teaching.
Thus, the creation of the Vicariate of Goma is not an isolated “missionary progress,” but a brick in the edifice of the conciliar sect’s global expansion.
Contrast with Authentic Missionary Catholicism
To expose the bankruptcy of this approach, consider what an authentically Catholic constitution for a missionary circumscription, faithful to Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII, would have contained:
– An explicit profession that:
– The Catholic Church alone is the Ark of Salvation.
– All non-Catholic religions are false and must be abandoned.
– A solemn reminder that:
– Christ is King not only of individuals, but of societies, and that the new vicariate must labour for Christian social order.
– A clear mandate:
– To form clergy in Thomistic philosophy and theology.
– To enforce the Anti-Modernist Oath.
– To reject any contamination by liberalism, socialism, Freemasonry, syncretism.
– A warning:
– Against naturalistic humanitarianism that serves as a substitute for conversion.
– Against adjusting doctrine to local customs, instead of purifying customs by dogma.
By comparison, the Bukavuensis text is emaciated: it gestures only at ethnic representation and legal demarcations, offering neither doctrinal depth nor militant supernatural orientation.
This is precisely how Modernism operates when forced to speak Latin and wear a cassock: by omission, relativization, and administrative overgrowth.
Conclusion: Anodyne Lines on a Map as Harbinger of the Abomination
The “Bukavuensis” constitution may seem a minor, harmless document confined to regional administration. In reality, read within its historical and doctrinal context, it is a symptomatic act of the emerging conciliar order:
– It instrumentalizes sacred jurisdiction in service of a power already drifting from the integral faith.
– It practices a “soft apostasy” by refusing to confess what must be confessed at the missionary frontier.
– It replaces the clarion call of Christ the King and the condemnation of errors with a cartographer’s pen and hollow pieties.
Such documents prepared the clergy and faithful to accept, without resistance, the subsequent tidal wave: Vatican II, the cult of religious liberty, false ecumenism, the destruction of the Most Holy Sacrifice, the proliferation of invalid sacraments, and the enthronement of man in the place of God.
When the supreme authority is used to erect structures emptied of dogma and armed only with canonical self-assertion, the stage is set for the *abominatio desolationis* (abomination of desolation) in the holy place. The vicariate of Goma, as engineered here, stands as one more captured outpost, drawn into the orbit of the neo-church that would soon openly betray the unchanging magisterium in whose name it pretends to legislate.
Source:
Bukavuensis (Gomaënsis, Constituito apostolica E vicariato apostolico Bukavuensi, in Congo belgico, quibusdam detractis territoriis novus efficitur vicariatus apostolicus Gomaënsis appellandus, d. 30 … (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025