The document issued under the name of Ioannes XXIII, “Rhodesiae Septemtrionalis et Nyassaland,” dated 25 April 1959, decrees the erection of two ecclesiastical provinces in British-controlled Central Africa (Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland), transforming several apostolic vicariates and prefectures into dioceses and metropolitan sees. It lists the new diocesan structures, assigns cathedrals and titles, transfers titular bishops to residential sees, subjects all to the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, and lays down ordinary canonical norms for governance, seminaries, and diocesan consultors, claiming binding force under “supreme apostolic authority.”
Colonial Cartography in Purple: The African Experiment of the Coming Conciliar Usurpers
The Pseudo-Apostolic Mask: Formal Orthodoxy as Preparation for Revolution
From the perspective of the integral Catholic faith, the first and decisive fact is this: this constitution proceeds from Ioannes XXIII, the initiator of the conciliar revolution, whose subsequent acts, council convocation, and doctrine mark him as the first in the line of usurpers occupying Rome since 1958. The text must therefore be read not in isolation, but as a programmatic piece in a broader strategy: stabilizing ecclesiastical structures precisely in those mission territories where the future “Church of the New Advent” would test its new theology of man, democracy, and decolonial syncretism.
At the factual surface, nothing appears overtly heterodox. The document:
– Erects the ecclesiastical provinces of “Rhodesiae Septemtrionalis” (Northern Rhodesia) and “de Nyassaland” (Nyasaland).
– Elevates Lusaka and Blantyre to metropolitan sees.
– Converts vicariates into dioceses (Abercorn, Fort Jameson, Kasama, Livingstone, Ndola, Dedza, Lilongwe, Zomba).
– Assigns legitimate pre-1968 consecrated bishops (e.g. Adam Kozłowiecki S.J., Franciscus Mazzieri O.F.M. Conv.) to these sees.
– Prescribes:
– Dependence on Propaganda Fide;
– Foundation of seminaries;
– Establishment of cathedral chapters or, temporarily, diocesan consultors;
– Usual canonical norms (election of capitular vicar, etc.).
But precisely this apparent normality is the most insidious feature. The text cloaks a shift of the Church’s presence in Africa into a grid of colonial-era boundaries and British administrative logic, laying infrastructural rails that, within a few years, the conciliar sect would steer away from the *Regnum Christi* towards the cult of “development,” “nation-building,” and “inculturation” emptied of the Cross.
We must expose how this constitution, while still framed in the vocabulary of the pre-conciliar code, is already marked by:
– silence about the exclusive social Kingship of Christ in emerging African nations;
– accommodation to Masonic-colonial political cartography;
– functionalist, bureaucratic vision of the hierarchy as an administrative network;
– implicit preparation for the “local church” ideology that would later be weaponized against Roman doctrinal unity.
Factual Engineering: Administrative Orthodoxy Without Supernatural End
On the factual level, the document appears as a standard pre-1958 expansion of hierarchical structures. However, several key elements reveal its deeper orientation:
1. It anchors diocesan borders primarily in colonial political units (Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland; specific British towns).
– This alone is not heretical; the Church has always adapted boundaries to political geography.
– Yet in 1959, on the eve of decolonization, freezing the hierarchy along imperial lines while failing to assert explicitly the non-negotiable sovereignty of Christ over future states creates a vacuum in which secular nationalist ideologies and later socialist regimes can claim autonomy from the Church without resistance.
2. It subjects all these sees to Propaganda Fide with purely practical language of administration and subsidies:
– “Ad mensam quod respicit singularum Ecclesiarum, eam efficient: populi collationes, Curiae proventus, bona… pecunia, tandem quam solet S. Congregatio Fidei Propagandae mittere.”
– A financial-technical framing without any mention of the obligation that material means serve the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary*, the preaching of the one true faith, and the combat against paganism, Islam, Freemasonry, and Protestant sects omnipresent in the region.
3. The insistence on canonical forms (cathedral chapters, pallium, consultors, capitular vicars) is correct in itself, yet entirely detached from explicit reaffirmation of dogmatic content.
– There is no reiteration that these bishops must:
– condemn indifferentism, syncretism, tribal spiritism;
– combat socialism, communism, and secret societies;
– uphold the Syllabus of Errors against liberal constitutions that were already foreseen in imminent independence.
– The silence is deafening and doctrinally revealing.
Such a purely structural operation, in 1959, from the very man who will soon convoke Vatican II, is not neutral. It is the classic method of subversion: preserve the shell, evacuate the substance, then fill the vacuum with a new religion. Forma servata, res subversa (“with the form preserved, the reality overturned”).
Linguistic Technocracy: Canonical Latin as the Language of Emerging Apostasy
The Latin of this constitution is smooth, juridical, and ostensibly pious. But the tone is symptomatic:
– It is the language of administration, not of combat.
– It speaks of “incrementa fidei” (growth of faith) in Rhodesia and Nyasaland, yet never defines that faith against the errors condemned infallibly less than a century earlier by Pius IX in the *Syllabus Errorum* or by St Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi.
– Key absences:
– No mention of the necessity of belonging to the Catholic Church as the only ark of salvation (against Syllabus prop. 16–18).
– No mention of the obligation of public profession of the Catholic faith in civil constitutions (against Syllabus prop. 55, 77–80).
– No mention of the duty of Catholic rulers (or future African leaders) to subject law and education to Christ the King, as Pius XI had solemnly taught in Quas Primas (“Peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ;” the state must publicly honor and obey Him).
– No mention of Freemasonry and anti-Christian sects explicitly identified by Pius IX as the driving force of worldwide persecution, heavily active in colonial and post-colonial Africa.
Instead, the constitution is content with phrases of purely human jurisdiction: *“de Nostra summa et apostolica auctoritate haec… decernimus”*, without explicit doctrinal re-anchoring. The vocabulary manifests a shift from *militant* to *managerial* Catholicism.
This bureaucratic serenity, on the threshold of the greatest revolution against the Faith in history, is not innocence; it is complicity by omission.
Theological Emptiness: The Silent Betrayal of Christ the King and the Mission
Measured by the immutable doctrine (pre-1958), the gravest indictment of this document is not what it says, but what it refuses to say.
1. No proclamation of the Social Kingship of Christ
In mission territories poised to become sovereign states, a truly Catholic act would:
– solemnly reaffirm that all authority comes from Christ;
– demand that constitutions and laws recognize the true Church;
– warn against secularism, denominational equality, Masonic “neutrality,” and communist infiltration.
Pius IX explicitly condemned the separation of Church and state (*Syllabus* prop. 55), and Pius XI taught that the crisis of nations arises because “very many have removed Jesus Christ and His most holy law from public life” and that rulers are bound to “public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ” (*Quas Primas*).
This constitution, however, enshrines new provinces without any doctrinal claim to the temporal order. It treats the growth of the Church as an administrative metric, not as the advance of *Christus Rex* subjugating nations to His law. This is a proto-conciliar mentality: the Church as chaplain to emerging states, not their supernatural sovereign’s organ.
2. No condemnation of modern errors infecting Africa
By 1959, Modernism, liberalism, socialism, Freemasonry, and Protestant and sectarian infiltration were rampant in Africa. An integral Catholic document would arm bishops explicitly:
– against syncretism and “inculturation” that dilutes doctrine;
– against interreligious relativism;
– against naturalistic “development” ideologies.
Instead, we find only:
“Curent Ordinarii Antistites ut in sua quisque Sede Seminarium saltem elementarium… construat…” – build seminaries;
“Canonicorum Collegium condat…” – erect chapters.
Sound measures in themselves, but free of reference to guarding seminarians from Modernist errors anathematized by St Pius X, free of reminders that training must be wholly subject to the anti-modernist oath and to scholastic theology as obligatory (contrary to the very Modernist propositions condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi).
3. Juridical absolutism detached from truth
The text threatens canonical penalties against anyone who resists:
“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.”
Such formulae, traditionally just and necessary, here acquire a sinister inversion: the one who will convoke a council unleashing doctrinal devastation claims unconditional obedience on the basis of office, while he prepares to weaponize that office against the Deposit of Faith.
But Catholic theology, as expressed by Bellarmine and the classical doctors, teaches the obvious principle: a *manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church nor bind consciences against immutable doctrine*. Pius IX had also reaffirmed that one must obey the Pope insofar as he guards and transmits, not overturns, the Deposit.
Thus, this absolutist claim, read retrospectively in light of Ioannes XXIII’s subsequent destruction, reveals its inner logic: habituate clergy and laity to unconditional juridical submission—even when future commands will contradict previous magisterium. It is the perfect preparation for Vatican II’s “pastoral” coup.
Symptomatic Level: Prototype of the Conciliar Sect’s African Strategy
This constitution is a symptomatic node in the broader conciliar project. Its characteristics prefigure the later Antichurch:
1. Territorialization without confessionality
By establishing provinces on colonial lines but without doctrinally binding the new local churches to the public reign of Christ, the document inaugurates the practice whereby:
– “local churches” become quasi-autonomous, later easily instrumentalized by the conciliar sect to promote liberation theology, inculturation rites, and interreligious syncretism;
– episcopal conferences in Africa, built upon these provinces, would serve as laboratories for the new ideology of “people’s church.”
2. Functionalist hierarchy
The insistence on consultors, chapters, canonical elections is correct canonically, but devoid of militant purpose. It reduces the episcopate to a managerial structure, ready to be reprogrammed after the council:
– The same sees, once erected, will be occupied post-1960s by men aligned with the “paramasonic structure” of the conciliar sect.
– The structure will be claimed as evidence of “continuity,” while its sacramental and doctrinal life has been poisoned.
3. Propaganda Fide as instrument of transition
Total subordination to Propaganda Fide, already influenced by nouvelle théologie tendencies before the council, means:
– centralized control of episcopal appointments;
– future promotion of bishops sympathetic to religious liberty, inculturation, and ecumenism condemned by the pre-1958 Magisterium.
Thus the constitution works as an infrastructural prelude to an African front of the neo-church: once the grid is in place, the content is switched.
The Silence about Salvation: The Harshest Indictment
The most damning feature is absolute silence regarding:
– the necessity of the state of grace;
– the danger of hell;
– the need for integral catechesis against error;
– the absolute uniqueness of the Catholic Church as the means of salvation.
The entire text moves at the level of:
– territories,
– titles,
– incomes,
– canonical organs.
This is not mere incompleteness; it is a symptom of an ecclesiastical mentality that has already internalized naturalism. Where Pius X, facing Modernism, thundered to defend Revelation, Ioannes XXIII (even before the council) speaks like a benevolent administrator of a multinational organization.
Silentium de supernaturalibus gravissimum crimen est. (Silence concerning the supernatural is the gravest crime.)
A truly Catholic missionary constitution for Africa—especially in 1959—would burn with:
– denunciation of idolatry, Islam, Protestantism, Freemasonry, communism;
– urgent calls to conversion, baptism, and perseverance;
– affirmation that native clergy must be formed as guardians of dogma against modern errors, not as socio-political mediators.
Instead, this document prefers placid neutrality. This neutrality, read in its historical context, reveals itself as practical apostasy in germ.
The Trap of “Legitimacy”: Valid Orders Weaponized Against the Faith
One might object: many of the individuals named were validly consecrated before the new rites; the structures erected were still under the 1917 Code; the sacramental theology was, on paper, orthodox.
That is precisely the trap.
– Before 1968, valid bishops are used to establish and dignify diocesan networks.
– After the council, the same networks, now under the usurping “popes,” implement:
– the new rite of “Mass,” which attacks the propitiatory nature of the Sacrifice;
– the new rites of ordination;
– religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality;
– pagan-“Christian” hybridizations.
The result:
– Africa becomes one of the showpieces of the conciliar sect:
– “vibrant liturgies,”
– “encultured rites,”
– proliferation of “bishops” loyal to Rome’s new ideology.
This 1959 constitution, while not stating Modernist doctrine, provides the canonical skeleton for that future betrayal. It is a classic example of how the Antichurch preserves juridical continuity in order to smuggle in dogmatic rupture.
Against Humanist Colonial Rhetoric: God’s Rights Above Peoples and Borders
From the integral Catholic standpoint, the Papal Magisterium before 1958 teaches:
– The Church is a perfect and sovereign society, not subject to civil powers (Syllabus prop. 19, 55).
– States and their boundaries are subordinate to the higher law of Christ the King.
– The mission is ordered to generate Catholic nations that recognize publicly the true Religion, not to baptize populations into a neutral “Christianity” that later justifies pluralism.
The Rhodesia–Nyasaland constitution never calls future African nations to confess Christ. It baptizes them structurally into a form of ecclesial presence that can coexist smoothly with Masonic constitutions, socialist regimes, and syncretic cults.
This is not accidental; it is entirely in line with the subsequent doctrine of religious liberty at Vatican II, which Pius IX had already condemned in principle (Syllabus prop. 15–18, 77–80). Hence this document is part of the continuum leading from integral mission to the “dialogue” and “tolerance” that enthrone man and silence God.
Conclusion: A Calm Before the Storm That Was Already the Storm
The Apostolic Constitution “Rhodesiae Septemtrionalis et Nyassaland” must not be naively admired as a purely orthodox missionary act. In light of pre-1958 doctrine and subsequent events, it is:
– an administrative consolidation executed by the very figure who would unleash the conciliar betrayal;
– a silent acceptance of colonial political grids without proclaiming the higher sovereignty of Christ and His Church;
– a manifestation of juridical self-assertion detached from explicit confession of immutable dogma;
– an infrastructural prelude used by the conciliar sect to transform Africa into one of its prime laboratories.
The most serious charge is this: in a time when clear, militant proclamation of Christ’s Kingship and condemnation of liberal, Masonic and Modernist currents was urgently required, this document offers polished Latin and canonical diagrams but withholds the trumpet of faith. That silence, in a pontificate that opened the door to Vatican II, is not neutral; it is complicity in a process that would soon replace the Catholic mission with the global humanitarian project of the neo-church.
Source:
Rhodesiae Septemtrionalis et Nyassaland – Constitutio Apostolica in Africa duae novae provinciae ecclesiasticae constituuntur quibus nomina erunt: Rhodesiae Septemtrionalis et de Nyassaland, d. 25 m. … (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025