The text attributed to John XXIII, entitled Haud raro (24 October 1959), is a Latin decree by which he, acting as head of the conciliar apparatus, proclaims Saint Venerius, Confessor, as the principal heavenly patron of the Gulf of La Spezia (formerly Lunensis), including Palmaria and the Tino islands. It recounts the traditional local veneration of St. Venerius, the historical Benedictine and Olivetan presence, and a modern lay committee’s efforts to restore the monastery on Tino and solemnize the cult, culminating in the act: he “confirms and constitutes” St. Venerius as patron with all corresponding rights and privileges. This apparently pious act, however, is an early and telling manifestation of the new paramasonic regime: an external imitation of Catholic forms deployed by one who had already set in motion the conciliar revolution, thereby instrumentalizing authentic saints in order to clothe an incipient apostasy with borrowed holiness.
Usurped Authority Draped in Ancient Piety
The central contradiction: valid saint, invalid legislator
On the surface, the document concerns a legitimate object of veneration: St. Venerius, a pre-modern, Benedictine-associated hermit, honoured for penance, miracles, and contemplative holiness. Nothing in pre-1958 Catholic doctrine questions his cult; indeed, a true local patronage for a historical confessor fits perfectly into the perennial praxis of the Church.
But here we encounter the decisive rupture:
– The decree is issued in 1959 by John XXIII, the initiator of the conciliar revolution, whose “pontificate” inaugurates the line of usurpers condemned in substance by the entire pre-conciliar Magisterium whenever it warns against Modernism, false ecumenism, liberalism, and masonic infiltration (Pius IX, Syllabus Errorum; Leo XIII, Humanum Genus; St. Pius X, Pascendi and Lamentabili).
– The text claims to act deque Apostolicae Nostrae potestatis plenitudine (“from the fullness of Our Apostolic power”) while that very fullness is being perverted to prepare Vatican II’s doctrinal devastation and the subsequent neo-church.
Thus the first and gravest problem is not in the chosen patron, but in the counterfeit lawgiver. An authentically Catholic act presupposes:
– A true Roman Pontiff, professing the integral and immutable faith.
– Juridical acts ordered to the supernatural end of the Church, not to the consolidation of an apostate structure.
Once the usurper occupies the See, every such document must be read as part of a strategy: to maintain Catholic externals while subverting Catholic substance. This is precisely the mechanism denounced by St. Pius X in Pascendi: Modernists “put on a mask” of tradition to infiltrate and transform from within.
Factual veneer as cover for institutional metamorphosis
On the factual level, the letter rehearses a narrative:
– St. Venerius is linked inseparably with the Gulf of La Spezia and the nearby islands; from him the region, it is said, drew “faith, customs and civilisation.”
– His eremitic holiness on Tino (Tyro) Island in the 7th century, miracles, and local cult are acknowledged.
– Benedictine monks (11th century) and then Olivetan monks (15th century) spread spiritual and cultural light through the abbey under his patronage.
– After the secular suppression of monasteries, a committee of select laymen, “Pro Insula Tyro,” undertakes restoration of the monastery and the solemn cult, with the desire to bring his relics back to the island and intensify annual celebrations, chiefly on 13 September.
None of these historical elements, taken individually, is objectionable. The continuity of a monastic sanctuary and local devotion belongs to the organic Catholic order.
Yet precisely here lies the subtlety: this continuity is claimed, narrated, and juridically “confirmed” by the very power that is about to unleash discontinuity on doctrine, liturgy, and ecclesiastical structure. The text is a textbook example of how the conciliar sect wraps its nascent apostasy in venerable names, dates, and saints:
– It leverages true history to fabricate an illusion of uninterrupted Catholic normality.
– It trains the faithful to accept juridical acts from an authority already internally aligned with condemned principles: religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, liturgical subversion, and the cult of man, which would soon be dogmatized in the “Church of the New Advent.”
The more “traditional” the surface, the more insidious the deception: simulatio iuris (simulation of law) as a mask for a new, anti-Catholic order.
Linguistic sacrality in the service of a neo-church
The language of Haud raro mimics classical Roman style:
– The solemn opening: Ad perpetuam rei memoriam.
– The rhetorical topos: places inseparably united with a heavenly patron, deriving from him “faith,” “morals,” and “civil culture.”
– The exaltation of monastic light over centuries.
– The technical canonical decrees: “confirmamus, seu constituimus ac renuntiamus,” “iuribus ac privilegiis,” “contrariis quibusvis minime obstantibus,” the assertion that contrary attempts are “irritum et inane.”
This sacral and juridical idiom once served as a transparent vehicle of true papal authority. Here it functions as a cosmetic:
– The pious evocation of holiness is instrumentalized without a single doctrinal affirmation against the dominant errors of the age.
– There is no reminder of the absolute necessity of the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary*, of repentance, of the state of grace, of the danger of hell, of the kingship of Christ over civil society.
– The traditional canonical formulae are brandished to endorse a purely devotional measure, safely harmless to the emerging programme of aggiornamento.
The tone is sentimental-archaeological: saints are treated as heritage, monuments, “civilising forces,” not as burning witnesses against modern apostasy or as patrons demanding public submission of nations to Christ the King.
This silence is not neutral. It is the silence of the coming revolution.
Theological emptiness: a devotion severed from doctrine
From the perspective of unchanging Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, several elements are conspicuously absent or distorted by omission.
1. No reference to Christ’s Social Kingship
Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches that true peace and order exist only where individuals and states publicly recognize and obey Christ the King; secularism and laicism are condemned as the great plague. Yet in a document concerning a coastal region marked historically by Catholic monastic culture, there is:
– No call for the Gulf of La Spezia, its civil authorities, or its institutions to acknowledge the reign of Christ.
– No demand that law, education, and public morals conform to divine and ecclesiastical law.
– No condemnation of the secular suppression of monasteries as an attack on the rights of the Church.
St. Venerius is presented as a regional emblem, not as an intercessor for the restoration of Catholic order in law and society. Patronage is reduced to decorative piety, compatible with the Masonic state that had expelled religious orders.
2. No denunciation of liberalism and state usurpation
Pre-conciliar doctrine is unequivocal:
– Pius IX in the Syllabus condemns the separation of Church and State (prop. 55), state supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, and the laicist school system.
– The same pontiff denounces Masonic sects as the “synagogue of Satan” warring against the Church, and invalidates laws that violate the divine constitution of the Church.
– Leo XIII confirms the incompatibility of Freemasonry with the Church and exposes its program of secularizing society.
In this context, the history of the Tino monastery—suppressed by civil power—is not an anecdote but a blatant injustice against the Church. A genuine pope, invoking a local patron, would:
– Explicitly stigmatize such usurpations as null and sacrilegious.
– Demand restitution, not merely architectural restoration managed by lay committees.
– Reaffirm the Church’s innate right to own and govern her institutions independently of the state (as taught consistently before 1958).
Haud raro does none of this. It thanks and endorses a lay committee operating within the parameters of the liberal state, without questioning the underlying apostasy of a political order which had trampled monastic rights.
3. Patronage cut loose from sacramental life
Authentic Catholic patronage is oriented to:
– The increase of true Catholic faith.
– The frequent worthy reception of the sacraments in the true rites.
– Penitence, modesty, and separation from the world.
– Defence against heresies and moral corruption.
The text restricts itself to:
– Annual solemnities.
– Restoration of a shrine.
– Vague “fostering of devotion.”
All of this unfolds on the eve of the demolition of the Roman Rite and the substitution of the neo-rite that empties the theology of propitiatory sacrifice, thereby rendering countless simulated “Masses” gravely suspect, and in many cases, given later ordination changes, simply invalid. Yet:
– There is no warning against Modernist errors already rampant and condemned by St. Pius X.
– No defence of the traditional liturgy.
– No doctrinal exhortation that would bind the faithful to resist the approaching revolution.
It is a devotion without dogmatic teeth, designed to survive comfortably inside the conciliar sect.
Symptom of systemic apostasy: the saint as ornamental legitimation
This letter must be read as an early symptom of the post-1958 method:
– Preserve the terminology: “Saint,” “Patron,” “Apostolic power,” “perpetual memory.”
– Preserve the external structures: local cults, shrines, feasts.
– Evacuate or suspend the militant doctrinal content, especially where it would collide with liberalism, ecumenism, religious freedom, and the cult of man.
In that sense:
– The saint’s intercession is quietly annexed to a new ecclesiology: a “Church” reconciled with the liberal state, as explicitly condemned in the Syllabus (prop. 80).
– The territorial patron becomes a cultural trademark for a coastal basin, not a guardian of integral Catholic confessional identity.
What is omitted is decisive:
– No insistence that salvation comes only within the one true Church of Christ, the Catholic Church, as consistently taught by the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
– No rejection of indifferentism or the lie that “any religion” can lead to salvation (condemned in Qui Pluribus and the Syllabus, props. 15–18).
– No clarification that civil and ecclesiastical authority must submit to revealed truth and to the Church’s jurisdiction in matters touching faith and morals.
By refusing to speak these truths, the text conditions Catholics to accept a purely horizontal, sentimental Catholicism: relics, restorations, picturesque feasts—while doctrinal treason metastasizes unchecked.
The legalistic façade: abusive invocation of papal plenitude
The document’s canonical formulae demand particular scrutiny:
– It invokes certa scientia ac matura deliberatione (certain knowledge and mature deliberation) and plenitudo potestatis (fullness of power).
– It declares the act “firm, valid and efficacious” in perpetuity, annuls all contrary acts, and brands any opposition as null.
Such formulae are traditionally the expression of the supreme, divinely assisted power of a true Pope, particularly in matters closely linked with the spiritual good of the faithful. But this power is not magical; it presupposes:
– That the one exercising it is a member of the Church and not a manifest heretic.
– That acts are directed to the true end of the Church, salus animarum (the salvation of souls), in continuity with the perennial Magisterium.
Pre-conciliar theologians, echoing the constant doctrine (cf. the sources collected in the provided Defense of Sedevacantism file), insist:
– A manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church, since he is not even a member; he loses any office ipso facto.
– Juridical formulas cannot transubstantiate error into authority. They are valid instruments only in the hands of a true Pontiff.
Thus, the use of the highest papal language by John XXIII, at the dawn of his Modernist council, is not proof of legitimacy; it is aggravating evidence of abuse. The extremist solemnity of the style contrasts violently with the complete reticence regarding the doctrinal crisis and liberal onslaughts solemnly condemned by his predecessors.
Silence in the face of error as complicity
Given the historical context:
– Modernism had already been condemned in detail by St. Pius X (Lamentabili, Pascendi).
– Liberalism, indifferentism, and socialism had been anathematized over and over by the 19th- and early 20th-century popes.
– Anti-Catholic states continued to expropriate, secularize, and corrupt.
A document truly animated by the spirit of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, or Pius XI would use the occasion:
– To exhort civil authorities in La Spezia to return to Catholic law.
– To condemn explicitly the prior suppressions and demand full liberty for the Church.
– To remind the faithful that veneration of St. Venerius is inseparable from fidelity to the entire pre-modernist deposit of faith.
Instead, there is a smooth, irenic, bureaucratic tone. This is precisely the style singled out as dangerous: a tone that speaks of devotion and culture but refuses to confront unbelief and revolution. Such silence, especially in a juridical act by the supposed supreme shepherd, is not neutral but objectively favors the enemies of the faith. Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent appears to consent).
From local patron to conciliar showcase: preparing the aggiornamento
This patronal proclamation functions as a liturgical and devotional pilot project:
– It tests the machinery of the conciliar structures: Congregation of Rites, chancery style, local episcopate, lay committees.
– It shows that under the new regime one can have saints, relics, processions, and solemn decrees—without any clash with the liberal state or Modernist theology.
Thus, when later the same line of usurpers will:
– Introduce a fabricated “Mass” and disfigure the sacramental rites.
– Promote religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality in defiance of prior condemnations.
– Manufacture a pantheon of post-conciliar “saints” who embody the new religion.
…the faithful will have been conditioned: “Nothing has changed; we still have our patrons, our shrines, our Latin decrees.” The cult of St. Venerius has been co-opted into a stage set that hides the replacement of the Catholic Church by the conciliar sect.
The necessary conclusion: reclaiming the saints from the neo-church
From the perspective of the integral Catholic faith:
– St. Venerius remains what he has always been: a Catholic confessor and hermit interceding for souls.
– The ancient devotion of the region tied to his memory is legitimate as far as it is united to the true faith, the true *Most Holy Sacrifice*, and obedience to the perennial Magisterium.
– However, the 1959 act of John XXIII, insofar as it claims to emanate from papal plenitude inside the conciliar project, is intrinsically compromised.
One must therefore:
– Reject the illusion that such acts legitimize the usurping line beginning with John XXIII.
– Deny to the conciliar sect the right to instrumentalize true saints as ornamental props for its apostasy.
– Call souls back beyond the cosmetic piety of neo-church decrees to the hard, non-negotiable demands of the pre-1958 Magisterium: no reconciliation with liberalism, no relativization of doctrine, no hermeneutic of continuity masking rupture.
To genuinely honour St. Venerius today is:
– To imitate his penance and separation from the world, not the aggiornamento of the world.
– To implore his intercession for the restoration of the visible structures of the Church to the unadulterated profession of faith, worship, and discipline solemnly taught and defended by the true popes before the conciliar betrayal.
– To refuse the seductive theatre in which saints and Latin phrases are deployed to crown the abominatio desolationis (abomination of desolation) enthroned where the Holy See once shone.
Any cult of saints that does not denounce the doctrinal deviations of post-conciliarism becomes, however unwittingly, an accomplice to that deviation. It is time to tear away this mask and confess openly: the saints belong to Christ’s true, unchanging Church, not to the paramasonic structures occupying the Vatican since 1958.
Source:
Haud raro, Litterae Apostolicae Sanctus Venerius, Confessor, Caelestis Patronus eligitur totius Lunensis seu Spediensis Sinus, d. 24 m. Octobris a. 1959, Ioannes PP. XIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025