Mirabilis tot is the solemn Latin decree by which John XXIII, in April 1959, inscribed Carlo da Sezze (Charles of Sezze), a 17th‑century Franciscan lay brother, into the catalogue of canonized saints. The document rehearses at length his humble rural origins, his Franciscan vocation, severe asceticism, mystical phenomena (visions, locutions, stigmata of the heart), reputed miracles during life and after death, and the juridical steps from diocesan inquiries through beatification under Pius IX to final canonization. It culminates in a high liturgical proclamation “as Supreme Pastor of the universal Church” that Carlo and Joaquina de Vedruna are saints for the whole Church, whose cult is commanded and whose patronage is invoked for the success of John XXIII’s announced “initiatives” and for the temporal and spiritual prosperity of peoples.

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The Self-Canonization of a Revolution: Mirabilis tot as Programmatic Usurpation

From Catholic Canonization to Conciliar Self-Legitimization

On the surface, the letter imitates the traditional form of canonization decrees: invocation of the Most Holy Trinity, recitation of life, virtues, miracles, juridical formula, threat of divine wrath upon contradictors. Yet the text must be read in its concrete historical and theological context: it is issued by John XXIII, the inaugurator of the conciliar upheaval (1958–1963), standing on the threshold of Vatican II and the construction of the conciliar sect. The document thus functions on two levels:

– Historically, it recounts a 17th‑century Franciscan’s life, largely evaluated and substantially completed (heroicity of virtues, miracles, beatification) under pre‑1958 pontiffs.
– Ideologically, it is used in 1959 as a vehicle for John XXIII to present himself as legitimate “supreme magister,” to attach his authority parasitically to pre‑conciliar processes, and to anchor his future revolution in the prestige of a “new saint.”

The central problem is not Carlo da Sezze as a historical person (whose life, as transmitted, contains many traditionally edifying elements, though also problematic mystical features to be judged with sobriety), but the act: John XXIII arrogates to himself the prerogative of infallible canonization at precisely the moment when he is preparing to overturn, by Vatican II, the doctrinal bulwarks erected by Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI and Pius XII against liberalism, religious indifferentism, rationalism, and Modernism.

Here is the internal fracture: the letter clothes itself with the language and seals of Tradition while serving as one more brick in the counterfeit edifice of authority claimed by the post‑1958 line.

Factual Layer: Appropriating a Pre‑Conciliar Cause to Sanction a Post‑Conciliar Usurper

1. The decree itself acknowledges that:
– The heroic virtues of Carlo were approved by Clement XIV.
– Miracles were judged under Pius IX.
– Beatification occurred in 1882.
– Further miracles for canonization were examined and approved under Pius XII.
– Pius XII already declared that it was safe to proceed to canonization.

Thus, every substantive element of the cause—virtues and miracles—was already concluded under unquestionably Catholic pontificates before 1958.

John XXIII’s act consists almost exclusively in:
– Rehearsing the previously gathered acts.
– Declaring as “supreme and universal pastor” that Carlo be inscribed definitively among the saints.
– Binding the whole Church to this decree under threat of the wrath of Almighty God and the Apostles Peter and Paul.

This is not a neutral step. The authority to pronounce an infallible, definitive judgment on a soul’s sanctity presupposes:
– True papal office.
– Full communion with the perennial faith.
– Non-contradiction with the doctrinal magisterium previously exercised.

Yet John XXIII had already manifested and would more openly manifest:
– His intention to convoke a council not to condemn errors but to “update” the Church.
– His conciliatory attitude towards precisely those liberal and Masonic forces condemned repeatedly by the Magisterium (see Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors; Leo XIII’s encyclicals on Freemasonry and liberalism).
– A program favoring the same “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” explicitly rejected as an error in proposition 80 of the Syllabus (“Romanus Pontifex cum progressu, liberalismo et hodierna civilitate componi et conciliare potest et debet”).

By solemnly performing a canonization in continuity of form while preparing a rupture in doctrine and discipline, John XXIII uses the cult of a pre‑conciliar religious as an instrument of self-legitimation. The act is formally cloaked in Tradition, materially ordered to the conciliar revolution.

From the perspective of the unchanging Catholic theology prior to 1958, this raises the gravest doubt about the juridical and theological validity of the act itself:
– A manifestly heterodox innovator cannot exercise the charism of infallibility.
– A line initiated by a public promoter of the very tendencies anathematized by previous popes lacks the conditions for binding, irreformable judgments.
– Therefore, the “canonization” here is at best dubious and at worst void; its authority cannot be accepted as that of the Catholic Church.

Linguistic Layer: Traditional Rhetoric in the Service of a New Religion

The rhetoric of Mirabilis tot is polished, ostensibly pious, and externally indistinguishable from earlier papal decrees of canonization. Yet its linguistic features, read in context, reveal a subtle re-orientation.

Key observations:

1. Hyper-emphasis on edifying narrative:
– The text expends enormous space on picturesque episodes, mystical phenomena, and extraordinary graces: beating back demons, dramatic penances, heart transverberation, apparent miracles.
– While such narratives appear in earlier canonizations, here they are deployed with near-total absence of doctrinal precision or explicit doctrinal warnings. There is abundant affective hagiography, little doctrinal militancy.

2. Silence on the doctrinal combat of the age:
– Canonizations traditionally highlight a saint’s role in defending the faith against the errors of his time, or at least situate his life within the Church’s triumph over heresies.
– In this decree, there is no connection drawn between Carlo’s sanctity and the defense of the faith against Protestantism, Jansenism, Enlightenment errors, naturalism, etc.
– Instead, the saint’s image is reduced to a harmless, interior, apolitical mystic, ideal as a devotional mascot for a “pastoral” religion allergic to doctrinal conflict.

3. Instrumental invocation of peace and universal prosperity:
– At the end, John XXIII explicitly yokes the new saints to his own program:
– He asks their aid so that “all Christians, united in fraternal love, may be one flock and one shepherd,” and that “all peoples… may advance towards prosperity which will be a harbinger of eternal happiness.”
– This language, read before Vatican II opens, anticipates precisely the ecumenical and naturalistic vocabulary that will dominate the “Church of the New Advent”: fraternity without doctrinal unity, temporal prosperity as quasi‑sacrament of salvation, dilution of the Kingship of Christ into soft humanitarianism.

4. Absence of militant assertion of Christ’s Social Kingship:
– Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches with adamant clarity that true peace and order require the public reign of Christ the King, the submission of states and laws to His law.
– Mirabilis tot, while nominally “for the exaltation of the Catholic faith and the increase of Christian religion,” ends in the vague hope that peoples, with “minds and affairs ordered by justice and charity,” may obtain prosperity as a sign of eternal happiness—without explicit insistence that states must reject secularism and submit to the law of Christ and His Church.
– This softening is symptomatic: the rhetoric is elevated, but the cutting edge of Catholic social doctrine is blunted.

Thus language that mimics Tradition is subtly bent away from its integral content toward the conciliatory, non-condemnatory, horizontal ethos that will define post‑conciliarism.

Theological Layer: Canonization Authority, Modernism, and the Conciliar Sect

From the vantage point of integral pre‑1958 doctrine, several theological fault lines appear.

1. The premise of binding canonization:

The decree claims, in the solemn formula:
“Auctoritate Domini Nostri Iesu Christi, Beatorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli ac Nostra… Beatos… Sanctos esse decernimus et definimus, ac Sanctorum catalogo ascribimus… Nemini autem… obniti liceat… Quod si quis temere ausus fuerit, indignationem omnipotentis Dei et Sanctorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli se noverit incursurum.”

For such a definition to be infallible, classical theology requires:
– The defining subject to be the true Roman Pontiff.
– The act to be exercised in continuity with the prior magisterium.
– The act not to be instrumentalized as vehicle for imposing or legitimizing condemned errors.

But:
– Pius IX’s Syllabus and later condemnations anathematize liberalism, religious indifferentism, reconciliation with “modern civilization” on its own principles, the very agenda John XXIII and his successors promote.
– St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi condemns the evolution of dogma, historicism, and the subordination of dogma to pastoral or experiential categories—exactly the core principles that animate Vatican II and its aftermath.

If one who publicly fosters these condemned tendencies claims, in the same breath, to exercise an infallible charism binding consciences, there is a direct theological contradiction: non potest simul affirmari et negari idem sub eodem respectu (the same proposition cannot be affirmed and denied under the same aspect). A promoter of what prior Magisterium marks as destructive of the faith cannot at the same time be its divinely assisted supreme teacher.

2. The function of hagiography in Modernist strategy:

The document’s approach to Carlo da Sezze’s mysticism and miracles is uncritical, almost credulous, emphasizing extraordinary phenomena without rigorous doctrinal framing. This is particularly dangerous in a modernist context:

– Modernism, as St. Pius X judged, uses religious experience and “vital immanence” to override dogma. Emotional piety becomes a solvent of defined truths.
– An overemphasis on sensations, ecstasies, visions, and “special experiences” without simultaneous, sharp doctrinal formation feeds this subjectivist drift.
– In Mirabilis tot, the entire narrative exalts mystical favors, interior locutions, prodigies, yet there is no doctrinal admonition against illuminism, no explicit recall of the decrees that subject private revelations and extraordinary phenomena to the severe judgment of the Church and subordination to public revelation.

The very elements that in an integral Catholic context would require sober discernment are here presented as ornaments for an already‑chosen candidate—and, functionally, as a pretext for John XXIII to exercise a triumphalist “supreme” act.

3. Exploiting pre‑conciliar causes:

The cause of Carlo da Sezze was essentially ready for canonization under Pius XII, who even fixed a date. Providence allowed Pius XII to die before the act.

John XXIII seizes this nearly completed cause to:
– Present himself to the world as the natural, unproblematic successor in the line of true popes.
– Demonstrate that under him “everything continues as before”: same ceremonies, same Latin, same threats of Peter and Paul’s wrath—while simultaneously preparing to overturn liturgy, theology, ecclesiology through Vatican II and its implementation.

This is theologically intolerable duplicity: using the signs of indefectibility to shield a work of defection. It is precisely the tactic warned against by Pius IX and Leo XIII when unmasking Masonic and liberal infiltration: the enemy seeks to occupy the forms and language of the Church in order to pervert her from within.

4. Canonization as endorsement of a new ecclesiology:

By invoking Carlo and Joaquina as intercessors for:
“all Christians… one flock and one shepherd… all peoples… with their affairs ordered by justice and charity… advancing to prosperity”,
without demanding explicit return to the one true Catholic Church and submission to her dogmas, the decree subtly aligns sanctity with the future ecumenical and irenic ecclesiology.

True Catholic teaching, as reiterated by Pius XI, is unequivocal:
– There is only one Church of Christ, the Catholic Church.
– Unity requires return of dissidents to this one fold in faith and subjection, not sentimental fraternity.
– Peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ, publicly recognized by individuals and states (Quas Primas).

Mirabilis tot evacuates these hard lines in favor of a bland horizon that meshes seamlessly with the post‑conciliar cult of “dialogue” and “human fraternity.”

In sum, at the theological level, the letter is not a neutral pious act but a sophisticated tool of the emerging paramasonic structure: it trades on the credibility of authentic pre‑1958 doctrinal processes to confer apparent supernatural endorsement on the new power occupying the Vatican.

Symptomatic Layer: Mirabilis tot as Early Symptom of the Conciliar Sect’s Method

Viewed as a symptom of the post‑1958 system, this document displays the characteristic features of the conciliar revolution:

1. Usurpation of Catholic forms:
– Traditional language, seals, signatures, juridical solemnity are all preserved.
– The deeper doctrinal and disciplinary thrust—already indicated by John XXIII’s program—is quietly redirected toward accommodation with liberal modernity.

2. Sacralization of the new authority:
– By wielding an act that, in Catholic theology, is among the highest exercises of papal infallibility, the usurping authority seeks to secure de facto obedience.
– Faithful attached to Tradition are placed under psychological pressure: to doubt the new line is to risk opposing a “saint” and a “solemn canonization.”

3. Depoliticization and spiritualization of sanctity:
– Carlo is presented chiefly as a private mystic, obsequious religious, miracle worker—not as a confessor of the Kingship of Christ against revolutionary forces.
– This furnishes an apolitical, interiorized model of holiness that conveniently does not resist the intrusion of secularism, liberal democracy, or Masonic influence in public life—exactly what Pius IX and Pius XI condemned.

4. Silence about the real enemy:
– Nowhere in Mirabilis tot is there mention of the war of the sects—Freemasonry, naturalism, socialism—against the Church, so powerfully described by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– There is no reminder that, as the Syllabus teaches, the State must not be separated from the Church (prop. 55), and that religious indifferentism is a grave error (props. 15–18).
– Instead, there is a vague wish for universal peace and prosperity, detached from the necessary submission of individuals and nations to Christ the King.

Silence here is not an accident; it is incriminating. At the very moment when the infiltration denounced by Pius IX as the “synagogue of Satan” and by St. Pius X as Modernism is reaching its triumph within the Vatican walls, the supposed “pope” chooses to canonize without any direct confrontation with these enemies. Sanctity is aestheticized; doctrine is anesthetized.

Exposure of the Bankruptcy: Why Mirabilis tot Cannot Bind Catholic Consciences

Taking together the factual, linguistic, theological, and symptomatic layers, the conclusion, on the basis of pre‑1958 doctrine, is inexorable.

1. The authority defect:
– A manifest innovator, preparing and then presiding over a council that will enshrine condemned propositions (religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, evolution of doctrine), cannot be regarded as a true Roman Pontiff according to the principles laid out by classical theologians and canon law.
– As the pre‑conciliar tradition insists, a public, manifest heretic is outside the Church and cannot hold authority; and public defection from the faith empties ecclesiastical acts of binding force.
– The line beginning with John XXIII, continuing through the conciliar and post‑conciliar antipopes, is thus a line of usurpers; their exploits, including so‑called canonizations, are juridically and theologically null or at least gravely doubtful.

2. The moral and doctrinal incoherence:
– Mirabilis tot claims divine sanction for the decrees of John XXIII, while his broader program flatly contradicts the Syllabus, Quanta Cura, Pascendi, Quas Primas, Mortalium Animos, and the rest of the pre‑1958 magisterium.
– An act that, in appearance, exalts a humble Franciscan yet in reality serves as a self‑consecration of an apostatic agenda is morally perverse.

3. The weaponization of piety:
– The true sanctity of Carlo da Sezze, insofar as it is historically and doctrinally credible, is not the issue; the issue is its exploitation.
– The conciliar sect systematically instrumentalizes saints, devotions, and canonizations—either by fabricating “new saints” of its own ideology or by annexing older causes—in order to maintain an illusion of continuity and to chloroform resistance.

4. The duty of resistance:
– Catholics bound by the immutable teaching of the Church must not allow themselves to be trapped by the external forms of acts issuing from a counterfeit authority.
– Pius IX, in denouncing Masonic and liberal conspiracies, and St. Pius X, in hurling anathema at Modernism, provided the criteria: any structure or teaching that reconciles the Church with liberal modernity, dilutes dogma, enthrones religious liberty and indifferentism, cannot be the authentic expression of the Bride of Christ.

Therefore:
– The canonization formula of Mirabilis tot, proceeding from John XXIII, does not enjoy the guarantee of papal infallibility as taught in Vatican I, because its subject is a usurper aligned against the prior magisterium.
– The faithful adhering to integral Catholic faith are not bound in conscience to accept this act; indeed, they must recognize in such decrees a hallmark of the parasitic neo‑church that dresses itself in Catholic garments to spread its poison.

Return to the True Measure of Sanctity and Authority

The only remedy to the confusion epitomized by Mirabilis tot is a radical re-centering on the unchanging principles:

– Sanctity is measured by:
– Adherence to the totality of Catholic doctrine.
– Submission to the true Church and her perennial Magisterium.
– Defense of Christ’s rights over individuals and societies, even at the cost of one’s life.
– Authority is recognized only where:
– There is continuity with the dogmas and condemnations taught “always, everywhere, and by all” in the Church.
– There is rejection, not embrace, of the errors catalogued by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
– Any structure that:
– Exalts religious freedom in the sense condemned in the Syllabus,
– Accepts the separation of Church and State,
– Indulges in syncretistic ecumenism,
– Promotes evolution of dogma and a cult of man,
stands self‑condemned by the pre‑1958 Magisterium and cannot claim the prerogatives of Peter.

Those who remain faithful must, therefore:
– Read documents like Mirabilis tot not as unquestionable papal acts, but as revealing texts of a counterfeit hierarchy attempting to legitimate itself by hijacking Catholic forms.
– Honor genuine saints discerned and canonically recognized within the true Church, without allowing their memory to be co‑opted in favor of the conciliar project.
– Refuse the emotional blackmail that weaponizes canonizations to silence doctrinal discernment.

Only by this uncompromising fidelity to the integral, immutable doctrine can souls avoid being seduced by the pseudo‑sacral gestures of the structures occupying the Vatican and instead persevere in the Barque of Peter as defined by the perennial Magisterium, where Christ the King truly reigns and His saints shine as witnesses—not to a revolution—but to His sovereign truth.

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Source:
Mirabilis tot, Litterae Decretales Beato Carolo a Setia, ex Ordine Fratrum minorum, confessori, Sanctorum honores decernuntur, Litterae Decretales, XXVI Maii 1959, Ioannes PP. XXIII   (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025