The text is a brief Latin decree of the usurper John XXIII, in which he confers on the church of Saint Mercurialis in Forlì (Foro Livii) the title and privileges of a minor basilica, appealing to its antiquity, artistic value, popular attachment, and the cult of Saint Mercurialis as first bishop of the city. It is a perfectly characteristic specimen of the early rhetoric of the conciliar revolution: externally pious and canonico-bureaucratic, yet functioning as a liturgical-anthropological ornament on the façade of an authority that had already defected from the integral Catholic faith, transforming sacred titles into decorative tokens within a paramasonic system usurping the name of the Church.
Empty Honors in a Usurped Structure: A Minor Basilica in the Service of Neo-Church
Usurped Authority and the Nullity of Post-1958 Pontifical Acts
From the perspective of the integral Catholic faith, the first and decisive datum is not the bricks of Forlì nor the aesthetic praise, but the subject who signs:
«Datum Roma, apud Sanctum Petrum… anno MDCCCCLVIIII, Pontificatus Nostri primo.»
The document self-presents John XXIII as Roman Pontiff and exercises plenitudo potestatis (fullness of power) by elevating a church to the rank of Basilica Minor. However:
– The integral Catholic doctrine, drawn from *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio* of Paul IV and presupposed by the 1917 Code of Canon Law (can. 188 §4), affirms that one who has fallen into heresy or publicly defected from the faith cannot validly obtain or retain ecclesiastical office.
– Pre-1958 papal teaching (e.g., Pius IX, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII) consistently condemns liberalism, false ecumenism, religious indifferentism, and conciliatory attitudes toward the masonic-secular order that John XXIII would notoriously promote and that would culminate in the Second Vatican Council and its apostasy. When a claimant to the papacy embraces or launches precisely what his predecessors anathematized as incompatible with the Faith, he falls under the principle summarised by St. Robert Bellarmine and the theologians cited in the Defense of Sedevacantism file: a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church, because he is no longer even a member.
Therefore, regardless of the modest object (title of basilica), this text is part of the body of acts issued by an authority which, according to the classical theological criteria, had no legitimate jurisdiction in the Church of Christ. The pompous legal formulae,
«certa scientia ac matura deliberatione Nostra deque Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine… ad dignitatem Basilicae Minoris evehimus… praesentes Litteras firmas, validas atque efficaces iugiter exstare… irritumque ex nunc et inane fieri, si quidquam secus… attentari contigerit»,
become self-referential and ironically self-condemning. He claims to nullify anything contrary to his decree; yet his own “pontificate,” measured against the immutable norms reiterated by Pius IX in the *Syllabus* and by St. Pius X in *Pascendi* and *Lamentabili*, stands condemned as collaboration with precisely those currents previously anathematized: liberalism, doctrinal evolution, practical indifferentism, subservience to the world.
Lex dubia non obligat (“a doubtful law does not bind”), and a fortiori *auctor dubius* in essentialibus (a doubtful authority in essential matters) does not command the internal submission owed to the Vicar of Christ. The act is thus an ornament of the conciliar sect, not an organically Catholic act strengthening the visible structure of the Mystical Body.
Celebration of Stone While the Faith Is Undermined
The letter constructs its entire rationale on naturalistic and aesthetic registers:
– Antiquity: the church rebuilt in 1176 after fires.
– Architecture: the “augusta aedes… concinne seiteque architettata.”
– Artistic ornamentation: paintings and reliefs of the Magi adoring the Divine Child.
– Popular attachment and post-war restoration.
– The tomb of Saint Mercurialis as a stimulus for local devotion.
Typical phrases include:
«templum Sancti Mercurialis, quod antiquitate, arte factis operibus, religione tam insigne est quam quod maxime»
and
«Forolivienses singulari eiusdem templi studio teneri… quod frequentes eo quasi in praecipuam quandam pietatis sedem confluant.»
Everything appears benign, even praiseworthy. Yet here the symptomatic dimension emerges:
1. There is not a single explicit reference to the necessity of the *true* faith, to the dogmatic integrity guarded by the pre-conciliar Magisterium, to the Most Holy Sacrifice offered there according to the Roman rite as codified by St. Pius V, or to the obligation of the city and nation to acknowledge the social Kingship of Christ as taught, for example, by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*, who insists that peace and order depend on publicly recognizing Christ as King in law and institutions.
2. The only “religion” element is generic: a shrine of devotion, a locus of popular piety. The argument is essentially: this is an ancient and beloved monument with religious associations, therefore we decorate it with a title. This is an estheticized sacrality, compatible with the cult of heritage and tourism—and perfectly congruent with the emergent conciliar mentality, which reduces Catholicism to patrimony, culture, and feeling, while eroding its claims of exclusive divine right.
3. The letter omits the militant and exclusive nature of the Church as taught before 1958:
– Pius IX in the *Syllabus* rejects the errors that “the Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion” and condemns religious indifferentism.
– St. Pius X in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi* condemns precisely the modernist reduction of dogma to symbols of religious experience and the adaptation of religion to modern culture.
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* demands public, social recognition of Christ’s Kingship—something utterly absent here.
The silence is thunderous. In a pontifical act concerning a major church, issued in the wake of the most anti-Christian century and the crimes of laicism and Freemasonry (denounced by Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X), the usurper limits himself to antiquarian compliments. No call to penance, no denunciation of the enemies of the Church, no reminder that the sanctuary houses the altar of propitiatory Sacrifice and the Real Presence, no insistence on the obligation of civil society to submit to Christ and His Church. Such omissions, in a context requiring clear affirmation, are not neutral; they are symptoms.
Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent appears to consent). The pleasant, “pastoral” silence about the supernatural combat aligns perfectly with the conciliar program that would soon enthrone “dialogue,” “religious liberty,” and “ecumenism”—all censured in substance by the pre-1958 Magisterium.
The Language of Bureaucratic Piety as Cloak for Subversion
The rhetoric of this letter is a distilled example of the amphibious style that allows the conciliar sect to pass as Catholic while emptying Catholic concepts:
– Use of traditional formulas: «Ad perpetuam rei memoriam,» «certa scientia,» «Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine,» «iura et privilegia,» «Contrariis quibusvis nihil obstantibus.»
– Use of devout expressions: praise of devotion of the faithful, mention of Saint Mercurialis, admiration of representations of the Magi.
Yet what is missing is decisive:
1. No doctrinal note explaining the meaning of the title Basilica Minor in relation to the primacy of the Roman See, to indulgences, to the ordering of worship toward God as sovereign Lord of individuals and nations.
2. No admonition that any honor given to the church is ordered to the greater honor of Christ, to the increase of true faith and Catholic obedience, as pre-1958 popes habitually emphasized.
3. The style is “high curial,” but emptied of doctrinal combativeness. Compare, for verification, with the sharp doctrinal clarity and anti-liberal vigour of:
– Pius IX, *Quanta Cura* and the *Syllabus*: explicit condemnation of liberal principles, religious indifferentism, denial of Church’s rights.
– Leo XIII, *Immortale Dei*, *Humanum Genus*: unmasking Freemasonry and demanding restoration of Christian polity.
– St. Pius X, *Pascendi*: detailed anatomical dissection of modernism, with canonical measures.
– Pius XI, *Quas Primas*: calling secular apostasy “the plague of our time” and insisting that states, not only individuals, must submit to Christ the King.
– Pius XII, who, despite prudential weaknesses, maintained doctrinal lines and did not abandon the principle of the objective rights of the true Church.
Against this background, the mellifluous harmlessness of John XXIII’s act is not incidental. It is the stylistic mark of the new regime: retain the smell of incense, remove the steel of dogma. Preserve “precious monuments” while preparing to invert their theological meaning.
This aesthetic-bureaucratic tone is itself symptomatic of what St. Pius X condemned: the drive to reconcile the Church with modern culture by softening dogma, muting anathemas, and presenting the Faith as a gentle cultural continuum. *Lamentabili* explicitly rejects the idea that ecclesiastical censures show the Church’s faith to be at odds with history; yet the conciliar mentality, inaugurated under John XXIII, precisely adopted a historicizing relativism and sought to free itself from “negative” definitions. The present letter’s refusal to be anything other than cultural-liturgical flattery fits into that trajectory.
Theological Incoherence: Sacred Privileges in Service of a Counter-Church
At the theological level, one must confront the contradiction implicit in granting real ecclesiastical privileges from within a counterfeit structure.
The letter solemnly attributes to the church of Saint Mercurialis:
«omnibus adiectis iuribus et privilegiis, quae sacris aedibus, eodem nomine insignibus, rite competunt.»
To speak meaningfully of:
– “rights and privileges” attached to a Basilica Minor,
– “rite competunt” (rightly belong),
– “praesentes Litteras firmas, validas atque efficaces,”
one must presuppose:
– a true Roman Pontiff, successor of Peter in the line of the Catholic Church,
– the continuity of the same ecclesial body which established those privileges.
But John XXIII would be the launching point for a structure that:
– convened a council (Vatican II) which embraced principles explicitly incompatible with the *Syllabus* and prior Magisterium (religious liberty as subjective right, ecumenism based on the denial of the exclusive claims of the Catholic Church, collegiality eroding papal monarchia, etc.),
– promulgated or prepared the liturgical revolution that would mutilate the Roman rite and obscure the sacrificial, propitiatory character of the Mass,
– initiated the policy of dialogue with anti-Christian systems and sects condemned repeatedly by pre-1958 popes.
A structure which systematically subverts dogma, morality, and worship cannot be the subject of Catholic juridical acts in the strict sense. It can simulate them. The decree therefore illustrates the deeper bankruptcy: it uses the venerable language of Catholic canonical efficacy while being organically ordered toward the demolition of the faith those privileges once protected.
Abusus non tollit usum (abuse does not take away use), but here it is not a mere abuse by a legitimate pope; it is the systematic use of Catholic forms by a non-Catholic regime—what can rightly be called the “neo-church,” the “Church of the New Advent,” the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican.
Thus:
– The cult of Saint Mercurialis is embedded into an ecclesial apparatus that would soon embrace religious liberty and ecumenism, implicitly denying that Forlì—or any city—must belong exclusively to Christ through His one true Church.
– The honor of Basilica Minor becomes a badge in the museum of “Catholic heritage” curated by those who have betrayed the doctrine that alone gave that heritage meaning.
This is the theological charade: they crown a church architecturally and historically noble, but do so in the name of a program diametrically opposed to what saints like Mercurialis, and the true Catholic hierarchy, stood for.
Silence on the Enemies of the Church and the Kingship of Christ
From the standpoint of integral doctrine, the gravest element is the total silence on:
– The enemies of the Church condemned by prior popes: liberalism, socialism, communism, Freemasonry, naturalism, modernism.
– The apostasy of states that expel Christ from laws and education, condemned in the *Syllabus* and reaffirmed in *Quas Primas*.
– The obligation of public, social subjection of Forlì and Italy to Christ the King.
– The centrality of the Most Holy Sacrifice offered on that altar as propitiation for sins and the heart of any true Christian civilization.
Pius XI declared that the calamities afflicting nations are fruits of the rejection of the reign of Christ and His law; he instituted the feast of Christ the King precisely to denounce “this public apostasy, which secularism has initiated with great harm to society.” He orders that both individuals and states must recognize Christ’s royal rights and shape laws accordingly. None of this spirit survives in John XXIII’s text.
Instead, we are given cultural Catholicism:
– the church survives war,
– the faithful love it,
– it holds artistic treasures,
– therefore we give it a title.
This naturalistic reduction—where the highest praise is given to the aesthetic and emotional attachment—is an example of that *laicisme pratique* which prior popes condemned. It is a clerical antiquarianism that lives comfortably within the secular order, no longer challenging its apostasy. It is the opposite of the militancy called for by Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI.
Qui non est mecum, contra me est (“He that is not with Me is against Me,” Mt 12:30). A “pontifical” act that refuses to confess Christ’s sovereign rights and to warn against His enemies—especially in an epoch drunk on secularism and masonry—aligns itself in practice with those enemies.
Symptom of the Conciliar Revolution: Harmless Gestures, Preparations for Ruin
One might object: this is “only” about granting a minor basilica title. But precisely such “small” acts reveal the mutation of mentality.
1. The act situates itself wholly within a horizontal horizon: historic preservation, local pride, devotional sentiment. This is how the conciliar sect would everywhere operate: preserving facades (cathedrals, feasts, titles), while dissolving the underlying claims of divine exclusivity, dogmatic obligation, and sacramental realism.
2. The insistence on juridical formulas, while the same regime will soon relativize or ignore prior condemnations (e.g., of religious liberty, ecumenism, collegialism), highlights hypocrisy: they demand that their own decrees be taken as “firm, valid, and effective,” but treat the solemn, anti-liberal teaching of their predecessors as a dead letter or as needing “reinterpretation.”
3. This text is dated early in his “pontificate”: January 1959—the same year in which John XXIII announces the council that would unleash the conciliar revolution. It stands as an outwardly traditional prelude masking the impending devastation. The gesture toward Forlì is a pacifying narcotic: look, continuity, basilicas, saints—while in the background the preparatory machinery for Vatican II is engaged.
4. In moral theology, signs matter: *signa rerum sacrarum* either witness to truth or become vehicles of deception. Here, the minor basilica dignity, severed from the integral Catholic framework, becomes an instrument of respectability for the usurping structure: “See, we honor ancient saints, we care for old sanctuaries; therefore we are the same Church.” This is exactly the tactic of every counterfeit: mimicry of externals, inversion of substance.
Pre-1958 papal teaching arms us against such simulation:
– St. Pius X brands modernism “the synthesis of all heresies” precisely because it survives by disguise—maintaining vocabulary, emptying content.
– Pius IX warns against those who would reconcile the Church with liberalism and modern civilization as defined against divine rights (#80 of the *Syllabus*).
– Pius XI and Pius XII insist on continuity of doctrine and on the Church’s divine constitution, untouchable by human schemes.
Measured against these principles, the John XXIII decree manifests:
– The substitution of cultural-historic motives for theological ones;
– The implicit acceptance of a Church reduced to a pious cultural factor within secular society;
– The exploitation of genuine local devotion to integrate souls into obedience to the nascent conciliar system.
Conclusion: A Basilica for Saint Mercurialis, but in Whose City?
Saint Mercurialis, presented as the first bishop of Forlì, belonged to the Catholic Church that taught:
– one true Faith, outside of which there is no salvation;
– one true Church, visibly governed by the successor of Peter, whose authority is bound to the unchanging deposit of faith;
– the duty of individuals and nations to submit to Christ the King and to the laws of His Church;
– the rejection of liberalism, indifferentism, syncretism, Freemasonry, and all revolutionary errors.
His tomb stands as a rebuke to any attempt to enlist his name in the service of a structure that embraces those very errors.
The conciliar sect’s decree “elevating” his church to a minor basilica is, at best, juridically dubious and, at worst, a liturgical-political theater: an attempt to drape an apostate project in the accumulated prestige of centuries of true Catholic sanctity.
Under the criteria of pre-1958 Catholic doctrine:
– The usurper has no authority to bind the Church or confer supernatural-juridical privileges.
– The rhetoric of artistic admiration and popular piety, stripped of doctrinal militancy, is a hallmark of that modernism unmasked and anathematized by St. Pius X.
– The omission of the Kingship of Christ, of the rights of the Church over nations, and of the denunciation of organized enemies is not a neutral editorial choice but a sign of conformity to the world, which Pius XI named the root of the world’s misfortunes.
Therefore, this “Apostolic Letter” is not an act of the spotless Bride of Christ, but an artifact of the “neo-church” that had begun to occupy her visible structures—one more polished stone in the facade behind which the abomination of desolation would arrange itself.
Source:
Agnes Sepulchrum (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025