The text attributed to John XXIII, titled “Urbis Fori Livii,” announces that the church of St Mercurialis in Forlì, praised for its antiquity, architecture, post‑war restoration, and popular devotion, is elevated to the rank of minor basilica, with all the rights and privileges that follow from this dignity. It is a brief juridical-act style document: a few lines of historical-aesthetic admiration, a mention of veneration of St Mercurialis, the request of the parish priest supported by the local bishop, and the solemn conferral of the new title “in perpetuum,” sealed with the usual formulae of validity.
Already here the mask slips: behind ornate Latin compliments stands the cold apparatus of the conciliar sect, using traditional forms to consolidate its usurpation and to divert the faithful from the only question that matters — the integrity of the Faith and the true Church.
Architectural Ornament as a Veil for Ecclesial Usurpation
On the factual plane, the document seems innocent: the building is ancient, rebuilt after fires, crowned with a notable tower; the interior houses works of art; the people of Forlì frequent it and restored it after the recent war; the relics or tomb of St Mercurialis stir piety. On this basis, the antipope confers the title of minor basilica.
All of that, considered in se, is compatible with Catholic praxis: the pre‑1958 Church did and could honor distinguished churches, especially those linked to true martyrs, confessors, or great shrines. But here, several decisive elements expose the spiritual fraud at work:
1. The act is issued in 1959 by John XXIII, the first usurper of the See of Peter according to the constant doctrine that a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church. As St Robert Bellarmine synthesized the unanimous Fathers: “A manifest heretic is not a member of the Church; therefore he cannot be its head.” To attribute to such a man binding apostolic jurisdiction is to assault the very constitution of the Church. Every solemn “we elevate,” “we decree,” in this text is juridically void and spiritually poisonous.
2. The document is drafted as if nothing epochal were occurring, as if the Church were peacefully continuing her mission, while in reality the conciliar revolution was being prepared — the same revolution condemned in substance by Pius IX’s Syllabus and by St Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi. This bureaucratic serenity in the mouth of a man who would convoke the council that unleashed Modernism upon the structures occupying the Vatican is not neutral; it is symptomatic.
3. The entire act reduces the life of the Church to heritage management: stones, paintings, a tower, post‑war reconstruction, honorary dignities. There is no word about the necessity of the *Most Holy Sacrifice* offered in the state of grace, no admonition about dogma, no call to penance or to combat the errors ravaging the 20th century — socialism, laicism, religious indifferentism, condemned, for example, in the Syllabus (propositions 15–18, 55, 77–80). What should be an ecclesial gesture ordered to the honor of God and salvation of souls degenerates into a liturgical tourism diploma.
Thus, even a seemingly “harmless” apostolic letter becomes a revealing specimen of post‑1958 parasitic continuity: the usurping structure wraps itself in traditional insignia precisely to anesthetize resistance and to conceal its rupture with the integral Catholic faith.
Sentimental Piety without Supernatural Clarity
Linguistically, the text feigns classical ecclesiastical gravitas: “Ad perpetuam rei memoriam,” praises of antiquity and art, references to “singular devotion” of the faithful, loving mention of the tomb of St Mercurialis. But what is absent is more revealing than what is present.
– The faithful are praised for restoring the building “after the devastations of the last war” and for flocking to it “as to a principal seat of piety.” Yet there is total silence about:
– the need for the true Faith as the only foundation of any cult,
– the necessity of remaining separated from condemned errors (Modernism, false religious liberty, ecumenism, naturalism),
– the state of grace as condition for fruitful participation in sacred rites.
This omission is not a detail: it reflects the naturalistic and aestheticised mentality of post‑conciliarism before it showed its full face. Stones are extolled, while souls are left unguarded.
In contrast, Pius XI in Quas Primas does not celebrate religious monuments in isolation; he orders everything to the explicit assertion of the social Kingship of Christ: peace, law, authority — all are null without the open submission of individuals and states to the reign of Christ the King. He denounces laicism as a “plague” and demands public recognition of Christ’s rights. Here, however, John XXIII contents himself with honoring a tower and images of the Magi, with no battle cry for Christ’s dominion over Forlì, over Italy, over public law. The vocabulary of this letter is anesthetic: it refuses to name the enemies of the Faith, refuses to echo Pius IX on the “synagogue of Satan” of the secret sects and their war against the Church; instead it folds into harmless cultural Catholicism.
– The style is that of a curator, not a watchman. The shepherd’s rod is replaced by the tour guide’s brochure.
– The name of St Mercurialis appears as a decorative seal confirming local identity, rather than as that of a militant bishop whose intercession should be invoked against the very modernist and masonic forces that the true Magisterium had repeatedly unmasked.
The pseudo-solemn rhetoric thus functions as a cloak: it simulates continuity while avoiding every sharp affirmation that defined the pre‑1958 papal magisterium.
Suppression of the Church’s Militant Character
On the theological level, the core perversity of this text lies not in any explicit doctrinal error stated in its few lines, but in its instrumentalization of Catholic forms to legitimize an illegitimate authority, while strategically suppressing the very elements that would unmask that illegitimacy.
Key points:
1. Illicit appropriation of apostolic authority:
– The letter speaks “de Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine” (“from the fullness of Apostolic power”), and declares that all contrary acts are “irritum et inane” (null and void).
– But, as demonstrated by Catholic theologians (Bellarmine, John of St Thomas, Billot) and codified in the 1917 Code (canon 188 §4), a public defection from the Faith — whether by manifest heresy, promotion of condemned doctrines, or complicity with Modernism — deprives a cleric of office ipso facto. A non-Catholic cannot wield the prerogatives of Peter: “Non potest esse caput Ecclesiae qui non est membrum” (“He who is not a member cannot be the head”).
– John XXIII, by embracing, protecting, and then institutionalizing tendencies already condemned by Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi, stands precisely under these principles. Therefore, his appeal to apostolic plenitude is a usurpation; his juridical formulas are an empty echo — they testify to the theft, not to the legitimacy, of power.
2. Trivialization of sacred dignity:
– The concept of a “minor basilica” is not evil; historically, the Church conferred this title to foster devotion, link churches more closely to Rome, and highlight exemplary liturgical life.
– But here it is treated as a mere honorific label attached because of architecture, art, and civic devotion, without any doctrinal or disciplinary exigence. There is no call to preserve the traditional Roman rite, no safeguard against liturgical abuses, no insistence on catechetical orthodoxy as a condition for this “dignity.”
– This reveals a mentality: sacred titles become decorations distributed by a central authority that is itself in apostasy, functioning like a cultural ministry. The more the Faith is emptied, the more pompous the honorary system becomes — a compensation mechanism masking spiritual desolation.
3. Absence of the Church’s true end: the salvation of souls:
– Not a single mention of the salus animarum (salvation of souls) as the supreme law.
– No recall of dogmatic truths, no exhortation to flee error, no emphasis on confession, on true devotion to the Most Holy Sacrifice, on adherence to the pre‑defined doctrine irreformably taught before.
– This silence is decisive. As St Pius X warns, those who pursue novelties empty dogma and sacraments of their supernatural content and leave only external forms. Here we see precisely that: a solemn act about an edifice that studiously avoids the essential, thus participating in the modernist reduction of religion to culture and sentiment — condemned explicitly in Lamentabili (e.g. propositions 20–26, 54–65).
In other words, the letter is not “neutral”; it is a liturgical-political move of the conciliar sect: it asserts its own counterfeit authority through an apparently pious gesture, confident that the faithful, flattered by a papal parchment, will not ask which “Church” is signing it.
Naturalistic Museum Catholicism Instead of the Reign of Christ the King
From the symptomatic perspective, this document prefigures in miniature the entire strategy of post‑conciliarism:
– Take genuinely venerable elements (ancient churches, saints’ tombs, local devotion).
– Wrap them in the language of continuity and respect.
– Use them as vehicles for:
– consolidating recognition of a false hierarchy,
– distracting from doctrinal combat,
– transforming the Church from a militant, dogmatic, supernatural society into a “heritage community” integrated with the world.
Consider what is absent, in light of binding pre‑1958 doctrine:
1. No affirmation of the exclusive truth of the Catholic Faith:
– Pius IX condemns as error the proposition that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” and that salvation can be found in any religion (Syllabus 15–16). A true pope, when addressing a local Church, never misses the opportunity to strengthen exclusivity of the true Faith.
– Here, nothing. Forlì is mentioned only as a geographic-cultural locus. No battle against indifferentism, Freemasonry, socialism, laicism that were ravaging Italy and Europe, and which Pius IX and Leo XIII denounced vigorously.
2. No assertion of Christ’s public Kingship over the city and nation:
– Pius XI in Quas Primas insists that rulers and states are bound to publicly honor Christ and submit their laws to His commandments; that secularism is the root of social ruin.
– This letter, although explicitly honoring a public and prominent sanctuary (“quasi index locusque sacer”), remains entirely horizontal: no call for Forlì’s civic authorities, no reminder of state duties, no reiteration that the Church, as a perfect society, must be free and superior in her own order (Syllabus 19, 55).
3. No denunciation of the modernist plague already condemned by St Pius X:
– Between 1907 and 1958, the Magisterium made clear that Modernism is “the synthesis of all heresies,” undermining Scripture, dogma, sacraments, and the Church’s structure.
– A legitimate successor of Pius X in 1959, faced with the same errors now resurging in seminaries, universities, and episcopates, would have used every document, however brief, to call to vigilance. Instead, John XXIII offers a quiet administrative favor, radiating “optimism” toward a world hurtling deeper into apostasy. This is not negligence; it is complicity.
4. Exaltation of local affectivity as substitute for doctrinal firmness:
– The text underlines how the faithful “frequently go there as to a foremost seat of piety,” and how the tomb of St Mercurialis “is no small encouragement of devotion.” But it never defines what true piety is: adherence to orthodox doctrine, participation in the true sacraments, submission to the perennial Magisterium.
– Sentiment without doctrine is precisely the modernist recipe: religion becomes experience, culture, feeling. Exactly those tendencies are anathematized in Lamentabili when it condemns the reduction of Revelation to “man’s awareness of his relation to God” and the idea that dogmas are mutable expressions of consciousness.
By such omissions, the letter trains the faithful to accept a Church that honors their devotions and monuments while quietly changing their faith.
Invalid Structures, Invalid Titles: The Canonical Illusion
One must underline the canonical dimension: the text is structured as a formal, rigorous decree: consultation of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, explicit exercise of “certa scientia ac matura deliberatione,” universal clauses of irrevocability, threat of nullity for contrary acts. This juristic choreography is meant to impress.
Yet, according to pre‑1958 canonical doctrine:
– Canon 188 §4 (1917 Code) provides for tacit resignation from office “by the fact itself and without any declaration” if a cleric publicly defects from the Catholic faith. All acts of jurisdiction requiring the power of governance after such defection are juridically null.
– Catholic theologians, as in the texts summarized in the provided Defense of Sedevacantism, explain that a manifest heretic cannot wield jurisdiction in the Church; any semblance of authority is a usurpation.
– Paul IV’s Cum ex Apostolatus Officio declares invalid any promotion of one who has defected from the faith, explicitly including the papacy, independently of recognition by others.
Applying these principles:
– The “Sacred Congregation of Rites” as configured under the conciliar usurpers is no longer the organ of the true Church; it is part of the paramasonic, neo-church apparatus.
– The supposed “Apostolic authority” invoked is lacking in its subject; the form is there, the matter (i.e., true jurisdiction) is absent.
– Therefore, while the physical church of St Mercurialis remains a sacred building by virtue of prior consecration, the conferral of “basilica minor” by a non-pope has no binding ecclesial force. It is a simulacrum.
This is not an abstract subtlety. The conciliar sect weaponizes legalistic continuity to make its apostasy appear as the legitimate evolution of Catholic life. Unmasking the nullity of such acts — especially when they are apparently benign — is essential to free souls from this enchantment.
From Honorific Titles to Liturgical Deconstruction
Finally, this letter, while not touching the liturgy explicitly, belongs to the same ideological current that would soon devastate the Roman rite:
– The emphasis on art, heritage, and external “dignities” prepares the faithful to accept a cult of form without substance.
– A church praised for its tower and Magi reliefs, bearing a fresh Roman diploma, becomes the perfect stage for the future replacement of the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary by the anthropocentric assembly-rite of the new order.
– There is no safeguard, no clause binding the church of St Mercurialis to the immemorial Roman rite, no doctrinal anchor. The omission is prophetic: the conciliar sect knows it will need such churches as prestigious theatres for its anti-liturgical experiments.
True Catholic doctrine before 1958, as reiterated by Pius XI and Pius XII, insisted that external solemnity must be the expression of immutable dogma and sacrificial worship, not an autonomous aesthetic. Here, the aesthetic is cut loose from doctrine — a clear modernist symptom.
Conclusion: A Polite Seal on the Great Usurpation
Seen through the lens of integral Catholic teaching, “Urbis Fori Livii” is not a neutral curiosity of diocesan history. It is:
– an act issued by an illegitimate claimant to the papacy,
– using the venerable language and insignia of the Church to consolidate acceptance of his authority,
– praising natural and cultural goods while remaining silent about the supernatural combat,
– exemplifying the reduction of Catholic life to heritage and sentiment — the very tendency condemned by the authentic Magisterium up to Pius XII,
– and contributing, by its omissions, to the anesthetization and seduction of the faithful, paving the way for the doctrinal, liturgical, and moral devastation of the subsequent decades.
The church of St Mercurialis, its saintly patron, and the faithful of Forlì deserve infinitely more than a decorative title from the conciliar usurper. They deserve the full proclamation of Christ’s Kingship, the fearless denunciation of Modernism and Freemasonry, the preservation of the integral Roman rite, the uncompromising teaching of the one true Faith — all that the pre‑1958 Church tirelessly affirmed and which the post‑conciliar neo‑church tirelessly betrays.
Where the Faith is falsified, every honorific decree becomes not an elevation, but a monument to the great imposture.
Source:
Agnes Sepulchrum (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025