In this Latin homily, John XXIII commemorates the “canonization” of Carlo a Sezze and Joaquina de Vedruna as models of universal attainable holiness: Carlo as a humble Franciscan religious absorbed in Eucharistic devotion and penance, Joaquina as noblewoman, wife, mother, widow, and foundress engaged in charitable and educational works. He extols their virtues, proposes them as exemplars for all states of life, and concludes by asking their intercession so that his pontifical initiatives and plans, already announced to the “universal Catholic world,” may bear fruit in unity and temporal peace among nations.
Early Manifesto of the Conciliar Religion under the Pious Mask of “Holiness”
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this text is not an innocent devotional oration but an inaugural liturgical seal placed by John XXIII on the nascent conciliar revolution: a manipulation of true sanctity, a tacit overturning of the Church’s doctrine on canonization, and a programmatic subordination of the supernatural order to naturalistic, diplomatic aims.
Pseudo-Canonization as Programmatic Usurpation of Infallibility
1. Factual level:
The homily’s entire structure presupposes that John XXIII, already the initiator of the “aggiornamento,” possesses and exercises the Catholic Church’s power to canonize infallibly. Yet according to the perennial doctrine reaffirmed by theologians and manuals prior to 1958, *canonization is an act of the supreme jurisdiction of the true Roman Pontiff, assisted by the Holy Ghost, proposing a saint for the universal Church as an object of cult and imitation, and as morally certain to be in heavenly glory.* This presupposes:
– that the one who decrees is truly Roman Pontiff;
– that the process is conducted within the integrity of Catholic doctrine and discipline, free from heresy and rupture.
Once the line beginning with John XXIII embraces *religious liberty, collegiality, ecumenism,* and the entire modernist program solemnly condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus of Errors) and St. Pius X (Lamentabili, Pascendi), its claim to be the same moral person as the Roman Catholic Church collapses. A paramasonic, naturalistic structure cannot enjoy the assistance promised exclusively to the true Church.
Therefore, the act celebrated here is not a true canonization but a pseudo-canonization performed by an antipope, and as such it lacks the theological note of infallibility. The homily tries to dress this usurpation in traditional language, using sanctity as a shield for a new, non-Catholic authority.
2. Theological basis for rejection:
– *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio* of Paul IV clearly underscores that one who has deviated into heresy cannot validly obtain or retain the papal office; any elevation is “null, void, and of no effect.” This is a juridical expression of the universal principle, reiterated by St. Robert Bellarmine and traditional canonists, that a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church.
– Canon 188 §4 of the 1917 Code affirms that public defection from the faith vacates ecclesiastical office automatically (*ipso facto*). The conciliar revolutionaries, by promoting doctrines previously condemned (religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, the cult of man), fall into this category.
Hence the pretended canonizations of the conciliar sect are deprived of authority. This homily functions as an early liturgical proclamation of this illegitimate authority, normalizing the usurpation by the sentimental exaltation of “new” saints.
Linguistic Cloak: Traditional Piety as Screen for Conciliar Intent
The language is deliberately chosen to pacify vigilant Catholics by a surface of orthodoxy.
1. Traditional elements:
John XXIII speaks of:
– heroic virtue,
– Eucharistic devotion of Carlo a Sezze,
– penance, mortification, zeal for souls,
– Joaquina’s fidelity in marriage, motherhood, widowhood, works of mercy,
– peace “which the world cannot give,” citing John 14:27.
These are all elements that, taken materially, Catholics recognize as good. But the devil is in what is omitted and in how these elements are instrumentalized.
2. Tone and rhetoric as symptoms:
– The homily is steeped in edifying anecdote and affective piety, but it is almost entirely devoid of doctrinal precision about:
– the absolute necessity of the integral Catholic faith for salvation,
– the horror of heresy,
– the centrality of the *Most Holy Sacrifice* as propitiatory,
– the kingship of Christ over states as a binding public obligation.
– Instead, it moves quickly from contemplating the saints to praying that they support “the plans and initiatives already announced to the Catholic world,” especially unity (“one fold, one shepherd”) and “prosperity” for all peoples with peace secured through order, justice, and charity.
The formula “aggiornamento through sanctity” emerges: sanctity is not upheld primarily as a testimony against the world and its errors, as Pius IX and St. Pius X consistently did, but as a soft spiritual capital to legitimize a new geopolitical, irenic, dialogical orientation of the “Church of the New Advent.”
This is linguistic sedative: traditional vocabulary emptied of its militantly supernatural edge and repurposed as propaganda for structural transformation.
Doctrinal Manipulation of the Communion of Saints
1. Sanctity detached from doctrinal militancy:
– Catholic doctrine: the saints are those who, in perfect fidelity to the integral faith, fight sin, error, heresy, and the world, often suffering persecution from worldly powers and false brethren. Their cult is doctrinal: it confirms, not relativizes, revealed truth.
– In this homily, Carlo and Joaquina are presented as universal moral exemplars in a way that is easily transferable into a non-confessional humanitarian ideal:
– Carlo: charity to the poor, Eucharistic devotion, mystical experience.
– Joaquina: care for the sick, education, social charity.
All of this can be affirmed, but John XXIII isolates these elements from their necessary doctrinal matrix. There is no insistence that their holiness is inseparable from uncompromising adhesion to the integral Catholic faith, to the condemnation of errors, to the social reign of Christ. Instead, sanctity is presented as proof that “everyone, in all conditions, can become holy,” a Salesian formula cited, but now tacitly preparing a future neo-church message: holiness in any environment, any regime, any doctrinal dilution, as long as there is “love,” “peace,” “service.”
2. Abuse of “one fold, one shepherd”:
At the end, he invokes the saints so that Christians “united by brotherly love may have one fold and one shepherd,” and that peoples achieve prosperity and peace as a foreshadowing of eternal happiness.
Sounds Catholic; yet within months John XXIII opens the way toward the council that will reinterpret “one fold” as an eschatological ideal and will praise false religions and separate communities as “elements” of the Church. The text here plants the seed: unity = affective fraternity and external peace, not explicit return of all nations and confessions to the one true Church under the true Roman Pontiff and under the social kingship of Christ, as Pius XI clearly demands in *Quas Primas*.
The saints are thus co-opted as icons for an impending pan-Christian and pan-religious syncretic agenda: their cult is detached from the Church’s exclusive claims and used instead to decorate the conciliatory project.
Silence about Christ the King and the Condemnations of Liberalism
The most damning evidence lies in what this homily does not say.
1. Systematic omission of the social reign of Christ:
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches that there can be no true peace until individuals and states publicly recognize and submit to the reign of Christ the King; he denounces laicism and secularism as the plague of the age, commanding Catholics to restore the public rights of Christ.
– Pius IX in the Syllabus condemns the separation of Church and state (prop. 55), religious indifferentism (15–18), and the false idea that the Pope can reconcile with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization (80).
In this homily:
– No call for governments to recognize the kingship of Christ.
– No warning that peace without Christ’s reign is illusion.
– No mention of the grave condemned errors poisoning nations.
Instead, John XXIII speaks in vague terms of “prosperity,” “peace,” “minds pacified,” “order, justice and charity.” These are emptied of their confessional meaning and made compatible with precisely that liberal naturalism condemned by his predecessors. This is not accidental; it is the rhetorical form of the new religion where “human rights,” “dialogue,” and “fraternity” usurp the rights of Christ the King.
2. Omission of Freemasonry and modernist subversion:
Pre-1958 magisterium, including the text quoted in the Syllabus, explicitly identifies masonic and similar sects as the “synagogue of Satan” plotting to enslave and destroy the Church. By 1959, this conspiracy had permeated political and cultural elites. A truly Catholic homily in the Chair of Peter, when speaking of peace and persecution, would remind the faithful of:
– the permanent incompatibility between Christ’s Church and the masonic-liberal order;
– the need for repentance and social restoration, not mere diplomacy.
John XXIII says nothing. The enemy disappears. Sanctity becomes an ornament for reconciliation with the world. This silence is not benign; it is complicity.
Naturalistic and Sentimental Reduction of Supernatural Realities
1. False orientation of intercession:
The concluding prayer asks Carlo and Joaquina to obtain above all the success of “already announced” pontifical initiatives, explicitly linking their heavenly intercession to John XXIII’s personal program. This inverts the Catholic logic:
– Traditionally, pontiffs appeal to saints to defend the Church against errors, to strengthen discipline, to obtain conversions.
– Here, the saints are made guarantors of a yet-undefined agenda (soon to be manifested in the council project) that will undermine exactly what earlier saints died to defend.
This is spiritual instrumentalization: heaven is mobilized as a marketing department for “ecclesial reforms.”
2. Peace and prosperity in purely immanent terms:
Although one biblical reference to “peace which surpasses all understanding” is present, the global orientation is horizontal:
– focus on earthly prosperity as “harbinger” of eternal felicity, without stating that earthly structures, laws, and institutions must submit to Catholic truth;
– no warning about hell, divine judgment, necessity of state of grace, or danger of heresy.
The saints, who in Catholic preaching are terrifying reminders of judgment and uncompromising fidelity to doctrine, are reduced to motivational figures for social harmony. This is classic modernist tactic: *religion as ethical inspiration,* not supernatural warfare.
Subversion of Canonization Criteria and the Abuse of Exemplarity
1. Canonization politicized:
In its pre-conciliar discipline, canonization follows painstaking examination: orthodoxy, heroic virtue, miracles, absence of doctrinal deviation. It is never used to smuggle in theological novelties.
Here the very act of “canonizing” during the early stage of John XXIII’s reign serves:
– to create an appearance of continuity with past practice, while the same regime is preparing to demolish doctrine through the council;
– to present flexible social types of holiness that can be easily integrated into the coming ecumenical and anthropocentric narrative.
Carlo’s mystical Eucharistic language is emphasized, but with no doctrinal sharpening against Protestantism or modern sacrilege. Joaquina’s founding of an institute for education and care of the sick is emphasized, aligning perfectly with the neo-church’s obsession with humanitarian activism. The homily carefully avoids highlighting intransigent doctrinal clarity or militant opposition to error.
2. Exemplarity severed from dogma:
The saints are invoked as models for:
– religious sisters,
– mothers of families,
– widows.
Yet the essential lesson – that sanctity consists in believing and professing *without compromise* what the Church believes, rejecting condemned errors – is absent. There is no exhortation for mothers to protect their children from liberal education condemned by Pius IX, no call for widows to be vigilant against the secularist state, no defense of religious communities against anti-Catholic legislation.
Sanctity is sanitized into generic virtue. This is a betrayal of the saints.
Symptomatic Revelation of the Conciliar Sect’s DNA
This homily, read in light of subsequent developments, reveals the key features of the conciliar sect already prefigured in 1959:
1. Hermeneutic strategy:
– Maintain traditional devotional language externally.
– Systematically omit precise doctrinal condemnations that would clash with modern ideology.
– Redirect piety to support institutional “renewal” and world-friendly projects.
2. Political theology:
– Replace the Catholic affirmation of Christ’s public kingship with a “peace and unity” rhetoric compatible with pluralism and religious liberty.
– Prepare the way for collaboration with the very forces that previous popes identified as enemies of the Church.
3. Magisterial fraud:
– Exploit the prestige of canonization and homiletic authority to cloak a new religion with the garments of tradition.
– Present pseudo-saints (and later, even worse candidates) as anchors of “continuity,” while the underlying theology mutates into condemned modernism.
Seen from the light of Quas Primas and the Syllabus, this is nothing other than an early act of the *abominatio desolationis* within the sanctuary: a liturgical proclamation of “holiness” in the service of a man-centred, pacifist, ecumenical, and liberal project, incompatible with the integral Catholic faith.
Reasserting the Integral Catholic Criterion
Against the soft insinuations of this homily, the perennial doctrine must be restated with absolute clarity:
– *Non est pax Christi sine regno Christi.* There is no peace of Christ without the reign of Christ. Any appeal to peace and unity that does not demand subjection of individuals and states to the Catholic religion contradicts Pius XI.
– *Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.* The unity of “one fold, one shepherd” is not a sentimental federation of denominations but the universal return to the one Church and the one true Pope. To use this verse while preparing ecumenism is an abuse of Scripture.
– *Sancti pugnant pro veritate.* The saints are defenders of dogma, enemies of heresy, not mascots of “aggiornamento.” Any presentation of sanctity neutralized of doctrinal sharpness is falsification.
– *Canonizatio requirit veram Sedem Petri.* Canonization requires a true Pope. A line of manifest modernists teaching condemned propositions cannot enjoy the charism of infallibility; their “saints” are at best historically pious figures, at worst instruments of deception.
This homily of John XXIII is thus unmasked as a subtle but decisive step in the construction of the neo-church: it deploys venerable vocabulary to preach a spirituality that prepares acceptance of modernism, religious liberty, and the cult of man. It is precisely this mild, smiling, sentimental liturgical language which disarms the faithful before the doctrinal onslaught of the council and its aftermath.
Source:
In Sollemni Canonizatione Beati Caroli a Setia, Confessoris, et Beatae Ioachimae De Vedruna Viduae de Mas (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025