The document is a Latin letter of the antipope John XXIII to Basil Heiser, Minister General of the Conventual Franciscans, on the 700th anniversary of the translation of the relics of St. Anthony of Padua, praising Anthony’s sanctity, eloquence, charity, connection with the Fourth Lateran Council, and exhorting the Franciscan family to prayer, preaching, charity, and fidelity to the aims of the so‑called Second Vatican Council. It wraps authentic Catholic symbols and a true saint in sentimental rhetoric to sanctify the neo-church’s conciliar revolution and to bend the memory of St. Anthony into an advance guard for Vatican II’s anthropocentric, naturalistic project.
St. Anthony Instrumentalized: A Saint Co-opted for the Conciliar Revolution
Historical Facts Twisted into Propaganda for a Counterfeit Church
On the factual level, the letter recounts:
– the solemn translation in 1263 of St. Anthony’s relics to the new basilica in Padua;
– the miraculous preservation of his tongue, with the famous exclamation attributed to St. Bonaventure;
– St. Anthony’s role as eminent Franciscan, preacher, intercessor, and model of charity;
– the present (1963) commemorations coinciding with Vatican II, with an explicit appeal that the Franciscan family support and harvest fruits from that council.
Taken in isolation, several base facts are historically sound:
– St. Anthony of Padua (1195–1231) is indeed a canonized saint, a Franciscan, a great preacher against heresy, honoured by the Church long before 1958.
– The translation of his relics and the discovery of his incorrupt tongue are part of longstanding tradition.
– St. Bonaventure, as Minister General, venerated him and acknowledged his doctrine.
However, the letter commits a grave fraud by subtle but deliberate re-contextualization:
1. It splices together the memory of a saint formed by the strict orthodoxy of the pre‑Tridentine and Tridentine mind with the incipient program of Vatican II, as though there were organic continuity.
2. It implies that fidelity to St. Anthony’s spirit entails supporting the conciliar aggiornamento, which in fact will unleash the very errors St. Anthony and St. Bonaventure combated: doctrinal relativism, dilution of dogma, profanation of the Most Holy Sacrifice, and the dislocation of Christ’s social Kingship.
This is not mere pious commemoration; it is an attempt to baptize a revolution by draping it in the mantle of a universally loved saint.
The core deceit: **a true saint of the Catholic Church is held up as patron and guarantor of a paramasonic “council” that repudiates precisely the immutable truths he defended.**
Soft Rhetoric as a Cloak for Doctrinal Subversion
The linguistic texture of the letter is revealing.
1. The text is saturated with affective, sugary phrases:
– dilecte fili, “beloved son”;
– emphasis on “joy,” “pious pilgrimage,” “sweet bond,” “fraternal aid.”
This sentimental register anesthetizes vigilance and replaces the virile clarity of the pre‑modern Magisterium with a saccharine, diplomatic tone.
2. St. Anthony’s incorrupt tongue is praised, but only to divert from its true function:
– The incorrupt tongue attested a preacher of dogmatic clarity, hammer of heretics, proclaimer of objective Catholic truth.
– Here it is used to idealize vague exhortations to “bless the Lord,” “form communities,” “fraternal love,” without once articulating the hard content of the faith he preached: the necessity of belonging to the one true Church, the horror of heresy, the reality of hell.
3. The culminating linguistic maneuver comes in the convergence with Vatican II:
– The letter says, in essence: St. Anthony lived after Lateran IV and exemplified its decrees; you, Franciscans, must now spiritually support Vatican II in like manner.
– This rhetorical parallel is designed to imprint in the mind: *Vatican II is to our time what Lateran IV was to his.* This is precisely **the hermeneutical trap**: a pseudo-council of rupture smuggled in under the verbal aura of true ecumenical councils.
4. The vocabulary betrays a horizontalist shift:
– When describing the desired effect of Franciscan witness, the letter calls for peoples “throughout the world” to raise their eyes to “God, Father of all,” and to be united into “one community” adoring Him.
– Missing are the necessary Catholic qualifiers: submission to Christ the King, adherence to the one true Roman Catholic Church, rejection of heresy, conversion of infidels. Instead we find **proto-ecumenical language** easily adaptable to religious pluralism.
The bureaucratic sweetness is not innocent. It is the typical idiom of the conciliar sect: non-offensive, emotive, deliberately ambiguous; it anesthetizes the dogmatic edge in favour of “values” and “community,” in preparation for the later full-blown cult of man.
Theological Perversion: From the Hammer of Heretics to Patron of Neo-Modernism
Measured against the immutable Catholic doctrine (before 1958), the core theological maneuvers of this letter stand indicted.
1. Eclipse of Christ’s Social Kingship
Authentic papal teaching (e.g. Pius XI, *Quas Primas*) proclaims clearly:
– Peace and order are impossible unless individuals and states publicly recognize the reign of Christ the King;
– The Church’s mission is to subordinate nations to Christ’s law and reject religious indifferentism and laicism.
In this letter:
– “Community” language replaces the explicit call for submission of societies to Christ the King and His Church.
– There is no reminder that governments and laws must recognize the true religion; no echo of the *Syllabus of Errors* condemning liberalism, religious freedom, and separation of Church and State.
– Instead, the Franciscan family is urged to be “ferment” so that all peoples lift their eyes to “the Father” and merge into one community of worship—phrasing flexible enough to undergird the subsequent ecumenical and interreligious projects of the conciliar sect.
This is a direct muting of *Quas Primas* and the *Syllabus*. It instrumentalizes a saint of orthodoxy to prepare minds for the repudiation of the public reign of Christ, replaced by the globalist brotherhood of Vatican II and its successors.
2. Reduction of St. Anthony’s Apostolate to Humanitarian Moralism
The letter extols St. Anthony’s charity and describes him as helper of the afflicted. True. But what is omitted is defining:
– his anti-heretical preaching;
– his clear teaching on sin, judgment, hell;
– his role in defending Catholic sacramental life and objective doctrine.
Instead, the exhortation to Franciscans is to imitate:
– works of mercy,
– “sweet bonds” of love,
– fraternal assistance,
– dissolving adversities through charity.
All necessary elements in themselves—but severed from proclamation of dogma and condemnation of error, they become humanistic ethics. The letter’s silence on:
– the state of grace,
– necessity of the sacramental life as defined by the true Church,
– the danger of heresy,
– the Four Last Things (death, judgment, heaven, hell),
constitutes a theological mutilation. The most damning feature is precisely this silence. The saint whose tongue was incorrupt for the defence of revealed truth is invoked, but not for truth; only for “love.”
3. Co-opting Lateran IV to Justify Vatican II
The letter notes that St. Anthony lived just after Lateran IV and that his ministry accorded with its decrees, then draws an analogy to Vatican II. This is a grave distortion.
– Lateran IV (1215) strengthened dogma, condemned heresies, and affirmed the unique salvific role of the Catholic Church, underlining the necessity of sacramental confession, the real presence, and moral discipline.
– The pseudo-council Vatican II, as executed and interpreted by the conciliar sect, promoted religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality against papal monarchy, and a naturalistic reading of human dignity—all repudiated in substance by pre‑1958 teaching.
By subtly paralleling the two, the letter attempts to cloak an impending doctrinal revolution with the prestige of an authentic ecumenical council. This is textbook **Modernist strategy**, condemned in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi*: smuggle evolution of dogma under the narrative of continuity.
4. False Spiritualization of Support for Vatican II
The letter solicits from the Franciscans:
– prayers,
– generous acceptance of difficulties,
“so that” Vatican II may bear abundant fruits.
In Catholic terms, to ask the faithful to cooperate spiritually with a true ecumenical council is legitimate. But here:
– John XXIII is already architect of the conciliar agenda that contradicts the *Syllabus*, *Quanta Cura*, *Quas Primas*, *Mortalium Animos*, and anti-Modernist oaths.
– By binding the Franciscan heart to “fruits” of such a council, the letter effectively demands spiritual endorsement of what integral Catholic doctrine identifies as apostasy.
From the perspective of unchanging doctrine, this is not a neutral exhortation but a recruitment:
the spiritual capital of a venerable order and a saint is being hijacked to energize the conciliar betrayal.
Symptomatic of the Conciliar Sect: Manipulation of Saints and Symbols
This document is emblematic of the larger pathology of the Church of the New Advent:
1. Appropriation of Authentic Saints
– A true saint like Anthony, canonized in the ages of faith, is retained as decoration, but his doctrinal teeth are extracted.
– He is presented primarily as a symbol of pastoral zeal, social charity, and personal prayer—undeniable aspects, but rearranged to fit the conciliar narrative of horizontal “renewal.”
This is the same method by which post‑conciliarism later exploits other pre‑1958 saints while suppressing their uncompromising dogmatic teaching.
2. Weaponized Ambiguity
The letter contains nothing overtly heretical in isolated sentences. This is precisely why it is dangerous:
– It exemplifies *pious ambiguity*, the Modernist’s safest tool: speak warmly of Jesus, saints, prayer, love—while evacuating the content that the pre‑conciliar Magisterium tirelessly defended.
– The absence of explicit doctrinal error is not proof of orthodoxy when the context is an ongoing project of doctrinal subversion; silence where dogma must be affirmed is itself symptomatic.
3. Shift from Supernatural Soteriology to Naturalistic Concord
While invoking prayer and grace verbally, the letter’s practical horizon is:
– helping the suffering,
– fraternal assistance,
– social peace through charity,
– global community worshipping “the Father.”
Missing is the precise supernatural soteriology:
– necessity of true faith and baptism in the Catholic Church;
– mortal sin and sacrilege (especially relevant as the same regime later introduces and normalizes liturgical desecrations);
– the primacy of the Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiatory for sins.
The letter thus participates in the long transition:
from a Church ordered to eternal salvation under Christ the King to a “church” oriented to temporal humanist harmony.
4. Submission of Religious Orders to the Conciliar Project
By directly addressing the Minister General and praising the custodians of St. Anthony’s shrine while tying their mission to Vatican II, the text seeks to:
– harness the prestige of the Franciscan family,
– redirect its spiritual obedience from the perennial Magisterium to the novel conciliar agenda,
– make of it “yeast” not for the Kingdom of Christ in the sense of *Quas Primas*, but for the new, borderless religious humanism.
Here we see the early stages of how the conciliar sect neutralized historic orders: praise their founders, canonize their “spirit,” then reinterpret that “spirit” to mean docile collaboration with aggiornamento.
The Silence that Condemns: Omitted Truths and Betrayed Duties
The gravest accusations stem from what this letter refuses to say.
– No assertion that outside the true Church there is no salvation (*extra Ecclesiam nulla salus*).
– No reminder that St. Anthony fought heresy and error, not just sadness and poverty.
– No mention of the dogmatic condemnations in the *Syllabus of Errors*, despite the looming dismantling of those condemnations by Vatican II and its aftermath.
– No profession of the Kingship of Christ over states as demanded by Pius XI; instead, talk of a “community” of peoples looking to a generic “Father.”
– No warning that diluting doctrine under pretext of charity is itself a betrayal of charity, since true charity seeks the eternal salvation of souls.
Given the historical position (1963, Vatican II in progress), such silences are not accidental; they are tactical. A document that publicly attaches a major religious order and a major saint to the conciliar experiment, without one word reinforcing those pre‑conciliar doctrinal bulwarks that Vatican II is about to undermine, is effectively siding with their eclipse.
Silence in such a context is complicity.
Conclusion: A Pious Mask for the Abomination of Desolation
This letter functions as an early icon of the conciliar sect’s method:
– retain the language of saints,
– retain relics, shrines, traditional devotions,
– speak of prayer, love, mercy,
– outwardly avoid crude heresy,
while internally reprogramming everything toward:
– religious liberty,
– collegiality,
– false ecumenism,
– naturalistic humanitarianism,
– and the practical dethronement of Christ the King.
By invoking St. Anthony’s incorrupt tongue but refusing to let that tongue speak its genuine doctrinal message, the antipope transforms the sign into its opposite. The saint who once defended Catholic truth is drafted, against his legacy, into service of an ecclesial revolution that dissolves the very foundations of the order and faith he embodied.
Against such misappropriation, one must recall the perennial principle, confirmed by the true Magisterium prior to 1958 and synthesized in condemnations like *Lamentabili* and the *Syllabus*: *God’s revelation does not evolve into its contradiction; councils and leaders that promote novelties against prior defined doctrine are not instruments of the Holy Ghost, but of the adversary.*
Therefore, the only coherent reading of this document, in light of integral Catholic doctrine, is as a calculated step in the conciliar sect’s campaign to cloak its apostasy with holy names, relics, and memories—a campaign that must be unmasked and rejected if the faithful are to remain in the true Church of Christ.
Source:
Franciscalis Familia – Ad Basilium Heiser, Ordinis Fratrum Minorum Conventualium Ministrum Generalem, septimo volvente saeculo, ex quo sacrae S. Antonii exuviae in Basilicam Patavii eius honori exstru… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025