Catana, a city near Mount Etna and adorned by the martyrdom of Agatha and Euplus, is indicated as the chosen place for a nationwide Eucharistic Congress; John XXIII appoints Cardinal Marcello Mimmi as his legate, exhorting clergy and faithful to increase Eucharistic devotion, promote unity and peace, and draw abundant spiritual and even civil benefits for Italy from this solemn gathering. Yet beneath this apparently pious exhortation lies an already operative program: the instrumentalization of the Most Holy Eucharist as a sentimentalist banner for a new naturalistic unity, detached from the integral doctrine of the Church and preparatory to the conciliar revolution against the reign of Christ the King.
The Catania Letter: Eucharistic Vocabulary in Service of a New Religion
From Authentic Magisterium to Conciliar Sentimentalism
This brief Latin letter of John XXIII (2 August 1959) seems, at first glance, innocuous: an appointment of a legate for the Italian National Eucharistic Congress in Catania, adorned with citations of St. Augustine and calls to venerate the Blessed Sacrament, to foster unity, peace, and even temporal prosperity. Precisely such texts must be dissected most rigorously, because the revolution does not begin with frontal denials but with subtle translatio (shifting) of meaning under an orthodox veneer.
Key elements of the letter:
– Praise of Catania and its martyrs as fitting place for a Eucharistic Congress.
– Designation of Marcello Mimmi as legate, representing John XXIII at the Congress.
– Exhortation that all should honor the Eucharist with purity of faith and veneration.
– Emphasis on the Eucharist as sacrament of unity and peace, excluding discord and division.
– Wish that from the Congress flow abundant graces for religion and for civil prosperity.
On the factual surface, nothing explicitly heretical is stated. The text even cites St. Augustine on the Eucharist as life. However, when contrasted with the integral pre-1958 Magisterium, with Pius XI’s Quas primas, with Pius IX’s Syllabus, and with the anti-modernist condemnations reaffirmed in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi, the letter reveals itself as a polished instrument of the nascent conciliar sect: it silences the kingship of Christ, evaporates the dogmatic dimension of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, and replaces the call to penance and doctrinal militancy with horizontal pacifism and civic optimism.
Factual Level: What Is Said and What Is Systematically Omitted
1. The Eucharist reduced to generic “triumph” and “piety”
– The letter calls the Eucharist the “summit” of heavenly wonders and speaks of strengthening souls, using an Augustinian phrase:
“Manduca vitam, bibe vitam: habebis vitam; et integra est vita.”
(Eat Life, drink Life: you will have Life; and Life is whole.)
– But there is no mention of:
– The propitiatory nature of the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary.
– The necessity of the state of grace for fruitful and non-sacrilegious Communion.
– The Real Presence defined against heresy (Trent, canons on the Eucharist).
– Transubstantiation as dogmatically fixed.
– The Most Holy Eucharist is presented predominantly as “alimentary consolation,” as “sweet nourishment,” without the dogmatic edge that characterizes the perennial Magisterium. This is a paradigmatic modernist tactic: retain affective language, excise precise doctrinal content.
2. Silence on the Kingship of Christ and the Social Order
– Pius XI teaches with lapidary clarity that peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ (Quas primas), and that nations must publicly recognize His rights.
– John XXIII here wishes that from the Eucharistic Congress should flow benefits “for the prosperity and happiness of civil affairs,” yet:
– Without any assertion that civil authority is bound to submit to Christ the King.
– Without any condemnation of the liberal, masonic, secular state condemned in the Syllabus (errors 39–41, 55, 77–80).
– Thus the letter suggests a harmonious coexistence between Eucharistic devotion and modern secular order, a coexistence solemnly rejected by the pre-conciliar Magisterium. The Eucharist becomes a decorative spiritual capital for the same political order that refuses the social kingship of Christ.
3. Unity and peace without doctrinal militancy
– The letter stresses the Eucharist as Sacrament of unity and peace, insisting that those who nourish themselves with this “banquet” must reject enmities, hatreds, envies, and all that breaks fraternal communion.
– Omitted:
– The absolute necessity of unity in the true Faith as a condition of authentic Eucharistic communion.
– The Church’s constant teaching that heresy, indifferentism, and false religions destroy unity far more deeply than any merely human discord (cf. Pius IX, Qui pluribus, Syllabus, condemned propositions 15–18).
– By isolating “unity” from its dogmatic foundation, the letter anticipates the false ecumenism of the conciliar sect, in which “peace” means suspension of doctrinal judgment and the silencing of the obligation to confess the one true Church.
In sum, the factual layer is not notable for overt error, but for a carefully consistent omission of everything that makes Eucharistic doctrine sharp, exclusive, and monarchic under Christ the King. This silence is not innocent.
Linguistic Level: Pious Aesthetic Covering a Program of Dilution
The rhetoric of the letter is short yet revealing.
1. Aestheticism and civic romanticism
– Catana is described with poetic admiration: proximity to Etna, pleasant nature, glorious memories, martyred by Agatha and Euplus.
– This aesthetic prelude sets a sentimental tone, aligning religious event, local pride, and gentle patriotism.
– There is no equivalent rhetorical energy in declaring the rights of God over that same city and nation, no call that Italy must repudiate liberalism, socialism, and masonic domination as demanded by the Syllabus and by multiple pre-1958 pontiffs.
2. Vocabulary of “Congress” rather than Sacrifice
– The whole focus is a “Eucharistic Congress,” a mass gathering.
– The letter places emphasis on:
– “Solemn honors to the mystery of faith.”
– “Splendor of celebrations.”
– “Magnificent Congress.”
– This language displaces the center of gravity from the altar’s bloody price of redemption to the spectacle of an event, where the Eucharist functions as a religious emblem of social togetherness.
3. Soft moralism: against “parties” and “self-interest”
– The letter calls participants to remove “false love of self and of their own party” and to pursue higher goods which are “more divine” insofar as they are broader and nobler.
– This sounds laudable, but:
– It never specifies that the “party” opposed to the Church is liberalism, socialism, freemasonry—real enemies identified by the true papal Magisterium.
– Instead, all parties are implicitly relativized; conflict itself is the problem, not error.
– The linguistic shift: from *odium haeresis* (hatred of heresy) to an indiscriminate aversion to all division as such. This is pure conciliar rhetoric in embryo.
Thus the tone and vocabulary are those of a humanistic chaplaincy to the democratic order: decorative piety, aversion to conflict, and ecclesial spectacle, in place of the virile clarity of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII.
Theological Level: The Pious Shell over Doctrinal Evacuation
Now we measure the text against the dogmatic teaching preceding 1958.
1. Eucharist as Sacrament of unity: truth without its dogmatic condition
The letter rightly calls the Eucharist Sacramentum unitatis et pacis. However, Catholic doctrine (Trent, and the unanimous Fathers) makes clear:
– Unity is first of all unity of faith and submission to the one true Church.
– Reception of the Eucharist while rejecting any defined dogma, or while persisting in mortal sin, is sacrilege and does not create peace but heaps judgment (cf. 1 Cor 11:27–29).
By speaking of unity and peace without:
– Mention of the need for orthodoxy.
– Mention of confession, repentance, and the state of grace.
– Mention that public heretics and public sinners must be excluded from Communion.
the letter insinuates a quasi-automatic, psychological unity from common Eucharistic “banquet,” which is the seed of the post-1958 profanations:
– Open-Communion mentality.
– Ecumenical “Eucharistic hospitality.”
– Reduction of the Eucharist to a sign of “inclusive community” instead of *signum unitatis, vinculum caritatis* grounded in truth and sanctifying grace.
This is diametrically opposed to the anti-modernist stance reaffirmed in Lamentabili sane exitu, which rejects any notion of dogmas or sacraments as mere expressions of communal consciousness evolving with time.
2. Suppression of the Eucharist as propitiatory Sacrifice
The Council of Trent defines:
– The Holy Mass is a true and proper sacrifice, propitiatory for the living and the dead.
– It is not merely a commemoration, not merely a banquet.
John XXIII’s letter:
– Speaks of “august Sacrament of the Altar” and of spiritual nourishment.
– Makes no mention of sacrifice, propitiation, satisfaction for sin, the Cross renewed in an unbloody manner.
Is such silence, in itself, heretical? Not formally; but:
– In the context of 1959, when the liturgical movement and its modernist infiltrations were steadily attacking the sacrificial and propitiatory character of the Mass, selective silence is a weapon.
– When the Sacrifice is not named and emphasized, while “Congress,” “celebration,” “banquet,” “unity,” “peace,” and “civic benefits” are exalted, the doctrinal center is displaced.
This displacement prepared the way for the later pseudo-rite by which the conciliar sect turned the Unbloody Sacrifice into a communal meal. The Catania letter is fully compatible with that trajectory; it is incompatible with the intransigent clarity of Trent and of St. Pius X.
3. Social kingship of Christ and the condemned liberal thesis
Pius XI states that the calamities of the nations arise because “many have thrust Jesus Christ and His law out of their lives” and that peace will not come until individuals and states recognize His royal rights (Quas primas). Pius IX condemns as errors:
– That the State is the source of all rights (Syllabus 39).
– That Church and State must be separated (55).
– That the Pope must reconcile with liberalism and modern civilization (80).
The Catania letter:
– Desires “civil prosperity and happiness” as fruits of Eucharistic devotion.
– Yet does not state that Italian public authority must reject the liberal separation from the Church and subject itself to Christ the King.
– Does not recall the condemnations of laicism, socialism, and masonry which were ravaging Italy and the world.
This is not a neutral omission. It manifests a new principle:
– The Eucharist is invoked to bless the existing liberal order rather than to judge and convert it.
– The order condemned in the Syllabus is treated as a legitimate framework in which Eucharistic piety can simply “contribute” to general well-being.
Such a shift contradicts the pre-1958 Magisterium not by frontal denial, but by practical abandonment—a classic modernist method already anathematized by St. Pius X, who condemned the idea of transforming Catholicism into “broad and liberal Protestantism” (Lamentabili, prop. 65).
4. Moral pacifism in place of doctrinal militancy
The insistence that those nourished by the Eucharist must avoid enmities, hatreds, envies, and anything that breaks fraternal bonds is true if understood according to tradition:
– Charity demands love of God above all, which includes hatred of error and of the systems that destroy souls.
Traditional Catholic doctrine always links peace and unity to:
– The condemnation of heresy.
– The refusal of communion with obstinate public sinners and apostates.
– The duty to resist masonic and revolutionary forces, as repeatedly ordered by true popes.
Here, instead, “peace” is detached from conflict with error. The implicit message:
– Avoid division, avoid “party spirit,” pursue broad, lofty goods.
Once such language is unleashed from dogmatic anchoring, it becomes a theological weapon against any resistance to the conciliar revolution. Those who, in fidelity to the faith of the ages, oppose the changes are then branded as enemies of “unity” and “peace” that the Eucharist allegedly demands—precisely the narrative subsequently weaponized by the conciliar sect against the faithful who refuse its novelties.
Symptomatic Level: An Early Symptom of the Conciliar Sect’s Program
1. The choice of John XXIII and the historical context
This letter is dated 1959, first year of John XXIII’s usurpation:
– Immediately following his election, he announced the preparation of what became the Second Vatican Council—a project aimed at “aggiornamento,” precisely the reconciliation with “modern civilization” solemnly condemned in the Syllabus.
– His pontificate inaugurates the line of usurpers culminating in the current antipope Leo XIV and the full-blown “neo-church.”
In such a context, the Catania letter functions as a micro-manifesto:
– No direct dogmatic break (that would alarm the faithful).
– A steady decentering: from dogma to atmosphere, from Sacrifice to “Congress,” from kingship to “civil prosperity,” from condemnation of error to sentimental unity.
This is how revolutions operate within sacred structures: corruptio optimi pessima (the corruption of the best is the worst). The holiest realities—the Eucharist, the martyrs—are co-opted as symbols to legitimize a program already aimed against the unchanging doctrine reaffirmed by St. Pius X in Lamentabili and by Pius XI in Quas primas.
2. The Eucharistic Congress as laboratory of the neo-church
Eucharistic congresses in themselves, rightly ordered, can be powerful public confessions of the Real Presence and of the social kingship of Christ. But in this letter:
– The Congress is not presented as a triumphant profession against unbelief, masonry, communism, liberalism, and heresy.
– It is presented as:
– Civic-religious spectacle,
– An occasion of generic piety,
– A source of unspecified “benefits” for religion and civil society.
Such congresses would soon become stages of the conciliar sect’s new orientation:
– Horizontal gatherings.
– Liturgical experimentation.
– Ecumenical and interreligious gestures.
– Use of Eucharistic vocabulary to sanctify the world’s own principles.
The Catania letter is entirely consonant with this mutation; it is dissonant with the Church of Trent, the Syllabus, and Quas primas, which demanded open war against liberal and masonic principles, not harmonious coexistence.
3. Silence on Modernism and on the enemies within
One of the gravest features:
– Absolute silence on the already long-known infiltration of modernists and masons into ecclesiastical structures, exposed with prophetic lucidity by St. Pius X and lamented in the documents collected in the provided sources.
– No admonition against sacrilegious Communions.
– No warning against indifferentism or moral corruption.
Such silence, in 1959, cannot be accidental. It confirms the diagnosis:
– The men occupying the Vatican had ceased to interpret their task as guardians of the deposit of faith against internal enemies.
– They instead began acting as managers of religious sentiment within a liberal world, using the holiest realities as symbolic glue for a new, syncretic “religious humanism.”
Contrasting with the Pre-1958 Magisterium: The Missing Notes
1. Against laicism and false religious liberty
The Syllabus condemns:
– The separation of Church and State (55).
– The idea that the Pope must come to terms with liberalism (80).
– The equality of all religions or the possibility of salvation in any religion (15–18).
In the Catania letter:
– No call that Italy publicly acknowledge Christ the King.
– No insistence that civil laws conform to divine law (cf. Syllabus 56).
– “Civil happiness” is invoked without the condition of submission to Christ’s law.
By such omissions, the letter implicitly tolerates what the Syllabus brands as pernicious errors, thereby serving, not resisting, the Masonic program denounced by Pius IX.
2. Against Modernism’s concept of evolving dogma
and Pascendi condemn the idea that:
– Sacraments and dogmas are products of collective religious consciousness evolving over time.
– Truth changes with history.
The Catania letter, while not theoretically teaching evolutionism, functions in harmony with the modernist praxis:
– It uses traditional words while redirecting their practical sense toward a new theology:
– Eucharist as symbol of broad unity, a rallying point for nation and people.
– Peace as absence of conflict rather than fruit of submission to revealed truth.
– By consistently omitting dogmatic precision in favor of pastoral rhetoric, it makes room for the reinterpretations that the conciliar sect would soon formalize.
Thus, the letter is not neutral; it is a calculated step in the pastoralization and relativization of dogma—precisely what St. Pius X foresaw and condemned.
Usurpation of Authority and the Misuse of Apostolic Benediction
The letter concludes by imparting “Apostolic Benediction” upon bishops, magistrates, clergy, faithful, and pilgrims.
But from the perspective of the integral Catholic faith:
– Authority in the Church comes from Christ through His established order, bound intrinsically to the preservation of the deposit of faith.
– A manifest favorer and architect of condemned principles—ecumenism, reconciliation with liberalism, practical suspension of doctrinal militancy—cannot be regarded as exercising legitimate papal authority.
– As the provided traditional theological sources explain, a manifest heretic or one who publicly defends and implements principles contrary to the solemn Magisterium ceases ipso facto to hold jurisdiction; he cannot give what he no longer possesses.
Therefore this blessing:
– Does not seal Catholic obedience.
– Functions as a liturgical mask for the advancement of the conciliar sect’s project.
Conclusion: Eucharistic Language as a Veil for Apostasy
This short letter is emblematic: it clothes the nascent betrayal in the most sacred vocabulary of the Church.
– It speaks of the Eucharist yet is mute about Sacrifice, propitiation, and the radical demands of grace.
– It praises unity and peace yet refuses to root them in doctrinal truth and in the kingship of Christ over nations.
– It invokes martyrs yet does not call the faithful to militant witness against the reigning political and ideological errors condemned by true popes.
– It blesses a Congress yet positions it as a festive integration of Catholic piety into a liberal social order, rather than a call to convert that order.
Thus, beneath its polished Latin and Augustinian citation, the Catania letter manifests the deep spiritual and theological bankruptcy of the emerging neo-church: a structure which exploits the language of Eucharistic devotion to anesthetize consciences, to paralyse resistance to Modernism, and to prepare the faithful to accept the systematic demolition of the Faith under the guise of “unity” and “peace.”
The only Catholic response is to reject this conciliar program entirely, to hold fast to the doctrine of the Church as taught consistently until 1958, to adore the True Presence in the context of the true Unbloody Sacrifice, and to confess publicly and without compromise the social kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ, against the world, against liberalism, and against all pseudo-magisterial texts that dare to use His Name in the service of apostasy.
Source:
Catana Urbs – Ad Marcellum S. R. E. Card. Mimmi, Episcopum Sabinensem et Mandelensem, a Secretis Sacrae Congregationis Consistorialis, quem legatum mittit ad Eucharisticum Conventum ex Universa Italia… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025