The Gabriel Letter of John XXIII as Prelude to the Conciliar Betrayal
The document is a Latin letter of John XXIII, dated 27 February 1962, addressed to Fr. Malcolm Lavelle, superior general of the Passionists, on the centenary of the death of St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows. It praises Gabriel’s early piety, his Passionist vocation, contempt of the world, penance, purity, Marian devotion, and proposes him as a model for youth, clergy, religious, and families, linking his example to the upcoming Second Vatican Council.
In reality, this apparently edifying text functions as a preparatory veil for the conciliar revolution, instrumentalizing an authentic pre-conciliar saint to baptize an impending program of modernist subversion.
Selective Hagiography as Cosmetic Cover for an Impending Revolution
At the factual level, much of the biographical material about St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows (Francesco Possenti) is historically accurate and drawn from traditional sources: his birth at Assisi (1838), his Passionist vocation, his love for the Cross, his purity, his Marian devotion. John XXIII reiterates standard elements of his life to present him as an exemplar for contemporary youth and Passionists.
However, the decisive problem is not what is said about Gabriel, but how he is co-opted and for what end. The saint is subtly detached from the integral doctrinal and liturgical order that formed him, and is made a mascot for a council which, in its texts, spirit, and implementation, would enthrone precisely those errors condemned by the pre-1958 Magisterium.
Key move of the letter: toward the end John XXIII explicitly welds the memory of Gabriel to the coming council:
These celebrations aptly fall in the year in which the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council will be convoked. If all are conformed to the example of this venerable youth, it cannot but be that they will gather joyful and abundant fruits from it.
The saint thus becomes a decorative preface to the most destructive pseudo-council in history. The rhetoric of continuity is deployed to disarm resistance: an authentic Passionist saint is invoked while the same hand prepares an assembly that will undermine the social kingship of Christ, exalt religious liberty, dilute ecclesiology, and open the way to the neo-church. This is the core duplicity of the text.
Instrumentalizing a Saint While Undermining His World
John XXIII repeatedly lauds Gabriel’s:
– contempt of the world,
– ascetical rigor,
– strict custody of the senses,
– intense Marian piety,
– love of the Passion,
– obedience and humility,
– seriousness about vocation and penance.
All these are indeed marks of genuine sanctity and fully consonant with traditional doctrine. But the letter is written by the very architect of an aggiornamento designed to soft-erase the doctrinal and ascetical matrix in which such sanctity grows.
Compare Gabriel’s world and the Church’s doctrine governing it—defined by Trent, Vatican I, the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX, the anti-modernist magisterium of Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII—with the conciliar program that John XXIII is already publicly promoting:
– openness to the world rather than contempt of the world,
– practical marginalization of rigorous penance and mortification,
– sentimental, horizontal “Marian devotion” while eroding Marian mediation in doctrine and liturgy,
– “dialogue” with false religions instead of demanding their conversion,
– the project of religious liberty and ecumenism directly condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus, 15–18, 77–80) and reiterated in pre-1958 teaching.
Thus the letter operates as a pious anesthetic. It praises exactly those virtues that the conciliar revolution will render incomprehensible in practice, in catechesis, and in the public life of the so-called Church of the New Advent.
Linguistic Sugar-Coating: Piety as a Vehicle for Modernist Substitution
The tone is classical, elegant, apparently orthodox. But its rhetoric must be read in context. Several features are symptomatic:
1. Idealized and decontextualized presentation:
– The letter isolates Gabriel’s virtues from the dogmatic, liturgical, and disciplinary structure that defined them. There is no concrete insistence on:
– the absolute necessity of the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* offered in the traditional Roman rite;
– the integral Catholic faith as the only way of salvation;
– the objective duty of states to profess the true religion, as taught in *Quas Primas* and the Syllabus.
– Instead we get a devotional portrait that can be transplanted into any “updated” framework.
2. The soft pivot to the council:
– After a series of edifying exhortations, the text suddenly binds Gabriel’s cult to Vatican II, as if the council were the natural flowering of his spirituality.
– This is classic *modernist rhetoric*: use orthodox language to grant unsuspecting Catholics an emotional bridge into a program that in substance contradicts prior doctrine.
3. Ambiguity regarding hierarchy of ends:
– The letter stresses interior life, holiness, penance in generic terms, but is silent on concrete doctrinal battles of the age: modernism, liberalism, socialism, false ecumenism, condemned in detail by Pius IX and St. Pius X.
– This silence, at the dawn of the 1960s, is damning. St. Pius X in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi* exposed modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies.” Pius XI in *Quas Primas* taught that peace and order are only possible in the kingdom of Christ, publicly acknowledged by nations. Pius XII warned repeatedly against false new theologies. John XXIII, in this letter, says nothing of this front-line war, though he writes on the very eve of his council. This omission is not accidental; it exposes intent.
4. Lexical softness in view of revolution:
– The vocabulary is devotional, but programmatic terms such as *aggiornamento*, “opening to the world,” “dialogue” and so on are not yet explicit here; instead, the bridge is subtle: holiness language attached to the council.
– This mask allows the conciliar sect later to claim “continuity”: “See, John XXIII loved saints, penance, Mary; therefore what he convoked is safe.” This is a deceit of form over content.
Theological Contradiction: Gabriel’s Spirit vs. John XXIII’s Project
From the perspective of unchanging Catholic theology before 1958, the essential clash is stark.
1. The Church’s condemnation of liberalism and religious indifferentism
Pius IX’s Syllabus explicitly rejects propositions central to the future conciliar agenda:
– that every man is free to embrace whatever religion he judges true (15);
– that man may find salvation in any religion (16);
– that Protestantism is merely another form of the same true religion (18);
– that the State should be separated from the Church (55);
– that the Pontiff can reconcile himself with progress, liberalism, modern civilization understood as autonomous from Christ (80).
Pius XI in *Quas Primas* proclaims that civil rulers and nations are bound to recognize and publicly honor Christ the King; denying His social reign is the root of modern misery.
Yet John XXIII, whose letter here appears harmless, will in the same pontificate summon an assembly which produces documents and a praxis directly aligned with those condemned liberal principles—religious liberty, ecumenism predicated on equality of cults, practical secularism, dilution of the claim of the Catholic Church as the unique ark of salvation.
To hitch Gabriel to that project is a theological contradiction. Gabriel’s Passionist sanctity presupposes the truth that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation, the absolute primacy of the Cross, the gravity of sin, the need for penance, and the sovereignty of Christ over individuals and societies. The conciliar neo-church, birthed under John XXIII and his successors, systematically erodes all these.
2. The anti-modernist magisterium vs. the conciliar mentality
St. Pius X’s *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi* (reaffirmed with excommunication penalties) condemn:
– the evolutionary conception of dogma;
– the reduction of faith to religious experience;
– the subjection of dogma to historical relativism;
– the democratization of doctrine under the so-called “people of God.”
The council convoked by John XXIII, and the post-1958 hierarchy of usurpers, will promote precisely those modernist tendencies under new formulations: “living tradition,” “development of doctrine” severed from its dogmatic anchor, collegiality as political democratization, the sensus fidelium invoked to flatten authority, etc.
In the letter, John XXIII speaks of Gabriel’s strong obedience to his “legifer father,” esteem for interior life, rejection of worldly entertainments even when not absolutely sinful. But he never connects this with the sworn anti-modernist stance imposed by St. Pius X on all clergy (Oath against Modernism, 1910) and embodied in pre-1958 theology and discipline. On the contrary, this same John XXIII had already begun dismantling that anti-modernist bulwark by his appointments, his rhetoric, and his program for the council.
Thus we face a theological dissonance: an apparently traditional exhortation in the mouth of one preparing to shatter the very safeguards that produced such sanctity.
The Strategic Silence: Where Eternity Disappears Behind a Council
The most revealing aspect is what the letter does not say.
It does not explicitly:
– warn against modernism, condemned as the synthesis of all heresies;
– reaffirm the unique salvific necessity of the Catholic Church against indifferentism;
– confirm the obligation of nations to subject their public law to Christ the King;
– denounce socialism, communism, Freemasonry—the enemies unmasked by Pius IX and Leo XIII;
– recall the concrete threats of doctrinal corruption inside seminaries and faculties;
– insist on the duty of parents to preserve their children from impious schools and media (so central to Pius IX’s and Pius XI’s magisterium);
– tie Gabriel’s penance and purity to the objective horror of mortal sin, hell, judgment, and the narrow way.
Instead, the letter offers a generic, “safe” spirituality easily absorbed into a coming naturalistic, horizontal moralism. The supernatural horizon is present verbally, but its sharp edges are blunted, its militant demands veiled under the pleasant prospect of “fruits” from the council.
This silence is grave. In Catholic theological evaluation, *silentium de necessariis* (silence on what is necessary) can be itself a sign of error. In the face of accelerating apostasy and of a planned, unprecedented council, the refusal to restate the condemnations of modernism and liberalism demonstrates complicity. The letter is a study in such silence.
The Use of Gabriel Against Youth and Vocations
John XXIII addresses youth, seminarians, religious, and families, holding up Gabriel as model.
– To youth, he recommends joy, moderation, chastity, Marian devotion.
– To those “called to the lot of the Lord,” he stresses interior life over activism, penance, obedience.
– To families, he exhorts Christian upbringing, domestic piety, openness to vocations.
Each of these exhortations is, in itself, congruent with pre-1958 teaching. But here lies the poison: they are placed within, and subservient to, a conciliar project that will in practice:
– replace the ascetical guarding of senses with openness to obscene media and fashions, tolerated or imitated by the conciliar sect;
– neutralize Marian devotion by ecumenical sensitivities and doctrinal minimalism;
– destroy authentic seminaries, replacing them with psychological, liberal, and even morally corrupt institutions that crush vocations or pervert them;
– encourage parents to accept state-controlled, secular, anti-Christian education under the banner of “pluralism” and “dialogue”;
– transform religious life, emptying convents and monasteries, replacing penance and enclosure with activism and political agitation.
Thus the letter weaponizes Gabriel’s image to mask a process that will eradicate the very soil in which a Gabriel can grow. It is spiritual fraud: “using” a saint to lead youth and vocations into the arms of the conciliar sect, where the sacraments are systematically profaned, doctrine relativized, and the spirit of the world enthroned.
Symptomatic Revelation: The Conciliar Sect’s Method in Miniature
Read in light of later events, this letter prefigures the method of the structures occupying the Vatican:
1. Invoke real saints of the pre-conciliar Church.
2. Extol generic virtues compatible with any vaguely Christian moralism.
3. Carefully avoid reiterating hard dogmatic and anti-liberal positions central to those saints’ world.
4. Link the saints and virtues rhetorically to the council or to later antipope agendas.
5. Use this fabricated “continuity” narrative to legitimize a new religion: ecumenical, anthropocentric, doctrinally fluid, aligned with condemned liberal principles.
This is precisely what occurs here with St. Gabriel. The name of a Passionist saint becomes a stage prop for John XXIII’s neo-pontifical self-presentation as a benign shepherd leading to a “new Pentecost.” But authentic magisterium before 1958 had already diagnosed this strategy:
– Modernists, taught St. Pius X, hide their poison under orthodox phrases, “lying concealed in the very bosom and heart of the Church.”
– They seek to maintain appearances and continuity of vocabulary while infusing dogmas with new meanings, evolving them according to the spirit of the age.
John XXIII’s letter is exemplary: the vocabulary is that of holiness; the strategic aim, indicated by the council reference and by the broader context of his acts, is a break masked as continuity.
John XXIII’s Credibility Measured by Pre-1958 Doctrine
Measured solely against the unchanging standard of the integral Catholic faith prior to 1958, and the clear criteria articulated by theologians such as St. Robert Bellarmine about the impossibility of a manifest heretic holding the papal office, the project inaugurated by John XXIII is incompatible with the papal duty to guard, not remake, the deposit of faith.
Pre-1958 doctrine teaches:
– *Non licet* (“it is not permitted”) to innovate in dogma under pretext of development;
– that the Church, as a perfect society, cannot reconcile herself with liberalism and the Masonic exaltation of man, condemned repeatedly (Syllabus; allocutions against secret societies);
– that any attempt to place human “dignity,” “rights,” or “modern civilization” above the public rights of Christ the King is treasonous.
The council convoked by John XXIII, and the entire conciliar sect that follows, systematically promotes those very tendencies. This divorces his program from the papal office as defined by Vatican I and prior magisterium.
In this perspective, the letter on Gabriel is not an innocent spiritual exercise; it is an early exhibit of the same pattern by which the neo-church clothes its apostasy in the garments of traditional piety.
Supernatural Reality vs. the Naturalistic Council Horizon
St. Gabriel’s whole life shouts what the conciliar sect mutes:
– radical separation from the spirit of the world;
– uncompromising devotion to the Passion, not as inspiration for activism, but as propitiatory sacrifice for sin;
– total Marian fidelity, not embarrassed by ecumenical sensitivities;
– love for the Most Holy Sacrifice according to the traditional Roman rite;
– reverent submission to defined dogma as immutable.
John XXIII’s letter mentions aspects of this, but he diverts the gaze to Vatican II, as though this council were the supernatural consummation of Gabriel’s spirituality. This is the decisive falsification. Pre-1958 magisterium (e.g., *Quas Primas*, the Syllabus, *Lamentabili*) demonstrate that peace, order, and salvation come only through the public and private recognition of Christ’s Kingship, the rejection of religious indifferentism, and the firm adherence to defined dogma against modernist evolution.
By contrast, the conciliar sect, inaugurated under John XXIII and continued by his successors, replaces this supernatural order with:
– a cult of “human dignity” detached from Christ and His Church;
– religious liberty understood as a natural right to propagate error;
– ecumenical “dialogue” that denies practically that the Catholic Church alone possesses the fullness of truth;
– liturgical devastation that obscures the sacrificial nature of the Mass.
To tie the celebration of St. Gabriel explicitly to such a council is to drag a genuine saint onto the stage of an *abominatio desolationis* (abomination of desolation) and use him as a rhetorical hostage.
Conclusion: Unmasking the Pious Mask
This letter must therefore be read not as an isolated devotional piece, but as a calculated operation within a broader project:
– It is doctrinally weak by omission at a critical historical moment.
– It misappropriates a true saint of the Passionist tradition to endorse a council that would wage war—doctrinal, liturgical, ascetical—against the ecclesial environment that produced his sanctity.
– It illustrates the modernist technique of speaking in venerable terms while preparing their inversion.
From the vantage point of the integral Catholic faith, every Catholic devoted to St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows must reject the attempt of John XXIII and the conciliar sect to recruit him into their narrative. St. Gabriel belongs to the immutable Church of the Passion and the Cross, the same Church that, through Pius IX and St. Pius X, thundered against liberalism and modernism. To co-link his centenary with the council of aggiornamento is not continuity; it is a rhetorical theft.
Authentic veneration of St. Gabriel today demands fidelity to that pre-1958 magisterium, separation from the Church of the New Advent, and adherence to the same spirit of penance, Marian devotion, and doctrinal solidity that this letter, beneath its devotional language, subtly betrays by its alignment with the conciliar agenda.
Source:
Sanctitatis altrix – Ad Malcolmum La Velle, Congregationis Clericorum Excalceatorum SS.mae Crucis et Passionis D. N. Iesu Christi Praepositum Generalem, centesimo exeunte anno ex quo S. Gabriel a Virg… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025