Beate Pastor Petre, clemens accipe
Voces precantum, criminumque vincula
Verbo resolve, cui potestas tradita,
Aperire terris cœlum, apertum claudere.

O Blessed Shepherd Peter,
mercifully receive the voices of thy supplicants
and loose the chains of sins with thy word,
to which is attributed the power to open heaven to the earth
and, if open, to close it.

Hymn. Decora lux, 3 

Sancti Apostoli Petrus et Paulus, de quorum potestate et auctoritate confidimus, ipsi intercedant pro nobis ad Dominum. These are the words with which the solemn formula of the Apostolic Blessing begins: May the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, in whose power and authority we trust, intercede for us with the Lord. The power and authority of the Roman Pontiff derive in fact from the two Patrons of the Holy Church, whom today’s hymn greets as

Mundi Magister, atque cœli Janitor,
Romæ parentes, arbitrique Gentium, [1]

one the Master of the world, the other the Guardian of the celestial Gates, fathers of Rome and judges of the Gentiles. Their lives, consecrated to the preaching of the Gospel and the conversion of peoples to the One and Triune God, are intertwined even in death, in Martyrdom: Per ensis ille, hic per crucis victor necem, Saint Paul by the sword, Saint Peter by the cross. That Martyrdom – their heroic testimony of Faith usque ad effusionem sanguinis – still consecrates the land of the Urbe today:

O Roma felix, quæ duorum Principum
Es consecrata glorioso sanguine!
Horum cruore purpurata ceteras
Excellis orbis una pulchritudines.

O happy Rome, thou that hast been consecrated
by the glorious blood of these two Princes!
Purpled with their blood,
Thou alone surpass all the other wonders of the world. [2]

Thou alone surpass the wonders of the world: because the glories of ancient Rome, its culture, its law, its arts, its territorial and administrative organization, its ability to unite and pacify peoples in the practice of virtues – even if not yet enlightened and vivified by Grace – were destined to find their fulfillment in adherence to the Catholic Faith, prepared by Providence also in the Martyrdom of these pillars of the Church, which in the Creed we profess as Una, Sancta, Catholica et Apostolica. Belonging to that Church makes each of us, as the Supreme Poet [Dante] sings, cive di quella Roma onde Cristo è romano [a citizen of that Rome where Christ is Roman] (Purgatorio XXXII, 102).

Hatred directed against Rome, the capital of Christianity as the seat of the Papacy, is the hallmark of heretics; a hatred that manifests itself in the systematic cancellation of everything that is Roman, starting with the sacred language, which is Latin. The Benedictine abbot Dom Prosper Guéranger writes:

Hatred of the Latin language is innate in the hearts of all the enemies of Rome: they see in it the bond of Catholics in the universe, the arsenal of orthodoxy against all the subtleties of the sectarian spirit, the most powerful weapon of the Papacy. The spirit of revolt, which induces them to entrust universal prayer to the idiom of each people, of each province, of each century, has moreover produced its fruits. [3]

Dom Guéranger continues:

[Martin Luther] had to abolish en masse the cult and ceremonies, such as (here Guéranger quotes Luther) “idolatry of Rome; the Latin language, the divine office, the calendar, the breviary, all abominations of the great whore of Babylon. The Roman Pontiff weighs on reason with his dogmas, weighs on the senses with his ritual practices: it must therefore be proclaimed that his dogmas are nothing but blasphemy and error, and his liturgical observances only a means to establish more strongly a usurped and tyrannical dominion. [4]

We should ask ourselves with what wretched thoughtlessness the Council Fathers – and today’s continuators of the so-called conciliar “reform” – allowed a handful of anti-Roman heretics to carry out within the Church, and with the force of the Church’s own authority, that attack on Romanitas that four centuries earlier was at the origin of the Lutheran schism; and how illusory is it to believe that article 36 of the conciliar Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium – Linguæ latinæ usus in Ritibus latinis servetur – The use of the Latin language shall be preserved in the Latin rites – could have been sufficient to prevent the demolition of the Latin Liturgy – when it was obvious that the first and fundamental purpose of the reform was precisely that of abandoning the Roman language in favor of the vernacular idiom. We should also ask ourselves how one can consider free from bad faith the behavior of those who, constituted in positions of authority, still today seek to attack the Roman Papacy with synodality, a principle that is ontologically contrary to the divine constitution of the Church precisely because it is essentially anti-Roman.

The parenthesis between Benedict XVI and Leo – an interregnum of twelve very long years of devastation of the Church and deconstruction of the Papacy at the hands of a usurper – made explicit the anti-Roman nature of conciliar and synodal neo-modernism. But if we know the causes of the present crisis, we also know the remedies to get out of it: namely, to recognize Christ as King and Pontiff of all societies, to restore to Him the triple crown of the sacred monarchy of the Church and the scepter of civil power, because Our Lord is the holder of all Authority, and those who govern derive their legitimacy only in exercising power as His vicars and stewards.

The Supreme Pontificate, the sacred Monarchy of the Church, is and must be an expression of the Divine Order which Our Lord has established. And everything that opposes this order must be recognized as alien and alien to the Catholic Faith. Everything in the ecclesiastical sphere that aims to parliamentarize and democratize the Church, replacing the personal authority of the Pope and the Bishops with forms of representative government on the model of the constitution of post-revolutionary States, tampers with the divine constitution of the Church and deprives the Papacy of its foundation, which is precisely being intrinsically connected to the supreme authority of Christ the Pontiff and to the principatus of Saint Peter. And if the Successor of Peter, like the Prince of the Apostles before him, should ever depart from what semper, ubique et ab omnibus creditum est [has always been believed, everywhere and by everyone], the Holy Spirit does not fail even today to raise up new Saint Pauls who will correct him in faciem (Gal 2:11). The Apostle, as Saint Thomas Aquinas comments [5], opposed Peter in the way he exercised his authority and not by contesting the authority of the Prince of the Apostles.

The possibility of correcting ecclesiastical superiors offers the Supreme Pontiff and the Bishops an example of humility – Aquinas explains – so that they do not refuse to accept reprimands from their inferiors and subjects; and to subjects an example of zeal and freedom, so that they are not afraid to correct their prelates, especially when the fault has been public and has redounded causing danger for many. [6] Unfortunately, in recent years we have seen how public corrections were considered by the one who occupied the Throne of Peter; what retaliation was suffered by those who denounced the doctrinal, moral, and disciplinary deviations of Jorge Mario Bergoglio; and what sanctions were imposed by the Roman Sanhedrin on those who questioned “the legitimacy of Pope Francis and the Second Vatican Council.” [7] On the other hand, the response of tyrants to critical voices has always been characterized by unjustified violence and a systematic abuse of power.

Today we ought to and want to hope that the multiplication of appeals from the ecclesial body for a return to Tradition will induce Leo to abandon Bergoglian “synodality” – an evolution of the conciliar “collegiality” of Lumen Gentium – and to exercise the Papacy without adulterating its authority with contaminations of an antichristic matrix that deny the Universal Lordship of Christ in the spiritual and temporal sphere. And Christ’s mandate to Peter – Pasce oves meas, pasce agnos meos (Jn 21:17) – must once again be exercised in the guarding of the Depositum Fidei and in the faithful transmission of immutable Catholic doctrine, without yielding to the spirit of the world that Peter, at the Council of Jerusalem, had already believed he could legitimize in the name of inclusion – as we would say today – of the Jews who wanted to maintain the rites of the Old Testament.

The Holy Roman Catholic Church was born in blood. In the most precious Blood of Our Lord, shed on Golgotha to redeem us from the tyranny of Satan and which is once again shed on our altars in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. She was born in the blood of the Martyrs, semen Christianorum, according to Tertullian’s expression. In the blood of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, patrons of the Universal Church. She will conclude her earthly pilgrimage, at the end of time, in the blood of all the new Martyrs who will defend the profession of the True Faith against the blasphemous heresies and apostasy of the Antichrist.

We ask the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and the Blessed Virgin their Queen, to intercede before the throne of the Divine Majesty, so that the Papacy, hitherto humiliated, may once again shine as a beacon of Truth for the people and a garrison of orthodoxy for the faithful. May the blood of the Princes of the Apostles, with which the blessed soil of the Eternal City is soaked, be the seed of new courageous and heroic Christians, ready to bear witness to Our Lord Jesus Christ in fidelity to the Holy Roman Church and to the Roman Pontificate. And so may it be.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

June 29, MMXXV
Ss. Petri et Pauli Apostolorum

FOOTNOTES

1 – Hymn Decora lux, 2

2 – Ibid., 3

3 – Dom Prosper Guéranger, Institutions liturgiques, cap. XIV, De l’hérésie antiliturgique et de la réforme protestante du XVI^e siècle, considérée dans ses rapports avec la liturgie, 8.

4 – Ibid., 10.

Ibid., 10. Dom Guéranger continues a little further on, recalling Joseph de Maistre’s essay Du Pape: Despite the dissonances that should separate the different separate sects from each other, there is one quality in which they all unite, which is “non-Romanness.” Imagine any innovation, whether in matters of dogma or discipline, and see if it is possible to realize it without incurring, willingly or unwillingly, the note of “non-Roman,” or if you like, that of “less Roman,” if one lacks audacity. It remains to be seen what peace a Catholic will be able to find in the first, or even in the second of these situations.

5 – Super Ep. ad Galatas, 77

6 – Ibid.

7 – Cfr. Announcement regarding the start of the extrajudicial criminal trial for schism (Art. 2 SST; can. 1364 CIC) https://exsurgedomine.it/240620-attendite-eng/