The Man Who Opened the Gates: John XXIII and the Birth of the Conciliar Church

On the feast of “Saint” John XXIII, the Church celebrates the architect of its self-destruction.

The Smile That Hid a Revolution

The modern cult of “Good Pope John” is one of the media’s most effective myths. His cheerful disposition, round face, and sentimental diary entries became the perfect mask for a theological coup. Fr. Luigi Villa’s “John XXIII Beatified?” strips that mask away.

Fr. Villa, writing as a lone voice of fidelity in the wake of the Council, documents what few dared to say aloud: that John XXIII’s pontificate marked the conscious opening of the Church to her ancient enemies: Freemasonry, Communism, and modernism itself. His “virtues,” praised by John Paul II as “ecumenical” and “dialogical,” were not the supernatural graces of the saints, but political categories repackaged as holiness. Francis canonized a man precisely for rejecting the theology of every pope before him.

The White Smoke That Turned to Ash

There is one episode in John XXIII’s rise that refuses to die, though it has been smothered for decades under the incense of official histories. On October 26, 1958, at 5:55 p.m., the chimney above the Sistine Chapel released white smoke, fumata bianca, the ancient signal that the cardinals had chosen a pope. The bells of St. Peter’s began to ring. Radio Vatican announced that a new pontiff had been elected. Newspapers across Europe set their presses. Reporters ran toward the loggia, waiting for the balcony curtains to part.

They never did.

After nearly half an hour of confusion, the smoke darkened again. The bells stopped. Vatican spokesmen mumbled that the white smoke had been a “mistake.” No name was given, no explanation offered. The conclave resumed behind sealed doors. Two days later, the cardinals emerged to proclaim the “unexpected” election of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli: John XXIII.

It was the only conclave in history where the color of the smoke and the official declarations contradicted each other so dramatically. Journalists who had covered multiple papal elections swore the first smoke was unmistakably white. The Associated Press, Reuters, and The New York Times all issued bulletins declaring Habemus Papam. Then came the retraction.

No one inside the Vatican ever produced a convincing explanation. Some blamed the stove; others whispered that a pope had indeed been elected but had refused the office. Still others, more darkly, have suspected coercion or invalidation by outside pressure. Cardinal Giuseppe Siri’s name surfaced again and again: the archbishop of Genoa, doctrinally firm, anti-modernist, the natural successor to Pius XII. A man like that could not be allowed to sit on the throne in 1958.

He Takes the Name of an Antipope

When the curtain finally opened, another oddity shocked historians. Roncalli took the name John XXIII, a title last used by Baldassare Cossa, the infamous anti-pope deposed at the Council of Constance in 1415. Never before in Church history had a legitimate pontiff revived the name of an anti-pope. Every previous “John XXIII” had been struck from the papal rolls. Roncalli claimed to choose it out of affection for his father and his native parish of St. John, but the symbolism was impossible to ignore: the first “John XXIII” convoked a false council that led to his own deposition; the second “John XXIII” convoked another council that led to the deposition of the Faith itself.

The Aftermath

What followed feels like a parable. The white smoke that signified certainty turned black, as if the very heavens retracted their announcement. The world thought a shepherd had been chosen; instead, a new era began, one that would trade the keys for the olive branch, the Creed for “dialogue,” the Cross for the crescent of human fraternity.

Whether Cardinal Siri was truly elected and forced aside will never be proved in this world. But the symbolism is too perfect to ignore: the light of truth rising for a moment above St. Peter’s, then swallowed in acrid smoke. The Church that emerged from that chimney was already the Conciliar Church, born not of fire from heaven, but of fumes from below.

From Bergamo to the Kremlin

Fr. Villa traces Roncalli’s modernist sympathies back to his days as a young priest in Bergamo. Suspicious to Pius X’s Holy Office for his admiration of modernist scholars, Roncalli escaped condemnation only because the saintly pope had died. Once in Paris as nuncio, he was known for his “worldliness,” his dinners with socialists and atheists, and his disdain for the anti-modernist vigilance of Pius XII.

The rot was not subtle. In 1962, under John XXIII’s orders, Cardinal Tisserant negotiated with Moscow to allow Orthodox observers at Vatican II, on the condition that the Council say nothing about Communism. Thus, while priests rotted in gulags, the Church fell silent. The blood of martyrs was traded for a diplomatic smile.

The Council That Was No Inspiration

John XXIII claimed the idea of the Council came to him suddenly in prayer, as if whispered by the Holy Spirit. Fr. Villa shows this was a fabrication. Roncalli had discussed a “renewal council” with friends and cardinals before his election. The plan existed long before the alleged “inspiration.” What emerged in 1959 was not divine breath, but the execution of a program conceived decades earlier by the very modernists condemned by Pius X.

The result was predictable: instead of reaffirming the Faith against modern error, the Council embraced those errors under the banner of mercy. The “window to the world” that John opened was not to let light in, but to let faith out.

Mercy Without Truth

Fr. Villa isolates the fatal redefinition at the heart of Roncalli’s theology: the substitution of “mercy” for judgment. John’s famous line, “The Church prefers the medicine of mercy to the weapons of severity,” has been repeated like a mantra ever since. But mercy without condemnation is not Christian; it is sentimental humanism.

In Pacem in Terris, John praised the secular ideals of 1789 and “human rights” as if the Enlightenment had accomplished what the Cross had not. He sought unity not through conversion, but through the Masonic “universal brotherhood.” The Church’s enemies needed no repentance; they were already “partners in dialogue.”

A False Saint for a False Church

Fr. Villa’s “counter-beatification” closes with an irony fit for Dante. The man who humiliated Padre Pio, who silenced anti-Communist bishops, who mocked the Holy Office, and who elevated Montini, the future Paul VI, was held up as the “Pope of goodness.” Yet his very goodness became the instrument of destruction. His optimism dismantled vigilance; his smiles replaced anathemas; his Council replaced Catholicism with “Conciliarism.”

Instead of sanctity, the world canonized surrender.

The Feast of the Conciliar Church

Today, under Leo, Roncalli’s true heir, the feast of “Saint John XXIII” is a liturgical monument to rupture. Every heresy now sheltered in the postconciliar Church traces its lineage to that smiling revolutionary.

The Devil, wrote Pius X, “never sleeps, but in every age insinuates his poison.” In 1958, he found his willing instrument in the man the world calls “Good.”

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