In a recent statement, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò (2025) extols the figure of Saint Pius X as an antidote to the current confusion and crisis in the Church. The text highlights the holy pontiff's governance as an exercise of sacred potestas at the service of truth, averse to "balancing acts" and committed to discerning and "cutting out" error. Viganò contrasts this doctrinal clarity with the present situation, where faith is reduced to language and the Church's mission to a social key. The intransigence of Saint Pius X is presented not as authoritarianism, but as the "supreme form of charity," for "only that which is true can be loved without deception." The pontificate of Pope Sarto is thus evoked as the living memory of a "hierarchical, supernatural Church, ordered to God," whose teaching is the only path to authentic ecclesial reform.
It is indeed accurate to state that the governance of Saint Pius X does not represent authoritarianism, but rather the correct exercise of sacred potestas. The modern error, however, consists in seeing a necessary conflict between authority and liberty, which leads to the false prudence of the "balancing act." For the liberal mentality, radically corrupted, the relationship between liberty and authority is an authentic conflict, as individual liberty is conceived as the supreme personal value. Therefore, when an authority imposes its doctrine without leaving room for divergence, it will appear to liberals as an oppression of the spirit. For the traditional Catholic, however, authority perfects liberty, because it allows man to choose with certainty what is most convenient for him. That is why the Catholic celebrates each definition of the magisterium of the Church as a new guarantee for his liberty (Nougué, 2017, p. 278-279). The refusal of Saint Pius X to "mediate" with error was, therefore, not a suppression of liberty, but its highest service, guiding it towards the truth, which is its proper end.The assertion that "one cannot save the world by yielding to the world" finds its deepest foundation in the doctrine of the Social Kingship of Christ. Liberalism, both political and religious, was born precisely to impede this Kingship, proposing that the ordering of all human things to the universal ultimate end occurs accidentally or indirectly, or not at all. However, perennial Catholic doctrine teaches that everything in the human world—the arts, the economy, and principally, politics—must be ordered in an essential and direct way to the ultimate end of the universe, which is God Himself, and that this ordering has taken the concrete form of an ordering to Our Lord Jesus Christ and to His kingdom "on earth as it is in heaven" (Nougué, 2017, p. 373). Thus, liberal democracy, as a regime founded on the premise that authority comes from the people and not from God, is not merely one form of government among others, but "is a more universal religion than the Church," whose purpose is precisely "to impede the political-social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to impede any and all of his reign" (Nougué, 2017, p. 372, note 1). The intransigence of Saint Pius X was, therefore, the logical consequence of confessing Christ as King not only of individuals, but of societies.
The postulate that "nothing is more pastoral than doctrine" is equally precise. This maxim exposes the inversion operated by the conciliar magisterium, which inaugurated a "new pastoral character." Indeed, for traditional pastors, the first pastoral care was the dogmatic definition that the grave problems of the Church required. For conciliar pastors, however, "nothing is more opposed to the pastoral character than doctrinal definition. In fact, all the documents of Vatican II reaffirm their 'pastoral' character precisely to justify the lack of doctrinal definition" (Nougué, 2017, p. 280). Pastoral care thus becomes a pretext for "balancing acts" and ambiguity, whereas for Saint Pius X the highest pastoral charity consisted in presenting doctrine clearly and unequivocally, as he did in the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis.
Finally, the memory of a "hierarchical Church" is the central point. The conciliar magisterium, in effect, inverted the relationship between the teaching Church and the learning Church. Traditional doctrine has always taught that the infallibility in credendo of the body of the faithful is a consequence of the infallibility in docendo of the magisterium, which is the sole subject of the charism of indefectible truth. The conciliar magisterium, however, maintains that "the first and immediate subject of infallibility is not the hierarchy, but 'the entire People of God'." Thus, the function of the hierarchy is no longer properly to teach, but to "unify and authenticate the common thought," which emanates from the "sense of the faith" of the collective (Nougué, 2017, p. 281-282). This is precisely the dissolution of the hierarchical form of the Church, against which the pontificate of Saint Pius X stands as a bulwark. His firmness in exercising apostolic authority was the affirmation that truth descends from Christ, through His Vicar and the bishops in communion with him, to the people, and not the other way around.
In sum, Viganò's analysis (2025) is theologically correct and its relevance, undeniable. The figure of Saint Pius X is not merely a "living antidote," but the personification of Catholic authority exercised in its fullness: an authority that does not dialogue with error, but condemns it; that does not seek to please the world, but to convert it; and that understands that the greatest mercy that can be offered to souls is the justice of presenting them with the truth of Christ the King, whole and without blemish.
References
VIGANÒ, Carlo Maria. https://x.com/CarloMVigano/status/1952620555921699143. 2025.
NOUGUÉ, Carlos. Do Papa Herético e outros opúsculos. 1st ed. Formosa, GO: Edições Santo Tomás, 2017.
VIGANÒ, Carlo Maria. https://x.com/CarloMVigano/status/1952620555921699143. 2025.
NOUGUÉ, Carlos. Do Papa Herético e outros opúsculos. 1st ed. Formosa, GO: Edições Santo Tomás, 2017.