Massoni | 4- Freemasonry in The Holy See

Chapter 4: The Mason and Rosicrucian Angelo Roncalli aka Pope John XXIII, Vatican II Council, and the Dream of a Modern Harmony Between Religious Essotericism and Masonic Esotericism Toward a Renewed Season of Equality, Brotherhood, and Freedom (1958–1968)

Where the initiations of the first masonic Pope, Vatican II Council, and the secret archives of the Ur-Lodge “Ghedullah” are told. 

---

The First Masonic Pope

• Mid-20th century witnessed unique collaboration between certain sectors of Freemasonry and Catholicism, aimed at progressive ideals, beyond earlier conservative massonic influences on European unification.  

• The project involved several powerful Ur-Lodges: 

  • Ecclesia (deeply rooted in Vatican circles)  

  • Ghedullah (Mediterranean and Middle East, mainly Jewish and Christian members practicing Kabbalah and Rosicrucian traditions)  

  • Daath (secular Israeli and liberal-progressive international Judaism)  

  • Thomas Paine (Anglo-American and French dominant)  

  • Montesquieu (mainly French-speaking)  

  • Christopher Columbus (transnational, US, Canada, Latin America)  

  • Ioannes (New England-based, mainly English-speaking Catholics, Anglicans, Episcopalians)  

  • Hiram Rhodes Revels (white hyper-progressive US and UK, prominent African-American figures)  

• The plan aimed for, historically, the first election of a Masonic pope and, simultaneously, a Catholic but non-Masonic and progressive US president.  

• This plan culminated with the 1958 election of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (1881–1963), Cardinal and Patriarch of Venice, as Pope John XXIII.  

• Roncalli had his first Masonic initiation in Istanbul in 1940 at Ur-Lodge Ghedullah (not 1935 as sometimes said).  

• Early correspondence (1929) showed hesitation/demonization of Freemasonry in full conformity with the prevailing antimasonic clerical attitude.  

• Roncalli’s spiritual evolution was influenced by his posting in Istanbul, a marked center of laicization under Masonic reformer Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.  

• Initiated as a Freemason in the Ghedullah lodge, which was esoterically concerned with the study and practice of Jewish and Christian Kabbalah, hesychasm, and Rosicrucian tradition.  

 

---

The Secret Archives of the Ur-Lodge “Ghedullah”

• Archives reveal the presence of Franz von Papen (1879–1969), a Catholic Mason and Knight of Malta, acting as a “visitor brother” during Roncalli’s ceremony in Istanbul. 

  • Von Papen was a complex figure: Chancellor of Germany (1932), ambassador, involved in Vatican-Germany concordat, at odds with Hitler post-1934 but protected by Hermann Göring.  

• The authors purposely avoid excessive bureaucratic fetishism regarding documentary evidence but confirm the Masonic nature of Roncalli and others by the style, action, and personal affiliations.  

• The authors have deposited substantial material with legal repositories in Paris, London, and New York for verification if challenged.  

• Roncalli’s initiation in Turkey (Istanbul) is recognized by “high-level Catholic and Masonic insiders.”  

 

---

The Second Initiation of Pope Roncalli

• After his 1944 appointment as Apostolic Nuncio to France, Roncalli received a second initiation at Ur-Lodge Montesquieu in Paris in late 1949.  

• Present was Baron Yves Marsaudon, a fervently Catholic Mason and Minister of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) in Paris.  

• Marsaudon was member of Grande Loge de France and later of Grande Loge Nationale Française.  

• In 1950, on the suggestion of Ghedullah brethren, Roncalli was initiated as a Rosicrucian in a Parisian Rosicrucian group linked to the Ur-Lodge Ioannes.  

• Documentation exists for all these events.  

 

---

The Masonic Activities of Angelo Roncalli and His Self-Perception as a True Catholic and True Freemason

• Roncalli distinguished between Catholic universalism (essoteric, aimed at the faithful needing guidance) and Masonic esotericism (requiring individual spiritual effort).  

• He wrote “architectural tablets” between 1950–1953 and 1955–1958 emphasizing the need for a true Freemason and Rosicrucian to be a good priest.  

• Roncalli strongly engaged in saving persecuted Jews during WWII, working with fellow Masons like Franz von Papen (Turkey) and Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg (Hungary).  

• He exerted pressure on Bulgarian Tsar Boris III to prevent deportations.  

• Notably, Vincent Auriol, Socialist President of France and grandmaster of Ur-Lodge Montesquieu, imposed the cardinal’s biretta on Roncalli in 1953.  

 

---

Vatican II Council and the Cuban Missile Crisis

• John XXIII convened Vatican II in 1959, which ran 1962–1965, revolutionary in opening the Church to modern universalism, ecumenism, and freedom of conscience.  

• Roncalli died before consolidating Vatican II reforms; later Popes (especially John Paul II and Benedict XVI) worked to curb reformist currents.  

• Under John XXIII, first African, Japanese, and Filipino cardinals were appointed.  

• He issued significant encyclicals blending Masonic esotericism and Catholic essotericism: Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963).  

• Although Pope John XXIII and President Kennedy (Catholic, not a Mason but well-liked by progressive brethren) never met face-to-face, their entourages maintained intense relations.  

• The Pope played a crucial pacifist role in the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.  

• The Discourse on the Moon (October 11, 1962) exhibited deep dual-level (essoteric and exoteric) rhetoric, referencing the Logos and Shekhinah (a Kabbalistic symbol linked to the moon).  

• Key diplomacy was executed via massons including Cardinal Richard James Cushing (archbishop of Boston, Ioannes lodge) and journalist/activist Norman Cousins (member of multiple Ur-Lodges).  

• The involvement of key figures such as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and US ambassador Llewellyn E. Thompson Jr., both affiliated to the Ur-Lodge Golden Eurasia, facilitated successful crisis resolution.  

 

---

The Masonic Enrico Mattei

• On the eve of the peaceful resolution of the Cuban crisis, Enrico Mattei (1906–1962), founder and president of ENI, died in a suspicious plane accident.  

• Mattei was a member of Ur-Lodges Golden Eurasia and Ibn Arabi (Middle East, North Africa, focused on Sufism).  

• His death is linked to attacks by conservative superloges like Joseph de Maistre, Edmund Burke, Compass Star-Rose, and Geburah, interested in disrupting East-West détente.  

• After Mattei, control of ENI shifted to the more ruthless Mason Eugenio Cefis, connected to those same conservative lodges and the notorious P2 lodge.  

 

---

Against the New Frontier

• The peaceful and progressive project of the New Frontier initiated by John XXIII and JFK was partly thwarted by these events (Mattei’s death, JFK’s assassination, Roncalli’s death).  

• JFK’s New Frontier, penned with input from progressive Masons like Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr., sought social justice reforms (civil rights, welfare, education, and equality).  

• Other Freemasons supporting the New Frontier included Arthur Joseph Goldberg, William Averell Harriman, Richard Newton Gardner, McGeorge Bundy, Roger Hilsman Jr., and George Wildman Ball.  

• The conservative massonic opposition controlled transnational networks including the Ur-Lodge Joseph de Maistre, with strong overlaps across East-West divide.  

• In the USSR, top leaders such as Leonid Brezhnev, Aleksei Kosygin, Mikhail Suslov, Anastas Mikoyan, Alexander Shelepin, Vladimir Semichastny, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko were all affiliated with Joseph de Maistre or Golden Eurasia, reflecting similar internal power struggles and massonic influences.  

• The Soviet Joseph de Maistre lodge was originally founded with Lenin and European Masons as an elite meeting point transcending ideology.  

• Lenin saw a supreme, unchallengeable ruling elite as essential for social order (this elite envisioned as an underground Masonic one).  

 

---

The Kennedy Assassination

• The authors do not delve into widespread conspiracy theories but clarify: 

  • The assassination was not a simple plot or monolithic conspiracy but a complex power struggle.  

  • There was a covert project for managing the US state’s apparatus opposing the New Frontier’s aims.  

• The German investigative journalist Mathias Bröckers (author of JFK. Staatsstreich in Amerika) offers a detailed account attributing the assassination to forces including Wall Street financiers, ex-Nazi intelligence, and the CIA under Allen Dulles.  

• According to Bröckers: 

  • JFK planned to end the Cold War, disarm nuclear weapons, and cooperate with the USSR.  

  • His death emboldened Cold War hawks on both sides.  

  • The CIA, FBI, and Military Intelligence were deeply involved in cover-ups.  

  • False documents, autopsy manipulation, and media control ensured the “official” narrative survived decades.  

  • Mafia, racist Southerners, and financial elites opposed JFK on various grounds but lacked means for the assassination.  

• Nevertheless, the authors note many inaccuracies in Bröckers’ thesis, such as overemphasizing CIA monolithic control and oversimplifying the role of Wall Street or Allen Dulles.  

• They stress the importance of nuanced understanding of factional interest among elites.  

 

---

The Military-Industrial Complex and the Superlodges

• The assassination allowed conservative Masonic superlodges to assert dominance over US politics, downgrading JFK and Khrushchev’s attempts at détente.  

• Names of conservative lodges controlling this complex include: 

  • Geburah  

  • Joseph de Maistre  

  • Edmund Burke  

  • Compass Star-Rose  

  • Pan-Europa  

• Former President and Mason Dwight David Eisenhower warned against this military-industrial complex in his farewell address (1961), echoing concerns about its threat to democracy.  

• These conservative lodges influenced CIA, FBI, the US military, and administration decisions via infiltrations and pressure.  

• They orchestrated the removal of JFK, allowed Johnson to escalate the Vietnam War, and controlled key policy outcomes for decades.  

 

---

Kennedy’s Oblique Messages

• The famous 1961 speech at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria, often cited by conspiracy theorists as JFK attacking Freemasonry or “Illuminati,” actually denounced secretive networks blending East and West Cold War powers.  

• JFK lamented the dangers of excessive secrecy and encroaching censorship, pointing to a “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” operating through covert means blending military, diplomatic, intelligence, and economic strategies.  

• His warnings encoded recognition of the influence of both progressive and conservative superlodges and their complex power games.  

• JFK’s allusions make sense only in context of the revealed power networks of competing Masonic lodges.  

 

---

New Frontier and Great Society, Despite It All

• Despite JFK’s assassination, progressive reforms under Lyndon Baines Johnson (a Democrat and Mason) continued: 

  • The Civil Rights Act (1964) outlawed racial segregation.  

  • Johnson appointed the first African-American Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall (Mason).  

  • Johnson’s Great Society initiated welfare programs expanding education, health care, and social services.  

• These programs reflected the combined legacy of the New Frontier, Rooseveltian New Deal, and progressive Masonic influences.  

• Multiple progressive lodges supported these reformist agendas like: 

  • Thomas Paine  

  • Christopher Columbus  

  • Ioannes  

  • Montesquieu  

  • Daath  

  • Simon Bolívar  

  • Ghedullah  

  • Fraternité Verte  

  • Hiram Rhodes Revels  

  • Newton-Keynes  

  • Benjamin Franklin  

  • Carroll of Carrollton  

 

---

The Birth of the Superlodges “Three Eyes”

• Founded officially in early 1968, “Three Architects” or “Three Eyes” was a superlodge created to: 

  • Prevent an early end to the Vietnam War.  

  • Influence the 1968 US presidential elections.  

  • Infiltrate and control the burgeoning global democratic and anti-authoritarian movements (such as the 1968 cultural upheavals).  

  • Re-establish oligarchic and technocratic control in Western governance.  

• The superlodge leadership represented the conservative backlash against progressive tides.  

• Notable martyrs of this reaction include: 

• Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), initiated February 1957 in Ur-Lodge Hiram Rhodes Revels.  

• Robert Francis Kennedy (non-Mason at the time but later initiated), assassinated 1968.