Papal Condemnations of Freemasonry

Pope Gregory XVI 1831-1846

Pope Gregory XVI 1831-1846

On August 15, 1832, Gregory XVI, addressing all the Episcopal Hierarchy of the Catholic world, in his Encyclical: "Mirari Vos" wrote:

"Truly indeed we can say that this is the hour granted to the power of darkness to grind the elect as wheat."

"Evil comes out of Secret Societies, bottomless abyss of misery, which those conspiring societies have dug and in which heresies and sects have, as may be said, vomited as in a privy all they hold of licentiousness, sacrilege and blasphemy.

Just 18 days before his death, on may 13, 1846, Pope Gregory XVI put in the hands of Cretineau Joly, the documents of the Italian Alta Vendita which this author published in 1858 in his book: "L'Eglise Romaine en face de la Revolution" (the Roman Church facing the Revolution). It would indeed be of the highest kind of interest to have a faithful and complete copy of those manuscripts which are, doubtless, in the Vatican.