A Secret Anti-Modernist Association: The Sodalitium Pianum

ON AUGUST 4, 1903, Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto, the patriarch of Venice, was raised to the papal throne with the name of Pius X. His program of restoration of Christian society, summarized in his motto Instaurare Omnia in Christo, involved a strong defense of orthodoxy in the Church that was threatened by modernism. The battle of St. Pius X against modernism reached its highest expression in the encyclical Pascendi of September 8, 1907, preceded by the Decree of the Holy Office Lamentabili of July 3, 1907, and followed by the Motu Proprio Sacrorum Antistitum of September 1, 1910, which required priests to take the anti-modernist oath.