Quo graviora (1826)

Quo is a graviora on 13 March 1826 by Pope Leo XII. published " Papal Bull" in which he writes about the secret societies.

Duty to defend

In the salutation, he emphasizes his duty, which was assigned to him to the Holy See and oblige him to preserve the position of the Church. Even here he threatens the secret societies on to unmask them his authority to enforce this duty to defend is to him as the successor to the See of Peter particularly applied. He calls by Pope Clement XII. published in Bull eminenti Apostolatus specula remembered and praised him as a wise man who had the foresight to recognize and fight these evil machinations of the Freemasons. Furthermore, his predecessor Benedict XIV with his bull Providas Romanorum have uncovered the sectarian infiltration and spread the spell over them.

The secret societies

In one breath he called Freemasonry and the secret society of the Carbonari as a common secret societies, which have tried with conspiratorial gatherings to combat the Catholic religion and to fight against the legal authority. Against these associations was also his predecessor Pope Pius VII proceed with its condemnation letter Ecclesiam a Jesus Christ. It is deplorable that these secret societies would now also set in universities and would hold secret meetings. Nor is it to remember that these torches of rebellion would endanger the peace of Europe and into wear a new disorder in the society.

Attacks on the Church

The enemies of the Church would try to attack the beliefs that authority and peace in the Church, with the aim to destroy it. Here the hatred against the sovereignty stand in the foreground and their attacks on the deity of Jesus Christ would prove the overthrow of thought that went out of the secret societies.

Call against the secret societies

With this letter he would like to express his duty to condemn the secret societies again, so that no one could claim that their machinations were not controlled by the highest authority. It is a legitimate task to defend the future of the Church and he cries all the cardinals of the Roman church to act together. In the power of holy obedience, it is now located, that all priests, laity and Catholic Christians should stand up for the just society and to defend it against all the evils of the frets. He, the Pope, therefore command all and every true under penalty of excommunication and failure of the absolution of these secret societies distance and never to make the ungodly oath of this conspiracy.