You don't need to format the SD card using FAT, you're only going to overwrite it later. What I'd do is prepare a .dsk image with the desired version of the System/Finder using Mini vMac, then use the Python script to produce an image for the SD card, then use either dd or some other tool (I don't know what Etcher is, but it might work) to write the image produced by the Python script to the SD card.
- Make systemdisk.dsk using Mini vMac
python3 makeimg.py sdcard.img systemdisk.dsk -
dd if=sdcard.img of=/dev/sdc
(but replace /dev/sdc with whatever the SD card device is)
- Alternatively use Etcher or some other tool to write sdcard.img to the SD card