DON A. writes:

Ann Barnhardt, on her blog, posits that there is evidence that Pope Francis was elected invalidly. Evidently, there is a video of Cardinal Danneels of Belgium, speaking in Dutch I presume, admitting that he led a group that engaged in canvassing on behalf of Francis. According to the Universi Dominici Gregis, the Apostolic Constitution of the Catholic Church, the following edict is observed:

“The Cardinal electors shall further abstain from any form of pact, agreement, promise or other commitment of any kind which could oblige them to give or deny their vote to a person or persons. If this were in fact done, even under oath, I decree that such a commitment shall be null and void and that no one shall be bound to observe it; and I hereby impose the penalty of excommunication latae sententiae upon those who violate this prohibition.”

Furthermore, she states that Cardinal Danneels admits in his authorized biography that the election of Francis was planned “years in advance” with the goal of advancing a “hyper-radical and utterly heretical “reform” agenda.”

Laura writes:

Thank you for your interest in this question, which has been a topic of public discussion since at least last year.

According to this view, Francis is not a valid pope. He is not a valid pope not because he routinely flouts divine law but because he has violated some man-made procedural rule.

This is avoiding the obvious, don’t you think?

The obvious is that a non-Catholic cannot be the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

I doubt Barnhardt would be interested in this procedural rule if she was not already greatly dissatisfied — and with good reason — with the views of Francis and did not already recognize some of these views and statements as being un-Catholic. (Obviously, he does say Catholic things too.)

Francis is not a valid pope because he is not Catholic. (One must accept all of Church dogmas in order to be Catholic.) The question of his election is unimportant in comparison to his public defections.

The position of sedevacantism, which is a thesis based firmly on the judgements of theologians, popes and canon lawyers who foresaw this eventuality and said that a manifest heretic cannot be a pope, fully acknowledges and preserves the papacy. To believe that the visible structure can persist without the faith, or that Catholics can go around endlessly criticizing and rejecting a valid pope, is to support the unraveling of the papacy.

— Comments —

Eric writes:

Aside from whether or not he was elected properly, I wonder what happened to Pope Benedict. He was not on the bridge very long.

I remember when John Paul II died. NPR was full of high hopes for “reform” and “a new chapter” and hosannas for the pageantry and glory and tradition of the Catholic Church – until the new Pope was named, and they discovered that, far from being the lesbian Jewish Communist atheist negro hippie Pope that they craved, he was just a white man from Germany(!) of all places, and a former Wehrmacht soldier to boot. Instantly they cued a solid week of stories about the sexual abuse of children by priests.

Laura writes:

Benedict is in retirement in Rome and has publicly said he supports the work of Francis. He was, contrary to his image, a radical, theologically.

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