Antipopes, Ranked!

Conservatives may not like Pope Francis, but have they seen the other guys?

On Thanksgiving day, Pope Francis published a New York Times op-ed titled “A Crisis Reveals What Is In Our Hearts”, reflecting on the COVID pandemic and the opportunity it presented for the global community to reflect on their collective responsibilities to each other. In particular, lines like “Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate," and “As if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom! It is all too easy for some to take an idea — in this case, for example, personal freedom — and turn it into an ideology, creating a prism through which they judge everything” appear to be very obvious and pointed critiques of the United States, where both citizens and government actors refuse to accept the idea that doing something good involves any kind of collective action or sacrifice. In the U.S., we gladly - gladly! - accept thousands of deaths a day just so we don’t have to stop eating in restaurants or getting haircuts. Coming the literal day after the Catholic majority on the Supreme Court struck down pandemic capacity restrictions for religious services in New York - a case brought to the Court by the Catholic diocese of Brooklyn - the Pope’s piece was even more striking in context.

As you’d expect, the op-ed was followed by a wave of conservative assholes upset that the Argentinian leader of the global Catholic church wasn’t behaving more like, I don’t know, the dumbass governor of Florida. Taylor Marshall proudly declared himself in schism with the church (I would urge him not to let the door hit his ass on the way out). Right-wing Catholics on Twitter admitted (again) that they totally couldn’t stand the Pope, a few returned to some of the old chestnuts like Benedict XVI still being the “true pope”, and some of the more conspiracy-minded folks speculated that Francis was actually the prophet of the Antichrist.

Look. Nobody has more fun criticizing the Catholic church than me. Nobody has to like the Pope, but if you want to be Catholic, you kind of have to acknowledge that he is, at least, the Pope. If you don’t want to do that, it turns out there are plenty of other Christian denominations around with low costs of entry, many of which align more cleanly with the Republican party platform! And if for some reason you don’t want to even do that, you can just pick another one of the Popes lying around!

Yeah, that’s right! You think you got to “the Vatican is a sham” before these weirdos? Antipopes - guys claiming to be the real Pope, elected by movements who claim to still be the true Catholic church while the Vatican has abandoned the faith - have been around for centuries, and there are currently multiple antipopes running around the world, at least one of which is literally operating out of his parents’ basement. All of them are weird, all of them are real, some of them are hilarious, let’s take a look.

POPE MICHAEL

Location: Kansas, United States

Reign: 1990-present

His Whole Deal: David Bawden, a former seminarian from the ultra-traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) claims that Vatican II broke the laws of God, and the Vatican has not been part of the true Catholic church ever since. The last legitimate Pope from the Vatican was Pius XII, who died in 1958. Bawden was elected Pope Michael by a conclave of six people including himself and his parents.

Pros: Subject of a feature-length documentary, as well as a Notre Dame student documentary I remember seeing in college. Being elected Pope by your parents is also adorable. Basically harmless since he doesn’t really seem to leave his parents’ house all that much.

Cons: Doesn’t really seem to leave his parents’ house all that much, so it’s unclear what value he’s providing to the world that the current Pope isn’t.

POPE PIUS XIII

Location: Montana and Washington state, United States

Reign: 1998-2009, now deceased

His Whole Deal: Lucian Pulvermacher was a Capuchin priest who fell in with more traditionalist Catholic groups until eventually arriving at the conclusion that every Pope after Pius XII had been illegitimate. Was elected Pope Pius XIII in Montana and did two decades of poping in the northwestern United States as head of “The True Catholic Church” whose website still looks like this:

Pros: Took the same pope name as Jude Law in The Young Pope, which I guess is cool. Was actually a priest at one point. Guys living by themselves in cabins in Montana probably have a great track record of changing the world.

Cons: Materially indistinguishable from Pope Michael (both former SSPX guys, both think the legitimate papacy ended at the exact same place, both guys you’ve never heard of with very short Wikipedia articles). Was into divination using pendulums, which actually sounds kind of cool but is probably not accepted as orthodox. I can’t do any searches on the “True Catholic Church” website because “Please be patient for New Search Engine, Site name has been hijacked (stolen)”. Also Pius XIII appears to have written at length about why people shouldn’t wear denim to Mass unless they’re on their way to “rough work” right after:

There are three purposes for clothing:​ for modesty,​ to shield the body from the elements (heat and cold), and​ to adorn the body.​ As society deteriorates, so do all the above purposes for clothing deteriorate.​ Modesty is lost to the extreme.​ Gang-like clothing may leave persons exposed to the elements.​ Finally, dressing up is lost.​ Formerly everyone had a Sunday suit, shirt and tie.​We must make an observation in regard to men without a shirt.​ If it does not offend modesty (and this is disputed) then it offends in being unadorned by clothing.​ Certainly, it is not fully acceptable, and custom should be so that it is not acceptable.​

What about the type of material?​ Custom has it that denim blue is for working men’s clothing.​ Farmers, railroad workers, ditch diggers and the like use it with rightful practicality.​ It is not wedding garment material for men or women.​ When circumstances permit it, such types of material should not appear at divine services, for we must be on our best-dressed behavior when worshiping God.​ A person on the way to rough work and returning from it can be excused.​

POPE GREGORY XVIII

Location: Quebec, Canada

Reign: 2012-Present, with predecessors dating back to 1961

His Whole Deal: The “Apostles of Infinite Love” movement may sound like an evil hippie sex cult, but it's a movement founded by two traditionalists up in Quebec. Canadian priests Michel Collin and Jean-Gaston Tremblay met up in 1961 and decided to form their own church, as Collin believed he had been chosen to lead a new church by a vision of the Virgin Mary. Collin named himself Pope Clement XV, got immediately laicized and excommunicated by the actual Pope, and continued serving as Pope in his head. Unfortunately, his partner Tremblay started spreading the message that “ok yeah, well the Virgin Mary just appeared to me and she says I'm the Pope”, forcing a power struggle that resulted in Tremblay becoming the next Pope in this movement, naming himself Gregory XVII (pictured above). The Apostles of Infinite Love have splintered several times since then, but Tremblay's direct successor Gregory XVIII is leading what's left of the movement.

Pros: The inevitable exchange of “God told me I was in charge" to “nuh-uh, God told me I was in charge" happens in one hundred percent of fundamentalist religious splinter groups, and it's funny every time.

Cons: Unfortunately, Apostles of Infinite Love was definitely an evil hippie sex cult, was subject to decades-long criminal abuse investigations for being a sex cult, had multiple priests arrested and imprisoned, and eventually had their land expropriated by the government. Ironically, all of this puts them much closer to the mainline Roman Catholic church than they likely ever expected to be.

POPE PETER III

Location: El Palmar de Troya, Spain

Reign: 2016-present, with predecessors dating back to 1978

His Whole Deal: The Palmarians are a traditionalist group in Spain who believes that Pope Paul VI was secretly murdered by evil modernist cardinals, and that subsequent Popes have been impostors. A series of alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary convinced office clerk Clemente Dominguez y Gomez that he was the true Pope who would purge sin and modernism from the church, and that the true Holy See had moved to his town Spain. Compared to the previous Popes, the Palmarians have a slightly clearer and more stable internal line of sucession, but they've never had a conclave, as their first Pope was selected by the Virgin Mary and each Pope has handpicked his own successor. Joseph Odermatt serves as the current Pope Peter III.

Pros: Got the sweet-ass church shown in the photo above. Put out a statement clarifying that they definitely did not posthumously canonize Adolf Hitler, thus clearing up all of the questions you may have had after reading the first half of this sentence.

Cons: Unfortunately, did posthumously canonize Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and are definitely full-blown fascists, as well as more general conservative freaks who at one point would not let their clergymen go to movie theaters. The Palmarians were also featured prominently in a Dan Brown novel but not one of the ones you read.

POPE LINUS II

Location: Hertfordshire, England

Reign: 1994-2007, or possibly 1994-present, as nobody is sure whether he's dead

His Whole Deal: South African Victor Von Pentz is another SSPX dropout and guy who thinks there hasn’t been a legitimate Pope in years, and I’m starting to think somebody should actually take a look at the Society of St. Pius X and figure out why they’re producing so many antipopes (the SSPX was actually excommunicated from the church for a few decades but Pope Francis is slowly working with them to get them back into the church). After being elected pope in 1994, his conclave tried to enter the Basilica of Saint John Lateran - the main cathedral of Rome - and were kept out in what I assume was a very funny fight between old people. The most notable thing about Linus II is that his own splinter group doesn’t seem to be able to confirm that he’s actually dead or resigned - which means they don’t know if they should be electing a new Pope or not - but he stopped making any public appearances or even answering his mail in 2007. Presumably, after getting embarrassed in a slap fight at Lateran, Linus II decided to keep a low profile but overshot and is now keeping too low a profile.

Pros: I can relate to not wanting anyone to ever call or email me at work.

Cons: Unlikely that the church can get a lot done if they can’t ascertain whether their Pope is dead.

In the modern era, antipopes are stupid. There could be some political justification for setting up a parallel papacy in an era where the Vatican was a major geopolitical superpower, but we don’t live in those eras anymore because other countries developed nuclear programs, air forces, and import/export economies. But if there’s one upshot to modern antipopes, it’s that they remind us all of our universal call to priesthood and sainthood through baptism. Even - perhaps especially - if we feel that our leaders fail, we can still do important work to build the world we want, and to care for the least among us. And then other times, people feel that their leaders have failed them and so they decide to wear white robes and never fuck for the rest of their lives.

I’ve covered plenty of critics of Pope Francis in this series; most of the time, I conclude that they’re just willing to say or do anything for easy money. If anything, the existence of people like Pope Michael or Pius XIII or Gregory XVIII or Peter III or Linus II confirms this, and shows that all of these grifters have options for other Popes, and have in fact had options this whole time! If Taylor Marshall or Michael Voris or John-Henry Westen or Abby Johnson really think the Pope is a secret Mason working to destroy the church, and if they are serious as they claim in their devotion, will they look for the true Pope elsewhere? Will they throw in with the traditionalists who have already built another faith community claiming the credentials of Catholicism? Or will they just keep bitching on YouTube and Twitter for easy subscriber dollars? We know the answer, but hey, I’d be glad to direct those guys to any of these Popes, since all parties involved, I’m sure, could use some friends.

Grift of the Holy Spirit is a series by Tony Ginocchio detailing stories of the weirdest, dumbest, and saddest members of the Catholic church. You can subscribe via Substack to get notified of future installments.