The late Fr Gregory Hesse (S.T.D., D.C.L.) remarks in his video on the Third Secret of Fatima, filmed in 2000, that in the thirteenth century St Francis of Assisi had predicted that the papacy of Christ’s Church would undergo an extended period of sedes vacancy.[1]  The prophecy is related in the book Works of Seraphic Father St Francis of Assisi (London, R. T. Washbourne, 1882).

 

 “The time is fast approaching in which there will be great trials and afflictions…

 

“The devils will have unusual power.  The immaculate purity of our order and of others will be so much obscured that there will be very few Christians who will obey the true Sovereign Pontiff and Roman Church with loyal hearts and perfect charity.  At the time of this tribulation a man not canonically elected will be raised to the pontificate who by his cunning will draw many into error and death.

…

“Those who preserve their fervour and adhere to virtue with love and zeal for the truth will suffer injuries and persecutions as rebels and schismatics, for their persecutors, urged on by the evil spirits, will say they are rendering a great service to God by destroying such pestilent men…  But the Lord will be the refuge of the afflicted and will save all who trust in Him…

…

“Some preachers will keep silent about the truth while others will trample it under foot and deny it.  Sanctity of life will be held in derision even by those who outwardly profess it, for in those days Jesus Christ will send them not a true pastor but a destroyer…”  (pp. 248-250)

 

In our e-book (also available in hard copy) The Two Churches, we support the claim of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, that the election of the Jesuit, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, as Pope in succession to Pope Benedict XVI was invalid.  We do so not because of irregularities in the electoral process—though these may have occurred—but because Pope Benedict’s resignation on February 28^th, 2013 failed to comply with the demands of the Code of Canon Law.[2]   Whatever the cause, the effect, as Archbishop Viganò remarked, was that—

“the Emeritus (i.e., Benedict) was Pope but did not exercise the papacy, while Bergoglio acted as Pope without being Pope.”

 

‘Pope’ Francis engaged in innumerable distortions, or attempts to distort, Church teaching in faith and morals.  These were documented in extenso by Catholic theologians in August 2017 and again in May 2024.[3]  If in due time the argument that Jorge Bergoglio was never a pope is accepted by Christ’s Church, it will confirm that between March 2013 and Jorge Bergoglio’s death on April 21^st, 2025 the Church endured twelve years of sedes vacancy and that the distortions of Church teaching for which he was responsible caused the harm prophesied by St Francis.

 

Fr Hesse had expressed grave reservations over the conduct and teaching of the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Josef Cardinal Ratzinger and it is unlikely he would have been among those who saw in his election as Pope in April 2005 a sign of a return to Catholic orthodoxy.  It must be a matter of regret that the Catholic faithful were deprived by his premature death (in January 2006) of Fr Hesse’s views on Papa Ratzinger’s purported abdication eight years later.

 

Fr Hesse was a doctor of canon law and would have been among the first to observe the inherent breach of Canon 188 in the Pope’s ‘resignation’.  As we have remarked elsewhere, its flaw is an inevitable consequence of Ratzinger’s ignorance of metaphysical principle.   He had, early in his studies, eschewed the Church’s Aristotelean realism in favour of the subjective and materialist protocols of the modernist inspired nouvelle théologie.  Metaphysics insists on the existence of a rigorous proportionality between natures, powers, acts and ends and the Church had long since adopted this principle in the provisions of the 1917 Code of Canon Law which is reflected in Canon 188 of the 1983 Code.

 

Put in simple terms, it was not enough for Pope Benedict to abdicate the powers pertaining to the papal office—which is what he purported to do—he had to abdicate the office itself and this he failed to do!

 

If in due course the Church should endorse the arguments outlined here it will expose an immense irony.  In choosing as his ‘papal’ title the name of the very Saint who prophesied the fraudulence of his election and the harm for which he would be responsible, Jorge Bergoglio was revealed as hoist on his own petard!

 

 

Michael Baker

July 31^st, 2025—St Ignatius Loyola—Founder of the Society of Jesus