5 FAQs – MDM and Jorge Bergoglio | Reconquest Podcast #3

Many thoughtful and learned persons, both clerical and lay, have raised profound concerns and objections regarding many of Jorge Bergoglio’s words and actions, including whether such words and actions indicate that he is not a valid pope.

While acknowledging the importance of those concerns, our focus is above all on what we believe the Lord is saying about the matter. 

In the Messages received by Sister Amapola, both those received prior to the first public Message released in February 2024 as well as those release subsequently, the Lord has spoken repeatedly of the terrible corruption pervading His Church in general and the hierarchy and papacy in particular.  

Consider the following excerpts:  

February 1, 2024

The enemy has succeeded in overtaking My Sanctuary.

What do I mean by this?

The eternal enemy, Satan and his cohort, has successfully placed his servants in places of authority in My Church, that through them he might subvert My Truth, My Teachings, turning them into a mockery, and thus leaving My children bereft of the usual means for them to receive My Grace….

Wolves, dressed in sheep’s clothing, are sitting on the thrones of My Apostles – even on the chair of My Peter.

No one else can say this, but I, Who see into the depths of every soul, I Who see every thought, every movement of every heart, of every will – 

I DO SEE, I CAN SAY.

I DO SAY.

My Church has been taken hostage.

You have placed your trust in a betrayer, who will cast you aside without a second thought.

The last, the ultimate betrayal is being prepared, is about to take place.

The Abomination of desolation is here.

February 22, 2024 

You have not only let the smoke of Satan infiltrate into My Sanctuary; but you have allowed a whole army of demons to take your places.

And you have allowed the usurper to sit on the chair of My Peter – he who is carrying out the Great Treason that will leave My Church desolate.

August 15, 2024 (From Our Blessed Mother) 

You know the times, sons.  You know what We have announced.  You know the consequences in the face of so many offenses to the Father.  You know the power of Our enemy and of his army, spread throughout the whole world and present in all areas of your lives.  You know the terrible confusion that there is and that surrounds everything, and in particular My Church. 

My sons, be alert, that you might keep My children alert. 

We have said to you that the chair of Peter and of the Apostles has been usurped. 

The Church is under siege, sons. 

From these Messages, it seems clear that Our Lord is speaking of an unprecedented evil afflicting the Church. Something far worse than the historic examples of popes who were guilty of great sins, such as Pope John XII, or guilty of expressing theological errors (though never doing so ex cathedra), such as Pope John XXII, all while still remaining valid, if greatly flawed, popes.  

Our Lord speaks of a satanic infiltration of the Church occurring at the highest levels, including the papacy. The description of the one occupying the chair of Peter as a “usurper” and one of the “wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing,” seems clearly to be saying that Jorge Bergoglio is acting not as the vicar of Christ, but as Christ’s enemy—“he who is carrying out the Great Treason.”  

Thus, from these words of Our Lord, we understand Him to be saying that Jorge Bergoglio is not a valid pope, and we are acting in accord with that understanding. 

A usurper is generally one who takes hold of something, especially a position of authority and power, without the right to do so, often through force, treachery or other illegitimate means.  

In a Message titled Hour to Join His Army—A Call to Priests and Bishops that was received between February 22 and 26, 2024, the Lord, speaking to the bishops of the Church, says: And you have allowed the usurper to sit on the chair of My Peter—he who is carrying out the Great Treason that will leave My Church desolate….   

So the key question is what does the Lord mean in calling Jorge Bergoglio (“Pope Francis”) a usurper.  

Only He can answer that question in its fullness, but from the above statement and others of a similar nature that we’ve received, we understand Our Lord to be saying that Jorge Bergoglio is exercising illegitimate authority, not a valid pope, and acting in fact as the enemy of Our Lord and His Church.

We do so to be consistent and coherent. We believe God is saying Jorge Bergoglio is a usurper and that he is not a valid pope.20 Calling him by the papal title and name would be inaccurate and incoherent to that understanding, hence our use of his given name.

When you name someone as pope in the Eucharistic Prayer it professes

• that you believe said man is head of the Church,
• and that you are in communion with him.

A commemoration of the supreme pontiff [i.e., the pope] and prayers offered for him during the sacrifice of the Mass is considered, and really is, an affirmative indication which recognizes him as the head of the Church, the vicar of Christ, and the successor of blessed Peter…  (Pope Benedict XIV, Ex Quo, 11)

When there is no valid pope (as during the time between the death of one pope and the election of another), it is prescribed by the Church that the name of the pope be removed from the Eucharistic Prayer. This point was affirmed by the noted liturgical scholar Father Adrian Fortescue, who said simply “When the Roman see is vacant, the mention of the pope is left out,”[1] and more recently and with more elaboration by another noted liturgical scholar, Father Edward McNamara:

In this case the pope’s name, and the entire phrase referring to the pope, is omitted from the Eucharistic Prayer during the period of the sede vacante. Mention is made only of the local bishop and the clergy according to the literary form of each prayer. For example, in Eucharistic Prayer II it would be: “Together with … N. our bishop, and all the clergy.”[2]

The reason we do not mention Jorge Bergoglio in the Eucharistic Prayer is not because we do not pray for him, but because we do not believe he is a valid pope. We are simply trying to follow the discipline of the Church.

[1]Fortescue, Adrian. “Canon of the Mass.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908.

[2] https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/when-the-holy-see-is-vacant-4668

No, we are not sedevacantists in the sense it is usually understood.

Sede (chair) vacante (empty, vacant) is a Latin phrase for when there is no pope, as in the interim between the death of one pope and the election of another. During such times the chair of St. Peter is vacant.

Commonly speaking, the term sedevacantist has come to signify a person who does not believe any of the popes during and after the Second Vatican Council were legitimate, valid popes. We are not sedevacantists in this sense. In fact, we have taken great inspiration from Pope St. John Paul II.

But in the second published Message, Our Lord Himself said, “And you have allowed the usurper to sit on the chair of My Peter – he who is carrying out the Great Treason that will leave My Church desolate.” We believe this and other similar passages from the Messages are clearly speaking about Jorge Bergoglio and indicating that he is not a valid pope.

Please see section 2 of our document We Must Obey God. The section is titled Unprecedented Crisis and can be found here.

The Church has never taught that the pope is “elected by the Holy Spirit” in the sense that human free will and judgment are nullified or irrelevant to the process. As Catholics we know that the Holy Spirit is constantly offering graces of inspiration for the decisions we make. And the Church rightly believes that such grace is offered in a special way for those charged with so important a duty as electing a new pope. The fact that good and even saintly popes have been elected in many conclaves suggests the cardinals do often respond to the Holy Spirit’s prompting. But there are no guarantees—human sinfulness and weakness can too often get in the way—and the Church recognizes that any given elector is free to ignore the Holy Spirit’s inspiration.[1] 

Pope Benedict XVI, while he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, addressed this question of the Holy Spirit’s role in conclaves:

I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope…. I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined…. There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked![2]

Bad men occupying the papal chair—which Pope Benedict suggests has happened and which history validates—is not evidence of God making a mistake, but of His permissive will allowing and respecting men’s free choices even when they are bad ones. Consider the Israelites’ demand to have a human king instead of relying on God as their King, and the profound suffering that caused them over the centuries.

To take one other example, we know that there have been many examples in Church history of bad or otherwise unsuitable men appointed as bishops. Does that mean the Holy Spirit was not offering the popes that selected those bishops His inspiration in choosing? Or rather is it another example of how often human factors can work to block the Holy Spirit’s inspiration? Consider the cardinal who recommends a candidate to the Holy Father not because of his qualifications but because he’s the cardinal’s friend, or worse yet because he shares the cardinal’s heterodox views. This has surely happened, leading to popes sometimes making poor selections.

Regarding the legitimacy of Jorge Bergoglio’s papacy in particular, serious questions have been raised by individuals who are much more competent in this area than we are.[3] We are not pretending to resolve here from a human standpoint all those difficult questions, but we are trying to transmit the crucial point made by the Lord in His Messages to us. We do believe that whatever scholars and canonists may say is the official or technical status of the man currently occupying the papacy, that man is a usurper and leading the most dangerous attack the Church has ever faced.[4]

These terrible circumstances should awaken us to the great battle of the Reconquest, but should not shake our confidence that the Holy Spirit is ultimately in charge and watching over His Church. Regardless of how badly the Church is attacked from without or betrayed from within, we have Our Lord’s promise that the gates of Hell will not prevail against Her (Mt 16:18).

[1] For additional commentary, see Dr. Jeff Mirus article The Role of Holy Spirit in Papal Elections and Jimmy Akin’ article Does God Pick the Pope?.

[2] Cited in The Rise of Benedict XVI: The Inside Story of How the Pope was Elected and Where He Will Take the Catholic Church, John Allen (New York: Random House, 2006).

[3] For example, was Pope Benedict’s resignation valid? Was the process that elected Bergoglio valid, given the rules established by Pope St. John Paul in 1996 and the seeming violation of them by the so-called “St. Gallen Mafia”? Has he taught heresy and thus deposed himself? Did Jorge Bergoglio truly intend to uphold the Petrine office?

This last question has been raised explicitly by, among others, Archbishop Vigano: “I believe instead that [Bergoglio’s] acceptance of the papacy is invalidated, because he considers the papacy something other than what it is, like a spouse who gets married in church but excludes the specific purposes of marriage from his intention, thus making the marriage null and void precisely due to his lack of consent…. I would like us to take seriously, very seriously, the possibility that Bergoglio intended to obtain the election by means fraud, and that he intended to abuse the authority of the Roman Pontiff in order to do the exact opposite of what Jesus Christ gave a mandate to Saint Peter and his Successors to do: confirm the faithful in the Catholic Faith, feeding and governing the Flock of the Lord, preaching the Gospel to the nations. All the acts of Bergoglio’s governance and magisterium – since his first appearance on the Vatican Loggia, when he introduced himself with his disturbing “Good evening” – has unraveled in a direction diametrically opposed to the Petrine mandate: he has adulterated and continues to adulterate the Depositum Fidei, he has created confusion and misled the faithful, he has dispersed the flock, he has declared that he considers the evangelization of peoples to be “a solemn nonsense,” and he systematically abuses the power of the Holy Keys to loose what cannot be loosed and to bind what cannot be bound.”   “Vitium Consensus”: Speech by Carlos Maria Vigano at the Catholic Identity Conference, Pittsburgh, October 1, 2023.  https://exsurgedomine.it/230930-cic-eng/

[4] See also FAQ No. 8: What is MDM’s view of Jorge Bergoglio (“Pope Francis”)? Does MDM believe Jorge Bergoglio is a valid pope?

Please see our document We must Obey God, section 2: Unprecedented Crisis, subheading: Human Evidence found here.