The John-Henry Westen Show - April 29, 2026


Fatima Priests Gruner and Kramer： Benedict’s Resignation Invalid - Francis was NOT Pope


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Benedict XVI resigned as Pope in 2012, but many have wondered if it was actually a real resignation. Did he really abdicate the papacy? And did he really renounce the idea of being a heretic? In this episode, Fr. Paul Kramer, who has written books on this topic, joins us to shed some light on the matter.

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00:00:00.000 What happens if a Pope were to become a heretic? Pope Innocent III says very clearly that if the 0.97
00:00:06.080 Pope were to become a heretic, he would lose office. He is to be cast out and trampled underfoot 1.00
00:00:11.660 by men. There's been a lot of talk recently, ever since we broke the news that the Vatican
00:00:20.600 Criminal Court is indeed looking into the petition, court petition, of Andrea Cianci,
00:00:27.280 the very famous Italian reporter, who's been like a hound dog on this story of Benedict's
00:00:33.560 resignation. Is it real? Did it satisfy the conditions laid out in canon law? And that's
00:00:40.180 actually being considered at the Vatican criminal court. So I brought to the show today someone whom
00:00:47.420 you all know very well. He's Father Paul Kramer, who has written books on this issue. But not only
00:00:53.340 that he was involved for the longest time with the Fatima Center, Father Nicholas Gruner, whom
00:00:58.980 everybody knows as the Fatima priest, the most famous priest in terms of promoting the message
00:01:04.780 of Fatima for decades. Believe it or not, Father Gruner believed that Pope Benedict's resignation
00:01:11.460 was false, did not do what it was supposed to do, and therefore he remained Pope, and he rejected
00:01:18.980 Pope Francis as Pope, which I know is stunning to many people, but you can check that out.
00:01:25.220 Watch this.
00:01:25.820 There's this impression now created by the fact that Benedict, when he resigned, and
00:01:32.960 it's there in his description, and Professor Violi, a canonist from Modena and Bologna,
00:01:41.080 before the resignation took effect, if anything took effect, on February 27, 2012, he said
00:01:48.980 says, very clearly, and you can read it for yourself, Benedict in his resignation says,
00:01:54.760 I am not resigning the munus, M-U-N-U-S. That means in Latin, it's the office. Yet canon law,
00:02:02.600 I think it's 332, if I got it correct, I can find it for you. If I don't have it here,
00:02:07.340 I most likely don't, I can send it to you. 332, which says, if a pope were to resign,
00:02:12.040 he must resign the munus. So here you have canon law saying, to resign, you must resign the munus.
00:02:17.800 And here you have Pope Benedict saying, I'm not resigning the Munis.
00:02:22.260 Now, to me, that's a principle that there's a contradiction here.
00:02:25.820 If you're resigning, you have to resign the Munis, but he's saying, I'm not resigning the Munis.
00:02:30.020 So whatever he's doing, he wasn't resigning the papacy.
00:02:34.380 That's the mystery which will be explained by the secret.
00:02:36.940 And you have a right to ask for the secret, the rest of the text that we know exists.
00:02:41.620 We're going to go to Father Paul Kramer now, who, as I said, has written books on this.
00:02:46.520 But Father Paul, thank you so much for joining us.
00:02:49.100 God bless you.
00:02:49.760 It's great to be back.
00:02:50.800 And I hope and believe I can shed some light on this topic.
00:02:55.920 Indeed.
00:02:56.420 For most people coming to this issue, we're coming as laymen, unschooled in the whole
00:03:02.800 area.
00:03:03.380 And it's a bit confusing.
00:03:05.820 Lay out for us what happened, I guess, starting with the resignation and how this is supposed
00:03:11.880 to be not real, how it was wrong or whatever it was to make it invalid.
00:03:16.220 I would begin by saying that many of those who have ecclesiastical degrees, canon law and theology, who have written articles on this topic, given interviews on this topic, unfortunately, they were not up to the task.
00:03:35.160 They have given opinions that simply do not reflect the mind of the church regarding canonical doctrine.
00:03:46.180 There are many fine points and distinctions they fail to make.
00:03:49.340 Some of these men have doctoral degrees.
00:03:52.320 They will talk about what they think was Pope Benedict's intention expressed in his declaration of renunciation, not resignation, not abdication, renunciation.
00:04:05.160 And they will say, well, it's clear that he intended to renequish the office.
00:04:09.780 The fallacies are the unspoken premises.
00:04:13.460 Now, if you are examining from the point of view of canon law and theology,
00:04:19.120 you're going to ask the question, not what was he intending to do,
00:04:28.620 but what was the formal object of his act?
00:04:32.760 what did he express was the object of his renunciation.
00:04:38.900 Did he renounce the office, the munus?
00:04:43.140 Or did he renounce something else with the idea
00:04:47.120 that the concomitant effect, the effect would be the loss of office?
00:04:55.140 So even if he personally subjectively intended to lose the office,
00:04:58.620 If the formal object of his renunciation is not the office itself, not the moonless itself, but something else that he, in making a substantial error, thinks will include that, well, that's the same as a Protestant minister, to use the example given by the magisterium of Leo XIII.
00:05:23.360 If a Protestant minister explicitly states that he's going to baptize, he has the intention of doing what the church does, doing what Christ instituted, according to his mind, he thinks he knows what Christ instituted, and he's going to baptize a child, and states explicitly that this sacrament will not take away original sin.
00:05:46.860 It will not sanctify. It will not justify. That's all accomplished by faith. Is it a valid sacrament? Does it accomplish those things? Yes. That's the answer of the Holy Office with the explicit approval given by Pope Leo XIII.
00:06:08.500 because the object intended is to perform the sacrament instituted by Jesus Christ.
00:06:19.220 The intended effect is something different.
00:06:23.380 What the man subjectively intends to be the effect of the sacrament has no bearing on it.
00:06:28.340 As long as he intends to perform and execute the sacrament of the church
00:06:34.320 and that to do what the church does in performing the sacramental rite
00:06:38.680 and to do what the church does there,
00:06:40.880 even if he thinks that that rite has no effect spiritually,
00:06:45.160 it's only an expression of the person's faith,
00:06:47.660 it doesn't matter, it's valid.
00:06:50.640 And it accomplishes those things whether he wants it or not.
00:06:54.580 And this is the explicit teaching of the Holy Office.
00:06:58.740 It's a papal act because it was under canon law
00:07:02.820 when the Pope himself approves of that act,
00:07:07.160 even if it's through the Holy Office,
00:07:09.000 it is canonically a papal act.
00:07:12.360 And that was the case with the Euler XIII.
00:07:14.420 So I begin just by saying that,
00:07:17.440 and this totally destroys the argument of those who will say,
00:07:20.820 well, Pope Benedict, it's clear,
00:07:26.000 even if he didn't formulate the words properly,
00:07:29.860 he didn't renounce his
00:07:33.080 modus verbally, explicitly
00:07:35.120 but it seems that he
00:07:36.800 synonymously used the words
00:07:38.960 ministerium and modus
00:07:40.400 interchangeably, that basically mean the same thing
00:07:43.200 and
00:07:44.780 he later says he loses the power of governance
00:07:47.180 so
00:07:47.500 it's clear he intended to relinquish the office
00:07:51.020 so it's a battle of his nation
00:07:52.460 well, no it's not
00:07:54.100 and you can see on all those points
00:07:55.860 I think already on what I said
00:07:57.260 you can see on all those points
00:07:59.340 you can see why it's invalid. First of all, the loss of office would only be an effect
00:08:03.720 of the renunciation of the ministry, of the ministerium. That cannot be. If one renounces
00:08:12.300 the active exercise of the ministry, that does not accomplish the loss of the office.
00:08:19.320 It simply doesn't. Secondly, the claim that he uses the words interchangeably, and when he says
00:08:27.300 ministerium, he means the same as
00:08:29.100 Moulin's. He's using them to mean the same thing.
00:08:31.740 They are synonyms in his usage.
00:08:33.580 This is plainly absurd.
00:08:35.620 When you examine carefully
00:08:37.240 the declaration of
00:08:39.360 renunciation, I have parsed it
00:08:41.280 sentence by sentence in the Latin text,
00:08:43.520 and I have quoted expert commentaries
00:08:45.360 on that Latin text.
00:08:48.380 But ultimately,
00:08:49.480 the interpretation is what
00:08:51.500 I explain according to the
00:08:53.220 literal sense of
00:08:55.580 the terms as understood in canon law, he begins the whole argument, what he's intending to
00:09:03.460 do.
00:09:04.740 He begins with a distinction between munus and ministerium.
00:09:08.200 And then, as canon law says, to validly renounce the office, one must properly, in the proper
00:09:17.180 manner, one must renounce the munus.
00:09:19.340 Now, here he clearly distinguishes between the two, ministerium and munus.
00:09:25.040 And then he says, I renounce the ministerium.
00:09:28.540 And in that same declaration, he distinguishes between the passive and the active aspects of the munus.
00:09:38.240 And he makes it clear that he intends to remain in the passive exercise of that munus, which is prayer and suffering.
00:09:51.020 So it is very clear that he does not renounce the munus, and the two, in fact, are not interchangeable.
00:09:58.820 In canon law, an office is defined as a stable munus.
00:10:03.800 The priesthood, for example, is an office.
00:10:06.020 One is a priest forever.
00:10:07.160 Once you're ordained validly to the priesthood, you are a priest forever.
00:10:11.800 And during your entire earthly life, you have the power of orders as a priest to offer the holy sacrifice at the Mass.
00:10:19.460 All that essentially pertains to the office of the priesthood, ministerium, the ministry.
00:10:25.480 If your bishop assigns you to be chaplain at a hospital, that lasts for only as long as you're employed as a chaplain.
00:10:34.580 If the hospital says, we don't need you anymore, we don't want your services anymore, you're gone.
00:10:42.440 Well, your ministerium, your ministry just ends. 0.84
00:10:46.580 It's not a stable munos.
00:10:49.460 It's not office. It's not permanent.
00:10:51.640 That's the difference.
00:10:52.840 The exercise of the ministry is what Pope Benedict
00:10:56.640 explicitly stated was what he renounced.
00:11:00.860 And he's saying that when he accepted the munos,
00:11:05.980 he didn't use the Latin word because he was speaking in Italian.
00:11:09.820 Quando io sono stato impegnato, words to that effect.
00:11:12.720 He used the word impegnato, which is he received the impegno.
00:11:16.280 That is the Italian equivalent to the monos.
00:11:19.840 He accepted it, and he said,
00:11:22.740 my decision to renounce the active exercise of the ministry
00:11:27.800 does not affect that, because that is always,
00:11:34.220 and the permit that is permanent, and that lasts always.
00:11:38.180 And you're speaking now of his sort of explanation
00:11:40.640 after the fact he gave?
00:11:42.260 After the fact he explained what was the meaning of his words
00:11:46.100 in that declaration.
00:11:48.980 What did he mean by that?
00:11:50.060 He was even asked more explicitly years later,
00:11:53.120 and it was only published a few years ago.
00:11:55.740 Peter Seewald, the German journalist,
00:11:58.920 had asked him about when Cardinal Burke,
00:12:02.460 Cardinal Burke had spoken about the confusion
00:12:07.840 in the church created by Amoris Laetitia.
00:12:10.080 That was the one that created such confusion, Amoris Laetitia.
00:12:13.780 And Pope Benedict answered,
00:12:15.020 I really ought not to answer this question because I would be interfering with the governance of the Church.
00:12:23.160 Maimunus that remains, what is still maimunus, is spiritual.
00:12:29.040 The exact words, in fact, I can give you the exact words because I think it's important to quote him exactly.
00:12:36.760 As Cardinal Burke said, there has been a terrible split in the Church, and that is not the way of the Church.
00:12:42.920 Benedict said, I do not want to take a direct position on the last questions because this would lead too much into the specifics of the church government and would therefore leave the spiritual dimension, which alone is still my mandate.
00:13:01.060 He's talking about the mandate, and he refers back to February of 2013, when he said, when he received that mandate, it is something that is always not ending.
00:13:15.960 In Germany he said, zu den letzten Fragen möchte ich nicht nur direkte Stellung nehmen, weil dies zu sehr ins Konkrete der Kirchenregierung hineinführt und damit die spirituelle Dimension verlassen würde, die allein noch mein Auftrag ist.
00:13:37.380 Now, that word outrach is in Latin, munus.
00:13:41.540 Until the very end, he maintains that he kept that aspect of the munus.
00:13:51.500 And it is impossible for a valid papal renunciation to take place,
00:13:59.340 unless the Pope will totally renounce the munus.
00:14:03.560 I think he's a cardinal now, Peter Erdorff.
00:14:06.360 He wrote an article explaining the mind of Pope Benedict.
00:14:10.580 Based on Benedict's writings, a rather erudite work on the critical examination to determine what is Benedict's meaning.
00:14:20.140 His finding is that Pope Benedict is approximating the resignation of a pope to the resignation of a bishop.
00:14:26.500 So a bishop resigns the canonical mission he receives, which is the jurisdiction, and therefore the office over a particular diocese, because the bishop, the ordinary of a diocese with the ordinary jurisdiction.
00:14:39.700 Then when he resigns at age 75, he becomes Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese.
00:14:47.460 He relinquishes the jurisdiction.
00:14:49.940 He has no power of governance, no ministerial authority over the Diocese anymore, but he is Bishop Emeritus.
00:14:57.360 And Pope Benedict had the idea that this is the same situation with the Bishop of Rome, who was the Pope,
00:15:03.340 that he relinquishes that jurisdiction,
00:15:08.520 the power of governance.
00:15:11.300 And he made very clear that he said,
00:15:13.560 I no longer have the power of governance.
00:15:15.480 But in virtue of what does he no longer have the power of governance?
00:15:19.880 You see that he made an error there.
00:15:23.460 Because in virtue of his renouncing, not the munus,
00:15:28.920 but renouncing the mere exercise of the ministry.
00:15:32.660 He made it very clear that it was the exercise of the ministry.
00:15:35.600 He retained the passive aspect of the munus specifically so that he could be Pope Emeritus,
00:15:45.320 and that's what he called himself, Pope Emeritus.
00:15:47.980 Now, again, the problem with that is that unless a person will renounce the munus,
00:15:53.220 he must properly, correctly express his renunciation of the munus
00:15:59.460 in order to have validly renounced the office.
00:16:02.720 If he doesn't, if he will retain anything of that munus,
00:16:09.800 then the act is invalid, and he remains pope.
00:16:16.020 And he retains his power of governance
00:16:18.700 even if he thinks it was forfeited,
00:16:21.140 because the object of his renunciation
00:16:25.220 is not the power of governance.
00:16:28.800 That is, the loss of that power is only what he personally believes
00:16:33.020 is the effect of the renunciation of a thing
00:16:35.640 that does not have the power of taking away the power of governance.
00:16:40.020 By renouncing the active exercise of the ministry,
00:16:43.720 a pope does not lose his power of governance.
00:16:47.180 The whole idea is tied with the bishop's ministry
00:16:50.340 and the bishop's boudoirs, properly pertained to a bishop.
00:16:54.700 And so if a bishop renounces his canonical modus of governing a diocese, he still retains that general sacramental modus received from Christ in virtue of the sacraments of holy orders that made him a bishop.
00:17:14.480 So he's still a bishop.
00:17:16.660 So he doesn't have ordinary jurisdiction anymore.
00:17:20.880 But even though he doesn't have ordinary jurisdiction, there can be, in particular cases, delegated jurisdiction.
00:17:28.480 There can be, in special cases, there can be supply jurisdiction, where he can exercise the Episcopal ministry with jurisdiction, even though his ordinary jurisdiction is gone.
00:17:44.180 Do that in virtue of the fact that he is still a bishop.
00:17:46.980 But a pope is different.
00:17:48.260 A man becomes pope when he accepts his election, and he accepts the election, the jurisdiction over the whole church, which is, to use the words of Pope Pius XII, a full and absolute jurisdiction over the entire church, full and absolute jurisdiction.
00:18:09.140 So the Pope receives that full and absolute jurisdiction directed from Christ when he receives his jurisdiction from Christ, his munus.
00:18:19.960 The papal munus is essentially different than that of the bishops.
00:18:24.560 The bishop's munus is the ordinary munus that they receive upon a grant from the Pope.
00:18:34.780 The Pope makes them bishop of a diocese and gives them the jurisdiction to govern and teach in the diocese.
00:18:41.220 The first bishops, ordained by the apostles, received that directly from the apostles.
00:18:49.180 But they received the episcopal munis, not the apostolic munis.
00:18:57.820 St. Robert Bellamy explains this very well.
00:18:59.820 The apostles received the apostolic, known as from Christ, but that is an extraordinary jurisdiction.
00:19:10.300 It was for the apostles alone.
00:19:13.040 The apostles, when they appointed their successors and consecrated them bishops, they didn't make them apostles.
00:19:20.500 They alone were apostles.
00:19:22.540 They were made apostles by Christ, but the apostles made their successors bishops.
00:19:27.640 Whereas, in the case of the primacy, the Pope, the Pope as successor of St. Peter, does not receive the Episcopal ministry like the bishops who were ordained by the apostles.
00:19:41.620 They're already consecrated bishops.
00:19:44.380 What they receive to become Pope is the universal jurisdiction that is the full and absolute jurisdiction.
00:19:54.740 The total fullness of supreme power, which the First Vatican Council defined as the primacy of the Pope.
00:20:02.520 So the primacy of the Pope is a full and supreme jurisdiction.
00:20:07.180 It is a total fullness of supreme power.
00:20:10.680 Being a total fullness of supreme power, there is no power beneath the Pope that by way of exception can ever challenge the authority of the Pope.
00:20:21.500 And so the Vatican Council, one, defined that the authority, the jurisdiction of the bishops exists entirely in hierarchical subordination to the jurisdiction of the Pope, which is the full and the absolute jurisdiction, the total fullness of supreme power, the full and supreme jurisdiction of the Pope.
00:20:44.320 When the Pope receives the primacy, it is not what Peter passes on.
00:20:49.900 He does not inherit a power given to Peter as an apostle.
00:20:53.700 That is given to all bishops.
00:20:56.920 What the apostles held in common as apostolic jurisdiction, all 12 apostles, and we include
00:21:03.480 Paul and Barnabas, I think that comes out to 13 or so, but whatever.
00:21:07.640 what all the apostles held in common
00:21:10.440 as apostolic jurisdiction.
00:21:14.520 That was an extraordinary jurisdiction
00:21:19.180 that expired with themselves
00:21:23.020 and they passed down to their successors
00:21:25.980 the Episcopal jurisdiction.
00:21:28.480 And that was the ordinary jurisdiction,
00:21:30.860 the habitual jurisdiction that the bishops received
00:21:33.400 from the hands of the apostles.
00:21:34.820 and then, after that, did he receive from the Pope.
00:21:39.380 Whereas the papal jurisdiction is the Petrine jurisdiction,
00:21:45.780 the Petrine munus, not as successors of the apostles,
00:21:51.020 but as successors of Peter as the head of the church.
00:21:55.040 And St. Peter had that jurisdiction not as an extraordinary munus,
00:22:00.760 but as ordinary.
00:22:01.960 and therefore it is passed on to his successors.
00:22:06.920 So the successors of Peter,
00:22:09.700 in virtue of being elected Pope
00:22:12.600 and accepting their election and becoming Pope,
00:22:15.920 they receive that primacy,
00:22:18.560 which is an absolute jurisdiction over the whole church.
00:22:21.260 And that individual has the total fullness of supreme power
00:22:26.900 in virtue of his office.
00:22:29.260 it is not something that can be divided in any way it is not something that remains in a bishop
00:22:36.840 if he renounces the papacy he renounces the munus he renounces the office he renounces the munus
00:22:44.900 he renounces the munus he is no longer in any way pope a man becomes pope he from bishop he becomes
00:22:53.340 pope, and he has the primacy over the whole church, and he is the father, the spiritual
00:23:00.880 father of the whole church. But if he renounces that office, and specifically that munus,
00:23:08.660 which is the Petrine munus, if he renounces the Petrine munus, he ceases to be pope.
00:23:16.560 He reverts to being only a bishop. And the tradition of the church is that every time a pope
00:23:21.480 ever has resigned the office, he reverts to what he was before he became pope, never became a pope
00:23:28.780 emeritus. It's impossible for a pope emeritus to exist, because a bishop could be a bishop emeritus
00:23:37.480 because he's still a bishop, and he still has that general episcopal munus, even if he doesn't
00:23:44.160 have that munus that was assigned to him by the pope. But the papacy is not sacramental.
00:23:51.480 It is entirely jurisdictional.
00:23:54.600 A bishop is a bishop.
00:23:55.920 He becomes pope because he accepts that universal jurisdiction. 0.86
00:24:00.680 And if he renounces that, if he specifically renounces that mulus,
00:24:06.180 he ceases to be pope, and he only possessed the mulus,
00:24:12.780 the Petrae mulus, in virtue of being the successor of Peter.
00:24:16.620 And if he renounces that office, that jurisdiction, and ceases to be pope, he loses every aspect of the Petrae Munas because there's nothing sacramental in him that remains of the papacy.
00:24:36.680 What remains in him is only that he's bishop.
00:24:40.460 The papacy is gone when a man resigns the papacy.
00:24:43.400 And you see that in the acts of resignation of previous popes,
00:24:47.680 Celestine V made it explicitly clear he renounces the throne and the title he renounces entirely.
00:24:56.860 Benedict did not do that.
00:24:59.480 Benedict equivocated on the basis of the substantial error that by renouncing the active exercise of the ministry,
00:25:07.700 that somehow he can retain the spiritual aspect of the munos.
00:25:16.140 But that cannot be.
00:25:17.860 That idea seems to be in his own writings previous.
00:25:22.860 It's expressed, obviously, he expressed it to Archbishop Genswein,
00:25:27.000 who talked about this as well.
00:25:29.220 Where do we get from church teaching that there can't be this kind of thing?
00:25:34.580 There can't be really two popes the way there was.
00:25:36.600 Why can't there be two popes?
00:25:38.400 The pope is, by definition, the successor of St. Peter.
00:25:42.180 It is clear from the wording of the dogmatic definition of the First Vatican Council
00:25:47.880 that the papacy is invested in one singular person.
00:25:55.580 And that is based also on the divine revelation that we see in Scripture.
00:26:01.480 Our Lord said, Satan wants to sift you as wheat.
00:26:06.600 but he uses the plural.
00:26:08.760 Not you, Peter.
00:26:10.140 Not you, Simon.
00:26:11.320 It's not Simon, son of John.
00:26:12.820 It's all 12 of you.
00:26:15.260 Satan wants to sift you as wheat,
00:26:17.100 but I have prayed for thee.
00:26:21.000 Singular.
00:26:22.860 I have prayed for you as an individual.
00:26:25.460 I have prayed for thee
00:26:26.480 that your faith may not fail.
00:26:27.960 And therefore I declare,
00:26:29.860 thou art Peter,
00:26:30.780 and upon this rock I will build my church, etc.
00:26:33.340 The Petrine Munis is singular to one person.
00:26:36.600 Not to you, but to thee.
00:26:40.180 The First Vatican Council's definition reflects that explicitly.
00:26:44.740 Using explicitly the singular pronoun of the successor of Peter is one individual.
00:26:53.640 And that has been universally the understanding of theologians unanimously for centuries.
00:26:59.320 which means it is the infallible
00:27:01.100 ordinary magisterium that is speaking
00:27:03.080 teaching us that 0.64
00:27:04.960 the Petrine
00:27:06.540 Munus is singular
00:27:08.780 and inheres in one
00:27:11.280 individual only, the man who
00:27:13.280 accepts that Munus, who becomes Pope
00:27:15.260 he exclusively possesses 0.93
00:27:17.640 the Petrine Munus
00:27:19.200 and he loses that
00:27:21.460 Munus if he voluntarily
00:27:23.560 renounces it
00:27:24.820 otherwise he either dies
00:27:27.620 or he voluntarily renounces it.
00:27:30.420 What then would be the consequences of a misdone or an error, as you said,
00:27:38.820 a substantial error in Benedict's thinking that he could retain part of it,
00:27:43.100 but he doesn't resign then the munis, just the ministerium?
00:27:46.380 What's the effect? What does that make of Francis?
00:27:50.320 What does it make of Leo? How does this play out in the Church?
00:27:54.220 The best way I can express it is in the words of a 17th-century canonist theologian, Franciscan, by the name of Father Francesco Bordoni, who explained that why the Pope must resist pressures to resign.
00:28:11.240 Because if he is pressured into resigning, he will provoke schisms and confusion.
00:28:16.900 I quoted him in the first volume of that two-volume work that I've written.
00:28:20.940 The first volume, of course, is on the question of, on the Catholic doctrine,
00:28:25.280 not the question of a heretical pope.
00:28:27.240 Then it goes generally into heresy, how to judge a person as a heretic.
00:28:32.300 And I quoted the most expert theologians, and especially Bordoni, who wrote two big volumes.
00:28:39.880 He was a qualificator of the Holy Office back in the 17th century.
00:28:44.140 The Magnificent work is very precise on the particulars of how you go about prosecuting suspected heretics and condemning evident manifest heretics.
00:28:58.480 And then there's the second volume, which is, I think, even better than the first.
00:29:02.640 I was under the gun to get it published, and my eyes were failing me, and I couldn't do the final edits in the first volume.
00:29:09.920 There are a couple of small errors in the first volume, but this one, on the true and
00:29:14.060 false pope, the case against Bergoglio, it is here that I explain why Pope Benedict did
00:29:21.340 not validly renounce the office, and what he expressed in his declaration is not sufficient
00:29:28.960 to validly renounce the office.
00:29:31.840 Why Francis, even if elected and even if universally accepted, according to church teaching,
00:29:39.920 the quoted papal teaching, would be incapable of the office of the papacy.
00:29:46.080 Why is that?
00:29:47.200 Church teaching and canon law make a very clear distinction between
00:29:51.440 those who are suspected of heresy and those who are clearly, manifestly, and obviously formal
00:29:59.040 heretics. And we hear from so many people the argument, well, he has to be challenged with
00:30:06.720 ecclesiastical correction. All those canons refer to suspected heretics. Ecclesiastical
00:30:13.560 admonitions are given by a superior to a subject who is suspected of heresy. A bishop who is
00:30:22.120 behaving in such a manner of speaking and acting in such a way that qualifies him as a suspect of
00:30:28.620 heresy, for the penal process to be initiated, he has to be given canonical warnings. But the
00:30:34.040 mistake that is made is that canon law distinguishes between what is to be done for suspected heretics
00:30:42.520 and those who are simply heretics. They incur automatic excommunication. They incur automatic
00:30:50.520 loss of office. And a loss of office does not depend on any judgment pronounced juridically
00:30:56.040 by the church. This is very clear from the pronouncement made by the Council of Constance.
00:31:01.620 That loss of office takes place by itself, and it is only confirmed by the ecclesiastical judgment that is pronounced.
00:31:10.540 So if a man is a public heretic, which is to say, not just saying heretical things,
00:31:18.000 but if in his words and actions the indicia, to use the proper canonical term,
00:31:23.660 the indicia of heresy manifests that he has the dolos of crime,
00:31:28.360 he has the pertinacity of heresy
00:31:33.020 and is evident and manifest and undeniable
00:31:37.740 then he loses office automatically
00:31:42.100 by himself
00:31:43.500 and the church does not have to put him on trial
00:31:47.320 they don't have to go through the penal process
00:31:50.380 which means the canonical admonitions
00:31:52.440 the warnings and all that
00:31:54.020 Those who have the power, the ecclesiastical power in the church to judge a heretic will simply declare that this person is outside the church.
00:32:05.360 He's manifestly, obviously a heretic, and that's the end of it. 0.84
00:32:11.060 They replace him. 1.00
00:32:12.460 And it is written in the 1970 Code of Penal Law, Pope St. Pius X, that this applies to whatsoever office, every office.
00:32:26.580 Now, to say absolutely every office in the Church means that it refers to the papacy, too.
00:32:34.740 Where does this doctrine come from?
00:32:37.220 It comes from Pope Innocent III.
00:32:39.800 And that's why in both my volumes there, I extensively have provided the quotations and commentary on the teaching of Pope Innocent III, because it's Pope Innocent III is the only pope who has explicitly taught about what happens if a pope were to become a heretic.
00:33:00.680 And Pope Innocent III says very clearly that if the Pope were to become a heretic, he would lose office. 0.66
00:33:07.600 He is to be cast out and trampled underfoot by men. 0.98
00:33:11.140 The Pope could be judged by no one. 0.73
00:33:13.180 But if the Pope were to become a heretic, then he is judged by the Church. 0.97
00:33:18.320 And the reason why is because the heretic is an alien. 0.83
00:33:21.480 He's outside the Church.
00:33:22.920 The heretic is minor qualivet catholico. 0.63
00:33:26.720 He's less than any Catholic. 0.62
00:33:27.920 He loses all rank and becomes lower than any Catholic.
00:33:34.500 And that's precisely the judgment made by the Council of Constance
00:33:39.960 on Antipo Benedict XIII, Pedro de Lula.
00:33:44.660 And that even if he held the papal office because of his schism and his heresy,
00:33:50.180 he would have lost by himself
00:33:55.080 all office and all
00:33:58.720 ecclesiastical dignity. It is only
00:34:00.960 as a precautionary measure that the council
00:34:04.840 declares this because he already lost it by himself
00:34:08.640 if he ever had it. Upholding and applying the teaching
00:34:11.840 of Pope Innocent III and that is the teaching
00:34:15.020 of St. Robert Bellarmine, that is the teaching of
00:34:17.980 Pietro Ballerini, and that is the teaching of, as a private theologian, the teaching of Pope
00:34:25.040 Gregory XVI. Very, very interesting, because at this point, you then, you have it both ways. I,
00:34:31.880 because that same phrase that they used, if he ever had it, would then also apply to Francis,
00:34:37.960 if he ever had it, somehow the Munis Ministerium thing were solved, even potentially, it wouldn't
00:34:45.640 matter anyway because he would, by his heresy, be removed from office. Is that what you're saying?
00:34:52.120 That's correct. That's correct.
00:34:53.460 In that case, how do we know he's a heretic? There's a lot of people who say,
00:34:58.440 oh, he might be a material heretic, but he's not a formal heretic. He has to be a formal
00:35:02.620 heretic in order for that to apply. That is why you must carefully, meticulously apply 0.89
00:35:08.980 the canonical criteria, which are the indicia of heresy, apply the Church's judgment
00:35:15.020 according to those indicia. And that's why I come to the unescapable conclusion
00:35:22.480 that Francis was a formal heretic and he is to be judged as such. According to the most
00:35:31.860 expert canonists in the history of the Church, this is basically the canonical doctrine of the
00:35:38.560 church. It's a branch of theology. Canonical doctrine is properly a branch of theology.
00:35:44.160 If a man is expressing formal heresy, and the definition of heresy, like Bordoni goes through
00:35:53.220 every single word of the definition. He defines every word of what defines formal heresy.
00:36:00.180 That's how strict he is. He was a qualificator of the Holy Office for judging heretics. He was
00:36:08.080 the expert in his day on how to prosecute heretics and suspected heretics. And it's very strict
00:36:16.460 on how you judge someone a heretic. They can't just say something heretical. It has to be
00:36:23.980 an assertion. They're asserting it as their belief. They have to know that what they say
00:36:33.640 is heretical. And in spite of the fact that they know it's heresy, and they make it clear that they
00:36:40.860 know it's heresy, they don't have to explicitly say, I know this is heresy, like a fool like 0.99
00:36:47.900 John Hasselza would say. All they have to do is say something that is literally equivalent to 0.98
00:36:55.700 making it clear that they know this is heresy, or else it is something that is so obviously
00:37:01.940 heretical for a man who has education, for a man who is, for example, a professor of
00:37:06.660 theology, a pope, to make the expression, to assert, to make the assertion, if you try
00:37:15.380 to convince someone else of your faith, that is venom, that is not listen.
00:37:22.620 Like, it's against the law of God to try to bring someone into the Catholic faith. 0.63
00:37:26.840 If you say something that is intended to bring a non-believer of Catholicism into the Catholic faith,
00:37:37.560 what you're doing is venomous, it's poison.
00:37:40.940 Which is to say, the teaching of Jesus Christ is poison.
00:37:44.720 The mandate that he gave to the apostles is poison.
00:37:48.100 It is not possible for a professor of theology, a man who has eventually become a cardinal and pope,
00:37:54.160 to say that this command of Jesus Christ
00:37:57.060 to bring people into the church and baptize them,
00:38:01.740 this great teaching of St. Peter the Apostle
00:38:05.860 on the first Pentecost Sunday,
00:38:07.340 to tell these pious Jews who came to Jerusalem
00:38:11.060 in pilgrimage that they need to come into the church
00:38:16.540 and be baptized.
00:38:17.640 For Francis, that is a venom. 0.99
00:38:21.060 That's poison. 0.57
00:38:22.020 which is to say that Jesus Christ was teaching poison, venom.
00:38:26.460 This one example, I get in several examples in the book
00:38:29.060 where he has so clearly opposed, not just made errors,
00:38:34.160 not just made mistakes, where he has clearly and knowingly
00:38:38.960 opposed Jesus Christ, opposed his church.
00:38:43.440 In the church's magisterium, in the infallible teaching of the church,
00:38:47.200 in the infallible faith of our church, he has opposed the church.
00:38:50.940 It is on that basis that I have judged that Bergoglio could not be a proper pope because he is what the doctors of the church, like St. Alphonsus, like St. Robert Bellarmine say, is an incapable subject of the papacy.
00:39:08.860 And they explain why such a man is incapable of being pope, because heresy, personal heresy, that is so notorious as that, even if it's not notorious, heresy as such, is utterly incompatible with the form of the papacy, is the faith itself.
00:39:28.200 so if a man is opposed to the faith
00:39:31.920 he's opposed to the reform of the church
00:39:34.040 so he's incapable of being pope
00:39:36.260 he's incapable of being the foundation of the faith of the church
00:39:39.960 he's incapable of being the pope
00:39:43.460 who is the final guarantor
00:39:46.180 of truth, of faith in the church
00:39:48.520 if he is in his very person
00:39:52.140 opposed to the faith 1.00
00:39:53.400 if this is correct then
00:39:55.140 that, you know, either by one method or another, Francis was not the Pope.
00:40:01.160 What then happens at his death then and with Leo?
00:40:05.660 Where are we at now?
00:40:07.460 If Leo were unquestionably an Orthodox Catholic upholding the faith,
00:40:13.240 he were to be accepted by the whole Church.
00:40:15.400 It is, again, it is the teaching of all the theologians.
00:40:20.200 It's unanimous.
00:40:20.900 So that makes it ordinary magisterium.
00:40:22.520 that would
00:40:24.660 convalidate even of an
00:40:26.460 invalid election. So he
00:40:28.520 would become Pope. Unfortunately,
00:40:30.520 every indication,
00:40:32.680 this man says,
00:40:34.200 we want a synodal church.
00:40:36.540 What is a synodal church?
00:40:38.540 Well, it's a church that is opposed
00:40:40.420 in its constitution
00:40:41.680 to the divine constitution of the Catholic Church.
00:40:45.140 What is a synodal church?
00:40:46.640 Well, let's look at the Anglican Church.
00:40:49.080 That is a synodal church.
00:40:50.800 And the churches that broke away from the Catholic Church, those are synodal churches.
00:40:56.980 They don't have papacy.
00:40:59.380 So what they have, like the Church of England, has a nominal figurehead, which is the King
00:41:04.240 of England, and the governance is entirely synodal.
00:41:08.200 The English communion throughout the world is synodal.
00:41:13.420 It is synods that govern the church.
00:41:15.500 So in the absence of the primacy of St. Peter passed on to his successors, since they don't have a pope, they have to have a different principle of governance, which is synodality.
00:41:28.040 I have been saying this for more than 50 years now.
00:41:33.960 The prototype of the counterfeit church is the Anglican Communion and the Church of England.
00:41:40.820 The Church of England is synodal.
00:41:42.920 St. Hildegard of Bingen foretold that the day will come when the people will prefer their national hierarchies to the governance of the Pope.
00:41:52.060 Vatican II introduced this idea of collegiality.
00:41:55.580 And now we have, with the collegiality, we have synodality being introduced as constitutive of the Church.
00:42:06.860 That's Francis' own words, that the Church is constituted.
00:42:10.860 constituted, it is constituted by synodality. That's heresy. The church is constituted
00:42:18.120 under the primacy of St. Peter. The Pope has a share in the kingship of Christ,
00:42:25.100 and that's why he has the full and total jurisdiction of the whole church,
00:42:30.860 and that the entire church, every aspect, every degree of jurisdiction exists in hierarchical
00:42:40.700 subordination to the supreme and total fullness of supreme power of the papal jurisdiction,
00:42:48.300 the papal primacy of jurisdiction. That's the difference. When Leo XIV says,
00:42:54.560 we want a synodal church, he's saying, essentially, we want a church that's constituted
00:43:00.340 like the Anglican communion, synodally. We do have synodality in the Catholic Church,
00:43:06.380 but that is subordinate to the papal primacy.
00:43:09.560 But according to the final document of the synod,
00:43:12.120 and Francis did not issue a final document himself,
00:43:15.840 he simply published the final document of the synod itself,
00:43:19.960 and that final document underscores that the primacy of the bishops and the pope
00:43:24.780 must be done in conjunction in a synodal manner with the pastors of the church.
00:43:30.640 That is a denial of the total fullness of supreme power,
00:43:34.460 what Pius XII called the full and absolute jurisdiction
00:43:37.520 that Christ directly confers on the Pope when he accepts his office.
00:43:41.600 So where does that leave Leo XIV?
00:43:44.880 Well, as I have been saying, it makes him,
00:43:49.460 according to the canonical criteria, the indicia of heresy,
00:43:53.980 according to the very canonical criteria of the Church's own canonical doctrine,
00:43:58.960 the Church's canonical tradition,
00:44:01.060 established that he is a doubtful Pope.
00:44:05.340 Well, what can we do now?
00:44:07.200 He's got to be corrected.
00:44:10.020 And we must wait and see which way he will go.
00:44:17.120 To clear up the doubt, will he veer to the right
00:44:21.360 and align himself with Jesus Christ and the apostolic tradition?
00:44:27.120 Or will he veer to the left and follow Bergoglio and Henry VIII
00:44:33.000 and Cranmer into synodalism.
00:44:36.680 That's what we must wait and see.
00:44:38.980 Father Kramer, thank you so very much for your time.
00:44:41.420 I encourage people, if you're interested in learning more,
00:44:44.140 to get Father's books.
00:44:45.660 We'll put them in the show notes.
00:44:47.360 If you would, Father, give us your final blessing.
00:44:52.700 Amen.
00:44:53.840 Thank you so much, Father Kramer.
00:44:55.160 Good to be with you.
00:44:55.800 God bless you.
00:44:56.540 And God bless all of you.
00:44:58.020 And we'll see you next time.
00:45:03.240 Hello, it's Fr. David Nix. If you like this content, please click the link in the description
00:45:07.880 for more like this. Thank you all for watching, and God bless you.