The John-Henry Westen Show - March 04, 2026


SAINTS vs ANTI-POPES： Medieval History Prof REVEALS the Battles


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Length

37 minutes

Words per minute

146.99992

Word count

5,554

Sentence count

322

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

15

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A new book by Edward Mazza delves into the question of whether or not there have ever been more than 30 Popes in the past, and why there are still no confirmed candidates for the office of Pope.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Judas and the last pope are to sell Jesus to the enemy. 0.69
00:00:06.640 Therefore, the era of Antichrist pope will come soon. 0.99
00:00:13.400 Hey, my friend, there is a new book out called Saints vs. Antipopes.
00:00:18.400 It's by a professor, doctor of medieval history, who delves into the questions.
00:00:24.320 A, there were antipopes.
00:00:25.500 Moreover, he looks also at modern controversies of what's going on right now and reveals that
00:00:31.880 from approved visionaries, we have messages warning of future antipopes.
00:00:37.640 We are with Dr. Edward Mazza.
00:00:39.520 Stay tuned.
00:00:40.220 Dr. Mazza, so good to be with you.
00:00:41.560 Oh, it's great to be here.
00:00:42.440 Thanks for having me, John Henry.
00:00:43.740 Let's begin as you always do with the sign of the cross.
00:00:46.260 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
00:00:50.220 Amen.
00:00:50.840 Well, let's start off with some basic history.
00:00:52.600 I think a lot of people will be surprised to hear that there were, in fact, antipopes
00:00:56.960 in the past.
00:00:58.280 What are we talking about?
00:00:59.380 Well, over the last 2,000 years, we're fortunate that there have only been about 30 or so antipopes. 1.00
00:01:05.960 The accusation that, well, is not all that infrequent in the church today about Pope Francis
00:01:12.200 being an antipope and then going on to Leo or whatever, it's not a new thing.
00:01:16.740 So 30 antipopes before.
00:01:18.320 Yes, and antipope just means a man who claimed to be the Roman pontiff, but in fact was not.
00:01:28.900 And in one special case in church history, we went about 40 years with two differing popes,
00:01:36.660 as it were.
00:01:37.340 And then there was a third one, and he was a former pirate.
00:01:41.220 So it gets interesting.
00:01:43.360 You as a historian have studied this, we now know there's like 30 or so antipopes before.
00:01:50.720 What sort of thing kind of distinguishes them?
00:01:54.960 Because obviously those are periods, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's massive, massive
00:01:59.600 confusion in the church.
00:02:00.820 Because kind of like in our day, you've got holy, holy people on both sides of a question
00:02:08.640 that's almost unthinkable.
00:02:11.280 Get into that, if you would.
00:02:12.140 In that one special case that lasted for decades, you had St. Catherine of Siena, a deep mystic
00:02:20.800 and, you know, espoused to Christ mystically.
00:02:24.480 Was an unlettered lay nothing, a woman, you know, in those days especially. 0.99
00:02:29.920 And she supported what historians generally consider the legitimate pope, the valid pope.
00:02:35.700 And then you have a great saint like St. Vincent Ferrer, a Dominican, who worked miracles, converted
00:02:43.040 thousands of Jews, and raised the dead. 0.93
00:02:46.160 And for a time, he supported the person that historians generally believe to have been the
00:02:50.660 antipope during that period.
00:02:52.040 So you can have good people disagreeing, you know, as to who is the occupant, the valid
00:03:00.600 occupant of the chair of Peter.
00:03:01.760 Make a very interesting point, too, because you just said there that Vincent Ferrer was a
00:03:08.580 cleric.
00:03:09.480 He was in the hierarchy of the church, whereas Catherine of Siena was a simple laywoman.
00:03:16.640 That all by itself is majorly interesting.
00:03:20.420 But the title of your book is very thought-provoking.
00:03:23.940 It's saints versus antipopes. 0.66
00:03:27.600 So one of the points, I guess you could say, in all of this debate that we're undergoing
00:03:34.960 right now is even the cardinals, the bishops, the faithful, who will quietly concede to you
00:03:44.900 that, yes, it might be that Francis Leo is an antipope, but that's not for us now.
00:03:54.500 That's the church to decide in hundreds, maybe tens, but maybe hundreds, maybe a thousand
00:04:01.020 years, what it will be.
00:04:03.140 Not for us now.
00:04:04.720 What did the saints do at the time of other antipopes during?
00:04:09.620 And were they also counseled, shut up, shut up, it's not for now?
00:04:12.680 Well, that's precisely, John Henry, why I wrote this book.
00:04:16.260 It turns out that we have been misinformed, misled.
00:04:20.540 If we follow the example of the saints, which Holy Mother Church wants us, always encourages
00:04:25.120 us to do, you'd be surprised what the saints did with apparent antipopes.
00:04:31.720 I go into more detail in the book, but I can go through a couple of controversial cases.
00:04:35.260 So there was a period of time, just after the year 1100 or so, when the emperors and the
00:04:43.820 kings of Europe were appointing bishops, and not just appointing bishops, but investing
00:04:48.540 them with the spiritual symbols of their office.
00:04:51.580 And this was a no-no, right?
00:04:53.240 This was against church teaching.
00:04:54.820 Kind of like communist China's doing today. 0.50
00:04:56.860 Yes, yes.
00:04:58.240 And so at one point, the Holy Roman Emperor, the German Emperor, kidnapped Pope Pascal II
00:05:05.200 and then extracted concessions from him.
00:05:08.740 And basically, they came to an agreement whereby the church would give up her earthly temporal
00:05:15.200 authority and possessions in exchange for the state not giving the spiritual symbols of
00:05:22.380 the office to the bishops.
00:05:23.520 A number of saints, canonized saints, stood up and said, the Pope can't do this.
00:05:29.060 This is a betrayal of the church.
00:05:30.520 You're betraying the church to the world, and this will have a destructive consequence for
00:05:34.660 the church.
00:05:35.600 Saint Bruno, a famous abbot in Italy, told the Pope that you can't go on with this.
00:05:44.600 A bunch of canonized saints' bishops in France got together, and they held a synod, as it
00:05:53.000 were, and they basically rejected the emperor's, you know, what the emperor had extracted from
00:06:00.300 the pope, in which the pope, even though he was now liberated, refused to recant or was
00:06:05.300 dragging his feet not to reject publicly.
00:06:08.880 So they rejected this idea that this concession that the emperor had gotten from the pope.
00:06:15.860 And they told the pope, in the unlikely event, you know, like, you know, when you're on an
00:06:21.440 airplane and they say in the unlikely event that you lose cabin pressure, put on your own
00:06:25.680 mask, in the unlikely event that you don't agree with us on this, in rejecting what the
00:06:30.600 emperor extracted from you, you, Pope Pascal II, will be separating us from you, and we will 0.83
00:06:39.880 no longer have communion with you.
00:06:42.400 And this is evidence that they believed that bishops, I mean, we're talking about St. Eve
00:06:49.780 here, and a future pope, a bishop who eventually became pope, Pope Calixtus II, they told the
00:07:00.300 Holy Father that, you know, if you don't agree with us on this, then you're pretty much not
00:07:04.440 the Holy Father, and we'll have to break communion with you.
00:07:06.700 This is not the same kind of language that we're getting nowadays on these subjects,
00:07:12.000 unfortunately.
00:07:12.920 They took direct action, even against suspected antipopes, and that pope wasn't an antipope,
00:07:19.980 is that correct?
00:07:20.560 Because in the end, he did the right thing, and they all breathed a sigh of relief on that.
00:07:27.320 But St. Eve, in his letter, says to Pope Pascal that we, let me get the exact quote here,
00:07:34.380 we do not wish to deprive the principal keys of their power, whoever be the person placed
00:07:41.800 on the throne of Peter, unless he manifestly departs from the evangelical truth.
00:07:48.780 And this is not an isolated case of this.
00:07:52.220 I also cite in the book a famous case of the Irish missionary saint, St. Columban, in the
00:08:01.980 early 600s, wrote a letter to Pope Boniface, in which he said, I have heard that you are favoring
00:08:10.400 heretics.
00:08:11.520 This had to do with an ecumenical council that had been held under Pope Vigilius.
00:08:16.280 And this council was very questionable, because it sort of condemned, in absentia, Catholic
00:08:23.420 authors, or authors who had died in the Catholic faith.
00:08:27.140 And it was done by the Emperor Justinian to appease a group of heretics in the church,
00:08:32.620 the Monophysites.
00:08:34.680 So decades later, it was rumored, got back to St. Columban of Ireland, that Pope Boniface
00:08:41.500 might be favoring, might not be on the level with this, that he might be promoting a false
00:08:46.360 council.
00:08:47.260 And so Boniface told him that if it turns out that it's true, St. Columban told him that
00:08:55.580 if it turns out to be true, rather than fabled, your subordinates will be your judge.
00:09:02.220 He recognized the Pope as the head of the church.
00:09:04.660 But he said that you only open the keys and close the keys as long as you are following
00:09:12.480 apostolic tradition.
00:09:13.940 And if you depart from that, basically, he was saying that you no longer hold office.
00:09:20.780 The saints took this up with quite direct means.
00:09:25.420 Even Catherine of Siena, who you didn't mention, but in your book, there's some doozy quotes from
00:09:31.700 her.
00:09:32.060 Do you have one of those that you can rattle off, just about her taking up the cardinals
00:09:38.780 for daring to elect an antipope, as she thought it was?
00:09:42.300 Yes.
00:09:42.700 So in the year of our Lord, 1378, the cardinals elected Pope Urban VI.
00:09:49.300 But Urban came on real strong and wanted to reform the Curia.
00:09:57.040 And so after a lot of controversy in September of 1378, the cardinals got together and elected
00:10:06.080 a new pope.
00:10:07.040 They said, we're going to have a do-over.
00:10:09.120 And they claimed that they were under duress at the conclave in April, which in a certain
00:10:15.100 sense they were.
00:10:15.940 They were screaming Italians outside the building saying, you'd better give us an Italian because
00:10:21.100 for the last 70 years, the pope had been in France.
00:10:25.340 But anyway, so they elect Robert of Geneva as what we would call an antipope.
00:10:33.560 And so the entire College of Cardinals went along with this.
00:10:38.620 And St. Catherine from Siena in Italy, she writes a letter to the Italian cardinals.
00:10:44.320 And she says to them, I tell you that you did wrong with the antipope. 0.82
00:10:51.400 He was chosen a member of the devil.
00:10:54.300 You have committed all these faults in regard to this devil to confess him as a pope, which
00:10:59.660 he surely is not.
00:11:02.360 Now, this example from St. Catherine goes against certain eminent and people that are respected
00:11:10.040 in the church today who are telling us, well, if the pope is, you can't question a generally
00:11:17.900 accepted pope.
00:11:18.840 There's no authority to do that.
00:11:20.120 Well, if there's no authority to do that, then by what authority did St. Catherine do 0.88
00:11:23.160 that?
00:11:23.520 That bursts a lot of bubbles.
00:11:25.640 But let's get back to something you mentioned in passing.
00:11:29.440 We're in a unique spot with regard to Francis Leo, because back in the day when they were
00:11:36.500 dealing with antipopes, even the antipopes weren't bad guys with regard to Catholic teaching. 0.99
00:11:45.400 So a lot of them had bad lives, wives or women at least, and then worse.
00:11:52.540 But that's, in terms of Catholic teaching and understanding, really does pale in comparison
00:11:58.680 to daring to go outside of Catholic doctrine.
00:12:03.100 And we learned that from the scriptures, St. Paul, even if I or an angel from heaven were
00:12:07.860 to come and give you a different gospel, let him be anathema, let him be accursed, let him 0.99
00:12:11.540 be damned, if you will.
00:12:12.800 That notion, though, has really fallen apart with Francis Leo, because now we have departures 0.99
00:12:20.440 from official teaching, not just in airplane interviews where I guess you could debate, oh,
00:12:25.880 he's not really teaching at all.
00:12:27.020 He's just riffing, who knows.
00:12:30.400 But actually in documentation with Amoris Laetitia, with Fiduci Supplicans, with Tradiciones
00:12:35.300 Custodes, you've got anti-Catholic teaching coming from a teaching position of a supposed
00:12:42.580 pope.
00:12:44.220 And yet that doesn't fly according to history of all the saints in the church.
00:12:51.200 Tell us about that.
00:12:51.940 Again, what St. Eves told Pope Paschal II, he said, we do not wish to deprive the principal
00:12:58.080 keys of their power, whoever be the person placed on the chair of Peter, unless he manifestly
00:13:03.200 departs from the evangelical truth.
00:13:05.360 And the fact of the matter is, John Henry, what Catholics don't understand, especially 0.92
00:13:09.160 some educated Catholics, is that there has never been a saint that has taught that a pope
00:13:14.860 can teach heresy as pope.
00:13:17.980 No one has ever taught that.
00:13:20.240 Now, there was an educated exchange between people like St. Robert Bellarmine, Francisco
00:13:26.900 Suarez, John of St. Thomas, Thomas Cajetan, these theologians from the Counter-Reformation
00:13:34.220 and closer to our own time.
00:13:38.100 St. Robert Bellarmine is a saint, and St. Francis de Sales talks about this.
00:13:43.340 They talked about a hypothetical, okay, because it's such an outlandish idea that a pope could
00:13:49.660 become a heretic or an apostate, that it's not in canon law what you should do under those
00:13:54.900 circumstances.
00:13:56.800 But just for the sake of argument, they entertained, would the pope lose his office automatically,
00:14:04.500 or would a group of cardinals or bishops need to get together and do that job of evicting
00:14:11.680 him, and that he's still pope until he is formally evicted?
00:14:16.060 There is some discrepancy there between, for example, St. John of St. Thomas and St. Robert
00:14:22.720 Bellarmine.
00:14:23.240 The point that gets lost in all these discussions in Catholic social media and online is that
00:14:29.100 the fact that none of these theologians, none of these saints even, ever envisioned the
00:14:36.640 idea of a pope as a heretic, as a pope. 0.88
00:14:41.420 They were thinking, well, as a private doctor, maybe he could teach something heretical.
00:14:47.400 Would he lose his office if he did that?
00:14:49.640 That's not what we're dealing with, with Bergoglio and Prevost.
00:14:53.300 Amoris Laetitia was put into the Acta Apostolica Satis.
00:14:59.600 When the Argentine bishops interpreted Francis's document as allowing communion for serial adulterers,
00:15:08.200 he said that's the only interpretation.
00:15:10.680 And then that was put into the Acta Apostolica Satis, which means it's considered magisterial.
00:15:17.420 So no saint ever envisioned that a pope acting as a pope would do that.
00:15:22.400 The least that they would concede is perhaps as a private doctor, he could teach heresy.
00:15:29.580 And if he did, St. Robert Bellarmine said he would he would lose his office.
00:15:35.660 And St. Robert Bellarmine was not the only one to say that he would lose his office automatically.
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00:16:11.000 That difference, I guess, is the kind of difference when Benedict wrote his book.
00:16:18.160 I think it was Dominus Iesus.
00:16:20.280 He didn't claim it to be a papal teaching.
00:16:23.020 It was a reflection.
00:16:24.400 And that's been done before.
00:16:25.800 So that's the kind of as a private doctor stuff.
00:16:28.100 But not official teachings like exhortations or encyclicals or modu proprio,
00:16:35.160 which are official teaching documents of the church.
00:16:37.480 So they thought that is right off the table.
00:16:40.820 That can't even happen.
00:16:42.960 This other, yeah, he writes in a book or paper of his.
00:16:45.840 It's wrong.
00:16:46.700 It's radical.
00:16:47.500 He loses office even at that point.
00:16:49.400 But the other is an impossibility.
00:16:51.220 Yes.
00:16:51.480 And the problem is, is that, you know, I respect, for example, Bishop Schneider very much.
00:16:56.820 But he has written for LifeSite News and he's written for 1 Peter 5 saying that a pope can teach heresy in his, not his extraordinary magisterium, but in his ordinary magisterium.
00:17:12.040 And that that goes against not only what St. Robert Bellarmine taught, but it goes against even what Blessed John Paul II taught, because Blessed John Paul II said that the pope, when he is not using his extraordinary magisterium,
00:17:29.560 but when he's using his ordinary magisterium, is not teaching as a private doctor, he is using his supreme teaching authority.
00:17:39.020 So that would include encyclicals and speeches and sermons and things like that.
00:17:46.120 So this, the idea of having a public material heresy on the part of a pope, show me what saint or what Catholic author in the last 2,000 years actually taught that.
00:18:02.780 No one.
00:18:03.380 All the doctors of the church, all of the saints, let's say, previous to the Second Vatican Council perhaps, were in unanimous accord on the point.
00:18:14.840 It's very interesting because you have this anomaly having to be faced right now, whereas in the past it was deemed an impossibility unless there's an antipope, which is sort of an easier solution in some ways.
00:18:32.740 A lot of people have argued, oh, what would we do if Bergoglio was not a real pope, then it would be total mayhem.
00:18:39.880 You'd have all these cardinals who aren't really cardinals and so on and so forth.
00:18:42.800 I think there's mayhem the other way as well, because we're continuing down a trajectory which hasn't changed.
00:18:51.360 A lot of people thought, oh, there'll be reform with Leo, but we haven't seen that either.
00:18:55.520 What I've done is I've gone through what the saints have told us, and there's a cognitive dissonance between what the saints were advising and doing and the inaction that's been going on the last 13 years.
00:19:10.640 I'll give you an example of chaos in the church.
00:19:14.120 On Valentine's Day in the year of our Lord, 1130, a group of cardinals got together.
00:19:20.340 The pope was dying, and what they did was as soon as he died, they sort of buried his body in the backyard, so to speak.
00:19:30.120 They didn't tell the rest of the cardinals he was dead, and they elected Innocent II as pope.
00:19:35.940 When the rest of the cardinals found out about this, they were furious, and they elected Anacletus II as pope, and he was accepted by the clergy and people of Rome.
00:19:47.820 And then there was fighting in the streets, and Innocent II had to flee Rome.
00:19:51.960 This is crazy, right?
00:19:53.080 I mean, imagine trying to report on this if there was media at the time.
00:19:58.520 Innocent II, whose conclave cannot be considered canonical, and I go into several authors in the book that talk about the non-canonical nature of his conclave.
00:20:13.400 Nevertheless, one of the, basically the greatest saint of the 12th century, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, backed him as the real pope.
00:20:23.200 And Saint Bernard went to the king of France, he went to the king of England, he went to the Holy Roman Emperor in Germany, and he wrote to them, he met with them, and cajoled them into getting the episcopacy in their kingdoms to back Innocent as the real pope, and Anacletus as the false pope, as an antipope.
00:20:46.000 Even though Anacletus, again, enjoyed the majority of the cardinals, and was actually sitting on the chair of Peter in Rome for eight years, okay?
00:20:57.500 And what, and then I asked the question in the book, what could have caused Bernard, a doctor of the church, to follow something like this?
00:21:07.500 And the answer is in a letter that he wrote to the emperor, he said that it's an insult to Christ that a Jew should sit on the throne of Peter.
00:21:16.960 So, what does he mean by that?
00:21:19.200 Well, apparently, Peter Pierre Leone, who was the cardinal that was elected Anacletus II, his grandfather or great-grandfather was Baruch, a Jew, a banker,
00:21:32.260 who actually helped out during the controversy between the popes and the emperors over the investiture of bishops.
00:21:39.540 Well, he accepted baptism, Baruch, and so his grandson, Pierre Leone, he was Peter Pierre Leone, was a Catholic.
00:21:50.020 He rose to be cardinal.
00:21:51.160 But because he was, I guess the implication was, is that this was sort of a secret takeover of the church by a Jewish banking family.
00:22:01.740 And that seems to have been the justification for not only St. Bernard of Clairvaux, but St. Norbert, the founder of the Norbertines,
00:22:10.440 was getting the emperor to actually launch armies into Italy to unseat Anacletus II.
00:22:20.180 And ultimately, what happened was Anacletus died eight years later.
00:22:24.840 Bernard came to Rome and then convinced his successor to step down and let Innocent II actually become pope, actually rule as pope.
00:22:34.420 And Innocent II called an ecumenical council, the Second Lateran Council.
00:22:39.020 And one of the provisions of the Second Lateran Council is that Anacletus was an antipope.
00:22:45.360 And then all of the bishops he made, all the cardinals he made are null and void.
00:22:50.160 If this is how the saints approached an apparent antipope, or at least, well, I guess I shouldn't say apparent because the Second Lateran Council said he was an antipope.
00:23:00.560 But if that's how they approached it, what is off the table in terms of options for the churchmen of today?
00:23:07.360 Looking at history this way surely does give us new appreciation.
00:23:13.540 It's interesting because there are some in the hierarchy, speaking, because there still is Archbishop Viganò, now excommunicated.
00:23:23.120 But I would presume back in the day, the antipopes would excommunicate the saints or whomever, on both sides perhaps, but still the actual antipopes would be doing excommunications of others.
00:23:40.140 How did that play out?
00:23:41.000 Yes, well, another aspect of this is I do talk about what actually happened historically.
00:23:46.780 But I also mentioned the teaching of the saints on who is in schism, who can question a pope.
00:23:53.820 Are you in schism if you question a pope?
00:23:55.700 And for example, Thomas Cajetan, who was the greatest theologian of the Reformation period, a man who actually debated Martin Luther.
00:24:05.340 So he knew a thing or two about schism and Cajetan teaches that if a person suspects because of rumors in circulation that the pope is not the pope, you are not a what's the word?
00:24:24.360 You are not in schism because to be in schism, St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, you have to be against the office of the pope.
00:24:37.560 It's not that you disagree as to who the occupant of the chair is.
00:24:42.060 And actually, Bishop Strickland spoke about this recently.
00:24:44.920 Bishop Strickland said that there is a difference between a person who questions the legitimacy of a pope and and someone who goes into schism.
00:24:55.620 I've got the exact quote in the book.
00:24:58.120 And in fact, Bishop Strickland also said before the conclave that elected Prevost, Bishop Strickland said that if a man who is a public heretic or reasonably suspected of being a public heretic is is elected, the cardinals, the faithful cardinals have an obligation not to recognize his validity.
00:25:19.980 That one, Ed, that has a lot of personal impact because we got in huge trouble for, see, we knew a lot about Prevost going in because Prevost was the former head of the Congregation for Bishops.
00:25:37.140 He was involved in canceling Strickland, canceling Ray, bringing McElroy to Washington, not to mention he was a liberation theologian who we knew where he stood on abortion versus immigration because he said it back in 2023.
00:25:56.340 So when at his election, of course, I said, that's a nightmare now famously.
00:25:59.760 And a lot of people were very upset with me at the time.
00:26:02.400 But we knew going in who this guy was, Bishop Strickland's words, hearing them again, they really strike.
00:26:10.540 Pope Francis, when he came out with his Abu Dhabi document with the imam saying that God positively wills the diversity of religions, right?
00:26:21.760 Something that the head of the Society of St. Pius X said recently, a person should accept martyrdom before signing on onto a document like that.
00:26:31.720 I think it was 2024 or 2023, Bishop Strickland said, this makes us think about the third secret of Fatima and that we have to be worried about apostasy at the top.
00:26:43.140 So there are, he says, yeah, we must be concerned about the reported words of the Virgin of Fatima about an apostasy, which would begin at the top.
00:26:52.060 So there are Marian apparitions that have, our lady is the greatest of all saints.
00:26:59.340 She's the queen of angels and saints. 0.90
00:27:01.240 And she has tried to coach us on how we should approach the current situation.
00:27:06.560 God has not left us in a lurch here, I would argue.
00:27:11.240 I did a show recently that sort of addressed this.
00:27:14.580 I was with a prophecy expert by the name of Xavier Eral, who's quite famous.
00:27:18.540 He wrote a book called Revelations.
00:27:20.680 We discussed the prophecies of Marie-Julie Yahani, who was a very famous stigmatist.
00:27:27.240 She talked about becoming two successive antipopes.
00:27:30.360 But in the same country and in the same century, there was actually an approved apparition of La Salette, which, you know, the secrets of La Salette buried for a long, long time, finally discovered in the Vatican.
00:27:45.320 And they, too, talk about something similar to two successive antipopes.
00:27:49.920 In the words of Our Lady of La Salette, it was two worm-ridden popes.
00:27:55.640 She, in fact, said that Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of Antichrist.
00:28:00.200 But you seem to, in your book anyway, talk about similar approved apparitions that also talk about antipopes or false popes.
00:28:09.920 What are those?
00:28:10.300 Yes, it's quite amazing.
00:28:13.020 Faithful Catholics have a devotion to Our Lady of Akita, Japan, right?
00:28:17.820 Because in 1973, Our Lady appeared to Sister Sasagawa, and this was approved by the bishop there, Bishop Ito.
00:28:26.220 But what a lot of Catholics may not be aware of is that in the message of Our Lady of Akita, Our Lady says to her that you should follow your spiritual director.
00:28:37.280 So that's an endorsement from the Mother of God.
00:28:42.600 And who was her spiritual director?
00:28:44.620 Well, Bishop Ito appointed Father Thomas Yasuda.
00:28:47.760 He wrote a lot about the apparition because he was a witness to the miraculous lacrimations, the tears that came from the statue of Our Lady of Akita.
00:29:00.360 Human tears coming from a wooden statue 101 times.
00:29:04.280 And by the way, that has a connection to Our Lady as co-redemptrix and mediatrix of all graces, but that's a discussion for another day.
00:29:14.140 But Father Yasuda wrote a book that was published in 2001.
00:29:18.040 It has not been translated into English.
00:29:20.180 But in the original Japanese, we are reliably informed by a Franciscan priest who recently did a YouTube video about this.
00:29:29.800 We have what he actually said.
00:29:32.200 And what Father Yasuda said is apparently somehow connected to the message of Our Lady of Akita.
00:29:38.920 He says that Judas and the last Pope are to sell Jesus to the enemy.
00:29:47.620 Therefore, the era of Antichrist Pope will come soon. 0.89
00:29:52.580 And then recently, you had Father Paul Kramer on your show.
00:29:56.720 I'm not sure if Father Kramer brought this up, but in a newsletter from, I guess, a couple of years ago, Father Kramer adds that Father Yasuda purportedly also said the following.
00:30:09.920 Make sure your seatbelt is securely fastened.
00:30:12.340 If these quotes are correctly attributed to Father Yasuda, Father Yasuda was one of these saintly souls.
00:30:35.980 When he died in December of 2013, hospital staff in Japan recorded the fact that they smelled an inexplicable smell of, like, lilies and roses at his deathbed.
00:30:49.740 They didn't have natural explanation for that.
00:30:52.360 So, I do believe the saints have tried to prepare us for this situation so that we act with the zeal of the saints and imitate their example.
00:31:06.680 Beautiful.
00:31:07.160 One of the other things that I think comes in your book is about Father Malachi Martin.
00:31:11.800 I did have one of his biographers on the show before talking about him.
00:31:17.200 Fascinating history.
00:31:18.900 Former Jesuit, of course, exposed the Jesuits.
00:31:21.540 You know, made a cardinal in the church secretly and went behind the Iron Curtain, was arrested, tortured, etc., etc.
00:31:27.940 But how does he come into play?
00:31:31.700 There is a quote from him.
00:31:33.080 He's talking before an audience in Detroit in 1990, saying that we may have to face an apostate pope.
00:31:39.800 So, well, I found another quote from Malachi, and this was when he was with, as you know, he did interviews not simply with Art Bell on secular radio, but with Bernard Jansen.
00:31:58.720 I think Mr. Jansen still actually has those on tape for those that want to buy that.
00:32:05.160 But one of those interviews from, I guess it was 1994, it was The Shoes of the Fishermen.
00:32:14.100 So Malachi Martin talking to Bernard Jansen.
00:32:17.460 The present situation, concentrating on the church, John Paul II got, and the policy he formulated.
00:32:24.460 He still maintains the facade.
00:32:26.980 He still welcomes the bishops for their ad limina visits.
00:32:30.000 He still treats them as if they were doing their duty, knowing they are not doing their duty, knowing some of them are plotting against him, knowing some of them want him to resign before his time and get out so that they can elect a man after their own heart who will be an antipope. 0.82
00:32:50.720 So this is from 1994, Malachi Martin, trying to give us a hint, as it were, what was going to happen.
00:33:00.200 One thing that is going to come up and that always does is, wait, wait, what do we do then?
00:33:07.600 I thought we were promised that, you know, the gates of hell will not prevail, that the church will always stand.
00:33:16.340 This seems to be the church has fallen.
00:33:19.420 It's gone.
00:33:20.700 What do you have to answer to that?
00:33:22.580 The fact of the matter is, is that there have been periods in church history.
00:33:26.420 I just gave you an example where there was an antipope, apparently, sitting on the throne of Rome for eight years.
00:33:32.060 And there have been interregnums where there was no pope for three years.
00:33:37.500 Malachi Martin said that the church would have to go underground.
00:33:41.080 And other holy people have told us, I think it was Father, not Father Paul Kramer, but Father Bernard Kramer, in a book that he wrote, I guess it was the 1950s, on the Book of Revelation.
00:33:57.100 And he says that there will be a time, and we don't know how long that time will last, but the faithful will be without the strength of the papacy, and we'll just have to buy our time and pray, and God will guide us.
00:34:16.380 St. Paul in 2 Thessalonians says, you know what is holding back the lawless one, the Antichrist.
00:34:24.280 And he told them not to get upset, because we know that the Antichrist and the end times are not going to come until the catacomb stops holding back the power of the Antichrist.
00:34:37.520 In my other book, The Third Secret of Fatima and the Synodal Church, Pope Benedict's resignation, I have a chapter where I examine what the doctors of the church and the saints have had to say about who the catacomb might be.
00:34:51.640 And the catacomb may be the papacy. If for the last three years we haven't actually had a valid pope, that should not shake our faith, because it's been predicted in Scripture that when the catacomb stops restraining,
00:35:06.100 it's a Greek word which means to stand fast or to hold fast, that is when the power of Antichrist and lawlessness is going to make itself known.
00:35:14.940 And quite frankly, it is the last three years when it seems like all hell has broken loose on the Tiber River there.
00:35:21.500 It's very interesting because you don't date it to Bergoglio's election, but you date it to the time that Benedict dies, which is very interesting.
00:35:34.100 And it's true, there was sort of a spike in heretical activity after the fact.
00:35:42.320 That's when we came out with the re-script on Traditiones Custodis to make sure everybody knew it's going to be as hardcore as I'll get out.
00:35:50.200 That's when we came out with Fiducius Supplicans, and you had this massive controversy.
00:35:56.140 So yeah, it's very, very interesting indeed.
00:36:00.040 Final thoughts for us, Ed. Thank you so much for all your time.
00:36:02.060 Give us both your final thoughts and where people can pick up the book.
00:36:06.020 Yes, well, people can pick up the book at Amazon, or they can go to my website, edmundmazza.com.
00:36:13.320 I offer online courses in church history and Marian apparitions and the latest controversies.
00:36:19.620 I've got a course right now on Jews, Muslims, and Catholics, so nothing controversial there, so they can get the book there also.
00:36:27.220 Final thoughts is that God has given us the example of the saints and the intercessory power of the saints, and we are going to get through this.
00:36:37.780 And Our Lady has promised that in the end, her immaculate heart will triumph.
00:36:42.040 And so we need to be praying our rosary, we need to be doing what we can according to the duties of our state of life, and just being informed.
00:36:50.660 And again, people will be surprised what the saints actually did with apparent antipodes.
00:36:57.260 It is true.
00:36:58.000 We're not walking toward defeat.
00:37:00.820 We're actually walking toward the triumph of the immaculate heart.
00:37:04.440 So there's lots of heart to have.
00:37:06.980 And since we've now entered into Lent, it's good.
00:37:11.000 Now is the time of year we put on our battle armaments to face whatever comes.
00:37:16.100 Ed Mazza, thank you so much for being with us.
00:37:17.660 God bless you.
00:37:18.920 God bless you, Dad.
00:37:19.660 And God bless all of you.
00:37:21.200 And we'll see you next time.
00:37:21.980 Hi, I'm Liz Yor.
00:37:27.820 I'm really urging all the audience to continue to follow LifeSite News for all information, news about life, for a great perspective on all the breaking news in the world.
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