Faré claimed Benedict didn’t properly resign from the papacy and remained pope until his death in 2022.
The priest also charged that Pope Francis was doubtfully elected and Benedict intentionally didn’t resign.
Francis is not the pope
Faré opened his sermon by explaining that in recent years, he has spent a great amount of time discerning the state of the Church and after much prayer and reflection, he has come to an uncomfortable conclusion.
“[A] priest must choose whether to preach what Sacred Scripture and the Church have always taught or to adhere to what the so-called Pope Francis teaches in his ordinary magisterium. Yes, you understood correctly. I said the so-called Pope Francis. What I am telling you today… is that for over eleven years, a man recognized as Pope by the majority has been sitting on the Chair of Peter, but he is not, however, the legitimate Pope,” Faré said.
Benedict’s resignation was invalid
Faré then dove into why he believed Pope Benedict’s resignation was invalid, namely that it was a declaration, not a formal abdication, and it lacked the act of resignation.
“The formula: ‘I declare to renounce,’ in legal terms, is not the same as saying, ‘I renounce.’ The Pope [Benedict] should have said, ‘I declare to renounce, as in fact, I renounce,’ or a similar formula. As it was pronounced, Benedict XVI’s declaration is, in fact, only a declaration, not a legally valid act, nor was it followed by any ratification.”
The priest then underscored that Benedict chose the title Declaratio, or “Declaration,” for his official resignation instead of “resignation” or “abdication.”
Faré added that Benedict’s resignation lacked the will to renounce the papacy. The priest highlighted that in his original Latin declaration, Benedict used the term ministerium, which refers to the visible execution of the papal office.
But, citing Canon 332 §2 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, Faré claims that for the resignation to be valid, he would have needed to resign from the munus, the “office” of the papacy.
Francis is a heretic whose election is doubtful
Circling back to Francis, Faré claimed his 2013 election is doubtful because a coalition of four radically liberal Cardinals, who are allegedly members of the St. Gallen Mafia: Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Walter Kasper, Godfried Danneels, and Karl Lehmann, conspired for years to make Francis the pope in order to start a revolution in the Church. The priest added that this alleged conspiracy would violate articles 79-82 of Pope John Paul II’s motu proprio on electing a new pontiff, Universi Dominici Gregis.
The priest also stressed that he believes Pope Francis is a heretic and cited several heretical statements and promulgations, such as in Amoris Laetitia, in which Francis opened the door to allowing couples in adulterous relationships to receive Holy Communion, the Abu Dhabi Declaration, in which Francis said that the “diversity of religions” is “willed by God,” and Francis’s recent statement to an inter-religious meeting in Singapore that “every religion is a way to arrive at God.”
But Faré emphasized that he believes Francis is an antipope first because Benedict’s resignation was invalid, not because he is a heretic. Francis’s heresies instead serve as evidence that Benedict did not resign from the papacy, according to Faré.
“This legal fact has theological repercussions: without a valid election, the consequent lack of divine investiture means that Bergoglio lacks the assistance of the Holy Spirit. If he were the Pope, he would be assisted by the Holy Spirit, like every Roman Pontiff, not only when pronouncing ex-cathedra but also in the ordinary magisterium.”
Benedict knew his resignation was invalid
Faré further posited that Benedict planned on making his resignation invalid, which is why, in his declaratio, he wrote, “I renounce,” instead of “I declare to renounce,” and resigned from the ministerium and not the munus. The priest noted that Benedict likely took this action because he knew of the St. Gallen Mafia’s plans.
“The Pope thus found himself at a crossroads: either allow an antipope to be secretly elected upon his death or attempt a strategy to foil the enemies of the Church by issuing a declaration with no legal effect. Incidentally, I point out that — even after the Declaratio — an invalid Conclave could have been avoided. The Cardinals who noticed the anomalies in the Declaratio… could have immediately raised the issue and prevented a Conclave from being convened. This did not happen, so it is important to note that the actual responsibility for what happened should not be placed on Benedict XVI but, rather, primarily on those who understood and remained silent in bad faith.”
The priest then suggested that Benedict left several more clues that he retained the papal office after the conclave for the Church’s prelates to pick up on and take appropriate action, such as using the title “Pope Emeritus,” continuing to wear his white cassock, and retaining his papal coat of arms.
Other theories on whether Francis is the pope
Over the years, several other Catholic prelates and thinkers have suggested that Francis is not the pope, including Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who has posited that Francis lacked the necessary intention to become pope.
Viganò has also called for an official investigation into Pope Benedict’s resignation and the 2013 conclave due to apparent irregularities. Others, too, have said Francis’ past statements and promulgations disqualify him from being a true pope regardless of the nature of Benedict’s resignation.
On the other hand, Bishop Athanasius Schneider has stated that “nobody has the power to judge Francis’s status as pope” because previous writings about a pope becoming a heretic, such as St. Robert Bellarmine’s, are only opinions, not doctrine, and that there is no one within the Church who has the power to declare him a heretic.
“[I]n the case of a heretical pope, the members of the Church can avoid
him, resist him, refuse to obey him, all of which can be done without
requiring a theory or opinion that says that a heretical pope
automatically loses his office or can be deposed consequently,”
Schneider wrote.