Antipope “Francis” (Jorge Bergoglio) is a heretic and an apostate, and therefore not a member of the Catholic Church. Thus, he cannot be the Pope.
The author of this article believes that the resignation of Benedict XVI was invalid, which he has written about in this article. However, even if Jorge Bergoglio would have been validly elected a pope, he would already have lost his office due to his, public formal heresy.
Who is a heretic?
A heretic is someone who is baptized (that is, is a Christian), but does not believe in at least one dogma of the Catholic Church.
A formal heretic is someone who knows and understands properly the actual teaching of the Church and then rejects it. The opposite is a material heretic.
Someone who is a formal heretic, loses his membership in the Church. This is based on the teaching of the Bible. “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.” (Galatians 1:8) “A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid: Knowing that he, that is such an one, is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment.” (Titus 3:10-11)
It was also stated often in Church history, that a pope is no exception to this rule. In order to save space, we will only use one quote here. St. Alphonsus Liguori, an 18th century bishop and Doctor of the Church, said: “We answer, that if ever a pope as a private person would fall into heresy, then he would immediately fall from the papacy; for since he would be outside the Church, he could no longer be the head of the Church. Whence in that case the Church would have to not in fact depose him, because no one has power over the pope, but declare him to have fallen from the pontificate.” (Vindiciae pro suprema pontificis potestate adversus Iustinum Febronium, Torino, 1832, p. 142, quoted here)
Amoris Laetitia
In March 2016, Bergoglio released Amoris Laetitia (AL), a “postsynodal apostolic exhortation” about marriage. This is a very complex topic, so we can only touch the surface. In Amoris Laetitia, Bergoglio proposed multiple heretical ideas. In the infamous chapter 8, he claimed that sexual relations between divorced and remarried people can in some cases be God’s will. He also allowed access of the divorced and remarried to the Sacraments. Professor Josef Seifert, a Catholic philosopher, called the document “a moral theological atomic bomb that threatens to tear down the whole moral edifice of the 10 commandments and of Catholic Moral Teaching” (here, p. 5.) He was fired by his bishop.
One of the most egregious heresies in AL is paragraph 303, which comes after a discussion of divorce and a new marriage, and it reads: “Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal. In any event, let us recall that this discernment is dynamic; it must remain ever open to new stages of growth and to new decisions which can enable the ideal to be more fully realized.” In other words, the “objective ideal” is a life of continence. If one cannot do that, then the current “most generous response” can be the will of God. That is, God wills adultery. This is of course blasphemy.
Many bishops, priests and theologians publicly corrected Bergoglio on the topic of Amoris Laetitia, but he refused to accept correction, making him a formal heretic.
On September 5, 2016, the bishops of the Buenos Aires Pastoral Region published their guidelines for the “application of chapter VII” of Amoris Laetitia. Bergoglio wrote back an “Apostolic Letter”. He stated that “[t]he writing is very good and explains the meaning of chapter VII of Amoris laetitia completely. There are no other interpretations.” Both the Argentinian letter and Bergoglio’s response have been published in the October 2016 edition of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, which is the official Vatican gazette. (original Spanish in the AAS)
The dubia
On September 19, 2016 four Cardinals (Raymond Burke, Walter Brandmüller, Joachim Meisner, Carlo Caffarra) have sent a letter with five dubia to Bergoglio. A dubium (doubt) is a question requiring a yes-or-no answer, which is normally posed to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.
The dubia can be summarized as (read the full text here):
After AL 300-305, can an absolution be granted to someone, who is in a valid marriage, but has sexual relations with someone else?
After AL 304, can one say that there are “absolute moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts and that are binding without exceptions”?
After AL 301, can one say that someone who “habitually lives in contradiction to a commandment of God’s law” is “in an objective situation of grave habitual sin”?
After AL 302, which talks about “circumstances which mitigate moral responsibility” can one still uphold John Paul II’s teaching that “circumstances or intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act ‘subjectively’ good or defensible” (Veritatis Splendor 81)?
After AL 303, is Veritatis Splendor 56, which teaches one can never refer to conscience to legitimize “exceptions to absolute moral norms”, still valid?
To this day, there has been no response to the dubia. Meisner and Caffarra both died in 2017.
The Correctio filialis
In 2017, Catholic priests, deacons, theologians and scholars published a document called “Correctio Filialis de haeresibus propagatis” (“Filial Correction of the spread heresies”). In this document, the authors list and discuss seven heresies contained in Amoris Laetitia. They can be summarized as:
- “A justified person has not the strength with God’s grace to carry out the objective demands of the divine law”.
- Christians who are validly married, get divorced, have a new partner with whom they have sexual relations, are not necessarily in mortal sin.
- “A Christian believer can have full knowledge of a divine law and voluntarily choose to break it in a serious matter, but not be in a state of mortal sin as a result”.
- “A person is able, while he obeys a divine prohibition, to sin against God by that very act of obedience.”
- One’s conscience can decide rightly that sexual acts between divorced and remarried are “morally right” or even the will of God.
- The moral law contains no absolute prohibitions on actions, which are “always gravely unlawful on account of their object”.
- Christ wants His Church to change its teaching about the divorced and remarried.
These heresies are to be found in paragraphs 295-301, 303-305, 308, 311 of AL.
Again, Bergoglio did not correct the heresies in Amoris Laetitia.
Other corrections
On January 18, 2017 Tomash Peta, Archbishop of Astana in Kazakhstan, his auxiliary, Athanasius Schneider and the emeritus Archbishop Jan Pawel Lenga have published an “Appeal to Prayer”. The subtitle was: “That Pope Francis may confirm the unchanging praxis of the Church with regard to the truth of the indissolubility of marriage.” These bishops reaffirmed the Catholic teaching on marriage and called on Bergoglio to revoke “in an unequivocal manner the aforementioned pastoral guidelines which are already introduced in several particular churches”.
On December 31, 2017, those same bishops published another document called “Profession of the immutable truths about sacramental marriage”. They say that they want to “profess in the face of the current rampant confusion the unchanging truth […] regarding the indissolubility of marriage” and that giving Communion to the divorced and remarried is “a discipline alien to the entire Tradition of the Catholic and Apostolic faith”. Seven other bishops have also signed this document, including Cardinal Janis Pujats, Archbishop emeritus of Riga, Luigi Negri, Archbishop emeritus of Ferrara-Comacchio and Andreas Laun, emeritus auxiliary bishop of Salzburg.
In light of all these public corrections, it is very hard to maintain that Bergoglio would somehow be guiltless and his heresy only material.
Actual teaching about marriage
When it comes to marriage, Pius XI has in his encyclical Casti conubii beautifully described the teaching of the Church:
“61. […] No difficulty can arise that justifies the putting aside of the law of God which forbids all acts intrinsically evil. There is no possible circumstance in which husband and wife cannot, strengthened by the grace of God, fulfill faithfully their duties and preserve in wedlock their chastity unspotted. This truth of Christian Faith is expressed by the teaching of the Council of Trent. ‘Let no one be so rash as to assert that which the Fathers of the Council have placed under anathema, namely, that there are precepts of God impossible for the just to observe. God does not ask the impossible, but by His commands, instructs you to do what you are able, to pray for what you are not able that He may help you.’[48]
This same doctrine was again solemnly repeated and confirmed by the Church in the condemnation of the Jansenist heresy which dared to utter this blasphemy against the goodness of God: ‘Some precepts of God are, when one considers the powers which man possesses, impossible of fulfillment even to the just who wish to keep the law and strive to do so; grace is lacking whereby these laws could be fulfilled.’[49]”
Apostasy in Singapore
During his “apostolic visit” to Singapore, he made the following remarks to a group of students:
“If we start to fight amongst ourselves and say ‘my religion is more important than yours, my religion is true, yours is not,’ where will that lead us? Where? It’s okay to discuss [between religions].
Every religion is a way to arrive at God. There are different languages to arrive at God, but God is God for all. And how is God God for all? We are all sons and daughters of God. But my god is more important than your god, is that true?
There is only one God and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, they are different paths.”
On the Vatican website, the statement was at first falsified (“[r]eligions are seen as paths trying to reach God” instead of “every religion is a way to arrive at God”), then corrected.
This is clear apostasy. Our Lord Jesus Christ stated: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6) If one believes that all religions lead to God, that is, all religions are true religions, one has completely abandoned Christ.
Bergoglio has doubled down on his apostasy. On September 17, he told a meeting of young people: “Unity is not uniformity, and the diversity of your cultural and religious identities is a gift of God. Unity in diversity.”
A few days later, he doubled down again, he told an interreligious meeting in Paris that we should “allow ourselves to be guided by the divine inspiration present in every faith”.
Archbishop Viganò said it well: “Bergoglio, with his ungodly statements addressed to young people in Singapore that “all religions are a path to God,” offends the Majesty of God, betrays Divine Revelation, tramples on the principal Mysteries of our Faith and nullifies the redeeming Sacrifice of the Son of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ. His lying words are particularly insidious because they are addressed to the new generations, whom Bergoglio deceives into believing that it is possible to be saved without recognizing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Only Savior, and that His Church is the only ark of salvation. I am the door (Jn. 10:9) said Our Lord of Himself. To deny this truth is to apostatize from the Faith and to trample on the Cross. To do so from the highest Threshold is a scandal of unprecedented gravity, surpassed only by the fearful or complicit silence of the majority of the Episcopate.”
In Bergoglio’s office, there is a picture of a painting, where a naked Jesus ministers to a dead Judas. The image first appeared 2021 in the Maundy Thursday edition of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. Later, Bergoglio said that the picture was in his office. It was first seen in a video from February 2024. (Lifesitenews article)