(Note well, his base premise is false. The Bergoglian conclave of 2013 was invalid because the true Pope yet lived, and never validly resigned. But this is quite an essay, reprinted here for the record. -nvp)
An open letter from
Professor Dr. phil. habil. Josef Maria Seifert
Kartäuserstraße 16/6
3292 Gaming, N.Ö.
Austria
To His Eminence Cardinal Dean Gian Battista Re
Gaming, April 24, 2025
On the Need to Examine before the next Conclave the Formal Accusation of Heresy launched by Archbishop Viganò (and supported by many distinguished theologians, jurists and philosophers world-wide) against Pope Francis
Your Eminence, dear Cardinal Dean Giovanni Battista Re,
Most cordial Greetings in Christ. I address myself to you, dear and highly revered Cardinal Dean Re, because You alone now hold the authority to let an investigation of the accusation of heresy brought up against Pope Francis, take place before the upcoming Conclave.
You hold until the election of the next Pope the highest authority in the Catholic Church, will invite, in union with the Camerlengo Kevin Joseph Cardinal Farrell, the qualified Cardinals of the whole world under the age of 80 to elect the new Pope and can determine the date of the next Conclave.
I make my letter to you an open letter because of the short time that remains to settle issues of extreme importance and urgency.
I discovered through the text J’accuse of archbishop Viganò two – through the solemn invocation of the See of Peter and their declaration of being valid for all times – probably dogmatic and certainly most authoritative pontifical documents on the issue of “heretical Bishops, Cardinals and Popes” by Pope Paul IV and St. Pius V.
These texts seem to me to be of the highest importance for the Church at the present moment.
They solemnly demand that the Church proceed with an examination of accusations of Papal heresy.
Simply to have excommunicated an archbishop because he exactly acted as a prominent and a Holy Pope demanded solemnly to act when faced with a Pope who adhered to Heresies prior to, during and after his election to the Papacy, is, I think, gravely wrong and unjust. These charges should first have been examined, and if true, absolutely no punishment is proper for bringing them forth.
I think the Church owes it to an excommunicated archbishop and to at least four other persons excommunicated for the same reason, two Popes and to the faithful to address the firm insistence of Pope Paul IV that a Pope who professes heresy is no longer Pope and cannot demand any obedience, just as archbishop Viganò said, with the important aviso that the impropriety of any authority judging a Pope does not apply to a heretical Pope who just usurps the See of Peter but, in virtue of his heresy, is not truly Pope and has less authority in the Church than any orthodox Cardinal or bishop.
The crucial significance of ordering and completing this investigation prior to convening the next Conclave, resides in this:
The outcome of the next Papal election depends largely on the outcome of this investigation, because St. Pius V and Pope Paul IV decree that all nominations of Cardinals made by a heretical Pope are null. Thus, if the accusation of heresy prior to Pope Francis’s election, during and after it, prove to be correct, two thirds of the present college of Cardinals would be excluded from entering the Conclave. Therefore, the conclusion of this question needs to be reached before the next Conclave because otherwise the next Papal election is a priori invalid if it is not determined before whether the largest part of the members of the College of Cardinals are legitimate electors or not, and whether the future elected Pope belongs to the College of Cardinals or not.
Also two further strictly connected questions ought to be clarified before the upcoming Conclave:
1. whether the changes Pope Francis made of the rules governing Papal elections decreed by St. Pope John Paul II are valid or (if he was not a valid Pope) not, and
2. whether any of the Papal documents of Pope Francis are to remain in the Acta
Apostolica or removed from them (as Popes ST Pius V and Paul IV decreed for documents issued by a heretical Pope).
Popes St Pius V and Paul IV decreed and fixed for perpetual times: that all decisions, nominations and elevations of bishops and Cardinals and that all writings of a heretical Pope should be declared null.
According to these Papal documents and according to natural law, the Cardinals whom Pope Francis has chosen, cannot remain electors if the accusation of heresy or apostasy proves to be true.
I address myself to you, dear and highly revered Cardinal Re, because you alone, in union with the Camerlengo Kevin Joseph Cardinal Farrell, now hold the authority to let this investigation take place before the upcoming Conclave.
Since you, dear Cardinal, now, until the election of a new Pope, dispose over the supreme authority in the Church, you could take action immediately, determine the members of the jury among the Cardinals nominated by Popes prior to Pope Francis who would make a judgment on the question of heresy and validity of Pope Francis.
For this reason, I humbly urge you, dear Cardinal Dean, to exercise your authority in such a dramatic moment in the history of the Church, and to act on the authority of two Popes who demand such an action.
I think presently only you could be, comparable with St Athanasius, who, still Deacon, when confronted with the Arian crisis and a wavering Pope, was able, (in spite of his 2 excommunications during the process), to prepare the way for some Councils that condemned the Arian heresy, that, if accepted, would have been deadly for Christian faith. But the heresy that God wants the plurality of religions including non-Christian ones, and others attributed to Pope Francis are even more antithetical to true Christian faith than Arianism was.
Therefore, I suggest and humbly implore you that you ordain before the impending Conclave a just and fair examination of the many accusations of heresy and (in view of the Abu Dhabi declaration that God wanted the plurality of religions from Creation on, and of the Pacha Mama worship in the Vatican) also of possible apostasy of Pope Francis.
I think that by this action you could save the Church from a historically speaking unique confusion of catastrophic proportions.
You would stand on the firm ground of the documents of Paul IV and St. Pius V, both of whom taught solemnly that even if ALL CARDINALS HAD ELECTED THE POPE FREELY, HIS ELECTION WOULD BE NULLIFIED by heresies he defended before and after his election.
This has nothing to do with you acting against the Church or against the Pope: on the contrary, it is an act of supreme love for the Church and Francis: for IF the accusation of heresy, having been launched formally and informally by high doctrinal and theological authorities against Francis, will be found true in a due ecclesiastic process, the Church will confront the faithful with the truth (and already Socrates said in the Gorgias) that no more precious gift could be bestowed on a person than freeing him from an error. The chance to free Francis during his life-time of errors, has now, given his death, been missed. But if Pope Francis did hopefully revoke any error before his death and certainly recognizes them now, to condemn them and to free the Church’s doctrine from them, would still be an act of love for Pope Francis and above all for Jesus’s bride, the Church, freeing it from the tremendous evil of heresies.
I think that, if the accusation of heresy is true, a valid official verdict that Francis is a heretic and therefore was not a valid Pope, as has been done with regard to several Popes before, also posthumously, would be of greatest benefit for the future of the Church. For even if Pope Francis would have resigned his office, just as Pope Benedict XVI did, this would not at all have been enough to heal the terrible wound of a heretical Pope, because the destructive elements and poisonous fruits of his Pontificate would remain:
1. The Acta Apostolica would continue to contain uncondemned heresies.
2. Heretical moral teachings such as those expressed in AL would seemingly remain official Church teaching and seduce the faithful to commit grave sins.
3. Many other heretical remarks of the Pope that contradict directly the solemn words of Christ and Church dogmas would not be stricken from the corpus of Church teaching, such as:
a. Francis’s (private but repeated) “teaching” of an empty hell and the non-existence of eternal punishment,
b. the affirmation of an annihilation instead of eternal punishment of incurably grave sinners, a typical teaching of Jehovah’s Witnesses incompatible with several dogmas.
c. The sentence in the Abu Dhabi declaration of God willing from creation on the plurality of religions (including those that deny the divinity of Christ, the Holy Trinity, redemption through Christ alone, etc.) that is more apostatic than just heretical, would not be removed from the Acta Apostolica but remain prescribed to all Bishops and Rectors of seminaries in the world to teach in seminaries in the una, sancta, catholica et apostolica Ecclesia as part of the preparation of Seminarians for the holy orders. This apostatic sentence would remain in the eyes of the faithful “Church teaching” but is in reality not only un- or even anti-Catholic but also anti—Christian and this would do immense harm to faith and morals if left in the Acta Apostolica.
3. Besides, only if Francis, after the Church examining and condemning his heresies that are far, far worse than those of any previous Pope such as John XXII, were declared posthumously not to have been the true Pope, many actions the Pope took (Papal praise and celebration of reformation day, statue, stamp and praise of Luther; Pacha Mamma cult in St Peter; blessings of homosexual and adulterous couples, the false claim that through their conscience adulterous and remarried couples can know that God wants them to remain in the sin of adultery, rather than following the perpetual teaching of the Church on marriage expressed in Familiaris Consortio 83 etc., etc.), could no longer be considered legitimate Catholic actions and teachings, nor would his documents remain accepted as part of true Catholic teaching.
In consequence, according to Paul IV’s and St. Pope Pius Vth, in my estimation, infallible Papal teaching, likewise Francis’ having nominated 80 % of Cardinal-electors (who will, humanly speaking, be likely to elect a Pope that might continue teaching the heresies of Francis) will be retracted and cease to remain a horrible threat to the upcoming Conclave and election of a new Pope.
For all these reasons, dear Cardinal Gianbattista Re, I implore you in the name of Jesus Christ, of his and our beloved mother who kills all heresies, and in the name of St. Joseph, the terror daemonum, to consider whether you might not be called to help freeing the Church from the mentioned evils.
I ask you on my knees to examine whether God does not call you, in his name and that of Jesus Christ, to become a human instrument of saving the Church from the abyss toward which it seems to be rushing.
This step seems to me the only right one, and the negative results it could provoke, the actual occurring of a division in the Church between the Bergoglio-Church and the true Church would be a much lesser evil than a tranquil church of disorder plunged into error; in fact, it would be a true blessing because it would lead to a revival of the true UNA, SANCTA, CATOLICA ET APOSTOLICA ECCLESIA founded UPON THE TRUTH. I am also sure that countless Catholics would welcome this step.
I pray that you, dear Cardinal, in this exceedingly important point in Church History, will receive the fullest grace of the Holy Spirit and have the full fortitude that will make you capable to undertake whatever dangerous mission HE wants from you, whether this be what I think it is or something entirely else that you will learn from the Holy Spirit directly in prayer and meditation.
Therefore, dear Cardinal Gian Batista Re, may you imitate, in a weaker, human way the glorious St. Michael and perform a human shadow of his fight against the devil in heaven, smaller but in some respects of no lesser value than his angelic action.
Lastly: without a Saintly dignitary of the Church preserving the doctrine of the Church from being sullied by Papal heresy, I am afraid only a direct intervention of Jesus or his blessed mother, can save the ship of the Holy Church from sinking into a hellish abyss of error, confusion and destruction, which God swore never to allow.
But I think, as St. Ignatius said, God wants us to believe that everything depends on God, but to act as if everything depended on us. Aided by His grace, let us take up the armor of the Holy Spirit and fight the powers of darkness, with St Michael and his heavenly host of holy angels, Maria, Queen of all Saints, under the protection of St. Joseph, terror daemonum.
In the love of Jesus who gave His Life for the Church and shed his holy blood for all of us, and whom I want to serve with all my heart and as humble servant to your far more perfect service to Him and the Holy Church,
In Christo Mariaque
Yours in Christ
Josef Seifert
Strangely enough, none of the multiple calls of different groups of theologians and philosophers for Francis’ resignation, except for J’accuse, cites these two most authoritative pontifical documents on the issue of “heretical Bishops, Cardinals and Popes”.
Though I thought “a priori” that such documents must exist and was searching for them for a few years, I owe my knowledge of these two probably dogmatic and at any rate crucially important Church documents solely to archbishop Viganò.
There is a complete (and in the present situation tragic) lack in CANON LAW, as far as I can see, of applying the teaching of these two Popes concretely. But now, after his death, there is no problem at all but a clear duty of the Church to investigate whether these accusations of heresy and (in the claim hat God wanted from creation on the multiplicity of religions including those which deny the most central truths of Christ’s Revelation) apostasy are justified or not.