TLDR: On 14 Feb 1130, a small number of Cardinals assembled a Conclave in secret and elected Innocent II. Later that day, the full college assembled and elected (antipope) Anacletus II. While the first Conclave was obviously illicit and non-canonical, it yet produced a valid pope, backed by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Doctor of the Church. Perhaps this is an option today, but they better hurry.
Above: St. Bernard supported the controversial conclave.
The Non-Canonical Conclave that Worked
As Bishop Joseph Strickland has warned the cardinal-electors:
If a public heretic, or a man who is reasonably suspected of being a public heretic, receives sufficient votes, faithful cardinals have an obligation to refuse to accept the validity of his election…
Your Eminence, if a false pontiff is presented to the world as the pope, I fear that many more souls will be lost. All those cardinals who consent to his invalid election will share that responsibility with him.
In the face of such an imminent danger, is there truly nothing that can be done except to bemoan and bewail after the fait accompli?
I believe there is.
I believe that Church history provides us a solution—perhaps the only solution—to this desperate situation.
In the early hours of February 14, 1130, Pope Honorius died. A handful of cardinals fearing the election of a particular candidate who might sully the Bride of Christ, dispensed with canon law and elected one of their own as Pope without even informing the rest of the college that the current Pontiff was dead. The new Pope was consecrated in the Lateran Basilica and took the name “Innocent II.”
When the rest of the cardinals learned about these early morning machinations, they immediately held their own conclave that afternoon, electing and consecrating “Pope Anacletus II.” Anacletus received the support of the majority of cardinals, clergy and lay people of Rome and after fighting in the streets between supporters of both claimants, Innocent fled Rome. Anacletus, on the other hand ruled from Rome for eight years, excommunicating Innocent and his supporters. But Innocent found a powerful protector in St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the greatest figure of twelfth-century Europe. The Cistercian abbot was a one-man dynamo in the cause of restoring Innocent to the Chair of Peter. The saint coaxed and cajoled the King of France, the King of England, and the Holy Roman Emperor in Germany along with scores of bishops and abbots into supporting Innocent as the rightful Pope until, in the end, only the Norman King of Sicily maintained his allegiance to Anacletus.
In 1138, Anacletus died, and St. Bernard then managed to convince his Roman successor to step down in favor of Innocent. Innocent then proceeded to convoke an ecumenical council of the Church, the Second Lateran Council in which he declared Anacletus an antipope and annulled all his actions.
How can this long forgotten episode in Church history provide a solution to our own impending disaster? Simply this. If the secret conclave in violation of canon law which produced Innocent II was subsequently validated and approved—why can’t the good cardinals of the Church do the same thing today? Why shouldn’t Cardinals Burke, Sarah, Muller et al not hold their own preemptive conclave and announce one of their own as the new Pope “Pius XIII” in order to avert an apostate from becoming “Francis II”? Possession is 9/10 of the law. Will all the heterodox bishops and the fake news media cry “schism”? Of course they will. But if world leaders like President Trump, Xavier Milei of Argentina and Giorgia Meloni of Italy, as well as faithful media backed the Traditional Pope (as did the Kings of Christendom 900 years ago) all that would matter is that he ultimately prevails even if the struggle took years as it did in Innocent’s case. As doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus Ligouri teaches:
It makes no difference that in past ages some Pope was illegitimately elected or fraudulently usurped the Pontificate. It is sufficient that he be afterwards accepted by the whole Church, for by such acceptance, he is made the true and legitimate Pontiff.[1]
[1] St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Verita Della Fede, Part III, Ch. VIII
https://onepeterfive.com/the-non-canonical-conclave-that-worked/
Taylor Marshall points out, the Vatican is in a bad way – financially: https://x.com/TaylorRMarshall/status/1919454611615650042
Bringing us back to the idea that there can be no Cardinals, no wealthy-worldly Church, unless the faithful do their faith-fulling. *Money* may yet motivate the Bergoglio cardinals to choose a decent Pope. (Unless their time has arrived to go plain Antichrist.)
You hear conspiracy theories about good guys who have secretly gained control of the world from the bad guys who were secretly in control of the world.
I know the theories are too wild. But sometimes, I have to wonder. In this context, I’m reminded that Marco Rubio is a Catholic re-vert, and JD Vance a Catholic convert; who together (under Trump) recently cancelled vast sums of money that had been going out the door via USAID & Catholic Charities, to Bergoglio’s version of the Vatican. Which would add to the Vatican’s financial woes & pressure to choose someone decent.
Trump, Milei and Meloni? Not likely – they would go with the establishment Church candidate if they even deigned to get involved. You’d have higher chances getting backing from Putin or Xi.
We are not blessed with the kings of old.
“In Portugal the dogmas of the faith will always be preserved… etc.”
Has to mean something. Something too frightening for those in Rome to bury it.
Maybe that conclave will occur in Portugal, or the Pope flees Rome to go there?
If we wind up with multiple papal claimants again, I’ll bet that odds are the guy who finally consecrates Russia properly and achieves miraculous results is the real one.
Pay attention to the bishop dressed in white who merely looked like the Holy Father, who reigns during the Great Apostasy where in some hamlet like Fatima (and not Rome?) the dogmas of the faith are preserved.
My only question is who Francis if not the False Prophet. If he was the False Prophet where are the signs and wonders?