(LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò delivered an address to the “Is the Pope Catholic?” conference this past weekend forcefully stating that Jorge Maria Bergoglio is a “false prophet” who fits the description of the one spoken of by the prophet Daniel during the time of the “final persecution” of the Church, to whom no Catholic owes “any” obedience or collaboration but rather steadfast resistance.
“We are … far beyond heresy,” His Excellency declared. “[St. Robert] Bellarmine could never have imagined that an emissary of Freemasonry could go so far as to be elected pope with the purpose of demolishing the Church from within, usurping and abusing the very power of the papacy itself against the papacy. Nor could he have imagined that a hypothetical pope would surpass mere heresy and embrace all-out apostasy.”
Organized by Dr. Edmund Mazza, the online event was streamed on YouTube on Saturday, December 9. It featured an array of speakers discussing whether or not Francis is actually the pope, a topic that Archbishop Viganò noted has emerged after a decade of “[Bergoglian] horrors” that are “worse than those we have witnessed in the last sixty years.”
Liz Yore, co-host of LifeSite’s Faith & Reason show, addressed the conference as well. Fr. Paul Kramer and blogger Ann Barnhardt also appeared. Kramer has written multiple books on the subject, including, “On the True and False Pope: The Case Against Bergoglio.”
Archbishop Viganò’s 50-minute message (which was cut down, Mazza told LifeSite, to 34 minutes for the stream) is a powerful assessment of the state of the Church today. He also touched on current events in Gaza, calling out the “heresy” of Zionism while mentioning Epstein Island and the “blackmail” Israeli intelligence officials hold over politicians to control them. Ultimately, however, his address served as a response to critics of his statements on the papacy in recent months.
“We have all sorts of hair-splitting about the distinctions between formal and material heresy, none of which do the least thing to impede Bergoglio’s destructive action,” Viganò, who recently started a house of formation in Italy for future priests, remarked. “We cannot behave as if we were resolving a question of a point of Canon Law. No. The Lord is being outraged, the Church is being humiliated, and souls are being lost because a usurper remains on the Throne.”
At the same time, he said that “what we cannot do, because we do not have the authority, is to officially declare that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not Pope. The terrible impasse in which we find ourselves makes any human solution impossible.”
His Excellency made similar remarks in his “Vitium Consensus” message on October 1. At the time, Viganò argued that Catholics should consider the possibility that Jorge Bergoglio obtained the office of the papacy with a “criminal intention” to “carry out a coup d’état within the Church and bring the prophet of the Antichrist to the Throne of Peter.” He doubled down on those remarks Saturday by mentioning that a “Luciferian intelligence” is at work.
“We know that John Podesta was working on behalf of Hillary Clinton and Obama – and the globalist elite in general – to promote a ‘colored revolution’ within the Church that was supposed to oust Benedict XVI from the papacy, elect an ultra-progressive pope, and substantially modify the Catholic Magisterium by making it accept the demands of the Agenda 2030: gender equality, the introduction of gender ideology and LGBTQ+ doctrine, the democratization of Church governance, collaboration in the neo-Malthusian project of the Great Reset, cooperation on immigrationism, and cancel culture,” he stated.
“It seems clear to me that this subversive project has found perfect realization in the appointment of Bergoglio – and I use the word ‘appointment’ deliberately – and that it is confirmed by his consistent pattern of acts of governance and magisterial teaching, both public and private, over the course of this most inauspicious decade.”
Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan and Professor Roberto de Mattei of the Lepanto Institute have also issued public statements (here and here) expressing disagreement with various aspects of Viganò’s arguments. Both have taken issue with different aspects of his claim that Francis’s intentions (and actions) invalidate his papacy and that the “acceptance” of him by the Church as the pope following the 2013 conclave is not sufficient to resolve his actual status.
“His heterogeneity to the papacy is now evident and perceived both by the simple faithful as well as by a large part of the clergy, and even by certain fringes of the media,” Viganò recalled Saturday. “The consensus and support for the Argentine Jesuit comes significantly from the ultra-progressive and pro-heretical wing that sponsored his election: all notorious members of the deep church and closely-linked to the homosexual and pedophile lobby of the deep state.”
“The objection that accusing the ‘reigning Pontiff’ of heresy or apostasy could cause division and scandal is belied by the evidence of the division and scandal that is already widely present in the ecclesial body precisely because of Bergoglio’s heresy and apostasy,” he continued.
“The intention to harm the Church by acting on behalf of an enemy power is not compatible with the acceptance of the papacy, and there is therefore a defect of consent given by the will of the one elected – confirmed by his words and deeds over the last ten years.”
On July 1 of this year, Archbishop Viganò established the Exsurge Domine organization. Viganò has subsequently founded Exsurge Domine USA to assist religious and clergy who live in America. You can visit their website here.
During his remarks Saturday, Archbishop Viganò alluded to the writings of St. Robert Bellarmine. Bellarmine, a Jesuit, was born in the 16th century and is a Doctor of the Church. His De Romano Pontifice is often referenced for its theories on how a pope could lose his office for teaching heresy. His Excellency said that although many Catholics can see the chaos being sown by the Vatican today, they are not drawing the necessary conclusions.
“For them, it is permissible to criticize Bergoglio, but only on the condition that one never criticizes the conciliar idol [Vatican II], the untouchable fetish of the Montinians.”
“Bergoglio’s heresy and apostasy” is “the tip of the iceberg of a much worse and more widespread crisis of the Hierarchy and of the Clergy that began sixty years ago and has now almost reached its peak,” Viganò also explained. Vatican II was “rightly defined by its own architects as ‘the 1789 of the Church.’ John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI did not fail to emphasize how the revolutionary and Masonic principles – liberté, égalité, fraternité – could in some way be shared and made their own by Catholicism.”
Viganò again reiterated that “we are not dealing with a situation where a pope adheres to one specific heresy (which, moreover, Bergoglio has done repeatedly).” Rather, “no Doctor of the Church has ever contemplated the possibility of an apostate pope or of an election falsified and manipulated by powers avowedly hostile to Christ, because such an enormity could only happen in a unique and extraordinary context such as that of the final persecution foretold by the Prophet Daniel and described by Saint Paul. Our Lord’s admonition videritis abominationem desolationis – when you shall see the abomination of desolation (Mt 24:15) – is to be understood as such precisely because of its absolute uniqueness.”
His Excellency also brought up, twice, the priestly Society of St. Pius X, which was founded by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991) in 1970. In the past, Viganò has praised Lefebvre for preserving the faith following the Second Vatican Council. On Saturday, he seemed to issue a warning to the group.
“The vexata quæstio – ‘Is Bergoglio Catholic?’ – is addressed from many different angles according to differing criteria stemming from various cultural heritages,” he stated. “The traditional scholastic point of view; the moderate and conciliar, or, we could say, the Montinian point of view; and the one that wavers, so to speak, between the two shores, recognizing Bergoglio as Pope although being de facto canonically independent from him (I’m referring to the SSPX). But we must recognize that today it is possible to share, along with many priests and laity, a feeling of serious unease and grave scandal due to the cumbersome presence of the Argentine Jesuit.”
“The Hierarchy limits itself to demonstrating either cowardice or complicity with the tyrant, and the few discordant voices do not dare to draw the necessary conclusions in the face of the heresies and nonsense of the tenant of Santa Marta.”
“And here we come to the punctum dolens,” he continued, “that is, the great contradiction that unites the proponents of Vatican II with its historical opponents – the Society of St. Pius X in primis – in wanting to proceed with an evaluation of objectively extraordinary facts using ordinary norms of evaluation.”
“As I have often said, it seems to me that some commentators are more concerned about the doctrine of the papacy than with the salvation of souls, so that they find themselves preferring to be governed by a heretical and apostate pope rather than recognizing that a heretic or an apostate cannot be at the head of the Church to which, as such, he does not belong.”
“Our task must not be to engage in the abstract speculations of canonists, but to resist with all our strength – and with the help of God’s Grace – the explicitly destructive action of the Jesuit Argentine, refusing with courage and determination any collaboration, even indirect collaboration, with him and his accomplices.”
His Excellency concluded his remarks by stating that Catholics can be “morally certain” that “the tenant of Santa Marta is a false prophet.” As such, they are “authorized in conscience to revoke our obedience to” him, as he is acting like a “Biblical wild boar” who “has no care for the sheep.”
“The ‘Bergoglio problem,’” he further said, “cannot be solved by ordinary means: no society can survive the total corruption of the authority that governs it, and the Church.”
“As long as society and the Church continue to be held hostage by the enemies of Christ the King and His Most August Mother, we will not be able to hope for the end of this most painful trial, because we will not have made the necessary choice of sides that the Lord expects of us in order to make us sharers in His total and definitive triumph over Satan.”
Click here to read His Excellency’s full remarks on the Exsurge Domine website.
Editor’s note: This article was updated on Wednesday December 13, 2023.