Within hours of Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement that he was
stepping down as Supreme Pontiff, speculation was swirling about
the top contenders to succeed him. National Catholic
Reporter’s veteran and eminently fair-minded Vatican
correspondent, John L. Allen, Jr., was taken aback when the Italian
press began floating the idea that the papacy could go to the
archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean O’Malley. Usually, if an
American cardinal is listed among the papabile, it’s the
gregarious archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan. But
since O’Malley arrived in Boston to replace the disgraced Cardinal
Bernard Law, he has impressed the Italian press with his simplicity
of life and his tireless efforts to clean up the moral and
financial mess left in the wake of the archdiocese’s clerical sex
abuse scandal.
As an American Catholic, even a seasoned journalist like Allen
couldn’t resist contemplating an American siting in the Chair of
St. Peter. Yet, there is an American pope, and a few years back
there were two. I suppose I should say, “popes.” Let me
explain.
In October 1998, Father Lucian Pulvermacher, a priest of the
Capuchin branch of the Franciscan order, was elected pope. The
circumstances of this particular conclave were out of the ordinary.
Father Pulvermacher had rejected the teachings of the Second
Vatican Council and with a small group of like-minded, disaffected
Catholics, founded what he called the True Catholic Church. They
taught that the last legitimate pontiff was Pius XII (reigned
1939-1958), that John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II,
and eventually Benedict XVI were false popes who had led the Church
off the true path. If the True Catholic Church was going to be a
going concern, it needed a pope. Of course, the TCC had no
cardinals, so, working on the basis of natural law, everyone agreed
that lay men and women could be electors. In 1998, some of the
electors met in a remote mountain cabin in Montana. Those who could
not make the trip phoned in their votes. Father Pulvermacher was
elected on the first ballot. He took the name Pius XIII.
For a time, the Vatican-in-exile was located in Montana, then in
Washington state, where Pius XIII died in 2009. The TCC claims a
global following, but the precise number of its members is not
known. Since Father Pulvermacher’s death, TCC has been without a
pope, but its website
promises that plans are underway for a conclave to elect Pius
XIII’s successor.
Meanwhile, there is yet another American pope living in Delia,
Kansas (population: 169). As with Father Pulvermacher, David Bawden
and his family rejected Vatican II. For a time they were members of
the Society of St. Pius X, a large group of traditionalist
Catholics whose split from Rome is now decades old. Eventually, the
Society was not traditional enough for the Bawdens. They formed
their own little splinter of traditional Catholicism and in 1990
they held a conclave. The electors—David, his Mom and Dad, and
three other laypeople—met in a converted thrift store. There they
elected David pope. He took the name Michael I. Some of his
neighbors actually address him as “Pope Michael,” but others still
call him David. The pope in Kansas, by the way, is the subject of a
short documentary film, Pope Michael, directed by Adam
Fairholm.
There is a term for Pius XIII and Michael I—antipopes. Sadly,
there were lots of antipopes during the Middle Ages and the early
Renaissance. At that time, if an antipope had the backing of
powerful kings and lords (and invariably, he did), he could be a
serious contender in church and temporal politics in Europe. And
then there was the supernatural issue of all the souls he was
misleading. Michael I and the late Pius XIII never came close to
wielding the kind of influence the antipopes of the past enjoyed.
Our American antipopes are rather sad figures, and more than a
little embarrassing.
