New Conspiracy Theories!

I'm not sure what this signifies, but I'm belatedly learning that between the death of Benedict XVI and the election of Leo XIV, several related conspiracy theories have emerged. Since I'm a Catholic convert, I should point out that if I thought there was a grain of truth to any of them, I would have to revert to my childhood Presbyterianism, but so far, that hasn't happened.

The most recent elaboration of this set of theories is contained in the hour-long YouTube post embedded above, in which Michael Lebron, who posts on the YouTube channel Lionel Nation, interviews Erik Thaddeus Walters, an adjunct associate professor at John Cabot University in Rome, which caters to English-speaking students who for whatever reason find themselves there. His D Phil is from the University of Vienna. Mr Lebron, who jokingly says he's not a conspiracy theorist but a conspiracy analyst, has had several interviews like this with Dr Walters in the runup to the just-concluded conclave.

The overall takeaway is a happy one, reflected in the title of the post: "Secret Move by Pope Leo XIV Restores True Papacy -- Why No One Is Talking About It". The underlying basis of the theory as it's reached its present stage of development is a version of sedevacantism:

Sedevacantism is a traditionalist Catholic movement which holds that since the 1958 death of Pius XII the occupiers of the Holy See are not valid popes due to their espousal of one or more heresies and that, for lack of a valid pope, the See of Rome is vacant. Sedevacantism owes its origins to the rejection of the theological and disciplinary changes implemented following the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).

This particular variant is more recent, and it doesn't appear to be unique to, or have been originated by, Dr Walters. In this version, the see has been vacant, or at least its true occupant has been unclear, only since the resignation of Benedict XVI:

His announcement of this plan to resign, just shy of a decade ago, shocked the world. In fact, in the aftermath of Benedict’s resignation came a strange phenomenon: Catholics claiming that he hadn’t really resigned.

Patrick Coffin, former host of Catholic Answers Live, suggested that Benedict’s “resignation” was some kind of elaborate sting operation, in which Benedict merely pretended not to be the pope to expose corruption in the Church. In Coffin’s words, “if his abdication was intentionally false, it was a masterstroke, pure genius, because it revealed all the corruption that he knew was simmering just below the surface of the Church’s life, but he was too weak to confront it.”

The death of Benedict in 2022, nine years after his resignation in 2013, simplified the problem, at least somewhat: if Benedict had been the true pope all along, the see was in fact vacant upon his death. The link just above calls this "Benevacantism". The putative remedy at this point should have been to call a conclave to replace Francis in early 2023. Again at the link:

Upon hearing of Benedict’s death, Coffin announced that he had become a sedevacantist, saying, “The pope has entered eternity, RIP. The impeded See is now vacant. May the pre-2013 cardinals do the right thing, and avoid yet another antipope.” Why is that so alarming? Because this line of reasoning makes for a clear collision course for schism and heresy. Here’s why.

Only cardinals under the age of eighty can vote, and Benevacantists don’t accept the legitimacy of the cardinals created by Pope Francis, since they don’t accept the legitimacy of Pope Francis. That leaves only forty-four of the 224 cardinals in the College of Cardinals who are old enough to have been made a cardinal by John Paul II or Benedict, but young enough still to be voting age.

Dr Walters, as far as I can tell, agrees that Benedict's papacy post-resignation was valid but impeded, but in his view, it was impeded because Benedict had resigned under some type of pressure and was being held prisoner. In any case, his conclusion is the same, that the cardinals created by Francis remain invalid and should not have voted in the conclave just concluded. But this leaves the problem that the conclave appears to have settled rather quickly on a seeming moderate consensus candidate in Cardinal Prevost.

If Francis had created such a majority of electors in his image, why didn't they just elect a straight-out Francis clone, like Cardinal Tagle? As best I can determine -- the discussion on YouTube is by no means clear -- Dr Walters feels that Cardinal Prevost, before he was elected, somehow convinced the Francis-created cardinals not to vote in the conclave, or the vote was secretly held before the Francis-created cardinals returned from a long lunch break, or something like that.

If this is the case, Prevost would have had to get this scheme past the camarlengo, who runs the conclave, Cardinal Kevin Farrell. Prevost would have had no special authority to do anything until he was elected pope, after all. Neither Mr Lebron nor Dr Walters explains how this could happen, but they seem more of less satisfied with the overall outcome, viz, the see is filled, and Leo XIV is a valid pope.

But this leaves open the question of why this would be a valid conclave, if, under the overall sedevacantist outlook, no cardinals created since Pius XII have been valid. We must assume that the last cardinal created by Pius passed away generations ago, so no conclave since then is valid, snd if the See of Rome is as vacant as it was before Francis or Benedict, what restored the legitimacy of the see after John XXIII?

Even so, there's yet another theory on the new Pope Leo: that he at least appears to be validly elected, but he will wear traditional garb and pray in Latin only to distract from his Francis-loyalist agenda, he is actually a heretic and can't be elected pope, and Cardinal Burke must call a new conclave made up only of John Paul II- and Benedict-created cardinals.

Tim reads his letter to Cardinal Burke live on air https://t.co/hOcD2WvnGH

— Timothy Gordon (Rules for Retrogrades Show) (@timotheeology) May 1, 2025

But that view must be argued with Dr Walters, who feels that this very election without Francis-created cardinals has already taken place. As I say, if I believed any of this, it would be back to the Westminster Confession for me.

In the real world, what seems to have become a general sigh of relief over Leo XIV leaves this sort of disgruntlement to the lunatic fringe, which strikes me as a very good sign.