(LifeSiteNews) — In the first part of his interview with LifeSiteNews, Father Leonardo Maria Pompei recounted the canonical process that led from having his online preaching of traditional Catholic teaching silenced to his suspension of office and, ultimately, a declaration that he had incurred excommunication for schism – a charge he insists was never accompanied by any accusation of heresy.
In this second part, Pompei moves from his own case to the theological argument underlying it. He explains what he means when he says the hierarchy – and even the Pope himself – can “betray” the papacy without the papacy, as a divine institution, failing. He addresses the growing rift among traditionalist Catholics, from sedevacantists to the position of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X to theories centered on Benedict XVI’s 2013 resignation, and argues that this fragmentation is itself a symptom of a deeper crisis of authority. The priest lays out, in detail, where he believes the line falls between legitimate resistance to a pope or bishop and outright schism.
Pompei also rejects both what he calls “papolatry” and indulging “private magisteria,” arguing that Catholics can resist teachings or commands they believe contradict Tradition without rejecting the Church’s divine constitution. His position draws on the “capital schism” thesis advanced by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, which he says offers a more measured path than either unconditional obedience or declaring the Apostolic See vacant.
Below follows Part 2 of LifeSiteNews’s interview with Fr. Pompei:
EXCLUSIVE: Priest excommunicated after defending Tradition speaks out
LifeSiteNews: What precisely do you mean when you say that, at present, it is the hierarchy and the Pope who have betrayed the papacy?
Fr. Leonardo Pompei: When I say that the present hierarchy and the man occupying the See of Peter have betrayed the papacy, I naturally do not mean that the papacy, as a divine institution, has failed or betrayed its own mission. The papacy was instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ and, as such, is indefectible. The papacy can be betrayed by the person who occupies its chair when he uses the authority he has received in a manner contrary to the purpose for which it was instituted.
The Pope is not the owner of the Church, the master of Revelation, or the source of a new faith. He is the Vicar of Christ, the successor of Peter, and the guardian of the Deposit of Faith. His mission is the one assigned by Our Lord: Confirma fratres tuos – confirm your brethren in the faith, not alter, obscure, or replace it with a different doctrine.
The First Vatican Council stated this with a precision that now appears almost prophetic:
Neque enim Petri successoribus Spiritus Sanctus promissus est, ut eo revelante novam doctrinam patefacerent, sed ut eo assistente traditam per Apostolos revelationem seu fidei depositum sancte custodirent et fideliter exponerent. – “The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter so that, by His revelation, they might make known some new doctrine, but so that, with His assistance, they might reverently preserve and faithfully expound the Revelation handed down through the Apostles, that is, the Deposit of Faith.”
To betray the Papacy, therefore, means outwardly preserving its name, symbols, and prerogatives while using its authority to pursue the opposite end: not preserving the faith but adapting it to the world; not confirming the brethren but disorienting them; not defending the Kingship of Christ but promoting a universal religious fraternity in which the Catholic Church is placed on the same level as false religions; not protecting the received liturgy but persecuting it in order to impose a rite born of the conciliar revolution.
Authority in the Church is conferred ad aedificationem et non ad destructionem: for building up, not for destroying. When it is used to demolish what it should preserve – the doctrine, morality, liturgy, discipline, and hierarchical constitution of the Church – it is exercised against its own nature and purpose. It is no longer placed at the service of Tradition, but employed to combat it.
This is precisely what Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has called “capital schism.” In ordinary schism, a part of the body separates from the head; in the present crisis, by contrast, the occupant separates from the See – that is, from the doctrine, Tradition, and supernatural mission inseparably bound to the Petrine office. The Chair remains what Christ instituted; it is the man sitting upon it who, by his actions, contradicts the very rationale of his authority.
The same responsibility applies, in different degrees, to the entire hierarchy. Bishops are not functionaries of the pope or delegates of an administrative structure: they are successors of the apostles and have the personal duty to preserve the faith in its integrity, govern their dioceses according to the law of God, and defend the flock from wolves. When, instead, they turn themselves into agents of the conciliar revolution; when they impose synodality, tolerate or promote moral errors, persecute the traditional Mass, and punish priests who have remained faithful to the doctrine of all time, they betray the purpose of their episcopate.
In saying this, I do not pronounce judgment on the subjective responsibility of each pontiff or individual bishop. God alone knows each person’s degree of awareness, freedom, and personal culpability. I do, however, recognize an objective fact: for 60 years, we have witnessed a systematic and widespread reversal of the mission of ecclesiastical authority, notwithstanding a few sporadic and meritorious exceptions. Those who should preserve Tradition combat it; those who should condemn errors legitimize them; those who should confirm the faithful in truth induce them to conform to the spirit of the world.
The betrayal of the papacy also consists in its transformation into something it is not. On the one hand, it is emptied of its function as guardian of the faith and reduced to a symbolic, synodal, and almost democratic presidency. On the other, absolute and unconditional obedience to the person of the pontiff is demanded even when his acts contradict the Magisterium of his predecessors. The true primacy of Peter is thereby demolished and replaced with papolatry: no longer fidelity to the pope because he preserves the faith, but adherence to whatever new position is adopted by the man who bears the title of pope.
This conception is profoundly anti-Catholic. The pontiff’s authority is supreme, but it is not absolute in the modern sense of the term: it is entirely bound by Revelation, divine law, and the supernatural end of the Church. The pope can govern the Church, but he cannot re-found her; he can expound the Deposit of Faith, but he cannot alter it; he can regulate the liturgy, but he cannot use it to introduce a new theology; he can require obedience, but he cannot command what leads to the loss of faith.
To say that the Pope and the hierarchy have betrayed the papacy therefore means that they have preserved and used the structures of Catholic authority to promote an ecclesial project incompatible with Catholic Tradition. The papacy has not failed; rather, those who should have served it have objectively betrayed the mandate they received.
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Precisely because I believe in the papacy, I cannot identify the papacy with every word or action of the man occupying its chair. Precisely because I recognize the sacred character of episcopal authority, I cannot call collaboration in the demolition of the faith obedience. And precisely because I do not intend to abandon the Church, I must reject that counterfeit of the Church which uses her authority, buildings, and institutions to spread a different religion.
Mine is not, therefore, a revolt against the papacy. It is an appeal to the papacy to become once again what Christ intended: the rock that confirms the brethren, preserves the apostolic deposit, and protects the Church from the errors of the world, instead of introducing them into her very sanctuary.
LSN: In Italy, and elsewhere, a number of priests and even bishops have been excommunicated or suspended after directing very harsh criticism at the magisterium of Francis and then of Leo XIV. The positions adopted by these priests, however, differ greatly: some have become sedevacantists; some have drawn closer to the well-known positions of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, thereby extending their criticism to the Second Vatican Council and the entire post-conciliar phenomenon; while others believe that the crisis in the Church essentially began only in 2013, with Benedict XVI’s renunciation of the papacy. Do you believe that this divergence of positions is a direct effect of the crisis of authority?
Pompei: Yes. I believe this divergence is, at least to a large extent, a direct consequence of the crisis of authority. When ecclesiastical authority rightly carries out its task, it preserves the faith, condemns errors, resolves controversies, and provides the faithful with sure criteria for distinguishing truth from falsehood. When, instead, authority itself spreads ambiguities, contradictions, and errors, or proves unable to resolve them in the light of the perennial Magisterium, disorientation and fragmentation inevitably follow.
Priests and faithful then find themselves confronted with facts that appear objectively incompatible with what the Church has always taught, but without a recognized authority offering them an authentically Catholic explanation. Each person therefore tries to understand how this situation could have arisen and what its theological and canonical solution might be. Different diagnoses thus emerge: sedevacantism; the Cassiciacum Thesis; the position of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X; the thesis that the crisis erupted only under Francis; the various hypotheses concerning Benedict XVI’s resignation and the validity of the 2013 conclave; and still other reconstructions.
The multiplicity of these interpretations does not prove that the crisis is unreal. On the contrary, it is one of its most evident symptoms. If authority exercised its task with clarity, individual priests and faithful would not have to formulate hypotheses about the status of the pope, the validity of a conclave, or the limits of obedience. It is the failure of authority to be exercised with certainty and in conformity with Tradition that compels souls, sometimes anxiously, to seek an explanation.
This does not mean, however, that all reconstructions are equivalent or equally well founded. I understand the reasons of those who, faced with the gravity of the facts, reach sedevacantist conclusions. As I have said, I regard the Cassiciacum Thesis as intelligent and theologically serious. I consider the diagnosis formulated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and maintained by the Society of Saint Pius X to be historically and doctrinally very solid. I also share to a large extent Archbishop Viganò’s interpretation, particularly his distinction between the See and its occupant and his concept of capital schism. But I do not believe that every hypothesis may be elevated to absolute certainty or turned into a new criterion of communion among Catholics.
Here we encounter a second, painful effect of the crisis. The vacuum left by authority risks being filled by numerous little private magisteria, each of which regards its own explanation as the only possible one and sometimes goes so far as to exclude, condemn, or treat as traitors those who share the same faith and the same struggle, but not the same theological solution. Traditionalists thus end up fighting one another more bitterly than they fight the errors responsible for the devastation of the Church.
This is a temptation that must be resisted. The questions concerning a heretical pope, the loss of office, the validity or invalidity of an election, and the distinction between the material and formal possession of the See are certainly extremely grave. Yet precisely because they have not been definitively resolved by the Church, we cannot turn a disputed theological conclusion into a private dogma and attempt to impose it on others.
The different diagnoses must also be distinguished according to their capacity to account for the entire historical course of events. Personally, I consider wholly inadequate the thesis that the crisis began only in 2013 with Benedict XVI’s resignation or Francis’s election. Bergoglio’s pontificate certainly represented an extraordinary acceleration and made manifest contradictions that had previously been presented with greater caution. But the roots of the crisis run far deeper.
Francis and Leo XIV cannot be understood without going back to the Second Vatican Council, the liturgical revolution, the new ecumenism, religious liberty, collegiality, the transformation of morality, and the Church’s progressive accommodation to the spirit of the world. Benedict XVI attempted to limit certain excesses and performed important acts, especially by restoring a measure of freedom to the traditional Mass; but theologically and biographically he remained a man of the council. His resignation was a development of enormous importance, but it was not the origin of the crisis.
Focusing exclusively on 2013 also risks personalizing a phenomenon that is instead systematic and widespread. If everything depended solely on Francis, replacing one man would be enough to solve the problem. But the substantial continuity manifested by Leo XIV and the near-unanimous adherence of the episcopate to the conciliar and synodal line demonstrate that we are facing a structural transformation that began many decades earlier.
The sanctions imposed on priests and bishops holding very different positions paradoxically confirm this diagnosis. The authorities do not punish only one particular theological school – sedevacantist, Lefebvrist, or otherwise – but those who, having followed different paths, arrive at a rejection of the new conciliar paradigm. What is punished is not so much the specific solution proposed to the crisis as the refusal to recognize in the council and its developments a legitimate and binding expression of Catholic Tradition.
I therefore believe that these divergences are understandable and, to some extent, inevitable for as long as the crisis of authority continues. They also depend on differences in formation, sensibility, and historical knowledge among the persons involved; but their principal cause remains the absence of an authority that truly confirms the brethren in the faith and resolves controversies in the light of the Deposit of Faith.
In the meantime, I believe that Catholics attached to Tradition must hold fast to certain principles: preserving the faith in its integrity; rejecting errors, regardless of the authority that proposes them; preserving the Mass and sacraments of all time; avoiding both papolatry and the presumption of taking the place of the Church’s authority; and refusing to turn legitimate theological differences into fratricidal wars.
We may differ in our assessments of the canonical status of the person occupying the Apostolic See or of the precise moment at which the crisis began. We cannot, however, allow those differences to make us lose sight of the fundamental fact that unites us: the duty to remain Catholic, preserving what the Church has always believed, taught, and celebrated, while awaiting the day when God restores to His Church an authority fully faithful to the mission received from Christ.
LSN: If you continue to consider yourself Catholic, what criterion should a member of the faithful follow today when he believes that a pope or bishop is teaching or governing in a manner contrary to the Tradition of the Church? Put differently, where is the boundary between legitimate resistance and schism?
Pompei: Not only do I continue to consider myself Catholic; I believe that I made my choices precisely in order to remain Catholic and faithful to the duties I assumed before God on the day of my priestly ordination.
The question is nevertheless decisive, because resistance without objective criteria could easily degenerate into the Protestant principle of private judgment, in which each person independently determines what belongs to the faith and decides which teachings or commands of authority he will accept. At the opposite extreme, absolute and indiscriminate obedience would turn ecclesiastical authority into an idol and make resistance impossible even when the faith and the salvation of souls were endangered.
The first criterion must be the Deposit of Faith: Sacred Scripture and Tradition as interpreted by the constant and perennial Magisterium of the Church. A member of the faithful cannot set his own opinion, personal preference, or particular spiritual sensibility against a pope or bishop. He can and must, however, compare what is taught or commanded with what the Church has always believed, taught, and practiced.
This is the celebrated criterion of Saint Vincent of Lérins: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus – what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all. Tradition is not a collection of obsolete customs, but the living and objective transmission of the Revelation entrusted by Christ to the apostles and preserved by the Church through the centuries.
The different acts of authority must also be carefully distinguished. Not every word spoken by a pope is infallible; not every interview, gesture, pastoral document, or disciplinary measure possesses the same magisterial weight. Likewise, not every decision of a bishop binds in conscience merely because it comes from him. One must consider the object of the teaching, the form in which it is proposed, the degree of authority engaged, and above all its conformity with the preceding Magisterium and divine law.
The initial presumption should certainly favor authority. A Catholic does not seek pretexts for disobedience, maliciously construe every word, or consider himself superior to the pope or his own bishop. Whenever possible, he asks for clarification, respectfully presents his difficulties, and seeks an interpretation consistent with Tradition. Resistance cannot be the first reaction; it becomes necessary when the conflict with the faith, divine law, or the good of souls is objective, grave, and sufficiently certain.
The fundamental principle was expressed by the apostles: Oboedire oportet Deo magis quam hominibus – we must obey God rather than men. Ecclesiastical authority is true authority, but it is vicarious: it derives from Christ, is limited by the law of Christ, and must be exercised for the purpose established by Christ. No superior can validly compel someone to profess an error, commit a sin, profane a sacrament, or cooperate in the loss of faith.
Commenting on Saint Paul’s public resistance to Saint Peter, Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches that when the faith is endangered, prelates may and must be publicly corrected, even by their subjects: ubi immineret periculum fidei, etiam publice essent praelati a subditis arguendi. Saint Robert Bellarmine explains that it is lawful to resist the pontiff when he attacks souls or attempts to harm the Church. To resist, however, is neither to depose nor to arrogate an authority one does not possess.
Legitimate resistance therefore has a determinate object and precise limits. One resists an erroneous teaching, an illegitimate command, or a harmful act; one does not thereby deny the divine constitution of the Church, reject the papacy and episcopate as such, or assume the power to define new doctrines or establish a new hierarchy.
Resistance must also be proportionate to the evil it seeks to avert. It may consist in refusing to carry out a particular command; publicly denouncing an error already spread publicly; continuing to celebrate the traditional liturgy; refusing to participate in rites, initiatives, or pastoral programs harmful to the faith; or seeking priests and communities that preserve the Church’s doctrine and sacraments in their integrity. It must never turn into personal hatred, a spirit of revenge, contempt for authority as such, or a taste for rebellion.
The boundary between resistance and schism therefore does not coincide with mere material disobedience. In the history of the Church, saints have resisted unjust orders and even publicly corrected pontiffs and prelates without thereby separating themselves from the Church. Schism properly arises when one rejects the very principle of the authority established by Christ, denies Catholic communion as such, or establishes an autonomous church founded on one’s own judgment.
Conversely, there can be merely apparent disobedience that is, in substance, the highest form of obedience: the command of a man is refused in order to remain obedient to God and to the supernatural purpose of authority. And there can be merely apparent obedience that becomes complicity: the superior’s command is carried out despite the knowledge that it leads away from the faith or gravely harms souls.
This does not, of course, authorize every member of the faithful to declare lightly that the Pope is a heretic or that his own bishop has lost office. Questions of such gravity require competence, prudence, study, prayer, and a very high degree of certainty. When those elements are lacking, judgment on persons must be suspended even while objective error is rejected. It is possible to say, “This teaching contradicts the preceding Magisterium,” without claiming to resolve definitively the canonical status of the person proposing it.
It is equally important that the faithful not remain isolated. They must form themselves through the Catechism, the documents of the perennial Magisterium, and the writings of the Fathers, Doctors, and saints; they must seek doctrinally sound priests; they must live in the state of grace, pray, and validly receive the sacraments. Resistance separated from the supernatural life risks being reduced to an ideology, a political militancy, or a continual search for enemies.
The ultimate criterion is the salus animarum – the salvation of souls. If an order preserves the faith, the sanctity of the sacraments, and the good of souls, it must be obeyed. If it places them in objective and grave danger, it cannot bind in conscience. But resistance too must be exercised for the salvation of souls, not to assert oneself, build a personal following, or satisfy resentment against the hierarchy.
Personally, I never desired separation, suspension, or excommunication. For as long as it was possible, I sought to exercise my ministry within the ordinary structures of the Church. When I understood that doing so would oblige me to act against the faith, conscience, and the good of souls, I chose to resist. Not in order to found a church of my own, but to remain in the Church of all time; not to deny the authority instituted by Christ, but to reject the use of that authority against the purpose for which Christ instituted it.
The boundary between resistance and schism can therefore be expressed in this way: resistance rejects error in order to remain faithful to the Church; schism rejects the Church and her divine constitution in order to follow one’s own will. Resistance retains the Deposit of Faith as its measure and desires the return of authority to its proper mission; schism transforms private judgment into a new authority.
For this reason, I continue to pray for the Church, the papacy, and the bishops; I continue to profess the Catholic faith, celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass, and administer the sacraments received from the Church. I do not consider myself outside the Church. I consider it my duty to remain firmly anchored in what she has always believed, taught, and celebrated, awaiting and imploring the day when authority once again confirms the brethren in the faith and there is no longer any need to resist it.