Does anyone here have any information or contact details for Pope Linus II or his followers?

Can you have a Pope who is not the Bishop of Rome?

Is this the "Pope" Linus II you are referring to?  Is this article serious or a joke?  Why is the year 2023 referred to as current?

"Pope Linus II"

 From the Internet: 20 September 2023

The assassination in Berlin this morning of Pope Linus II has been a great shock to the world. This Pope, who had transformed Roman Catholicism in a generation, was shot with a single bullet from the revolver of a Jєωιѕн fanatic who reproached the Pope for his repeated calls for justice for the Palestinian people.
Pope Linus II, his civil name George Zakiyah, was born in an impoverished Aramaic-speaking village in western Syria on St. George's Day, 6 May, 1945. Though his parents, Youcef and Myriem, were Orthodox by faith, they were forced to bring up their only son as a Catholic, since at that time this was the only way in which they could obtain schooling and medical care. Of humble peasant background, George showed himself to be a very able pupil and with the help of a scholarship he went on to study Modern Languages at the University of Damascus, on graduation studying theology at the Gregorian University in Rome. In 1963, aged 28, George was ordained, working as a parish priest in the Lebanon, mainly in Beirut. In 1988 he was appointed Catholic Bishop of Damascus, where he showed great diplomatic abilities which may well have resulted in his appointment as a Cardinal only six years later in 1994. At this point it seemed as if his already distinguished career were over and he would eventually retire into the ecclesiastical obscurity of the Middle East. However when Pope John-Paul II died and a divided Catholic Church could not agree on a successor, this young and obscure Arab Catholic Cardinal was elected Pope of Rome. This surprise-choice was in fact a compromise. To traditionalists it seemed a safe bet to elect a non-European and a non-American, appointed Cardinal by the conservative John-Paul II. To liberals he seemed a good choice to represent the Third World since he was young and came from an oppressed minority. Only the State of Israel disapproved of his surprise election. Surprise increased when the new Pope refused to take the name 'John-Paul III', as all had expected, and instead took the name Linus II after the first Pope of Rome, Linus I, consecrated by St. Peter. Indeed the new Pope's choice was the first of many, symbolising a radical departure from what had gone before and a genuine return to the Early Church.
Indeed Pope Linus II took as his slogans: 'Return to the first millennium to go into the third millennium' and 'Turn the clocks back a thousand years to put them forward a thousand years'. And these phrases did indeed set the pattern for his whole 'episcopate' - as he called it. Traditionalists and liberals alike were stunned by Pope Linus' call to cast aside all the 'errors', as he openly called them, amassed by the Roman Catholic Church during the second millennium. Pope Linus' first symbolic act, to drop Latin as the Vatican's official language and replace it by English, shocked many. Even more so when he pointed out to them that Christ had never spoken Latin, but Aramaic, the Pope's own mother-tongue, and that if Christ returned, he would not speak a dead language such as Latin. But this was nothing compared to his next act, which was to allow married men access to the priesthood. For the first time in over 900 years married Catholic priests were officially allowed to celebrate the mass. But the Pope's third act shocked traditionalists even more. Admitting that his predecessors had been mistaken in their dogmatism, Pope Linus stated that as Pope he had nothing to say about the use of contraception, declaring that this was not a dogmatic question, but a pastoral one, and that it was up to Catholics to act in this domain according to their consciences and their confessors' advice. He himself, he said, could see cases in which there was no alternative to contraception.
In the furore but also popular acclaim that followed these actions, Pope Linus' fourth action, to return to traditional Trinitarian Theology and spirituality by outlawing the 'filioque' and removing it for ever from the Catholic Creed, passed almost unseen, except by the Orthodox Church. But it was in fact this act which has led to the extraordinary spiritual renewal which the Catholic Church has witnessed in the last two decades. The realisation that much that had previously passed for spirituality had in fact been psychic fraud was perhaps the deepest change in all of Pope Linus' radical episcopate. Certainly it led to the decanonisation of several previously popular Catholic 'saints'. At this vital point, in February 2002, it seemed as though the Catholic Church would break apart into traditionalists and liberals. The situation was saved, however, when in spring 2002, Pope Linus stated his clear opposition to priestesses, cremation, the changing of the date of Easter, condemning Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ and reinstating into the calendar several Saints, such as St. George, the Patron of Palestine, St. Catherine, St. Barbara and St. Christopher, who had been rejected at the Second Vatican Council. Traditionalists were so pleased by these moves that it seemed that they were almost ready to forgive the Pope for his former apparently liberal stance. In fact such actions were to typify Pope Linus' whole episcopate. Thus in 2003 when he moved out of the Vatican, which he turned into a 'Musuem of the Renaissance', abandoning his status as a political leader and abolishing the Vatican as a State, he appalled traditionalists but pleased liberals. But in the same year when he called on Catholics worldwide to renew their prayer-life, calling for monastic renewal and calling all Catholics to weekly fasting and regular confession, both of which they had almost wholly abandoned, the opposite occurred. In particular his restoration of the forty-day Lenten and Advent Fasts, of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays and of the eucharistic fast shocked liberals, but appeased the traditionalists.
The crowning achievement of Pope Linus' episcopate must however be his calling of the First Council of Rome, to which he invited not only Catholic bishops, but also all Orthodox bishops, giving the latter the right to vote on equal terms and greeting Orthodox Patriarchs as equals. It was at this Council in 2010 that Pope Linus in a great act of humility condemned the dogma of Papal Infallibility and rejected the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. His liturgical reforms which returned Catholicism to the practices of the Early Church, including his demand that priests administrate confirmation at the same time as baptism, give infants communion, that communion be for all under both kinds, the return to priestly celebration facing the altar, back to the people, the abandonment of the mediæval bishop's mitre in favour of the earlier form and the rejection of Gothic Architecture as a 'mediæval aberration' attracted the attention of many. But it was above all the return of Roman Catholicism to collegiality and the total abandonment of what Pope Linus himself called 'Papism' that truly stole the world's attention. His nomination of six Patriarchs for North America, Latin America, Africa, Australasia, China and India with absolute authority for all Catholics in their jurisdictions has certainly been the greatest reform of Catholicism since the eleventh century Hildebrandine reforms, which first introduced compulsory clerical celibacy and enforced papal authoritarianism. Today the Pope of Rome is merely a venerable figurehead among the Metropolitan-Bishops of Western Europe and on other continents local Catholic Bishops now elect their own Patriarchs from their midst, quite independently of Rome.
In the ecuмenical field Pope Linus' policies were greeted with enthusiasm by both Protestants and Orthodox. The former were pleased with Pope Linus condemnation of the 'grave errors' of the Middle Ages such as indulgences and his decanonisation of several medieval Catholic pseudo-saints, who had been well-known for their persecution of Protestants and other dissidents. Pope Linus, perhaps not surprisingly given his background, drew Catholicism much closer, however, to the Orthodox Church, which he called 'the source of the true Catholic Tradition'. His decanonisation of 'political saints', mass murderers as varied as Charlemagne, Josaphat of Polotsk, Andrew Bobola or Stepinac of Zagreb, was warmly greeted, as was his abandonment of the Uniats and his call to them to return to Orthodoxy. His condemnation of the previously justified filioque as 'a profound spiritual error' which had led to 'the spiritual deformation of Catholicism', together with his condemnations of Scholastic theology as 'mere philosophy' and his call for a return to 'the values of Patristic theology' as well as the decanonisations of Scholastic philosophers were just as appreciated. But it was perhaps above all his categorical condemnation of the Crusades as 'abominable banditry', and the condemnation of Austrian, Polish and Croat aggression towards Orthodox during the twentieth century and the direct and indirect responsibility of the Vatican for the mass-murder of Orthodox in the First and Second World Wars that made Pope Linus popular among ordinary Orthodox. Nobody will forget his repentance in Serbia and his insertion into the Catholic calendar of the Serbian New Martyrs massacred by so-called 'Catholic' fanatics, which so outraged the hardline Croat government in 2012. Nobody was surprised when this was followed in the next year by the inclusion in the Catholic calendar of all Orthodox saints, including the Russian New Martyrs. Although relations with the Muslim world were somewhat improved by this Arab Pope's condemnation of the Crusades, generally links with the non-Christian world moved little during the Pope's episcopate and with Judaism probably worsened. Indeed it was Pope Linus' reiterated calls for the return of Palestine to the Palestinians that provoked his assassination this morning by a Jєωιѕн fanatic in Berlin.
Frankly it is difficult to see what will happen now in the Catholic Church. It is hard to imagine who could possibly replace this head of Catholicism in Western Europe who condemned the 'errors of Catholicism', calling on Catholics to 'return to the Church' and who repeatedly called himself 'only a Bishop of Rome'. Since Pope Linus' abolition of Cardinals, it is now the unenviable task of the Metropolitans of Western Europe to choose a new Pope. How can this man who has rewritten the history of Western Christianity ever be replaced? This question remains unanswerable, unless of course it is decided that there is no need to replace him ... .


 

 
      

Lineage of "Pope Pius II"

FIFTH LINEAGE_____
.

An aged Roman Catholic prelate, allegedly in the lineage of Pope Pius XII, is said to have in the 1990s consecrated as bishop a sedevacantist priest elected Pope Linus II by supporters gathered from around the world.

The identity of this alleged consecrating bishop was for years kept secret, supposedly to protect his life.

For some time, this consecrator was rumored to be a retired Italian bishop, Msgr. Arrigo Pintonello (1908 - 2001), but this was vigoroudly denied both by Msgr Pintonello (during his lifetime) and by many leading sedevacantists skeptical of Linus II.

Following Msgr. Pintonello's death in June 2001, however, Linus II along with some of his suppoerters began claiming that Msgr. Pintonello had indeed consecrated Linus II a bishop.

Here is the history of this lineage. On June 25-29, 1994, a gathering of delegates (calling themselves a "concilium") representing various sedevacantist groups from twelve countries met in an 800-year-old chapel located atop a hill on the grounds of the Hotel Europa, in Assisi, Italy.

Ten times this consilium, by wide margins, elected to be Pope Victor von Pentz, a former student at Archbishop Lefebvre's seminary in Switzerland who allegedly was later ordained a Eastern Rite Roman Catholic priest. Each time, though, Fr. Von Pentz declined the office. On the eleventh ballot, however, after again being elected, and this time unanimously, he accepted and took the name "Linus II."

There followed in that same chapel a Coronation Mass, where the newly elected pontiff was crowned with a papal tiara.

Then, on June 29, 1994, the participants in the concilium drove from Assisi to Rome, with plans to acknowledge Linus II publicly as Pope in the Lateran Basilica. The group, however, was prevented from entering the Basilica by armed Italian policemen.

Linus II, though styling himself Pope, was not yet consecrated a bishop. When exactly, and by whom, he was raised to the episcopacy is therefore disputed.

Some have said that he was consecrated in Assisi or elsewhere in Italy in June 1994 by Msgr. Pintonello.

Others, while agreeing it was by Msgr. Pintonello, say that the consecration did not happen until four years later, in November 1998, at a ceremony in London, England.

Linus II's consecration is, of course, so far unverifiable. One complication is that some sources also report that the bishop who consecrated Linus II also, at the same time, consecrated Emmanuel Korab as a bishop.

Bp. Korab, though, is reported by some as having been consecrated a bishop during the Assisi consilium, but not by any retired Roman Catholic bishop. Instead he is reported to have been consecrated there by José Ramon Lopez-Gaston, an independent bishop in the lineage of Archbishop Pierrre Martin Ngo Dinh Thuc.

Certain other backers of Pope Linus II, however, claim that Bp. Korub was later consecrated a bishop, sub conditione, in 1998 in London, England, by that same un-named retired Roman Catholic bishop who supposedly came to Britain to consecrate Linus II. Still other backers of Linus II deny this and say that what happened in 1998 was only that Linus II, Bp Korub and Bp Richard Bedingfeld (also of the Thuc lineage) came together in London to consecrate Philippe Cochonneaud as a bishop.

.

11/30/1953 Arrigo Pintonello (b. in 1908; d. in 2001).
Ordained a Roman Catholic priest on 10/9/1932 at xxxxx, Italy,

   1. by Msgr. xxxxx, Roman Catholic Bishop of xxxxx.

Consecrated a Roman Catholic bishop on 11/30/1953 at xxxxx, Italy,

   1. by Msgr. Adeodato Cardinal Piazza, Roman Catholkic Bishop of Sabina and Poggio Mirteto,
   2. assisted by Msgr. Carlo Confalonieri, Roman Catholic Titular Archbishop of Nicopolis ad Nestum,
   3. and by Msgr. Girolamo Bortignon, OFM Cap, Roman Catholic Bishop of Padova.

      Msgr. Pintonello was the Military Vicar for Italy, 1953-65, and Titular Archbishop of Theodosiopolis in Arcadia, 1953-67. He was the Apostolic Administrator for the Diocese of Velletri, Italy, 1965-67; He was the Archbishop of Latina, Terracina, Priverno and Sezze, 1967-71. He resigned his see on June 25, 1971.
      .
          * 1) 06/xx/1994 or 11/05/1998 Immanuel Korab (b. in 19xx; still living).
            Ordained a priest on xx/xx/19xx at xxxx, Czechoslovakia,
               1. by xxxx, a bishop of the Czech Old Catholic Church.

            Later ordained a priest, sub conditione, on 06/xx/1994 in Assisi, Italy,
               1. by José Ramon Lopez-Gaston, a bishop of the xxxxx Church. [See the Thuc lineage]

            Reportedly also later ordained a priest, sub conditione, on 11/xx/1998 in London, England,
               1. by Msgr. Arrigo Pintonello, the resigned Roman Catholic Archbishop of Latina, Terracina, Priverno and Sezze,
            Consecrated a bishop on xx/xx/19xx at xxxxx, Czechoslovakia,
               1. by xxxxx, a bishop of the Czech Old Catholic Catholic Church.
            Later consecrated a bishop, sub conditione, on 06/26/1994 in Assisi, Italy,
               1. by José Ramon Lopez-Gaston, a bishop of the xxxxx Church. [See the Thuc lineage], and possibly also
               2. by Msgr. Arrigo Pintonello, the resigned Roman Catholic Archbishop of Latina, Terracina, Priverno and Sezze,

            Reportedly also later consecrated a bishop, sub conditione, on 11/xx/1998 in London, England,
               1. by Msgr. Arrigo Pintonello, the resigned Roman Catholic Archbishop of Latina, Terracina, Priverno and Sezze,

            He resides at xxxxxx, Czech Republic.
                o  
          * 2) 06/xx/1994 or 1 1/07/1998 Victor von Pentz (b. in 19xx; still living).
            Ordained a priest on xx/xx/19xx at xxxx
               1. by xxxx, the Byzantine Rite Roman Catholic bishop of xxx.

            Later ordained a priest, sub conditione, on xx/xx/19xx at xxxxx,
               1. by Richard F. Bedingfeld, a bishop of the Tridentine Latin-Rite Church. [See the Thuc lineage]
            Consecrated a bishop on 11/07/1998 at London, England,
               1. by Msgr. xxxxx, the resigned Roman Catholic Bishop of xxxxx.

            Bp. von Pentz has since June 1994 acted as Pope Linus II. He resides in Hertfordshire, England..
            In 1999, Dr. Elisabeth Gerstner, his German-language secretary wrote that it would be too dangerous to publish the name of the Roman Catholic bishop who ordained and consecrated Victor von Pentz.  Dr. Gerstner has, however, stated that Linus II was consecrated as "Bishop of Rome" on 7 November 1998 in London, England, by a bishop in apostolic succession through Pope Pius XII.
            She went on to write that this bishop's name would not be revealed until his death out of concern for his safety.
            The secretary also wrote that Archbishop Arrigo Pintonello is a close friend and "co-fighter", who participated "in writing" in the concilium in Assisi.  She added that Pope Linus II celebrates Mass both in the Byzantine and in Roman (neaning Traditional, not Novus Ordo) rites.
                * xx/xx/1998 Philippe Cochonneaud (b. in 19xx; still living).
                  Ordained a priest on xx/xx/19xx at xxxxx by Frederick Gilbert Linale, the bishop of Caer-Glow and the Primate of the Old Roman Catholic Church. Later ordained a priest sub conditione. on xx/xx/19xx at xxxxx by by Richard F. Bedingfeld, a bishop of the xxxx Church.
                  Consecrated a bishop on xx/xx/19xx at London, England, by Victor von Pentz (Pope Linus II), by Richard F. Bedingfeld, a bishop of the xxxx Church, and by Emmanuel Korub, a bishop of the xxxx Church.

 

I attended (SSPX) seminary with Victor von Pentz in 1989-90 at Winona, MN.

He claimed that he had been ordained to the diaconate in the Eastern Rite but evidently could not prove it, so he was not allowed to function there in that capacity.

Victor was a mysterious character.  We called him "Mr. Freeze" because he kept his room's window open even in the winter.  Some of us had thought he was doing some great penance or mortification, until it came to light that he was in fact refrigerating a stash of food in his room (since the food there was pretty lousy).  Victor would rarely eat at the common meals, saying that he had allergies to almost everything.  So, again, we thought he was just practicing extreme self-denial.  Yet after long periods of time eating next to nothing, one would have expected him to drop a significant amount of weight.

At one point, Victor and a couple other seminarians played a prank on another seminarian.  Victor dressed himself up to look like the ghost of a Dominican priest to frighten the victim (Winona had been a Dominican seminary, and there's a graveyard of priests not far from the main building -- incidentally, many of the priests buried there had died very young, right before the New Mass came in).  Needless to say, much "hilarity" ensued after the victim seminarian had a late-night encounter with the "ghost".

Victor kept a PO box in town because he didn't want the priests there reading his mail (which they were known to do).

We very much got the impression that he was a teller of tall tales.

Who said life at the seminary is dull?  There are tons of other amusing stories from the time I spent there.

I suppose that I have to be careful with stories like this, since sometimes people who have not spent time at a seminary or other religious institution could be a tad scandalized by what may (perhaps rightly) be considered inappropriate behavior.  At the same time, the one thing I did come away with from seminary is this realization that priests are people too, human beings with unique personalities and even quirks.  Before I spent time at seminary, I did put priests up perhaps too much on a pedestal and had unrealistic expectations of them.

I have known a few priests that have "fallen" morally, and have run into people who were very harsh with them, which undoubtedly comes from this over-glorification of priests.  I could only feel sorrow and compassion for them.  That's not to say we don't have reverence for the priesthood, but it's important to remember that they're also human beings.  Perhaps we depersonalize them a little bit in elevating them too high.  We need to remember that they're also somebody's little boy or son or brother or friend.

I remember that I had long thought ill of Bishop Shuckhardt of the CMRI.  Then I saw a biography of his which showed a picture of him as a toddler.  And then I thought of my own little boy who was about the same age as Francis Shuckhard in that picture, and it broke my heart.  God taught me a real lesson in charity there.

So perhaps we could take that away as a little meditation.  Imagine a priest with whom we've had differences and towards whom we're angry.  Imagine that priest as a two- or three- or four- year old child.  Imagine he's your child.  We would feel heartbreak if that child of ours had grown up to be a murderer or criminal or heretic or Novus Ordo priest or bad priest or bad religious or a priest with whom we've had run-ins.

Ladislaus said:

We know that thousands upon thousands of priests left the priesthood after Vatican 2.

Maybe because it wasn't liberal enough for them?

When researching NFP, I read about one priest who said he could no longer in good conscience tell people that marriage was primarily for having children.  I'm sure a lot of priests were looking forward to the Church allowing artificial birth control.  My 80-year old friend told me his priest in the 50's boasted openly that the Church would one day allow ABC.

We don't hear much about that these days, because of the "Pius XII Golden Age" mythomania.  But think about it -- if there were so many traditionalist, conservative priests, what became of them?  Why didn't they join up with the sedevacantists, or SSPX?  What happened, they were so orthodox and so devoted that they gave up the faith entirely?  That makes no sense.

No, the faith was on a steep decline long before Vatican II.  Otherwise people would not have apostasized due to the New Mass but would have fought as we are fighting, in some way. Some of them surely did and are unsung heroes, but by no means do I believe the story about ranks and ranks of traditional priests who left in a huff.  That just does not gel with what we know of the Church in the first half of the 20th century.  It was becoming more and more liberal by the day.

Oh well.  While I don't know if the Dominicans who died young in Winona were orthodox, at least they were spared this --

Liturgical Interpretive Dance?