[While Giuseppe Siri may never have announced publicly that he'd been elected pope, he did throw us a few intriguing hints to that effect some months before he died in a taped interview with Italian journalist Benny Lai.  This took place on 18 Sep. 1988.  Lai later included a transcript of the recording as the final chapter (XVII) of his book, "Siri, Il Papa non Eletto", or The Un-Elected Pope, which came out in 1993.]

Siri :  “A newly elected Pope-- barring a miracle, & the Lord doesn’t do unnecessary miracles-- what does he know, poor man, of the task awaiting him?  He has to be integrated into his new position.  The question which settles a pontificate is the choice of the Secretary of State, because it is he who must educate the Pope.  Not all Popes become such after going through the school to become one.  The schooling, whether he wants it or not, occurs before the election, when the positions, suitability for the positions, & dedication to the positions, are well matched.”

Now, readers will realize this is not simply a commentary on the papacy in general if they note the sense of personal involvement, of frustration.  Siri notes, “Not all Popes become such after going through the school to become one.”  What does this mean?  Could he be telling us that whereas he'd been duly prepared & elected by the College of Cardinals, he still refused, even after the vote was nearly unanimous?  Or is it more likely that after being voted in perhaps a 2d or 3d time, he finally accepted but could not take office because of a coup d’etat engineered by prominent participants in the Conclave?

While Siri speaks here in the 3d person, in the next paragraph he switches suddenly to the 1st person, thus indicating the true subject of his discourse.  Indeed, the emotion in his voice intensifies, as he turns to the crucial matter at hand.  There is a sense of immediacy that cannot be denied :

“I say this because I have great remorse.  I have faith in the forgiveness of the Lord, &, therefore, I am at peace.  During the first 2 conclaves in which I participated, my candidature was presented by an influential cardinal.  He himself told me that all the French were behind him. [the Liberal wing, who were not Siri's natural allies].  The others, then, followed the French [the rest of the Liberals & Radicals, as shown next...]  The Germans held back, but gradually, along the way, joined the rest [the Radicals].  I said no, & if you elect me I will say no [suspecting a setup-- if he lets the Libs & Rads elect him then what will he owe them in exchange?].  I have made a mistake, I understand it today.  Today?  For some years.  I did wrong, for I would have avoided completing certain actions...  [the Council?]  I wish to say-- but I am afraid to say it-- making certain mistakes.  Therefore I have had great remorse & I have asked forgiveness of God.  I hope that God forgives me.”

The reason for his remorse, his sense of guilt, obviously involves his role regarding the papacy-- but why?  If the official version that he was never elected pope is correct, then why should any of this bother him?  And how are we to interpret the details he gives us about the first 2 conclaves he participated in, those of 1958 & 1963?  While he doesn’t come out & say he was elected, those who know the politics of the situation might conclude just that.

For more clues as to his plight, let us turn briefly to a well-circulated article by Louis Hubert Remy describing an interview that took place on 18 May 1985, at Siri’s palace in Genoa.  What prompted this was an earlier incident recorded by Paul Scortesco, cousin to Prince Borghese, President of the 1963 conclave.  According to Scortesco, during that conclave Cardinal Tisserant left to meet with representatives of B’nai B’rith, & told them Siri had been elected!  [Illegal under canon law to leave during the Conclave.]  They in turn said that for the new pope to continue as such would immediately precipitate another round of persecutions against the Church.

During the 1985 interview at the Cardinal’s palace in Genoa, when Remy & his two companions, Francois Dallais & Monsieur de la Franquerie, asked Siri himself about the above incident, his response was precise & firm.  “No,” he said, “no one left the Conclave.”

Asked whether he had been elected pope, however, the Cardinal reacted quite differently…  After a long silence, he 'raised his eyes to heaven' as though in pain & suffering.  Joining his hands, he said gravely: “I am bound by the secret.  This secret is horrible.  I would have books to write about the different conclaves.  Very serious things have taken place.  But I can say nothing.”

Remy thinks that “if he had not been elected pope, he would have said so” with the same sort of firm, categorical “No,” given the previous question.  He thus concludes that Siri had in fact been elected, but, feeling “bound by the secret”, “took refuge behind it.”  Indeed, Remy goes on to say that Siri told another one of his “trustworthy” friends that he had in fact been elected twice.

To whoever powted the reference to the John Vennari "refutation" of nthe Siri Thesis-- OK, I found it. I'm working on a response now.

In 2006 Catholic Family News editor John Vennari wrote an article purporting to refute the Siri Thesis, which I actually find to be rather weak.
http://www.cfnews.org/Siri.htm
This post is a point-by-point counter refutation. For reasons of space it can't be totally comprehensive, but I'll do the best I can.
1.   "The fact that a Cardinal receives the necessary votes in a conclave does not in itself make him Pope. The Cardinal must accept the office in order to become Sovereign Pontiff."
   The Siri Thesis proposes that Siri did in fact accept, & chose the papal name Gregory XVII, but was then persuaded to step aside; so Vennari's objection here has no meaning. Since Vennari himself alludes to this alleged chain of events, his statement is even more mystifying.
2.   "Cardinal Tisserant reportedly admitted that irregularities did indeed occur at the 1958 conclave."
   This statement actually works against Vennari's theory.
3.   "These irregularities were also alluded to by Cardinal Siri in an oft-quoted 1985 interview: 'I am bound by the secret. This secret is horrible.' While this indicates that 'serious things have taken place' at recent conclaves, it also reveals that Cardinal Siri was certainly not the Vicar of Christ. As one astute priest observed, only the Sovereign Pontiff is not bound by conclave secrets, so the fact that Siri said, 'I am bound by the Secret' demonstrates he was not Pope."
   ...unless the secret that Siri referred to was not the secret of the '58 Conclave, but the secret of the confessional. We've established that V2 & the NO Mass were planned well in advance to be deceptively perpetrated on the Church-- but neither of those events could have come about in the absence of a pope to promulgate them. So a necessary part of this conspiracy is the previous installation of an antipope. Nor could an antipope be installed without the use of a mechanism to compel dissenting Cardinals to keep silent-- hence the use of the confessional.
4.   "After the 1958 election, Cardinal Siri gave public obeisance to Pope John XXIII and recognized him as Vicar of Christ. He did likewise with Popes Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II. If Cardinal Siri were truly a 'Secret Pope', what sort of scoundrel was he to give public obedience to men whom he knew to be impostors?"
   I don't propose Siri for sainthood, I merely suspect-- not "know", but suspect-- that he may have been validly elected pope in 1958. A weak man? Probably. But by what mechanism would he have been persuaded to step down in 1958? Explanations have included threats against his life & the lives of his family, persecutions against Catholics in Eastern countries, and so forth & so on. So once he even considers stepping aside, what's the very next step? You turn to the camerlengo & ask, 'Is this canonical? Can I even do this?' And if the camerlengo says, 'Sure you can;' then as an ultra-Traditionalist Cardinal, Siri was strongly predisposed to accept the ruling of the camerlengo. It may have been years before he even began to suspect he'd been lied to-- a conclusion that at first he can be expected to have strongly resisted. After all-- it's an idea that I resisted for 30+ years.
   ...and once you've accepted John 23 as the legitimate pope, once years later you begin to suspect otherwise, at what point do you develop enough certainty to go public & openly oppose him? Especially when you have no proof? What do you say? "Oops-- I made a mistake?"
   Siri may have thought-- in fact he probably did think-- that by remaining silent & recognizing the successors of John 23 as legitimate he was practicing humility & making a huge personal sacrifice to prevent the biggest schism since the Avignon popes. Maybe he thought that adhering to a false pope was better than dividing the Church by having 2 or 3 of them running around excommunicating one another. Can you honestly say that the present situation is materially worse than that would have been?
5.   "...Cardinal Siri participated in all the post-1958 conclaves: 1963 and the two in 1978. Why would Pope Gregory XVII take part in false conclaves when he was already Pope?"
   For the reasons given above.
6.   "Cardinal Siri participated in the Second Vatican Council, which was called, if the Siri Thesis is correct, by a Holy Father who was neither Holy nor the Church’s Father. Siri accepted the decisions of Vatican II if interpreted in the light of Tradition."
   Again, for the reasons given above. I have reference to a detailed refutation of Vennari's article--
http://www.thepopeinred.com/defense.htm
   "(Siri’s) many interventions during the Council were all directed to block progress & promote the passage of conservative statements. (Siri) stated that the Vatican II Council... was a terrible suffering for him. He termed the Council 'the greatest mistake in history', as docuмented in the book by Benny Lai, The Unelected Pope (1993:296-97). The UPI reported more than 10 years after V2 that 'Cardinal Siri suffered from a...nervous condition specifically at the Council.'"
   Vennari himself agrees that, "Cardinal Siri recognized Vatican II to be a disaster. He said, 'If the Church were not Divine, the Council would have buried her.'"
7.   "He adopted the reforms, celebrated the Novus Ordo Mass, ordained priests in the New Rite, and consecrated bishops in the New Rite."
   Ah-- but did he really?
   "The Remnant Newspaper reported that churches in Genoa looked the same in 1989 as they had in 1940. (Priests offered Mass facing the altars with no conciliar tables in sight.) Siri was Genoa's active archbishop until he was 81, long after the mandatory retirement age of 75... But (immediately) after granting an interview to Louis H. Remy...Siri was forced into retirement. One year & nine months later he was dead."
   "There is (also) evidence he covertly ordained priests for the Church in eclipse."
8.   "What sort of man does 'our last true Pope' turn out to be? Why would he in any way submit to this destructive Council if he knew it to be the work of papal impostors?"
   For reasons given above. Once again, I'm not proposing the man for sainthood. I'll grant that on the surface his actions look weak, but if it were written down somewhere that only a strong man can be pope then we'd have to disqualify half of them.
   1st, he probably accepted the opinion of the camerlengo that he could withdraw canonically. So it may be useful to ask, "Would the camerlengo really have done that?"
   I refer now to :
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=3304
   "The camerlengo (Benedetto Cardinal Masella) was chosen by the 12 or so cardinals, now here... under the guidance of Eugene Cardinal Tisserant... Meanwhile, most of the other of the world's 55 cardinals hastened toward Rome..."
   I've been able to find nothing on the theology of Cardinal Masella specifically, but clearly he was a Curial candidate. And since the Roman Curia has been one of the major forces within the Church pushing for greater liberalism-- especially since his election was rushed thru rather than waiting for the other Cardinals to arrive-- I conclude that Masella & a majority of the cardinals who elected him were probably part of the conspiracy. Possibly I do an injustice to their memories, but clearly something very wrong happened to the Church between 1958 & 1962. I believe these men were at the root of it, because it could not have happened without their collusion.
   2d, it may have been years-- during or after V2-- before Siri fully realized what had been done, & that he was in fact the true pope. And 3d, what could he do then? By that time John 23 was probably already dead. Paul 6 was masquerading as pope, Siri had no evidence, & there are indications that he was being closely watched by the Vatican. Siri himself said that his life was in danger if he spoke about what happened at any of the Conclaves.
   Unthinkable? Robert Calvi was murdered, possibly with Vatican collusion. Ditto Michael Sindona. I suspect this is gonna get me in trouble with some of you, but there's strong evidence that Pope John-Paul I was murdered with the assistance of Cardinal Villot. Whether Vatican complicity in any of these murders is true or not, any or all of them could have been presented to Siri as evidence of what would happen to him if he got out of line. Such a threat would have been highly credible. (Note, for those of you who aren't very good at reading nuance, I'm not saying that any of this is true-- merely that it could have been made to seem so.)
9.   "Lastly, if the 'Siri Thesis' were true, then every Cardinal at the 1958 conclave is implemented in the swindle. None of them could be forced to go along with such a scandal, and none of them could be legitimately 'bound by the Secret' of the Conclave..."
   ...again we have the "secret". And once again, if the prelates who were responsible for planning V2 & the NO Mass were capable of such deliberate deviousness, then surely they were capable of making up a list of the Cardinals most likely to rebel & ensuring their silence thru the use of the confessional.
10.   "Cardinal Siri died in 1989. If the Siri Thesis is true, the papacy came to an end 17 years ago with no successor in sight."
   I have posted elsewhere on this site why I believe that is precisely in accord with various End Times prophecies, including the Book of the Apocalypse.

   In conclusion, the "refutation" of the Siri Thesis repeatedly mis-states what the Siri theory actually says, essentially setting up a straw man only to knock it down. It relies for its force on supposing what various people-- mainly Cardinal Siri-- should have done, instead of looking for plausible reasons why they did what they in fact did do. And it concludes, as the Pope in Red site points out, "...(according to John Vennari) 'The Siri Thesis'...is untenable because it is unthinkable. ...But it is thinkable to John Vennari that the man who substituted a new modernist religion for the ancient faith, new sacraments, & extinguished the sacrament of Orders...was the true Pope."
   ...and that is precisely my point in a nutshell. It is unthinkable to me "that the man who substituted a new modernist religion for the ancient faith...was the true Pope." Rather than that, I would prefer to think-- as crazy as it sounds on the surface-- that maybe Siri really was elected pope.

   I'd like to conclude by quoting from an eminent 19th Century Cardinal & close associate of John Cardinal Newman, Henry Edward Cardinal Manning-- "The apostasy of the city of Rome from the vicar of Christ & its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts so new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians of greatest repute. First Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Biegas, Suarrez, Bellarmine, & Bosius that Rome shall apostatise from the faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ, & return to its ancient paganism. ...Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, & shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible hidden in catacombs...it shall be swept, as it were, from the face of the earth. Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early Church." (Cardinal Manning, The Present Crisis of the Holy See, 1861, London: Burns and Lambert, pp. 88-90.)

If Pope Gregory Did lose his office, it is up to a future Council to decide. I still think that taking a Papal Name means he was legally elected and that--- as Caminus correctly informs us--- is a Dogmatic fact.
It is well known also that Card Siri was personal choice of Pope Pius XII( student of Rampolla--- and a much closer and more adept student than Della Chiesa).

I said no, & if you elect me I will say no [suspecting a setup-- if he lets the Libs & Rads elect him then what will he owe them in exchange?.

So the arch-liberals elect an arch-conservative to an authoritarian position of absolute power on the sheer hope that he will feel grateful and enact their liberal policies?  And then, having gone to all that trouble of conspiring to elect a candidate totally at odds with their views, not five minutes later -- before he even makes it out onto the balcony -- they all suddenly change their minds and "persuade" him to quit?  Sorry, the whole theory is absurd on its face -- like arguing that the 1968 Democratic National Convention actually nominated Richard Nixon for president, but then persuaded him to quit in the space before he made it up to the podium to give his acceptance speech.

Quote from: Graehame

I said no, & if you elect me I will say no [suspecting a setup-- if he lets the Libs & Rads elect him then what will he owe them in exchange?.

So the arch-liberals elect an arch-conservative to an authoritarian position of absolute power on the sheer hope that he will feel grateful and enact their liberal policies?  And then, having gone to all that trouble of conspiring to elect a candidate totally at odds with their views, not five minutes later -- before he even makes it out onto the balcony -- they all suddenly change their minds and "persuade" him to quit?  Sorry, the whole theory is absurd on its face -- like arguing that the 1968 Democratic National Convention actually nominated Richard Nixon for president, but then persuaded him to quit in the space before he made it up to the podium to give his acceptance speech.

It's not as absurd as it appears at first glance. See the forces of the anti-Church have often succeeded in getting a pope of their choosing who they thought would be weak and easy to control. Pius X is a good example, in the 1903 Conclave when it became apparent that Giuseppe Sarto (Pius X) was to become Pope he protested to  the liberal Cardinal Gibbons "But I know nothing of world affairs" to which the Cardinal replied "So much the better."  Sarto's candidacy was also pushed by Montini's family because they thought he would be easy to control, however when he received the grace of the Holy Office everything changed. So what had to be done was they had to elect a Pope shove him aside and then and then elect someone else (a fake) to show to the world. SOMEONE WHO WOULD BE FREE FROM THE GRACE OF THE PAPAL OFFICE because the real pope would have been cast aside.

In 2006 Catholic Family News editor John Vennari wrote an article purporting to refute the Siri Thesis, which I actually find to be rather weak.
http://www.cfnews.org/Siri.htm
This post is a point-by-point counter refutation. For reasons of space it can't be totally comprehensive, but I'll do the best I can.
1.   "The fact that a Cardinal receives the necessary votes in a conclave does not in itself make him Pope. The Cardinal must accept the office in order to become Sovereign Pontiff."
   The Siri Thesis proposes that Siri did in fact accept, & chose the papal name Gregory XVII, but was then persuaded to step aside; so Vennari's objection here has no meaning. Since Vennari himself alludes to this alleged chain of events, his statement is even more mystifying.
2.   "Cardinal Tisserant reportedly admitted that irregularities did indeed occur at the 1958 conclave."
   This statement actually works against Vennari's theory.
3.   "These irregularities were also alluded to by Cardinal Siri in an oft-quoted 1985 interview: 'I am bound by the secret. This secret is horrible.' While this indicates that 'serious things have taken place' at recent conclaves, it also reveals that Cardinal Siri was certainly not the Vicar of Christ. As one astute priest observed, only the Sovereign Pontiff is not bound by conclave secrets, so the fact that Siri said, 'I am bound by the Secret' demonstrates he was not Pope."
   ...unless the secret that Siri referred to was not the secret of the '58 Conclave, but the secret of the confessional. We've established that V2 & the NO Mass were planned well in advance to be deceptively perpetrated on the Church-- but neither of those events could have come about in the absence of a pope to promulgate them. So a necessary part of this conspiracy is the previous installation of an antipope. Nor could an antipope be installed without the use of a mechanism to compel dissenting Cardinals to keep silent-- hence the use of the confessional.
4.   "After the 1958 election, Cardinal Siri gave public obeisance to Pope John XXIII and recognized him as Vicar of Christ. He did likewise with Popes Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II. If Cardinal Siri were truly a 'Secret Pope', what sort of scoundrel was he to give public obedience to men whom he knew to be impostors?"
   I don't propose Siri for sainthood, I merely suspect-- not "know", but suspect-- that he may have been validly elected pope in 1958. A weak man? Probably. But by what mechanism would he have been persuaded to step down in 1958? Explanations have included threats against his life & the lives of his family, persecutions against Catholics in Eastern countries, and so forth & so on. So once he even considers stepping aside, what's the very next step? You turn to the camerlengo & ask, 'Is this canonical? Can I even do this?' And if the camerlengo says, 'Sure you can;' then as an ultra-Traditionalist Cardinal, Siri was strongly predisposed to accept the ruling of the camerlengo. It may have been years before he even began to suspect he'd been lied to-- a conclusion that at first he can be expected to have strongly resisted. After all-- it's an idea that I resisted for 30+ years.
   ...and once you've accepted John 23 as the legitimate pope, once years later you begin to suspect otherwise, at what point do you develop enough certainty to go public & openly oppose him? Especially when you have no proof? What do you say? "Oops-- I made a mistake?"
   Siri may have thought-- in fact he probably did think-- that by remaining silent & recognizing the successors of John 23 as legitimate he was practicing humility & making a huge personal sacrifice to prevent the biggest schism since the Avignon popes. Maybe he thought that adhering to a false pope was better than dividing the Church by having 2 or 3 of them running around excommunicating one another. Can you honestly say that the present situation is materially worse than that would have been?
5.   "...Cardinal Siri participated in all the post-1958 conclaves: 1963 and the two in 1978. Why would Pope Gregory XVII take part in false conclaves when he was already Pope?"
   For the reasons given above.
6.   "Cardinal Siri participated in the Second Vatican Council, which was called, if the Siri Thesis is correct, by a Holy Father who was neither Holy nor the Church’s Father. Siri accepted the decisions of Vatican II if interpreted in the light of Tradition."
   Again, for the reasons given above. I have reference to a detailed refutation of Vennari's article--
http://www.thepopeinred.com/defense.htm
   "(Siri’s) many interventions during the Council were all directed to block progress & promote the passage of conservative statements. (Siri) stated that the Vatican II Council... was a terrible suffering for him. He termed the Council 'the greatest mistake in history', as docuмented in the book by Benny Lai, The Unelected Pope (1993:296-97). The UPI reported more than 10 years after V2 that 'Cardinal Siri suffered from a...nervous condition specifically at the Council.'"
   Vennari himself agrees that, "Cardinal Siri recognized Vatican II to be a disaster. He said, 'If the Church were not Divine, the Council would have buried her.'"
7.   "He adopted the reforms, celebrated the Novus Ordo Mass, ordained priests in the New Rite, and consecrated bishops in the New Rite."
   Ah-- but did he really?
   "The Remnant Newspaper reported that churches in Genoa looked the same in 1989 as they had in 1940. (Priests offered Mass facing the altars with no conciliar tables in sight.) Siri was Genoa's active archbishop until he was 81, long after the mandatory retirement age of 75... But (immediately) after granting an interview to Louis H. Remy...Siri was forced into retirement. One year & nine months later he was dead."
   "There is (also) evidence he covertly ordained priests for the Church in eclipse."
8.   "What sort of man does 'our last true Pope' turn out to be? Why would he in any way submit to this destructive Council if he knew it to be the work of papal impostors?"
   For reasons given above. Once again, I'm not proposing the man for sainthood. I'll grant that on the surface his actions look weak, but if it were written down somewhere that only a strong man can be pope then we'd have to disqualify half of them.
   1st, he probably accepted the opinion of the camerlengo that he could withdraw canonically. So it may be useful to ask, "Would the camerlengo really have done that?"
   I refer now to :
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=3304
   "The camerlengo (Benedetto Cardinal Masella) was chosen by the 12 or so cardinals, now here... under the guidance of Eugene Cardinal Tisserant... Meanwhile, most of the other of the world's 55 cardinals hastened toward Rome..."
   I've been able to find nothing on the theology of Cardinal Masella specifically, but clearly he was a Curial candidate. And since the Roman Curia has been one of the major forces within the Church pushing for greater liberalism-- especially since his election was rushed thru rather than waiting for the other Cardinals to arrive-- I conclude that Masella & a majority of the cardinals who elected him were probably part of the conspiracy. Possibly I do an injustice to their memories, but clearly something very wrong happened to the Church between 1958 & 1962. I believe these men were at the root of it, because it could not have happened without their collusion.
   2d, it may have been years-- during or after V2-- before Siri fully realized what had been done, & that he was in fact the true pope. And 3d, what could he do then? By that time John 23 was probably already dead. Paul 6 was masquerading as pope, Siri had no evidence, & there are indications that he was being closely watched by the Vatican. Siri himself said that his life was in danger if he spoke about what happened at any of the Conclaves.
   Unthinkable? Robert Calvi was murdered, possibly with Vatican collusion. Ditto Michael Sindona. I suspect this is gonna get me in trouble with some of you, but there's strong evidence that Pope John-Paul I was murdered with the assistance of Cardinal Villot. Whether Vatican complicity in any of these murders is true or not, any or all of them could have been presented to Siri as evidence of what would happen to him if he got out of line. Such a threat would have been highly credible. (Note, for those of you who aren't very good at reading nuance, I'm not saying that any of this is true-- merely that it could have been made to seem so.)
9.   "Lastly, if the 'Siri Thesis' were true, then every Cardinal at the 1958 conclave is implemented in the swindle. None of them could be forced to go along with such a scandal, and none of them could be legitimately 'bound by the Secret' of the Conclave..."
   ...again we have the "secret". And once again, if the prelates who were responsible for planning V2 & the NO Mass were capable of such deliberate deviousness, then surely they were capable of making up a list of the Cardinals most likely to rebel & ensuring their silence thru the use of the confessional.
10.   "Cardinal Siri died in 1989. If the Siri Thesis is true, the papacy came to an end 17 years ago with no successor in sight."
   I have posted elsewhere on this site why I believe that is precisely in accord with various End Times prophecies, including the Book of the Apocalypse.

   In conclusion, the "refutation" of the Siri Thesis repeatedly mis-states what the Siri theory actually says, essentially setting up a straw man only to knock it down. It relies for its force on supposing what various people-- mainly Cardinal Siri-- should have done, instead of looking for plausible reasons why they did what they in fact did do. And it concludes, as the Pope in Red site points out, "...(according to John Vennari) 'The Siri Thesis'...is untenable because it is unthinkable. ...But it is thinkable to John Vennari that the man who substituted a new modernist religion for the ancient faith, new sacraments, & extinguished the sacrament of Orders...was the true Pope."
   ...and that is precisely my point in a nutshell. It is unthinkable to me "that the man who substituted a new modernist religion for the ancient faith...was the true Pope." Rather than that, I would prefer to think-- as crazy as it sounds on the surface-- that maybe Siri really was elected pope.

   I'd like to conclude by quoting from an eminent 19th Century Cardinal & close associate of John Cardinal Newman, Henry Edward Cardinal Manning-- "The apostasy of the city of Rome from the vicar of Christ & its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts so new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians of greatest repute. First Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Biegas, Suarrez, Bellarmine, & Bosius that Rome shall apostatise from the faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ, & return to its ancient paganism. ...Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, & shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible hidden in catacombs...it shall be swept, as it were, from the face of the earth. Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early Church." (Cardinal Manning, The Present Crisis of the Holy See, 1861, London: Burns and Lambert, pp. 88-90.)

Counter to your counter:

1) Wrong.  Supposing Siri accepted, but was then persuaded to step aside, the end result is the same: When the conclave concluded, he was not Pope.

2) A lot of things "reportedly" happen.  Supposing, for the sake of argument, there were irregularities in the conclave, we do not know whether they were invalidating irregularities, or non-invalidating irregularities.  In any case, we do not know whether such irregularities had anything to do with Cardinal Siri (if in fact there were any irregularities).

3) Nope.  Cardinals do not confess to eachother in a conclave.  This idea is as gratuitous as it is imaginitive.

4) Another supposed refutation that amounts to nothing more than an imagination directed toward a conclusion you want to maintain.  Nothing to support any of these wild imaginings.

5) Same

6) On the contrary, his helplessness demonstrates he was powerless to stop V2, which would not be the case if he were Pope.

7) There is no doubt that he said the new "mass" and "consecrated" in the new rite.  Like EWTN, he hung on to what they would let him hang on to.

8) See #4

9) The seal of the confessional is not relevent to papal conclaves.

10) Have it your way.

Concluding remarks: See #4

John 23 is an anti-pope.

Which one? There are two.