There may be some 10,000 Sedevacantists throughout the world, with the most important centers in the United States, Mexico, France, Italy, Germany, and the Czech Republic. The small Japanese group Seibo no Mikuni, founded in 1970 by Yukio Nemoto (1925-1988), remains largely isolated because of its peculiar millennial beliefs. Most of them believe that forming a central organization would be tantamount to establishing a schismatic alternative to the Roman Catholic Church. They prefer to remain a network of small groups and see themselves as the only surviving remnant of the one true post-Second Vatican Council Catholic Church. One of their main problems is how to respond to the issue of the future of Catholic authority. By definition, they regard the pope as essential for the church’s very survival and infallibility, but, at the same time, they maintain that there is no (legitimate) pope in Rome at present. A large majority of Sedevacantists dismiss as non-canonical, and even ridiculous, the very idea that they could convene a conclave and elect a pope of their own; they prefer to wait for a solution to come directly, and perhaps unpredictably, from God, whose ways, they say, are after all not human ways. A few Sedevacantists, on the other hand, are “conclavist”—that is, they believe a conclave should be called (composed of all, or at least most, Sedevacantist bishops) and a new pope duly elected. Conclavists realize nonetheless that, should a conclave be organized, the majority of the Sedevacantist bishops would refuse to attend it, and that some groups (such as the Italian Association of St. Mary Salus Populi Romani, headquartered in Turin, Italy) regard a conclave as certainly desirable but, at least for the time being, impracticable. Attempts have been made to organize a conclave, however: in 1994, for example, some 20 Sedevacantist bishops from 12 different countries met in Assisi, Italy, and elected as pope a South African priest (and former student at Lefebvre’s seminary), Victor Von Pentz (b. 1953), under the name of Linus II. He currently resides in the United Kingdom and maintains but a limited following. Some conclavists have, on the other hand, joined other alternative popes (“antipopes,” according to Roman Catholic theology), who, even before the full development of the Sedevacantist network, had claimed that their role was based both on the alleged heresies of the Second Vatican Council and on mystical visions calling them to the pontificate without the need of any conclave or election. One of the earliest “pretenders” was a French priest, Michel-Auguste-Marie Collin (1905-1974), who claimed to have been called by heaven itself to become Pope Clemens XV during the Second Vatican Council, in 1963. Collin established an alternative Vatican in Clémery, Lorraine, where he also founded a Renewed Church of Christ, known outside France as the Church of the Magnificat. After Collin’s death in 1974, his church nearly collapsed entirely, and it is now reduced to a small remnant of what it once was. One of Collin’s followers, however, the Québec priest Gaston Tremblay (b. 1928), had already ceased to recognize the French claimant in 1968 and had proclaimed himself Pope Gregory XVII. His movement is called the Apostles of Infinite Love.
Tremblay’s main competitor was Clemente Domínguez y Gómez (1946-2005), one of the seers in the alleged Marian apparitions of Palmar de Troya, Spain (1968-1976), and later a “Thuc bishop,” consecrated by the Vietnamese archbishop on January 11, 1976. In 1978, Domínguez (in the meantime blinded in a car accident in May 1976) revealed that he had been mystically designated by Jesus Christ as the new pope in a 1976 vision, and his followers confirmed his election as Pope Gregory XVII (the same name adopted by Tremblay in Québec). His Catholic, Apostolic, and Palmarian Church (named after the town of Palmar de Troya) is probably the single largest organization bowing to the authority of an “alternative” pope, with more than 1,000 followers in Spain and several hundreds more internationally. In the 1990s, however, Domínguez was accused of sɛҳuąƖ immorality with several nuns of the order he had established in the meantime; in 1997 he admitted his sins and asked for his community’s forgiveness. Most followers remained loyal to Domínguez and, after his death in 2005, to his handpicked successor, former lawyer and “Thuc bishop” Manuel Alonso Corral, who became Pope Peter II. Others, however, have both doubted the sincerity of Domínguez in his apology and questioned his decision to appoint a successor rather than leave this choice to a conclave including the many cardinals he had in the meantime appointed from among his bishops. At the end of 2000, 17 bishops with a couple of hundred followers left the Palmarian Church and formed a splinter movement known as The Tribe. Other claimants to the role of pope have included Father Gino Frediani (1913-1984), the parish priest of Gavinana (province of Pistoia, Italy), who in 1973 claimed to have been mystically consecrated by Jesus Christ and several Old Testament prophets as Pope Emmanuel I. He gathered several hundred followers; after his death, a hundred have remained active in his New Church of the Holy Heart of Jesus under the leadership of his successor, Father Sergio Melani (who, however, makes no claim to being the new pope). A couple of dozen rival “antipopes” operate in several countries, but none of them have more than a handful of followers. Among them are Father Lucian Pulvermacher (b. 1918), who in 1998 proclaimed himself the new pope under the name Pius XIII (
http://www.truecatholic.us); and David Allen Bawden (b. 1959), living in the Kansas countryside, once a seminarian with the Society of Saint Pius X (where he had never been ordained to the priesthood), who on July 16, 1990, was elected by a group of six laypeople (including three women) as Pope Michael.
A special position is nonetheless maintained by William Kamm (b. 1950), a German-born Catholic lay preacher living in Australia and known as “Little Pebble.” It is claimed that the Virgin Mary has revealed to Kamm that the post-Second Vatican Council popes, including John Paul II and Benedict XVI, are indeed legitimate (contrary to the Sedevacantist thesis). On the other hand, heaven has designated Kamm as a future pope under the name Peter II. Kamm gathered more than 1,000 followers in several countries, some of them living communally and most of them members of a religious order known as the Order of Saint Charbel (named after the popular Catholic Lebanese saint Charbel Maklouf [1828-1898]). The Australian Catholic bishops, despite his protests, have repeatedly branded Kamm’s organization as schismatic and not a legitimate part of the Catholic Church. Their position seemed vindicated when in 2005 and 2007 Kamm was sentenced to two jail terms for sɛҳuąƖ relations with two minor girls. Kamm did not deny the relations, but claimed that the Virgin Mary in an apparition had authorized him to take as many as 84 “mystical wives.” Kamm is now in jail and will not be eligible for parole before 2013. Many followers have left the Order of Saint Charbel and only a handful remain loyal to Kamm.
https://isidore.co/misc/Res%20pro%20Deo/Sede/Sedevacantism%20and%20Antipopes.pdf
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