Is Pope Francis Stepping Down? Does It Matter?

Let’s try Occam’s Razor:

Fortunately, “Francis” , for various reasons, isn’t actually the pope. There is talk afoot about his possible “resignation,” and one might suppose that will smoothe things out, but there’s a big problem. What might that be?

Well, he can’t “resign” if he’s not the actual pope in the first place! There is massive evidence, the chief proponent of which is Dr. Edmund Mazza, that Pope Benedict never properly resigned. He tried to bifurcate the papacy into an “active ministry” and a “contemplative ministry,” keeping the latter while handing off the former to a “successor” elected in March 2013 (“Francis” – aka Jorge Mario Bergoglio). Since Benedict couldn’t possibly do this without undermining the very purpose of the papal office going all the way back to Peter, the resignation was invalid, and, whether he likes it or not, Benedict is still the pope. “Francis” is an antipope and usurper.
 
But, even if Benedict’s resignation were otherwise valid, Francis is *still* not validly elected himself. Why? Because there is much well–documented evidence that at least some of the cardinals were comparing notes and cutting deals before and during the conclave, which was expressly forbidden in the then in-force document governing papal elections: Domenici Universi Gregis, written by Pope John Paul II. Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Belgium, now dead, was on video basically admitting he and some other cardinals conspired before the conclave to engineer this very thing. This would invalidate Bergoglio’s election by itself, if he were otherwise eligible to be elected (which he wasn’t, because of Benedict’s invalid resignation!).
 
But wait, there’s more! Even if Bergoglio was validly elected, it is well-known that you can’t swing a dead cat these days without hitting a video or article quoting “Francis” saying something heretical This could make sense as an indirect proof that he isn’t validly the pope, since he would have no positive or negative protection against that. Further, the Pachamama scandal from 2019 alone is hyper-problematic, as one could clearly say that he was guilty of promoting flat-out idolatry of this fertility goddess of the Andes, which, clearly would make him an apostate, and apostates, by definition, cease to be Catholic. A non-Catholic cannot be pope! St. Robert Bellarmine gets into this as an intellectual exercise back in the 1500s, and his theological opinion was that a pope in that highly-theoretical situation (in his mind) could lose the office ipso facto.
 
So, to recap, Bergoglio isn’t the pope because:
 
* Benedict still is due to a faulty – and therefore invalid – resignation.
 
* But, even if that were not the case, and Benedict did resign legitimately, Bergoglio is still not the pope because of prior electioneering and conspiring of a bloc of cardinals before and during the conclave which “elected” him.
 
* But, even if that election were somehow valid (say, for example, Danneels would have been lying about his own admitted actions), “Francis” has lapsed into manifest heresy on many occasions and has, at a minimum, countenanced idolatry during the Pachamama fiasco in 2019. This is still just a theological opinion, but many serious theologians (eg: Bellarmine, cited above) would be inclined to say that a pope under such circumstances would have lost the office.
 
Keep in mind that, if Benedict didn’t validly resign, none of the other arguments mentioned above would even matter, since Bergoglio, from his “election” to this moment, was never pope to begin with. But if somehow Benedict really did resign authentically, then we can start looking at the other issues. One way or another, Bergoglio is no more pope than I am, and I am really, really sure that I am not!
 
I hope that the Catholics, particularly, who frequent this site will research the argumentation above if they have uncertainty in this matter. It’s vitally important for us to try to get this right!