archy

The Pope is dead!
Well, not that pope, another pope.

The leader of a secretive Spanish sect who said he was the true Pope and that the Vatican was controlled by the devil has died, a town hall official said Tuesday.
Gregorio XVII, 58, was the leader of a self-styled church whose followers believed he would be crucified before a kind of apocalypse would take place.

Gregorio believed God crowned him after Pope Paul VI's death in 1978 and he rejected changes made to the Catholic church in the 1960s such as saying mass in local languages rather than Latin and dialogue with other branches of Christianity.

[...]

The sect, based in the southern Spanish town of El Palmar de Troya but with members from as far away as the United States, conferred sainthood on former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.

Last summer, Taipei Times did profile on Gregorio that explanes how he became pope:

Before crowning himself "pope", the man formerly known as Clemente Dominguez said he had visions of the Virgin Mary and messages from God that the church in Rome, and Pope Paul VI, were being misled.

"Satan is governing in the Vatican," Gregorio was told in a vision in 1971, according to one booklet. A year later he was told, "Masons and Communism have infiltrated the Vatican."

Gregorio lost his sight in a 1976 car crash but the Virgin Mary promised he will regain it one day, church documents say.

Two years later Paul VI died and Clemente Dominguez, on a trip to Colombia, proclaimed himself pope.

Gregorio's church, which he called the "Carmelite Order of the Holy Face," is not the only schismatic church to emerge in opposition to Vatican II. Last year, during the brou-ha-ha that erupted before the release of "The Passion," it was revealed that Mel Gibson's father, Hutton Gibson, is a Holocaust Denier and member of one such church (The Society of Saint Pius X). Mel himself appears to be a Catholic traditionalist, a member of a congregation that still performs the Latin mass, but hasn't fully broken with Rome yet.

The other day, TBogg made a compassionate prediction about Popes dying (I think he meant the other one, but he could have meant this one):

As an added note: you do realize that if both Terri Schiavo and the Pope leave this mortal coil within days of each other, the Brides of Jesus (that would be Peggy Noonan & Kathryn Jean Lopez) will have a meltdown that will make Chernobyl look like a snuffed birthday candle.

Even if this doesn't make their heads explode, if we announce, it right it might give one of them a wee aneurysm.