An Urgent Appeal to Pope Francis to Either Change Course or Renounce the Petrine Office
December 8, 2015
Feast of the Immaculate Conception
Your Holiness:
Pope Celestine V (r. 1294), recognizing his incapacity for the office to which he had so unexpectedly been elected as the hermit Peter of Morrone, and seeing the grave harm his bad governance had caused, resigned the papacy after a reign of only five months. He was canonized in 1313 by Pope Clement V. Pope Boniface VIII, removing any doubt about the validity of such an extraordinary papal act,confirmed in perpetuity (ad perpetuam rei memoriam) that “the Roman Pontiff may freely resign.”
A growing number of Catholics, including cardinals and bishops, are coming to recognize that your pontificate, also the result of an unexpected election, is likewise causing grave harm to the Church. It has become impossible to deny that you lack either the capacity or the will to do what your predecessor rightly observed a pope must do: “constantly …More