(LifeSiteNews) –– Costa Rican priest Father Don José Pablo de Jesús Tamayo Rodríguez has charged that Francis is not the legitimate pontiff because he is a Freemason and because Pope Benedict XVI did not fully resign his office.   

The 81-year-old retired priest was excommunicated for schism after claiming that Benedict XVI didn’t properly resign from the papacy and remained pope until his death in 2022. The priest also alleged that Francis is a Freemason, making him ipso facto excommunicated from the Church and, therefore, not the pope.     

Rodríguez’s excommunication and response 

Fr. Rodríguez’s bishop, Archbishop José Rafael Quirós, announced in a November statement that the priest had received a latae sententiae, automatic excommunication, for the crime of schism. In that statement, Quirós emphasized that Rodríguez had been warned repeatedly to retract his statements about Pope Francis but that the priest “stubbornly” held onto his views.   

In December, Rodríguez responded to the excommunication with his own statement, stressing that he fully accepts the authority of the Roman Pontiff but that he cannot accept Francis’ authority because he is not a true pope. 

“In all sincerity, I must clarify my position in relation to the person of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, whom I respect, but I cannot accept as Supreme Pontiff,” he said.  

Benedict’s resignation was invalid  

Rodríguez’s spokesperson, Vicente Montesinos, in an email to LifeSiteNews explained the main reasons the priest believes Francis is an antipope.  

Rodríguez posits that in his 2013 Declaratio, Benedict resigned only from the active exercise of the papal office, or the ministerium, and not the office of the papacy itself, or the munus, which would be required for a valid abdication, according to Rodríguez. Since the resignation was invalid, Benedict remained the true pope until his death in 2022, according to Rodríguez.  

“There cannot be two Popes at the same time, as the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, and a body can only have one head,” Montesinos said.  

Francis is a Freemason   

Rodríguez also claims that Francis is a Freemason and, therefore, cannot be the legitimate pontiff.   

“On July 14, 1999, Mons. Bergoglio adhered to Freemasonry, a profoundly anti-Christian sect explicitly forbidden to any Catholic. This act constitutes a canonical impediment to holding any ecclesiastical office. Moreover, if he already held an office at the time of his adherence, he lost it ipso facto,” Montesinos said.  

It is true that the Catholic Church has consistently and firmly forbidden the faithful from becoming Freemasons because Freemasonry is essentially its own universal religion. Pope Clement XII’s 1739 papal bull, In Eminenti, judged Freemasonry so serious a matter and membership in it so dangerous that he imposed a latae sententiae excommunication on any Catholic who joined the Masons.   

However, LifeSiteNews was unable to corroborate that then-Archbishop Bergoglio began adhering to Freemasonry on the date cited or any other date.  

Francis is a heretic   

Finally, Rodríguez underscores that Francis has upheld and promoted several grave heresies during his reign, including his supposed statement to a journalist that Jesus ceased to be God from the moment of His incarnation until His death on the cross and Francis’s statement to an inter-religious meeting in Singapore last year that “every religion is a way to arrive at God.”       

“All of these statements are considered serious heresies, which render him illegitimate to hold the office of Pope,” Montesinos said.    

Montesinos also told LifeSite that Rodríguez has appealed his excommunication based on previous papal documents and the Code of Canon Law. In his appeal, Rodríguez included a complaint that the official excommunication letter was dated in November while Rodríguez was not informed of his excommunication until December, when the appeal period was already underway.   

As reported by LifeSiteNews, several other Catholic prelates and thinkers have suggested that Francis is not the pope for a variety of reasons. Several of them have been excommunicated for proclaiming their theses.    

Among these include Italian priest Father Giorgio Maria Faré, who, like Rodríguez, was excommunicated last year after stating that Benedict did not validly abdicate from the papacy in a viral sermon.  

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, on the other hand, has posited that Francis lacked the necessary intention to become pope. Viganò was declared excommunicated by the Vatican for holding this position last year.       

On the other hand, Bishop Athanasius Schneider has stated that “nobody has the power to judge Francis’ status as pope” because previous writings about a pope becoming a heretic, such as St. Robert Bellarmine’s, are only opinions, not doctrine, and that there is no one within the Church who has the power to declare him a heretic.      

“(I)n the case of a heretical pope, the members of the Church can avoid him, resist him, refuse to obey him, all of which can be done without requiring a theory or opinion that says that a heretical pope automatically loses his office or can be deposed consequently,” Schneider wrote.      

To read other articles on various perspectives on the legitimacy of Francis’ papacy, click here.  

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We must remain Catholic, even as Freemasons attempt to destroy the Church