October 24, 2023 • 35 mins
After Vatican II, many traditionalist Catholics around the world decided that the heresies of the Pope meant that the papal throne was actually empty. For one member of that group, the only solution was to fill the position himself.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
On April twentieth, twenty twenty three, Elon Musk unverified the Pope.
I bet that was a sentence you never thought you'd
hear on this podcast. Musk, the eccentric billionaire who bought
the website formerly known as Twitter seemingly for the Lafts,
had changed his policy on verification. Previously, verification had been
(00:40):
subject to a rigorous evaluation to verify the accounts of
public figures and organizations, but now the coveted blue check
was available to anyone with eight dollars a month to spare.
The end result was that, at least temporarily, a blue
check mark or public figures and organizations no longer conferred
(01:04):
any meaningful marker of identity. Those unwilling to pay for it,
like Pope Francis, were simply unceremoniously stripped of their blue check.
If you were, like me, someone who often found yourself
on the history nerd side of Twitter, you might have
noticed a couple of odd terms trending as the verification
(01:29):
mayhem unfolded, namely, Auvignon and Western Chisholm. In the early
fourteenth century, Pope Clement the fifth had moved his court
from Rome to Avignon in what is now France. The
papacy would remain there unchallenged for over seventy years and
through six more popes, until Gregory the eleventh moved his
(01:53):
court back to Rome in thirteen seventy six. What does
this have to do with Elon musk ask The answer
lies in a third trending term, antipope. When Gregory the
eleventh died in thirteen seventy eight, the College of Cardinals
in Rome set about their usual business of electing a
(02:14):
new pope, which they did Urban the sixth, But some
cardinals opposed the move from Avignon back to Rome, so
they elected a pope of their own in Avignon, who
would become known as the anti Pope, Clement the seventh,
though they just called him Pope Clement the seventh. A
total of three antipopes would be elected and reign from
(02:39):
Avignon and two more from Pisa. From June fourteen o
nine to May fourteen fifteen. There were popes in all
three cities, each believing wholeheartedly that he alone was the
world's singular direct line to God. Twitter story argued mostly jokingly,
(03:02):
that Musk's decision to unverify Pope Francis was akin to
a modern day Western chism. With the Pope in Rome
stripped of the mark that made it clear he was
the one and only Pope, Musk was leaving the door
open for someone else to claim the papal throne, at
(03:22):
least on Twitter. The brief verification of Pope Francis was
many things, a technological oversight, a notable day in Twitter's
slow downfall, an opportunity to laugh, perhaps nervously, at the
idea of Elon Musk accidentally taking control of the Catholic Church.
(03:43):
But it was not, in fact a crisis in the Vatican.
The papalexperts of Twitter dot com, however, were quick to
point out that a Twitter verification schism, funny as it was,
would not have even given us the first modern antipope.
In the last sixty or so years, at least ten
(04:05):
men have claimed the Holy See, each girded by a
variable number of followers but an equally fervent belief in
the righteousness of their pontificate. Most of these were clergy
associated with specific offshoots of the Catholic Church before they
claimed an appointment to the papal throne. But Twitter that
(04:28):
day was almost entirely focused on a man named David Bowden,
a former real estate agent and furniture maker originally from Oklahoma, who,
in the Year of Our Lord nineteen ninety decided that
he was the only one who could lead the church
in the right direction. I'm Danas Schwartz, and this is
(04:52):
noble blood.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
In order for.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Any religious organisation to endure, it has to strike a delicate,
mysterious balance between holding on to its central tenants and
traditions and updating itself as the world around it inevitably changes.
In January nineteen fifty nine, when Pope John the twenty
third announced his intention to convene a second Vatican Council,
(05:23):
the world had been irrevocably changed by the horrors of
the world wars, by the trepidation of the rebuilding and
globalization that followed, and by the tension that came with
the brewing Cold War. We're about to get into some
complicated religious bureaucracy. So before we get any further, I
(05:44):
figure it would be helpful to explain some terms. The
Second Vatican Council, or Vatican two as it often called,
was an ecumenical council, which is the term they used
to describe a gathering of all bishops and other church
authorities during which they consider and rule on questions of doctrine, administration,
(06:07):
church practice, and the like. Despite its name, Vatican two
was not the second ever ecumenical council, just the second
to take place in the Vatican City. There have been
twenty seven ecumenical councils in total, dating all the way
back to the fourth century CE, with different sects of
(06:30):
Christianity accepting the conclusions of some and not others as
they saw fit. The Catholic Church accepts twenty one of them.
When Pope John called the Ecumenical Council that would be
known as Vatican two, there had not been an ecumenical
council in nearly one hundred years since the First Vatican
(06:52):
Council had concluded in eighteen seventy. It took roughly three
years to prepare for the Second Vatican Council. Before putting
together the council, the Vatican first needed to conduct an
evaluation of the Catholic world from bishops to the faculty
of Catholic universities. Thousands of individuals and institutions replied with
(07:17):
their wishes for the future of the Church, and immediately
the conflict was clear. This Ecumenical Council would be divided.
Which we those who believed it was the duty of
the Church to remain steadfast to resist change, because to
change would be to give in to the pressure from
an increasingly secularized world, and those who believed equally strongly
(07:43):
that change was necessary for the Church to continue to
thrive in that world. The Council opened on October eleventh,
nineteen sixty two, and met in four sessions over the
course of a little over three years. Pope John the
twenty third died in nineteen sixty three, so the final
(08:04):
three sessions were overseen by his successor, Paul sixth.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
He closed the.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Council on December eighth, nineteen sixty five. Vatican two is
remembered as the most significant event in the history of
the Catholic Church since the Reformation. It enacted change to
an extent unseen in the Church's history and on a
global scale not possible in prior centuries. To read out
(08:35):
and explain every change would take too much of our time,
but some changes that might stand out. This was the
moment the Church stopped conducting liturgy in Latin, and when
priests began to be allowed to preach facing the congregation
for the first time in hundreds of years. Lay people
were widely allowed to take communion under both kinds, that is,
(08:59):
they could receive both consecrated bread and the wine that
previously had been limited to members of the clergy. Of course,
these were only a few of many changes, some of
which went to matters of much greater importance to the
doctrine than did the issue of in which direction a
priest could stand. But it's hard to understate how important
(09:23):
a shift Vatican two was for the Catholic world and
how divisive. The conclusion of the Second Vatican Council and
all the change that accompanied it did little to quell
the dissension that had been bubbling over the past several years,
if not longer. Many people, both lay and clergy, continue
(09:47):
to believe steadfastly in traditionalist Catholicism, and some went so
far as to espouse the belief that by changing the
Church and its practices, hope John the thirteenth committed heresies
that effectively nullified his nineteen fifty eight appointment to the papacy.
(10:10):
This belief became known as set of a Cantism, coming
from the Latin phrase set of a cante, meaning with
the seat being empty. The phrase was generally used to
indicate the interregnal periods of the papacy after one pope
had died but before a new one was elected. The
set of a Cantist's adoption of the term went to
(10:33):
their central claim that the nullification of Pope John's appointment
meant that, in fact, the Holy See had remained vacant
since nineteen fifty eight. But what do you do when
you believe the Holy See to be vacant but the
Vatican doesn't agree? Some set of a Cantists saw an
(10:55):
obvious solution to the problem of the empty papal throne
to take matters into their own hands and elect a
pope themselves. David Bodden's life started out about as unremarkably
as a life can start out for someone who would
(11:15):
later claim to be the rightful pope for decades. David
was born in nineteen fifty nine, the very year Pope
John the thirteenth called for an ecumenical council in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
His parents, Kennett and Clara, also known as Ticky Bowden,
were devout Conservative Catholics, and Vatican Two, which concluded when
(11:41):
David was only six years old, felt like a betrayal
of their faith. The result was a traditionalist upbringing for
David and his brother Brian that sowed the seeds of
set of Acantism. Eventually, the Boden family became involved with
the Society of Saint Pius the tenth an international fraternity
(12:04):
of traditionalist Catholic priests, which was founded in nineteen seventy
by Archbishop Marcel Lefevre, who had been one of the
leading clerical voices of opposition during Vatican Two. The Society
acknowledged the Pope in Rome, but took enough issue with
(12:25):
the reforms of Vatican Two that it was still considered
schismatic by the Vatican. David Baden entered the Society's seminary
in nineteen seventy seven, moving to Eccombe, Switzerland to begin
his spiritual training, before transferring to a location in Michigan
later that year. By the time David was dismissed from
(12:49):
the seminary in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
It's possible he had heard.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Of someone named Clemente Domingazigomes, known to his followers as
Pope Gregory. The seventeenth Gomez, was a controversial Spanish bishop
who proclaimed that Christ had come to him in a
series of visions, promising that he would be pope and
return the church to its former glory. Gomez cobbled together
(13:18):
his own college of cardinals and crowned himself on August fifteenth,
nineteen seventy eight, in Seville, Spain, founding what would become
known as the Palmarian Christian Church. David Bowden couldn't have
been particularly satisfied by that papal alternative. The Palmrian Christian
(13:40):
Church has long been widely considered something of a cult,
but that would have been the first significant example in
David's lifetime of some kind of conclavist adjacent movement. A
little bit more messy theology, there are several different distinct
kinds of antipopes, and the differences really boil down to
(14:03):
how those antipopes came into their claims. Many modern antipopes
simply claim that God told them that they were pope.
Such was the case in the Apostles of Infinite Love,
an early traditionalist Catholic movement that began in the thirties
but picked up some momentum following Vatican Two.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Its first two popes.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Claimed that they had been mystically made so without any
need for an election or outside consideration. That's not entirely
dissimilar to what Domengezi Gomez did, and that would become
clear that he didn't actually care much for the practice
of electing a pope by conclave when in nineteen ninety
(14:48):
five he suppressed the cardinalate and single handedly appointed his
own successor. But in the decades since Vatican Two, many
had to genuinely believe that although the throne of Saint
Peter was vacant, the process by which a pope was
chosen was still important. One needed a conclave to elect
(15:13):
a new head of church. These people became known as Conclavists,
espousing the belief that not only was a conclave important,
but that one could or even should, convene their own
conclave to elect a rightful pope outside of the Vatican.
(15:33):
Despite David's dismissal from the Seminary, which he maintained was
due to infighting in the institution rather than any wrongdoing
on his part. David Bodden initially remained loyal to the
Society of Saint Pius the Tenth. The Boden family moved
to Saint Mary's, Kansas, where the society ran Saint Mary's
(15:57):
Academy and Collegevid's brother Brian Bodden, attended school there, and
David took a job, hoping to prove himself worthy of
readmission to the Seminary, but in nineteen eighty one, several
years and a failed seminary application later, David became dissolutioned
(16:19):
by the Society of Saint Pius the Tenth and he
struck out on his own, with his family quickly following suit.
Over the next few years, the Boddends became drawn to
the set of vacantist movement, and soon they believed firmly
that every pope after Pious the twelfth was a heretic
(16:44):
unfit for the papal throne, because the Society of Saint
Pius the Tenth, though traditionalist, still acknowledged the Pope in Rome,
who by this time was John Paul the Second. The
Bodens deemed that society heretical too. As David continued to
study under his own guidance and become more deeply involved
(17:06):
with the set of a Cantist movement, or at least
as involved as one could be without being ordained, he
began to reach a new conclusion that perhaps there was
a solution to the problem of the empty papal throne,
and before long another conclusion that perhaps he was the
(17:28):
one to fill it. In nineteen eighty seven, David began
campaigning for lack of a better word. According to his writings,
which he uploaded to the online ebook service script, it
was in September of that year that he received a
letter that would solidify his conviction that a new pope
(17:48):
must be elected. The letter was otherwise unspecified, but he
claimed that it included a quote from what he described
as the only Vatican Council, that is, the first Vatican Council,
which stated that Saint Peter quote would have perpetual successors
in the papacy until the end of time end quote.
(18:12):
Apparently from that letter, David immediately knew that a new
pope must somehow be elected, and he decided to take.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Up the cause personally.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Around this time, David connected with Teresa stanfill Ben's, a
Denver based woman who shared his convictions around the state
of the Catholic Church and the need to call a conclave. Together,
the two of them wrote a book straightforwardly titled Will
the Catholic Church Survive the Twentieth Century. The book laid
(18:47):
out numerous objections to Vatican two and their thoughts on
how the Church might be saved. One such thought stands
out because the actual college remained faithful to someone who
they believed was a false pope. David and Theresa championed
and apparent precedent within the Catholic Church for the election
(19:10):
of a pope by quote true Catholics, that is, laypeople,
instead of the usual College of Cardinals, which generally consists
of senior clerical officials in the Vatican. With the path
forward finally clear, David began planning to hold a papal election.
(19:32):
He reportedly sent over two hundred copies of his and
Theesa's book to every set of a Cantist priest and
set of a Cantist publication he could get a hold of,
hoping to inflate the number of voters at the election
and thereby its legitimacy. He was hopeful that at least
(19:52):
one ordained priest would come and vote in his homespun
papal election. A few, he said, expressed interest, but ultimately,
in the end none came. After months of planning and
a handful of delays, putting together a papal election on
(20:14):
your own is a logistical challenge, after all, the big
day finally rolled around on July sixteenth, nineteen ninety, a
day which David would later note was serendipitously also the
Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a liturgical feast
which had come under some scrutiny from the Vatican following
(20:36):
Vatican two. With no perish or church to speak of,
David Bowden convened the conclave in the thrift store his
family owned in Bellevue, Kansas. Out of second hand furniture,
the conclave made the best approximation they could of a chapel,
homemade pews padded with leopard print cushions, papal throne all
(21:01):
atop some classic nineties shag carpeting. The conclave was composed
of six lay believers, including Teresa Stanfill Ben's Kennett and
Tickie Bowden, David's parents, and David himself, along with a
couple who traveled from Michigan for the occasion. It only
took one round of voting by secret ballad before it
(21:25):
was decided David Bowden would fill the papal throne that had,
according to the conclave, been vacant for over thirty years
since Pius the twelfth died the year before David's birth.
The newly crowned pope chose the name Michael first, after
Saint Michael, the archangel, who was said to have battled
(21:48):
the devil himself and defended the faith against heresy. In
a statigy shaky blurry video taken on the day of
the election, the videographer, presumably David's father, shows David kneeling
before their homemade altar in a white skull cap, a
white stole with crosses on it, and a robe that
(22:12):
looked like it may have once been a tablecloth. In
a charming, somewhat mid Atlantic accent, David's father, Kenneth declares,
habay moose Popham, we have a pope, And then, like
all proud dads have done since the invention of the
video camera, he struggles to figure out how to zoom
(22:32):
in on the new leader of his faith. A farmhouse
for a palace, an attic for a chapel, a pickup
truck for a popemobile. In twenty eleven, an independent documentary
was made about Pope Michael, detailing his rise to the
(22:55):
thrift shop throne and the small but fervent movement that
he had gathered around him. The film offers an intimate
portrait of Pope Michael that one could never dream of
getting for, say, Pope Francis. We see him eating dinner
at home in Kansas with his mother Ticky, and his
(23:15):
seminarian and papal secretary, Phil Friedel, a young man from
Chicago who had left a girlfriend and an engineering education
behind after corresponding with Pope Michael and feeling called to
his church. We see the Christmas lights Michael used to
decorate his workspace, slash chapel in his mother's attic, the
(23:39):
old computer he used to email with his followers and
update his website, and the aviator Sonny's off white trench
coat combo he wore when he ran errands. We also
hear about the struggles Pope Michael has faced over the years.
A primary problem was that he was unknown ordained for
(24:01):
the first twenty one years of his reign. He never
did gain acceptance to a seminary after his dismissal in
nineteen seventy eight, and he couldn't very well do so
while both rejecting the Vatican and claiming.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
To already be pope.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
But his technically lay status meant that he could not
perform any of the traditional duties of a pope or
a priest for that matter. That meant, among other things,
that he could not offer Mass. So in order to
preach his gospel and grow his following pope, Michael turned
(24:40):
to the newly minted Internet and started a blog, which
he called Vatican in Exile. He used it to maintain
contact with his followers, who remained small in number but
who were based around the world. He also used it
to solicit new followers, to criticiz size the Vatican, and
(25:01):
to try to combat those who would seek to delegitimize
his reign. For the entirety of Michael's reign, his blog
and the Internet in general would be the primary.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Tool of the papacy.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I feel like I need to mention now if you
found yourself charmed by David's quirky underdog story. We cannot
forget that Pope Michael fancied himself a traditionalist Catholic pope.
His blog, along with his other writings, was full of
vitriol against queer and trans people. It was full of
(25:38):
anti choice tirades, and, particularly after COVID hit anti vaccine misinformation.
In twenty eleven, Pope Michael claimed to finally have been
ordained and consecrated as a bishop by Bishop Robert b Arneson,
who was part of the quote independent Catholic movement that
(26:01):
saw clergy and laity break away from Rome and ordain
and consecrate clergy without Vatican approval. It was an ordination
that would never have stood up to scrutiny by Church officials,
but it should be clear by now how little that
would have mattered to Michael. Soon after, Michael wrote and
(26:23):
published another book titled fifty four Years That Changed the
Catholic Church nineteen fifty eight to twenty twelve, in which
he retold his own story and espoused his beliefs on
a wide range of doctrinal issues and perceived heresies and
sins by the Church in the Vatican not to mention
(26:44):
the secular world at large. The other great struggle of
Pope Michael's reign, perhaps unsurprisingly, was near constant criticism. He
dealt with pushback not only from modern Catholics, but also
from his fellow set of Accantists, and even from former
(27:06):
supporters and members of his own family. Teresa Stanfill Bens,
who had made up one sixth of Michael's papal conclave,
had denounced his papacy as a cult of personality several
years prior to the twenty eleven documentary, including him on
her list of anti popes on her blog. David's own brother,
(27:30):
Brian Bawden, had been shocked by the election itself, and
was quoted in the Miami Herald shortly after the election saying,
oh my god, no, I don't know what to think.
I don't follow the church in Rome. I don't go
around electing popes either. We don't hear much about Brian
(27:51):
after Pope Michael's election. From outside his circle, Pope Michael
received ridicule from pro Vatican Catholics, from non Catholics, and
of course from supporters of other anti popes. From a
mixture of these, he received his many nicknames, the junk
(28:12):
store Pope, the second hand Pope, and the thrift shop Pope,
among others. He also claimed to have received many threats
over the years, with one particularly colorful one promising to
cut out his tongue and ship it to then Pope
John Paul the Second. The ridicule never seemed to bother
(28:35):
Michael much. In one interview, he equipped quote they called
Jesus a kook too, though he did file a police
report after that tongue threat. In July twenty twenty two,
the Vatican in Exile Twitter account shared that Pope Michael
had been admitted to a hospital in Kansas City, Missouri,
(28:58):
for emergency surch injury and was in a coma. He
never recovered and died on August second, twenty twenty two,
at the age of sixty three. In another interview released
shortly after his death, he claimed that his constant efforts
online had earned his church over one hundred loyal members.
(29:23):
David Bodden's death did not make the waves one might
expect from the death of a pope. His obituary is
a curious testament to the precariousness of his position. He
was named only as father David Bowden, and his obituary
never explicitly mentioned his claim to the papacy, naming him
(29:45):
instead as a member of the Saint Helen's Catholic Mission
Church in Topeka. It also gave him the titles of
President of the Oakland Neighborhood Improvement Association and members member
of the Citizen Advisory Committee. Nevertheless, the obituary did note
(30:06):
that he would be lying in state at Saint Helen's
in honor not afforded to just anyone, not even regular
quote unquote priests. In death as in life, David embodied
many of the tensions and contradictions that defined the Catholic
world after Vatican Two. The papacy in the Vatican, as
(30:29):
we all know, continued on after Pope Michael's death, with
Francis and the cardinals and the bishops and most of
the world ignoring him as they always had, But in
the eyes of somewhere between thirty and one hundred believers,
the throne of Saint Peter was vacant. Once again. That's
(30:59):
the story of David Bodden's peculiar and contested papacy. But
stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear about
how his followers have continued his mission normally here at
(31:19):
Noble Blood. Our episode's focus on a past not always distant,
but usually far back enough that by the time we
press record there aren't any updates. As in everything, David
Bodden's story is a bit of an anomaly. His church
never had very many followers, but he had some, and
(31:41):
they have continued to try to honor his legacy and
hold his church together in the time since his death.
While this episode was being written in July twenty twenty three,
they did so by doing exactly what Pope Michael would
have wanted, by convening a co enclave and electing a
(32:02):
new pope. Their conclave began on July twenty fifth, twenty
twenty three. The Vatican in Exile newsletter reported the venue
as being in Vienna, Austria, but several news outlets claimed
the event took place in Kansas. The conclave consisted of
(32:22):
two American priests and two bishops. The sessions of the
conclave were chaired by Pope Michael's Archbishop Rhellia Martinez, who
had brought his Pope's movement to his home parish in
the Philippines. It's unclear whether Martinez was counted among those
(32:42):
in the conclave, or whether his presence brought their number
up to five. This new conclave elected an unnamed priest
as their new pope rather quickly, but he didn't pick
up the phone when they called to tell him.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
He was the new Pope.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Martinez chose to give him a forty eight hour grace
period to accept the papacy, during which said priest did
eventually call them back, but unfortunately rejected the position, just
as their counterparts in the Vatican would have done. The
conclave got back to work to elect someone else, and
(33:21):
just like David Bowden did before him. On July twenty ninth,
twenty twenty three, Rhelio Martinez chaired the session that saw
a handful of people, presumably including himself, elect him to
the papacy. News outlets reported that his return to the
Philippines as Pope was celebrated with a motorcade and growing
(33:46):
number of fervent followers, not to mention threats of excommunication
from local Vatican officials. Though Pope Francis has yet to
acknowledge his competitor in any way. Since Martinez's election, he
has taken up the task of picking up where David
Bowden left off, leading his faithful, building his following, and
(34:10):
raging against the Vatican and its perceived heresies and the
pontifical name he chose that would be his Holiness, Pope Michael.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
The Second.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and
Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is created and hosted
by me Dana Shwort, with additional writing and researching by
Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman.
The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and
(34:50):
rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive
producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams and Matt From. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
On April twentieth, twenty twenty three, Elon Musk unverified the Pope.
I bet that was a sentence you never thought you'd
hear on this podcast. Musk, the eccentric billionaire who bought
the website formerly known as Twitter seemingly for the Lafts,
had changed his policy on verification. Previously, verification had been
(00:40):
subject to a rigorous evaluation to verify the accounts of
public figures and organizations, but now the coveted blue check
was available to anyone with eight dollars a month to spare.
The end result was that, at least temporarily, a blue
check mark or public figures and organizations no longer conferred
(01:04):
any meaningful marker of identity. Those unwilling to pay for it,
like Pope Francis, were simply unceremoniously stripped of their blue check.
If you were, like me, someone who often found yourself
on the history nerd side of Twitter, you might have
noticed a couple of odd terms trending as the verification
(01:29):
mayhem unfolded, namely, Auvignon and Western Chisholm. In the early
fourteenth century, Pope Clement the fifth had moved his court
from Rome to Avignon in what is now France. The
papacy would remain there unchallenged for over seventy years and
through six more popes, until Gregory the eleventh moved his
(01:53):
court back to Rome in thirteen seventy six. What does
this have to do with Elon musk ask The answer
lies in a third trending term, antipope. When Gregory the
eleventh died in thirteen seventy eight, the College of Cardinals
in Rome set about their usual business of electing a
(02:14):
new pope, which they did Urban the sixth, But some
cardinals opposed the move from Avignon back to Rome, so
they elected a pope of their own in Avignon, who
would become known as the anti Pope, Clement the seventh,
though they just called him Pope Clement the seventh. A
total of three antipopes would be elected and reign from
(02:39):
Avignon and two more from Pisa. From June fourteen o
nine to May fourteen fifteen. There were popes in all
three cities, each believing wholeheartedly that he alone was the
world's singular direct line to God. Twitter story argued mostly jokingly,
(03:02):
that Musk's decision to unverify Pope Francis was akin to
a modern day Western chism. With the Pope in Rome
stripped of the mark that made it clear he was
the one and only Pope, Musk was leaving the door
open for someone else to claim the papal throne, at
(03:22):
least on Twitter. The brief verification of Pope Francis was
many things, a technological oversight, a notable day in Twitter's
slow downfall, an opportunity to laugh, perhaps nervously, at the
idea of Elon Musk accidentally taking control of the Catholic Church.
(03:43):
But it was not, in fact a crisis in the Vatican.
The papalexperts of Twitter dot com, however, were quick to
point out that a Twitter verification schism, funny as it was,
would not have even given us the first modern antipope.
In the last sixty or so years, at least ten
(04:05):
men have claimed the Holy See, each girded by a
variable number of followers but an equally fervent belief in
the righteousness of their pontificate. Most of these were clergy
associated with specific offshoots of the Catholic Church before they
claimed an appointment to the papal throne. But Twitter that
(04:28):
day was almost entirely focused on a man named David Bowden,
a former real estate agent and furniture maker originally from Oklahoma, who,
in the Year of Our Lord nineteen ninety decided that
he was the only one who could lead the church
in the right direction. I'm Danas Schwartz, and this is
(04:52):
noble blood.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
In order for.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Any religious organisation to endure, it has to strike a delicate,
mysterious balance between holding on to its central tenants and
traditions and updating itself as the world around it inevitably changes.
In January nineteen fifty nine, when Pope John the twenty
third announced his intention to convene a second Vatican Council,
(05:23):
the world had been irrevocably changed by the horrors of
the world wars, by the trepidation of the rebuilding and
globalization that followed, and by the tension that came with
the brewing Cold War. We're about to get into some
complicated religious bureaucracy. So before we get any further, I
(05:44):
figure it would be helpful to explain some terms. The
Second Vatican Council, or Vatican two as it often called,
was an ecumenical council, which is the term they used
to describe a gathering of all bishops and other church
authorities during which they consider and rule on questions of doctrine, administration,
(06:07):
church practice, and the like. Despite its name, Vatican two
was not the second ever ecumenical council, just the second
to take place in the Vatican City. There have been
twenty seven ecumenical councils in total, dating all the way
back to the fourth century CE, with different sects of
(06:30):
Christianity accepting the conclusions of some and not others as
they saw fit. The Catholic Church accepts twenty one of them.
When Pope John called the Ecumenical Council that would be
known as Vatican two, there had not been an ecumenical
council in nearly one hundred years since the First Vatican
(06:52):
Council had concluded in eighteen seventy. It took roughly three
years to prepare for the Second Vatican Council. Before putting
together the council, the Vatican first needed to conduct an
evaluation of the Catholic world from bishops to the faculty
of Catholic universities. Thousands of individuals and institutions replied with
(07:17):
their wishes for the future of the Church, and immediately
the conflict was clear. This Ecumenical Council would be divided.
Which we those who believed it was the duty of
the Church to remain steadfast to resist change, because to
change would be to give in to the pressure from
an increasingly secularized world, and those who believed equally strongly
(07:43):
that change was necessary for the Church to continue to
thrive in that world. The Council opened on October eleventh,
nineteen sixty two, and met in four sessions over the
course of a little over three years. Pope John the
twenty third died in nineteen sixty three, so the final
(08:04):
three sessions were overseen by his successor, Paul sixth.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
He closed the.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Council on December eighth, nineteen sixty five. Vatican two is
remembered as the most significant event in the history of
the Catholic Church since the Reformation. It enacted change to
an extent unseen in the Church's history and on a
global scale not possible in prior centuries. To read out
(08:35):
and explain every change would take too much of our time,
but some changes that might stand out. This was the
moment the Church stopped conducting liturgy in Latin, and when
priests began to be allowed to preach facing the congregation
for the first time in hundreds of years. Lay people
were widely allowed to take communion under both kinds, that is,
(08:59):
they could receive both consecrated bread and the wine that
previously had been limited to members of the clergy. Of course,
these were only a few of many changes, some of
which went to matters of much greater importance to the
doctrine than did the issue of in which direction a
priest could stand. But it's hard to understate how important
(09:23):
a shift Vatican two was for the Catholic world and
how divisive. The conclusion of the Second Vatican Council and
all the change that accompanied it did little to quell
the dissension that had been bubbling over the past several years,
if not longer. Many people, both lay and clergy, continue
(09:47):
to believe steadfastly in traditionalist Catholicism, and some went so
far as to espouse the belief that by changing the
Church and its practices, hope John the thirteenth committed heresies
that effectively nullified his nineteen fifty eight appointment to the papacy.
(10:10):
This belief became known as set of a Cantism, coming
from the Latin phrase set of a cante, meaning with
the seat being empty. The phrase was generally used to
indicate the interregnal periods of the papacy after one pope
had died but before a new one was elected. The
set of a Cantist's adoption of the term went to
(10:33):
their central claim that the nullification of Pope John's appointment
meant that, in fact, the Holy See had remained vacant
since nineteen fifty eight. But what do you do when
you believe the Holy See to be vacant but the
Vatican doesn't agree? Some set of a Cantists saw an
(10:55):
obvious solution to the problem of the empty papal throne
to take matters into their own hands and elect a
pope themselves. David Bodden's life started out about as unremarkably
as a life can start out for someone who would
(11:15):
later claim to be the rightful pope for decades. David
was born in nineteen fifty nine, the very year Pope
John the thirteenth called for an ecumenical council in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
His parents, Kennett and Clara, also known as Ticky Bowden,
were devout Conservative Catholics, and Vatican Two, which concluded when
(11:41):
David was only six years old, felt like a betrayal
of their faith. The result was a traditionalist upbringing for
David and his brother Brian that sowed the seeds of
set of Acantism. Eventually, the Boden family became involved with
the Society of Saint Pius the tenth an international fraternity
(12:04):
of traditionalist Catholic priests, which was founded in nineteen seventy
by Archbishop Marcel Lefevre, who had been one of the
leading clerical voices of opposition during Vatican Two. The Society
acknowledged the Pope in Rome, but took enough issue with
(12:25):
the reforms of Vatican Two that it was still considered
schismatic by the Vatican. David Baden entered the Society's seminary
in nineteen seventy seven, moving to Eccombe, Switzerland to begin
his spiritual training, before transferring to a location in Michigan
later that year. By the time David was dismissed from
(12:49):
the seminary in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
It's possible he had heard.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Of someone named Clemente Domingazigomes, known to his followers as
Pope Gregory. The seventeenth Gomez, was a controversial Spanish bishop
who proclaimed that Christ had come to him in a
series of visions, promising that he would be pope and
return the church to its former glory. Gomez cobbled together
(13:18):
his own college of cardinals and crowned himself on August fifteenth,
nineteen seventy eight, in Seville, Spain, founding what would become
known as the Palmarian Christian Church. David Bowden couldn't have
been particularly satisfied by that papal alternative. The Palmrian Christian
(13:40):
Church has long been widely considered something of a cult,
but that would have been the first significant example in
David's lifetime of some kind of conclavist adjacent movement. A
little bit more messy theology, there are several different distinct
kinds of antipopes, and the differences really boil down to
(14:03):
how those antipopes came into their claims. Many modern antipopes
simply claim that God told them that they were pope.
Such was the case in the Apostles of Infinite Love,
an early traditionalist Catholic movement that began in the thirties
but picked up some momentum following Vatican Two.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Its first two popes.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Claimed that they had been mystically made so without any
need for an election or outside consideration. That's not entirely
dissimilar to what Domengezi Gomez did, and that would become
clear that he didn't actually care much for the practice
of electing a pope by conclave when in nineteen ninety
(14:48):
five he suppressed the cardinalate and single handedly appointed his
own successor. But in the decades since Vatican Two, many
had to genuinely believe that although the throne of Saint
Peter was vacant, the process by which a pope was
chosen was still important. One needed a conclave to elect
(15:13):
a new head of church. These people became known as Conclavists,
espousing the belief that not only was a conclave important,
but that one could or even should, convene their own
conclave to elect a rightful pope outside of the Vatican.
(15:33):
Despite David's dismissal from the Seminary, which he maintained was
due to infighting in the institution rather than any wrongdoing
on his part. David Bodden initially remained loyal to the
Society of Saint Pius the Tenth. The Boden family moved
to Saint Mary's, Kansas, where the society ran Saint Mary's
(15:57):
Academy and Collegevid's brother Brian Bodden, attended school there, and
David took a job, hoping to prove himself worthy of
readmission to the Seminary, but in nineteen eighty one, several
years and a failed seminary application later, David became dissolutioned
(16:19):
by the Society of Saint Pius the Tenth and he
struck out on his own, with his family quickly following suit.
Over the next few years, the Boddends became drawn to
the set of vacantist movement, and soon they believed firmly
that every pope after Pious the twelfth was a heretic
(16:44):
unfit for the papal throne, because the Society of Saint
Pius the Tenth, though traditionalist, still acknowledged the Pope in Rome,
who by this time was John Paul the Second. The
Bodens deemed that society heretical too. As David continued to
study under his own guidance and become more deeply involved
(17:06):
with the set of a Cantist movement, or at least
as involved as one could be without being ordained, he
began to reach a new conclusion that perhaps there was
a solution to the problem of the empty papal throne,
and before long another conclusion that perhaps he was the
(17:28):
one to fill it. In nineteen eighty seven, David began
campaigning for lack of a better word. According to his writings,
which he uploaded to the online ebook service script, it
was in September of that year that he received a
letter that would solidify his conviction that a new pope
(17:48):
must be elected. The letter was otherwise unspecified, but he
claimed that it included a quote from what he described
as the only Vatican Council, that is, the first Vatican Council,
which stated that Saint Peter quote would have perpetual successors
in the papacy until the end of time end quote.
(18:12):
Apparently from that letter, David immediately knew that a new
pope must somehow be elected, and he decided to take.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Up the cause personally.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Around this time, David connected with Teresa stanfill Ben's, a
Denver based woman who shared his convictions around the state
of the Catholic Church and the need to call a conclave. Together,
the two of them wrote a book straightforwardly titled Will
the Catholic Church Survive the Twentieth Century. The book laid
(18:47):
out numerous objections to Vatican two and their thoughts on
how the Church might be saved. One such thought stands
out because the actual college remained faithful to someone who
they believed was a false pope. David and Theresa championed
and apparent precedent within the Catholic Church for the election
(19:10):
of a pope by quote true Catholics, that is, laypeople,
instead of the usual College of Cardinals, which generally consists
of senior clerical officials in the Vatican. With the path
forward finally clear, David began planning to hold a papal election.
(19:32):
He reportedly sent over two hundred copies of his and
Theesa's book to every set of a Cantist priest and
set of a Cantist publication he could get a hold of,
hoping to inflate the number of voters at the election
and thereby its legitimacy. He was hopeful that at least
(19:52):
one ordained priest would come and vote in his homespun
papal election. A few, he said, expressed interest, but ultimately,
in the end none came. After months of planning and
a handful of delays, putting together a papal election on
(20:14):
your own is a logistical challenge, after all, the big
day finally rolled around on July sixteenth, nineteen ninety, a
day which David would later note was serendipitously also the
Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a liturgical feast
which had come under some scrutiny from the Vatican following
(20:36):
Vatican two. With no perish or church to speak of,
David Bowden convened the conclave in the thrift store his
family owned in Bellevue, Kansas. Out of second hand furniture,
the conclave made the best approximation they could of a chapel,
homemade pews padded with leopard print cushions, papal throne all
(21:01):
atop some classic nineties shag carpeting. The conclave was composed
of six lay believers, including Teresa Stanfill Ben's Kennett and
Tickie Bowden, David's parents, and David himself, along with a
couple who traveled from Michigan for the occasion. It only
took one round of voting by secret ballad before it
(21:25):
was decided David Bowden would fill the papal throne that had,
according to the conclave, been vacant for over thirty years
since Pius the twelfth died the year before David's birth.
The newly crowned pope chose the name Michael first, after
Saint Michael, the archangel, who was said to have battled
(21:48):
the devil himself and defended the faith against heresy. In
a statigy shaky blurry video taken on the day of
the election, the videographer, presumably David's father, shows David kneeling
before their homemade altar in a white skull cap, a
white stole with crosses on it, and a robe that
(22:12):
looked like it may have once been a tablecloth. In
a charming, somewhat mid Atlantic accent, David's father, Kenneth declares,
habay moose Popham, we have a pope, And then, like
all proud dads have done since the invention of the
video camera, he struggles to figure out how to zoom
(22:32):
in on the new leader of his faith. A farmhouse
for a palace, an attic for a chapel, a pickup
truck for a popemobile. In twenty eleven, an independent documentary
was made about Pope Michael, detailing his rise to the
(22:55):
thrift shop throne and the small but fervent movement that
he had gathered around him. The film offers an intimate
portrait of Pope Michael that one could never dream of
getting for, say, Pope Francis. We see him eating dinner
at home in Kansas with his mother Ticky, and his
(23:15):
seminarian and papal secretary, Phil Friedel, a young man from
Chicago who had left a girlfriend and an engineering education
behind after corresponding with Pope Michael and feeling called to
his church. We see the Christmas lights Michael used to
decorate his workspace, slash chapel in his mother's attic, the
(23:39):
old computer he used to email with his followers and
update his website, and the aviator Sonny's off white trench
coat combo he wore when he ran errands. We also
hear about the struggles Pope Michael has faced over the years.
A primary problem was that he was unknown ordained for
(24:01):
the first twenty one years of his reign. He never
did gain acceptance to a seminary after his dismissal in
nineteen seventy eight, and he couldn't very well do so
while both rejecting the Vatican and claiming.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
To already be pope.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
But his technically lay status meant that he could not
perform any of the traditional duties of a pope or
a priest for that matter. That meant, among other things,
that he could not offer Mass. So in order to
preach his gospel and grow his following pope, Michael turned
(24:40):
to the newly minted Internet and started a blog, which
he called Vatican in Exile. He used it to maintain
contact with his followers, who remained small in number but
who were based around the world. He also used it
to solicit new followers, to criticiz size the Vatican, and
(25:01):
to try to combat those who would seek to delegitimize
his reign. For the entirety of Michael's reign, his blog
and the Internet in general would be the primary.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Tool of the papacy.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I feel like I need to mention now if you
found yourself charmed by David's quirky underdog story. We cannot
forget that Pope Michael fancied himself a traditionalist Catholic pope.
His blog, along with his other writings, was full of
vitriol against queer and trans people. It was full of
(25:38):
anti choice tirades, and, particularly after COVID hit anti vaccine misinformation.
In twenty eleven, Pope Michael claimed to finally have been
ordained and consecrated as a bishop by Bishop Robert b Arneson,
who was part of the quote independent Catholic movement that
(26:01):
saw clergy and laity break away from Rome and ordain
and consecrate clergy without Vatican approval. It was an ordination
that would never have stood up to scrutiny by Church officials,
but it should be clear by now how little that
would have mattered to Michael. Soon after, Michael wrote and
(26:23):
published another book titled fifty four Years That Changed the
Catholic Church nineteen fifty eight to twenty twelve, in which
he retold his own story and espoused his beliefs on
a wide range of doctrinal issues and perceived heresies and
sins by the Church in the Vatican not to mention
(26:44):
the secular world at large. The other great struggle of
Pope Michael's reign, perhaps unsurprisingly, was near constant criticism. He
dealt with pushback not only from modern Catholics, but also
from his fellow set of Accantists, and even from former
(27:06):
supporters and members of his own family. Teresa Stanfill Bens,
who had made up one sixth of Michael's papal conclave,
had denounced his papacy as a cult of personality several
years prior to the twenty eleven documentary, including him on
her list of anti popes on her blog. David's own brother,
(27:30):
Brian Bawden, had been shocked by the election itself, and
was quoted in the Miami Herald shortly after the election saying,
oh my god, no, I don't know what to think.
I don't follow the church in Rome. I don't go
around electing popes either. We don't hear much about Brian
(27:51):
after Pope Michael's election. From outside his circle, Pope Michael
received ridicule from pro Vatican Catholics, from non Catholics, and
of course from supporters of other anti popes. From a
mixture of these, he received his many nicknames, the junk
(28:12):
store Pope, the second hand Pope, and the thrift shop Pope,
among others. He also claimed to have received many threats
over the years, with one particularly colorful one promising to
cut out his tongue and ship it to then Pope
John Paul the Second. The ridicule never seemed to bother
(28:35):
Michael much. In one interview, he equipped quote they called
Jesus a kook too, though he did file a police
report after that tongue threat. In July twenty twenty two,
the Vatican in Exile Twitter account shared that Pope Michael
had been admitted to a hospital in Kansas City, Missouri,
(28:58):
for emergency surch injury and was in a coma. He
never recovered and died on August second, twenty twenty two,
at the age of sixty three. In another interview released
shortly after his death, he claimed that his constant efforts
online had earned his church over one hundred loyal members.
(29:23):
David Bodden's death did not make the waves one might
expect from the death of a pope. His obituary is
a curious testament to the precariousness of his position. He
was named only as father David Bowden, and his obituary
never explicitly mentioned his claim to the papacy, naming him
(29:45):
instead as a member of the Saint Helen's Catholic Mission
Church in Topeka. It also gave him the titles of
President of the Oakland Neighborhood Improvement Association and members member
of the Citizen Advisory Committee. Nevertheless, the obituary did note
(30:06):
that he would be lying in state at Saint Helen's
in honor not afforded to just anyone, not even regular
quote unquote priests. In death as in life, David embodied
many of the tensions and contradictions that defined the Catholic
world after Vatican Two. The papacy in the Vatican, as
(30:29):
we all know, continued on after Pope Michael's death, with
Francis and the cardinals and the bishops and most of
the world ignoring him as they always had, But in
the eyes of somewhere between thirty and one hundred believers,
the throne of Saint Peter was vacant. Once again. That's
(30:59):
the story of David Bodden's peculiar and contested papacy. But
stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear about
how his followers have continued his mission normally here at
(31:19):
Noble Blood. Our episode's focus on a past not always distant,
but usually far back enough that by the time we
press record there aren't any updates. As in everything, David
Bodden's story is a bit of an anomaly. His church
never had very many followers, but he had some, and
(31:41):
they have continued to try to honor his legacy and
hold his church together in the time since his death.
While this episode was being written in July twenty twenty three,
they did so by doing exactly what Pope Michael would
have wanted, by convening a co enclave and electing a
(32:02):
new pope. Their conclave began on July twenty fifth, twenty
twenty three. The Vatican in Exile newsletter reported the venue
as being in Vienna, Austria, but several news outlets claimed
the event took place in Kansas. The conclave consisted of
(32:22):
two American priests and two bishops. The sessions of the
conclave were chaired by Pope Michael's Archbishop Rhellia Martinez, who
had brought his Pope's movement to his home parish in
the Philippines. It's unclear whether Martinez was counted among those
(32:42):
in the conclave, or whether his presence brought their number
up to five. This new conclave elected an unnamed priest
as their new pope rather quickly, but he didn't pick
up the phone when they called to tell him.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
He was the new Pope.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Martinez chose to give him a forty eight hour grace
period to accept the papacy, during which said priest did
eventually call them back, but unfortunately rejected the position, just
as their counterparts in the Vatican would have done. The
conclave got back to work to elect someone else, and
(33:21):
just like David Bowden did before him. On July twenty ninth,
twenty twenty three, Rhelio Martinez chaired the session that saw
a handful of people, presumably including himself, elect him to
the papacy. News outlets reported that his return to the
Philippines as Pope was celebrated with a motorcade and growing
(33:46):
number of fervent followers, not to mention threats of excommunication
from local Vatican officials. Though Pope Francis has yet to
acknowledge his competitor in any way. Since Martinez's election, he
has taken up the task of picking up where David
Bowden left off, leading his faithful, building his following, and
(34:10):
raging against the Vatican and its perceived heresies and the
pontifical name he chose that would be his Holiness, Pope Michael.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
The Second.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and
Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is created and hosted
by me Dana Shwort, with additional writing and researching by
Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman.
The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and
(34:50):
rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive
producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams and Matt From. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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