Timeline: Benevacantism

By mid-September 2023 Catholic World Report reported that Fr. James Altman, already removed as a pastor in 2021, had declared in a YouTube video that Francis was not really the pope but an antipope. Commentators disputed whether his position was sedevacantist or benevacantist.

Il Post and Euronews reported on messages about Benedict XVI flown over Italian beaches promoting the claim that Francis was an antipope. Euronews described the claim as a conspiracy theory. See benevacantism.

OSV News reported that Fr. Robert Spitzer, Jeff Cavins and Jennifer Roback Morse, along with 17 other speakers, had withdrawn from Patrick Coffin's 24 May online Hope Is Fuel conference after Coffin questioned the legitimacy of Pope Francis. Morse said she withdrew on learning it also featured E. Michael Jones, whose writings the ADL describes as antisemitic.

Benedict XVI died at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in Vatican City, where he had lived since resigning in 2013. Some benevacantists then recognised Francis; others turned to sedevacantism.

A papal decree dismissed Alessandro Minutella, a priest of Palermo, from the clerical state, according to a later diocesan decree. The same decree records that he had incurred excommunication on 18 August 2018; the Archdiocese of Palermo had cited heresy and schism. He continues to lead a movement that rejects Francis and Leo XIV.

In an interview with Massimo Franco published on 1 March 2021, Benedict XVI defended his resignation as a decision taken in full awareness. The Associated Press reported that he said "there is only one pope". Benevacantist writers disputed the interview's significance.

After about seven and a half years hosting Catholic Answers Live, Patrick Coffin left the programme to start his own media projects. He later used his podcast to argue that Pope Francis was an antipope, a claim Catholic Answers rebutted.

In his Declaratio, Benedict XVI announced that he was renouncing the ministry of Bishop of Rome, with the See to fall vacant on 28 February 2013 at 20:00. He was the first pope to resign since Gregory XII in 1415. The wording later became the basis of benevacantist claims that the resignation was invalid.