by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

Now that the Catholic World is coming to understand the veiled way in which the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI has been speaking since February 2013, I want to return to shed some light on the question of the election of His successor and two aspects of His Declaratio which I was the first to publicly bring to the attention of the world.

In the past, when I spoke of these things, they seemed incredible. But now that Andrea Cionci has definitively established that the Holy Father is using amphibologies to get His message out to the faithful, while hiding their true meaning from the Masons in the Church — just as Christ our Lord did when speaking with the High Priests, Pilate, or the Pharasees — it is more certain that was I recognized nearly 3 years ago, is the true sense of His Declaratio.

First of all, in the very opening of the Latin text of the Declaratio, the Holy Father uses the word vobis instead of vobiscum, which is a glaring error only a refined classicist in Latin would be sensitive to, but which alters the meaning of the entire sentence and sends a grave warning to the whole Church.

All the Vatican translations read the vobis as if it were vobiscum, but that is a totally illegitimate and dishonest way of reading a Latin text. They do this, however, by necessity of self protection, because when you read vobis as vobis, and not as vobiscum, you see immediately that the Declaratio is a denunication of the entire Roman curia and the Cardinals in particular.

Reading vobis in the original as vobiscum, the opening sentence is translated thus:

“I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church. …”

But reading vobis in the original as vobis, the Latin meaning of the first phrase is an explosive declaration of schism:

“Not only for the sake of the three acts of canonization have I called you together for this Consistory, but also so that I may communicate a separation from you of great moment for the life of the Church.” (For details, and footnotes see here).

This means that the entire Declaratio must be read in an entirely different light, and that the references to the election of His successor too.

For when he says, in the core of his Declaration (again my translation):

On which account (5), well conscious of the weight of this act I declare in full liberty, that I renounce the ministry (6) of the Bishop of Rome, the Successor of Saint Peter, committed (8) to me through the hands of the Cardinals (7) on the 19th of April, 2005, to leave unused (10) from the 28th of February, at 20:00 hours, Rome time (9), the See of Saint Peter, and that a Conclave to elect a new Supreme Pontiff is to be convoked by those who are competent (11).

We must take a close look at the final phrase,

… that a Conclave to elect a new Supreme Pontiff is to be convoked by those who are competent.

They key word here in Latin is,

ab his quibus competit convocandum esse.

Speaking in front of the entire College of Cardinals, the Holy Father omits to say that they are the men to whom it pertains to convoke the Conclave. I noticed this in 2020, and it led me to all my investigations into the text (see here), which have borne fruit now in the book by Andrea Cionci.

COMPETIT

So now that we know that it is very important to pay attention with precision to the words that the Holy Father uses, I wish to bring to your attention, dear readers, that the Holy Father is saying something very important in His choice of the word which in English has no equivalent: and that word is competit.  I have rendered it as those who are competant, using the English cognate.

But the Latin does not refer to mental competancy but to legal competancy.  And this reference is not just to someone who has authority to act, but to one who has it innately or naturally.

This can be seen in the definitions of the Latin verb, competo, in the Lewis’s Latin Dictionary, under the third tropological sense of the word:

This is why the Holy Father says, ab his quibus, rather than ab vobis fratribus cardinalibus quibus…  That is, why He says, “by those to whom” rather than “by You Cardinal Brothers”.

This is because the Cardinals only have the right to elect the Roman Pontiff in virtue of Canon Law and Papal Law, which are positive juridical acts, which can be altered or abolished.  But there is another group which has the right to elect the Roman Pontiff by divine and natural right and Apostolic Tradition, which can never be abolished and needs no written law to confirm: and that is the Catholics of the Church of Rome.

Hence, I believe it can be soundly and safely said, that in His Declaratio, the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI has authorized canonically His successors election by the Faithful of Rome, foreseeing in some way, that all the Cardinals would break with the Apostolic See by electing an anti-Pope and that none of them would be reconciled with His person before His death, which is the sine qua non requirement for them to participate in any election of His successor.

And His prayer for the Cardinals at the end of his Declaratio shows that He is praying for their conversion and return, as a good father always does.