Editor’s Note: Very little can be found in English about the First Council of Sutri, and perhaps for this reason not a few of unlettered Catholic influencers are reluctant to speak of the Sutri Initiative. — For this reason I publish here this article on the role of money in the sale of the Papacy by the legitimate pope Benedict IX to John Gratian, who took the name of Pope Gregory VI, and whose acolyte was the famous St. Hildebrand, who would later be raised to the Apostolic Dignity as Pope Gregory VII and begin in earnest the medieval renewal of the Papacy known as the Gregorian Reform.

This scholarly article is in English, by the Brazilian academic, Dr. Leonardo Rust, professor of Medieval History, at the University of Brazil. It was published in 2023.

As this paper shows, the deposition of 3 claimants to the Papacy at Sutri in 1046, during a Provincial Council was an event accepted by the entire Church. It is still accepted. And those who hold to “universal acceptance” should take note, because they are the ones who, if they refuse the Sutri Initiative, are in fact holding against universal acceptance.