by Br. Alexis Bugnolo
UPDATED with PDF & Text Versions
Readers have asked me to publish a suggested letter which they could send to any Cardinal, whether elector or not, asking him to attend to the two grave legal irregularities in the Conclave of May, 2025.
So here below is a suggested letter in PDF format. Beneath that, is the same letter in the format of an article here at FromRome, so that with Chrome or Firefox you can see the text in your native language in a mechanical translation (which probably has errors, but will give you the gist of the Letter).
While we can be sure that some of the Cardinals do not care, it may be that many of the Cardinals do, especially those 65 who were not involved in the claim of April 30, “that Pope Francis granted a dispensation” to the rule of having no more than 120 Cardinal electors, or that Prevost’s election could never be valid on account of his previous public acts of the sin of heresy.
This letter contains the complete canonical argument in a direct, to the point, format, as a formal canonical petition, which must at least be read the Cardinal and his legal team.
Here is that suggested text, in format of PDF, I wrote it in suchwise that you need only sign it and mail it to a Cardinal.
Note, as I correct minor typographical errors, the version of this letter will change. Currently the version is 1.03.
If you do not have the access to someone who can translate this letter precisely, using the normal ecclesiastical terminology which prevails in your native language, you can still send this letter to any Cardinal in the English language.
Finally, I advise you not to change anything in this letter on the basis of any claim by any social media grifters, because once they see this Letter their vanity and jealously will cause them to attack every part of it and or suggest alterations so as to make the canonical petition it contains null and void or at least seem ridiculous. I warn you all in advance, since I have seen the malignity of these sort of people for the last 12 years and am familiar with their modus malum operandi (their way of working evil).
If you send such a letter, send it by registered mail, or at least in suchwise as you have a receipt for the date of its sending.
PLEASE SEND YOUR LETTERS BEFORE JULY 30, 2025, so that your petition arrives before 90 days, after the initial claim of the Cardinals to have a dispensation, has elapsed,
To download this file, press FULL SCREEN when on a PC, and then click the download icon in the upper right corner on the tool bar.
After 90 days, if the Cardinals do not take any action on this petition, then they are canonically demonstrated to be knowingly and willfully complicit in the crime of schism and promoting heresy, and excommunicated latae sententiae by canon 1364, for schism at the very least, after which according to canon 1331 §1, they can exercise no office, ministry nor confer any Sacrament licitly in the Church, until a true pope absolve them after they have repented. Then the Catholics of Rome can proceed to the election of a Catholic Pope in accord with the teaching of Pope Nicholas II, and this with their enemies having no valid basis for a contrary claim that the Cardinals will or might at some future time repair their fault, since after being excommunicated they cannot licitly exercise their offices as Cardinal electors.
Letter to a Cardinal about the Juridical Problems which Invalidate the Recent Conclave of May, 2025
Your Eminence,
As a fully incardinated member of the Church of Rome, and prince of the Church, I am writing to you to express my grave concerns, using the rights granted me by Canon 212 of the Code of Canon Law for the Roman Rite, published by Pope John Paul II, on January 25, 1983. Hereafter, in my letter, when I refer to the Code, I will cite this edition.
My concerns are not those of myself only, but are held by hundreds of thousands of Catholics of the Roman Rite throughout the English, Spanish, French and Italian speaking world.
And as they regard the recent Conclave, I trust in the Lord that He will abundantly pour out upon you, if you ask Him, the grace and light, since being a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, He will always stand at your side ready to give you such blessings to fulfill your duty to serve Him, who is the Supreme Head of the Church.
These concerns regard two grave juridical problems and arise solely out of the discrepancy of the historical record of how the Conclave was conducted with the prescriptions of papal law.
The First Problem
The first regards the press release made by the Cardinals assembled in General Congregation on April 30, 2025, and reported by Vatican News, and now published on the Vatican Website, regarding the claim of the Cardinals to have received a dispensation from Pope Francis to violate the formal equipollent precept found in n. 33 of the papal law on conclaves, Universi Dominic Gregis, promulgated by Pope John Paul II, on February 22, 1996, and which I will refer to, hereafter, in my letter, with the symbol UDG, for brevity’s sake.
That precept reads in the Latin text of the papal law – which is the only legally binding text – as follows:
Maximus autem Cardinalium electorum numerus centum viginti ne excedat.
And which in English would be, precisely: “Moreover, let the maximum number of Cardinal electors not exceed one hundred and twenty.”
The Vatican’s English translation has the helping verb “must”, which is in no way signified in the Latin, though it does not formally deviate from the same sense.
The point is, however, that in claiming to have been dispensed, the Cardinals failed to take note of UDG n. 4, which forbids dispensation from papal laws during a sedevacante:
- Sede Apostolica vacante, leges a Romanis Pontificibus latas non licet ullo modo corrigi vel immutari, neque quidquam detrahi iis sive addi vel dispensari circa partes earum, maxime eas, quae ad ordinandum negotium electionis Summi Pontificis pertinent. Si quid contra hoc praescriptum fieri vel attentari contigerit, id suprema Nostra auctoritate nullum et irritum declaramus.
Which in English, would be:
- With the Apostolic See vacant, it is not licit that the laws promulgated by the Roman Pontiffs, be in any way corrected and/or changed, nor that anything whatsoever be taken away from or added to them and/or dispensed from concerning their parts. most of all those, which pertain to the ordering of the business of electing the Roman Pontiff. If anything would happen to be done and/or attempted against this prescription, We, by Our Supreme Authority declare it null and irritus.
Here, Pope John Paul II not only declares the use of any dispensations illicit – which he signifies by putting the verb, dispensari in the passive voice of the infinitive of the verb, “to dispense” (dispenare), and thus connecting it syntactically connecting it to “it is not licit in any manner that the laws … be dispensed from” (leges … non licet ullo modo) – but also declares them null and irritus (irritus means “to be considered as never having existed” because not done according to the prescribed rules)
Thus, if the Cardinals wanted not only to use the dispensation they claimed, but that it be effective so as not to impinge upon the juridical value of their acts, they would have to have also obtained a derogation of UDG n. 4, which they did not claim to have. In fact, since UDG. n. 4 forbids all changes to papal laws during a sede vacante, echoing Canon 335, which forbids all innovations in right, during the same, Pope Francis would have had to permanently or temporarily derogated, that is removed, the prescription of UDG n. 4, so that it would not cancel out the dispensation that the Cardinal claimed to have received.
But in the Roman Church, derogations are alterations of law, and only come into effect, when promulgated in written form and signed by a competent superior. In this case Pope Francis would have had to publish the derogation from UDG n. 4 in the Acta Apostolic Sede, before or after granting the dispensation – even if one admits arguendo that a dispensation can be verbally granted.
All of this is true, because in ecclesiastical right, in the Roman Church, the authority of every Roman Pontiff ends completely with his death, IF he has not promulgated his will in some juridical act. Thus after his death Pope Francis could exercise no authority over the papal law, UDG, by a mere verbal comment or by the appointment of Cardinals, since all the rights regarding voting in a Conclave, (cf. UDG n. 36) are conceded under the stricture of the rule of 120 maximum. – The resulting legal error by the Cardinals, caused the Cardinal Electors in Conclave to violate UDG n. 68, when they unlawfully counted 133 votes in each ballot, rather than the maximum number allowed, which is 120. Thus, the prescription of UDG n. 68 was violated, when the votes were counted rather than being collected and being burnt, as UDG n. 68 requires when there are more votes cast than the allowed 120.
All this is a very grave irregularity, in the very act of the election, a thing which UDG. 76 forbids and declares, that in all such elections with irregularities in the very act of election, the one elected receives no right or office, and the election is null and invalid.
The Second Problem
However, the second legal error is even more grave, and it regards the violation of the Papal Bull of Pope Paul IV, Cum ex apostolatus officio, of February 15, 1559, and confirmed by Pope Saint Pius V, in his motu proprio, “Inter multiplices curas”, of January 12, 1567, which in paragraph 6 reads as follows, in the Latin:
- Adiicientes quod si ullo umquam tempore apparuerit aliquem Episcopum, etiam pro Archiepiscopo, seu Patriarcha, vel Primate se gerentem, aut praedictae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem, etiam ut praefertur, Legatum, seu etiam Romanum Pontificem ante eius promotionem, vel in Cardinalem, seu Romanum Pontificem assumptionem a fide Catholica deviasse, aut in aliquam haeresim incidisse,
(i) promotio, seu assumptio de eo etiam in concordia, et de unanimi omnium Cardinalium assensu facta, nulla, irrita,
(ii) et inanis existat, nec per susceptionem muneris, consecrationis, aut subsecutam regiminis, et administrationis possessionem, seu quasi, vel ipsius Romani Pontificis inthronizationem, aut adorationem, seu ei praestitam ab omnibus obedientiam, et cuiusvis temporis in praemissis cursum, convaluisse dici, aut convalescere possit,
(iii) nec pro legitima in aliqua sui parte habeatur,
Which in English, would read thus:
- Adding, that if at any time ever it will have appeared that any Bishop, even as an Archbishop, or Patriarch, and/or acting as a Primate, or Cardinal of the aforesaid Roman Church, even as one promoted, Legate, or even a Roman Pontiff before his promotion, either to the Cardinalate, or his elevation as Roman Pontiff, had deviated from the Catholic Faith, or fallen into any heresy,
(i), Let the promotion, or elevation of him, even in peaceful agreement, and from the unanimous given consent of all the Cardinals, stand forth as null and irritus,
(ii) and void, nor said to be convalidated, nor even be able to be convalidated, through the undertaking of the munus, consecration, or subsequent possession of the government, and administration, or as if, either through the same’s enthronement as Roman Pontiff, or adoration, or through the obedience proffered him by all, and through whatever course of time in the aforesaid,
(iii) nor let his election be held as legitimate in any part thereof.
This censure which is not directed against the person of the elected pope, but against the canonical validity of his election remains in force since no Roman Pontiff has ever abrogated this Bull by name, nor derogated, subrogated, or obrogated it, on account of this, that no subsequent papal legislation has dealt with the validity of such an election of a pope, even though the Bull itself, as regards many other things deals with matters which have been integrated into the Codes of Canon Law of 1917 and 1983, as well as the papal laws for the election of the Roman Pontiff promulgated by Saint Pius X, Pius XII and John Paul II.
This Bull of Paul IV must be considered in mind, since Cardinal Prevost before his election was publicly known to have deviated from the Catholic Faith when he accepted the teaching contained in such documents as Fiducia Supplicans and Amoris Laetitia, which teaching notable Cardinals of the Roman Church declared as heretical or contrary to Catholic Faith, or contrary to the discipline of the Sacraments established by the Apostles themselves; not to mention that Cardinal Prevost emphatically denies the admissibility of the use of capital punishment by the state in direct contradiction to the teaching of the Apostle Saint Paul, one of the co-founders of the Church at Rome.
For these two grave reasons, I, in my capacity as a Roman Catholic, do petition you, in your capacity as a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, to bring these concerns to the full consideration of Cardinal Prevost and the entire College, since the juridical error is of such a magnitude as to make it improbable and impossible that Prevost received the Papal Office from Christ, and as such, if left unaddressed, is and will be the cause of schism in the Church, because in the juridical order the entire body of the Faithful would be treating as Roman Pontiff a man who in the sight of God never received that office. And since that office has no superior on earth, its conferral must be impeccable without legal error of any sort.
Sincerely,
