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May 5, 2025 - Lionel Nation
01:17:14
Was Pope Francis Ever Really the Pope? Vatican Bombshell Exposed
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The video you're about to see, the interview you're about to see, is in my humble opinion, one of the most fascinating I have ever had the pleasure of being involved in and with.
Not me!
But my guest and my friend, Dr. Eric Thaddeus Walters.
A man of imane, colossal knowledge.
Sobriety.
And I use that in the serious tone regarding one of the most fascinating cases, filled with intrigue, labyrinthine conspiracies.
I mean, it is like Mandelbrot's fractals.
You keep getting closer and closer and deeper and deeper, and there's more there.
I want to say one thing before we begin this.
This is not in any way Catholic bashing.
This is not about the theology.
The liturgy of the faith has nothing to do with this.
This is the oldest in essence non-hereditary monarchical theocracy in the history of the world.
This isn't just some Religious internecine battle among Catholics.
This is bigger than anything you've seen.
And the final word is, this goes to show you yet again, how, as is often the case, when something so great and so grand becomes made aware to the people, whether it's assassination theories or corruption, Americans and people think that there must be some tribunal that will jump in and correct it, that says, hey, wait a minute, you can't do this.
Wrong.
Yet again, it goes to show you how so much can go wrong.
Unaffected, unavoided, unaltered.
That is exactly what we're talking about.
So my friend, I thank you for watching this.
Sit back and get ready.
For one of the most fascinating...
And by the way, this is a follow-up to a prior interview we did, and I'm going to have that link as well.
For those of you who think you know about the papacy or the Catholic Church or Benedict or Bergoglio or Ratzinger, get ready for this.
Get ready to be mesmerized.
The reaction to this gentleman...
was like nothing I have ever seen in my years.
Dr. Eric Thaddeus Walters, professor, il professore, maestro, the one and the only, joined us to give us a kind of a bird's eye or Vatican's eye view of Bergoglio.
Prince, oh my god, maybe that was a pun.
Pope Francis' demise, what happens next?
And Professor Walters, welcome back.
And I want to just say a preface.
This is not Catholic bashing.
This is not, you know, in fact, it's anything but.
This is an historical news review of the realities of a transition.
Which affects the world and not necessarily just Catholics.
So, lest anyone thinks we're getting into digs or talking about either the theology or the Eucharist or the liturgy or...
No, no, no, no, no.
This is about a quasi, dare I say, governmental transition process.
Would that be fair, Eric?
Is this almost like quasi-governmental?
This is...
This is revolutionary.
Oh, we'll get to that.
It's beyond that.
This is the end of an epic.
Okay, tell us, and just one last word.
Don't let me ask the question.
I don't know anything.
I am nescient regarding this.
Tell me what we should know, what insiders know.
What Romans know, what your colleagues, what the insiders know.
Proceed, sir.
Okay.
So once again, I came up with a little outline.
There's a lot to cover because I'm glad that the audience the last time enjoyed it.
Wow.
I personally went through all the comments and I was very appreciative of them.
And a lot of interesting follow-up questions that people had.
So there's no way we're going to be able to go through everything.
So I'm trying to keep this limited to a few things.
And maybe not to be salacious, but already off the bat, a few interesting things that I actually did want to mention last time, but just we didn't have time.
The premier biographer of Pope Benedict XVI, the German journalist, Peter Seewald.
And it's in English translation.
I think the English translation is Final Conversations from 2016.
And there's a lot of one-liners and takeaways.
It's in an interview format.
With Pope Benedict XVI, pretty much the last interview he ever gave, or at least published.
One takeaway line is the interviewer, the author, Peter Seewald, asks him, and this is going on in what's called the Monastery Mater Ecclesiae, in the Vatican Gardens overlooking St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel, which is where he spent the last 10 years of his life.
Also bear in mind, Benedict, you know, all the spin they put out immediately following his resignation, which was not a resignation, as we mentioned last, explained last time, and the election of Bergoglio, part of the spin was, oh, you know, Benedict is frail, he's sick, he's ill.
Well, for being so sick, frail, and ill, He spent more than half of his pontificate in an impeded sea.
What does that mean?
The impeded sea, again, he's a prisoner either of an external force or an internal force, in this case, internal within the church itself.
I'm sorry, not to interrupt, but somebody might say this.
S-E-E, the holy sea, the impeded sea.
What is the S-E-E for layman and myself?
Yeah, yeah, sure.
It's where we get the English word seat from.
There's a difference in Latin between a cathedra, from which we got the word cathedral.
Cathedra meaning the chair of the magister, the teacher in the classroom, or the magistrate in the courtroom.
In this case, the chair of Peter, meaning the pope.
Okay?
So, there's a difference, though, in Latin between a C-S-E-E-S-E-E.
In Latin, cede is meaning a generic chair.
It could be any kind of a chair.
And the cathedra is unique, specific.
Got you.
In any event, the interviewer, Peter Seewald, asks Pope Benedict XVI, who was Pope for 10 years, well, he was Pope for longer in an impedency as prisoner than he was actually doing Pope, so much for that.
10 years he was in an impedency.
And the interviewer asks him at a certain point, Are you going to be the last Pope?
Pope Benedict XVI responds, quite frankly, he says, anything is possible.
So, that's one thing.
I'm sorry, not to, please, just impedency when Pope Benedict Ratzinger, the predecessor of Bergoglio Francis, Impedency meaning you are before transition or after before.
Does that mean his papacy was illegitimate?
It was a nullity.
It was vacant.
It was void.
It was with an asterisk so that we understand what was his status?
He was usurped.
His cathedral, his chair, his throne was usurped.
It's like a coup.
It's like a coup d 'etat.
It's a coup d 'etat, and then you have an imposter, a usurper, come in to just claim that.
Like kind of a Shakespearean drama, tragedy, or whatever.
So it would be, in essence, you have this imposter who came in and told the world, I am, and nobody, nobody, the white smoke, all of that, Nobody spoke up, or did they?
Everybody knew this.
There were high-ranking prelates at the time, both bishops and cardinals, not a lot, maybe half a dozen or so, who did publicly make statements to this point and to the effect that he was usurped, he was a coup d 'etat.
But nothing formally on the part of those who could have and should have done something, namely the pre-2013 elected cardinals.
That is, cardinals created by either Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI.
And again, I'm violating my own rules here.
The Pope Benedict Ratzinger did not die, did not...
Quote, stepped down?
Can that be done?
How is a papacy, how is the secession or the terminus of a papacy, how is that accomplished, thus allowing a vacancy and then the re-election?
Is that even possible?
Can you do that without a pope being dead?
Well, only unless either the pope has to die.
Or the Pope has to properly abdicate, resign the office of being Pope, which in Latin is called munus, M-U-N-U-S, munus.
And Benedict did not do that.
Okay, interesting.
So he, and again, all of this is done and nobody is saying, hey, wait a minute, wait a minute, here in this, if somebody tried to do that with Pope or even Trump or Biden, There would have been screaming, you can't do this.
It would have been constitutional scholars.
It was done under the radar with a tacit say nothing.
That's the part that blows my mind and others as well.
They say, Eric, this can't be.
You just don't go out there and nobody in St. Peter's Square says, hey, hold it.
Not one person, nobody on television, not our Cardinal Dolan.
Nobody, did Vigano or any of the other heretics say, who complained about this?
Well, those that did complain, there were very few that did it for the correct reasons.
Okay.
There were others, many, Vigano I think could be placed in that category, that did it for seemingly other and unproductive.
Okay.
Counterproductive and perhaps personal interest.
Okay.
Okay.
Grudges, axes to grind, animus, whatever.
Okay.
Okay.
Forgive me.
Proceed, sir.
Okay.
Okay.
So that's one thing.
Another thing is when Benedict again did the Declaratio and in the aftermath, and again repeated to the journalist Peter Saywald, who I mentioned earlier, He also mentioned, if anyone vaguely recalls when this all happened, in February and March of 2013.
Oh, the first pope to resign in 593 years was among them.
No.
Benedict said that what I'm doing has not happened in over a thousand years.
And he was referring specifically to the year 1013.
Wow!
And his predecessor, who did abdicate, but also for forced reasons, by the Holy Roman Empire at the time.
Wow!
And who was that, pray tell?
Well, rather ironically, if not providentially, Pope Benedict VIII.
Wow!
Oh, cue the theremin!
Wow!
Yeah, yeah, okay.
And then finally, in this kind of more salacious part, I guess, if you will, Archbishop Gainsfine, whom I mentioned also last time, Pope Benedict XVI's personal secretary, now Archbishop, he's done a lot of public appearances.
He's very careful and measured with his words.
But to his credit, in 2020, so just last year, 2024, he was giving a conference in a church.
In the north of Italy.
And he said to everyone, there's a few hundred people there, I guess, that what Benedict did is not what the world thinks.
Meaning?
Implying.
Yeah.
This cryptic, these measured, almost like read between the lines.
I think we had joked about Jeremiah Denton, the POW, who was blinking torture when he was It's as though he's the person, the woman at the door, when the police officer comes and says, everything all right?
And they open the door and there's a chain and she's trying to say, no, everything's fine, everything's fine.
So there are these signals and you understood it.
How many of your, if I walked around with you and talked to your colleagues and friends and those in the know, how many of you would say, oh, absolutely, of course that is.
Of course that's true.
A lot.
Wow!
The problem is everything happened so fast, just, I mean, warp speed.
You know, to wrap your head around it and to figure out what was happening in the first place, you know, again, analytically, you know, accurately, it took a little time and it kept taking time.
And then, you know, there are...
Questions posed to prelates.
It's just they avoid it.
They don't want to know.
But now it's gotten a fever pitch in Italy.
Really?
Okay, that's what I want to know.
Because as you can imagine here, nobody is saying...
If you remember the Italian journalist I mentioned last time, Andrea Cionci, he's filed several petitions.
he actually got, he actually received in return from the Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, who just had, I think, a heart attack a few days ago.
I was very cordial thanking him for his solicitation.
So there's been many petitions, et cetera, signed by thousands and thousands of people sent to the Secretary of State in the Vatican Holy See to address specifically all of these matters and basically saying, To do what we discussed last time, you need to declare the Pope is truly dead, go into conclave with only the pre-2013 cardinals, 27-28.
I'll explain why there's a question mark over that number exactly in a moment.
And do what you know you need to do.
Again, some of the other canons we didn't go into last time also have to do with the cardinals have the obligation and duty to do this.
That is, they can't just brush it under the rug.
I mean, it's so...
Pope is dead would be Bergoglio or Ratzinger?
Bergoglio is nothing.
So his death, after his death, and I'm so sorry, I'm a dunce here, but after Ratzinger died, in exile, in Elba,
so to speak, after he died, You could have corrected it then by saying, alright, let us take this corrective measure here, say the Pope is dead, pick up where we left off, even after Bergoglio was already Pope, could they have somehow fixed it, corrected that glitch?
Because...
They didn't.
Am I reading this right?
I mean, or is that just forever?
We've been stuck in this situation since March 1st, 2014.
20 what, please?
2013.
Wow!
So that's over 12 years?
Yeah.
And the amount of years would not be so...
This may actually be the longest time.
I think it is the longest time such as a collision has occurred.
But there's been several moments in Israel for the Catholic Church where the same or similar situations have occurred several years without Pope.
Again, what makes this unique is this is the first time this was actually a successful coup d 'etat, color revolution within the church and a usurper cognizant of very completely knowing what they were doing.
Okay.
So, okay.
Continue.
I'm sorry, sir.
I'm interrupting.
So, yeah.
So, there's been a couple since we last did this, which was, I guess, about a little over 10 days ago.
There's been a couple of developments.
One is that, one is not really a development, as already known, we just didn't, I didn't mention it.
Under, again, canon law, the apostolic, canon law from 1983, the apostolic constitution, That was under Paul VI in the 1970s.
I forget which specific year.
I'm adding to this.
Establishing the number of legal, licit, legitimate cardinal electors in the College of Cardinals at 120.
Can't have any more than 120.
You can have as little as three, because it's just a two-thirds majority required to validly, illegally elect the Pope, but no more than 120.
And they were always very careful since then, Paul VI, 1970s, all the way through Benedict XVI, to never put in more potential cardinal electors than 120 in the College of Parliament.
And today, how many are there?
How many are there?
There's a problem.
Big problem.
This by itself, by itself, again, according to canon law, we will nullify the conclave, which is supposed to begin in three days.
How many are there now?
There's over 200 total partners.
Wait a minute.
Hold on.
Several scores of which are over the age of 80, and so we know they're not going to be voting.
Okay.
But there's 135 of voting age.
So they're 15 over the limit.
So, number one, if all 135 go into the Sistine Chapel, as per church law itself, null and void, that's number one.
Number two, if even just one, A post-2013 cardinal, meaning a cardinal created by Bergoglio, even if just one out of 108.
So he's created a total of 108.
75% of the College of Cardinals, even though not one of them is a legitimate legal cardinal.
And they face actual sanctions on the part of the Holy See, like serious prison time, if anyone does what they're supposed to do about them.
Prison?
Yeah, that's easy.
Potentially, theoretically.
Serious sanctions.
Serious sanctions.
I mean, you know, it could be commuted to something else.
But they're stripped of everything.
I mean, there is blaicization.
So, among other things.
So, even if just one of those 108 Bergoglian cardinals, cardinals created under the K.A. Pope Francis, anti-Pope Francis, even if just one of them sets foot in conclave, the conclave is null and void, once again.
It's an illegal, illegitimate conflict.
It can only be the pre-2013 cardinals created by Popes, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, of which there's 27 or 28. Why 27 or 28?
Well, this is a development that happened.
And this is a real...
This is like something out of a...
I'm not going to use...
I'm doing my best to be very careful and measure it here.
Just imagine your favorite mafia movie.
Yeah, right.
I understand.
Yeah.
There's a Sardinian Cardinal, last name Bechu, and he was created by Bergoglio anyway in the first place.
Well, he took the place of the Australian Cardinal Pell, whom Bergoglio put in charge of basically the new entity responsible for cleaning up Dior.
IOR, IOR, Istituto per le Opere Dirigione The Vatican Bank.
It's usually a euphemism that we refer to.
Okay.
Cardinal Pell, the Australian who died a few years ago, also in interesting circumstances, we'll just say.
Yeah.
He took the place of the guy before him that was in charge of this, put in charge of this by Pope Benedict XVI.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Geno, who was doing his job and doing a good job.
And that's one of the reasons why then he was sent as the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States in Washington, D.C., basically the Vatican, the Holy Seas, ambassador to the United States of America, because they were already being forced and pressured.
Pope Benedict XVI was losing a lot of support and a wiggle room.
He was becoming more and more confined already.
Again, this is all leading up to his declaration in February of 2013.
So, suddenly there's a lot of no one's fault.
Oh, so Bechiu, this guy, after Birgulio died...
I think it was right, probably right the day we did the previous interview.
He meets with the guy that just had the heart attack a few days ago, the Cardinal Secretary of State, Parolin.
Parolin gives him a handwritten letter.
It was typed out, but you know.
It says basically, it says that this Cardinal Bechu, who had already been relieved of command, And for a while, he was also relieved of any cardinalacial prerogatives.
But then Bergoglio reinstated them.
There's a lot of backroom deals that go on here.
But he was relieved of his command from, you know, investigating the transparency and financial activities of Vatican Bank, the YOR.
And so, last week, he says to...
So Parolin shows him this letter in which supposedly Bergoglio says, "You're not allowed to vote in conclave." Signed, F. Not even his full name, Francis, just F. F. There's no date on it.
Wow.
And this Cardinal Bates, who says to Parolin, his witness, the other people there, says, "This is not legal.
This is not listed.
This is not valid.
I'm not respecting this.
Now what are you going to do?
And now suddenly a few days ago, Pauline just had a heart attack or severe.
Wow.
Now, let me stop for a second.
According to what you're saying, the only...
Let me stop.
Only 120 eligible cardinals are able to vote.
Now, you could have more.
Who are 90, 100, but up to the age of 80, you cannot vote after 80. You can remain your cardinalship or whatever the particular now is.
You can stay on.
You can have 500 if you want, but only the ones after 80 you stop voting.
I did not know.
Yeah, you cannot vote.
120 were there from Ratzinger, excuse me, from Benedict and then J.P. Deuce, right?
Those two.
Anyone after that, any cardinal appointed theoretically by Francis doesn't count.
So the only ones who can vote, and you can have a minimum, we say a quorum, if you will, a minimum of three, and no more than 120 voting.
They could be, and they can't be in the room, correct?
You can only have 120.
So let's say there's 200 total.
The other 80 cannot...
Be in that conclave.
It can only be a 120 bona fide, certified, legitimate, authorized cardinals who can vote.
And you say, right now, of that 120, there's about 135 who are attempting to vote.
135, so that's already one problem.
They're 15 over the limit anyway.
Right, and?
And moreover, 108 were all created by Bergoglio.
Wow.
This is also unprecedented in history.
He's the guy that's created the most cardinals in history who are not cardinals because he was not the Pope.
So we have 27, right?
My math.
Roughly about 27 or 28, you said, who can actually vote.
Yeah.
And if you walked into the...
And by the way, If you had, in that conclave, any more than that 27 or 28 who were able to vote, does that nullify the validity of the conclave as well?
Out of 108 Bergoglian cardinals, even if one of them sets foot in the conclave, the conclave is ab initio de facto nullable.
Right.
Now, if somebody, if I were to ask, theoretically, everybody in Rome or anybody who has conversed with the papacy rules, To say, how many of you have heard this or know this?
How many people would honestly say, yep, we know all about that.
We're not saying anything, but Eric Thaddeus Walters is 100% correct.
How many do you think roughly would acknowledge this?
Of those who care?
Yes and no.
Correct.
I would say...
All of them.
More than 50%.
Wow, wow, wow.
And the other remaining percentage of whatever that would be are what you or what some might characterize as gatekeepers, whether they're in the media.
Right, right, right.
Okay.
So where do we go now?
And what happens?
So I'll keep calling it an illegitimate, illegal conclave because no one's done anything yet about it.
It begins on this Wednesday, May 7th in the morning.
And so what will happen is in St. Peter's Basilica, there will be a mass and then they will...
And all the cardinals will be there present for that, so that's over 200.
And then if 135 go into the Sistine Chapel, conclave null and void.
But they'll do what they usually do.
They'll do the rounds of voting called scutini.
There's a session in the morning and a session in the afternoon.
And they do that for five days in a row.
And if they don't come up with anyone on the fifth day, then they take another few days off to, I don't know, get in touch with the Holy Spirit or something.
And then they go back in to Conclave again for more rounds of voting.
Now, that's not happened in, I don't remember one last time, a long time.
I mean, the last...
The last several elections have been done historically relatively quickly, anywhere from a one to a few days, and not even a full five days.
So that starts on Wednesday, Wednesday morning.
But as I said, if those 135, just one of the Bergoglian Cardinals goes in, it's another illegal and illegitimate conclave, okay?
And so whoever, and in the meantime...
There could be fireworks.
In other words, it could happen in the Sistine Chapel.
Right.
You know, a proper drop-down, what do you call it?
Drop-down, drag-out.
Right.
Knock-down, drag-out.
You know, who knows?
Now, a couple of questions here.
First, you mentioned before somebody could be imprisoned.
Because the first thing...
Eric, people might be saying is, oh, this is just some internecine battle of Catholics.
Who cares?
It doesn't affect anything.
It's a bunch of people in dresses and funny hats and pink shoes and red shoes.
And so what?
It's bigger than that.
This is not just about a Catholic church.
It is about, what would you call it?
It's almost like an ancillary to the monarchy.
To me, there's no...
Explain that significance of what the papacy means.
Yeah, so the papacy, to put it in those kind of governmental political terms, is the world's only non-hereditary, elected, absolute theocratic monarchy, the king of which is the Pope.
Interesting.
Theocratic monarchy.
Non-hereditary.
Although there is nepotism, for example, in the Renaissance period.
And there's monarchical.
For example, one could argue that Iran, for example, that's a theocracy.
But that's not hereditary.
That's almost a democratic theocracy.
You're voted or voted.
This is a different story altogether.
So that's number one.
Number two, what is the judicial review, if you will, process if the Pope is infallible?
The Pope is like the Supreme Court.
Whatever the Pope says is ipso facto, by its very nature, correct.
End of discussion.
Do you think that anyone could actually bring this up?
Has there been any kind of a civil war or anybody who told a pope you're doing something wrong?
Oh yes, over history, sure.
Is it successful?
Is there a tribunal that could overrule a pope?
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
I don't want to get too lost.
These are all important, profound, deep, and fascinating, time-consuming questions.
That's why it's so complicated to wrap one's head around one of them.
Most recently, it was the first Vatican Council, 1869 to 1870, when Pope Pius IX, the Church's longest reigning pope ever, 33 years.
It was under him the papal states collapsed into what we know today as Vatican City State.
He issued what's called the dogma of papal infallibility.
When the Pope speaks ex cathedra from the Pope's throne, he's infallible in matters of faith and morals.
And morals is an unfortunate and really inaccurate translation from the Latin mores, because mores...
It's much more encompassing.
It doesn't just mean ethical behavior.
It means customs and traditions and all sorts of things.
And if anyone in your audience has ever heard of Lord Dalberg Acton.
Lord Acton.
I think there's an institute that's named after him.
He's the guy that, at least in the modern period, coined that phrase.
All power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
He uttered those words to Pope Pius IX's face in December of 1870, trying to get him not to give this a dogma.
Now, a little background.
My understanding, my pedestrian understanding, is that Mussolini and the Vatican under Pius XI...
Form some kind of an alliance, the Lateran Treaty of 1929.
Because I find this interesting, like Mussolini, also Italy is with Libya.
Because we in the United States, as you know, being from here, we're used to, we've been here, we've added on, but we don't have any serious questions as to how Arizona came about or who owns it.
So this is almost like Harry Potter-ish.
What's that about, Mussolini and the Vatican?
So, I don't want to bore people with...
You cannot bore anybody.
It's impossible for you to bore anybody.
Okay, so the Vatican is the world's oldest, continuously still surviving nation-state of any kind.
It was formally established in the year 754.
Between Pope Stephen II and the barbarian chieftain of the Merovingians at the time, a guy named Pepin the Short, not to be confused with his relative Pepin the Fat.
So the barbarian chieftain of the Merovingians, whom the Pope, the previous Pope, or the Pope invited to invade the Italian peninsula to subdue.
Two other barbarian groups, the Ostrogoths and the Lombards.
Okay.
They accomplished this successfully in 754, and that's when the Papal States begin, the sovereign, temporal, monarchical rulers of which are the Popes.
It's also when European nobility begins, because for his part, the Pope grants to Pepin and his two sons, Carloman and Charlemagne, the ancient Roman legal title of nobility, Patricius Romanorum.
We're patrician of the Romans.
So this is when European nobility begins.
So if you think about the bad-eared guy in England, all that stuff, you know, the wizards, that's when a big formula begins.
Always under the Pope.
Not because he's...
Actually, not specifically because he's the successor of Peter and the Vicar of Christ, but because he's also the Pope of Ex Maximus, which we can come back to or not, either now or a later time.
It's long.
Anyway, so...
And this last...
So the Papal States, then, from that point until 1870...
Basically, it covered the central third of the Italian peninsula.
Okay?
And during the so-called unification of Italy in the 19th century, so for your American listeners, while the U.S. Civil War was going on, it was kind of a civil war going on here, referred to as the unification of Italy, by 1870, the Papal States had been collapsed into what we know today as 44 hectares or 110 acres of land back to the city-state.
And in fact, historians refer to this period between 1870 and 1929, coming to the Latrine Treaty, as the Roman question.
What do we do now with this Pope thing?
Because, you know, we got a lot of Catholics running around the world.
So 1929, February 11, the same day Benedict made his Declaratio.
February 11, 1929.
The Latrine Treaty is signed between Pope Pius XI and the dictator of Italy at the time, Benito Mussolini, establishing Vatican City State with all sorts of provisions for remunerations because of the loss of tax revenue from the Papal States and all sorts of other legalities.
See, but that's fascinating because the one thing that we know...
And one of the interesting stories which folks, I think, forget, and I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a biblical scholar or historian, but one of the problems that Jesus posed to Pontius Pilate was, who's this guy?
We don't like somebody within the confines of our jurisdictions claiming not only allegiance with a bunch of people who can turn against this and some kind of Very powerful, if not supernatural.
We don't care.
So Mussolini and others had to realize we have to do something about these folks.
We have to mollify them, contain them.
It's almost like containment theory like we did with NATO and Soviet Union.
So that's something interesting because if anybody thinks, put it this way, there is no, and you would agree, with all due respect to our brothers and sisters who are Jews or Lutherans or Baptists, there ain't nothing.
Like Roman Catholics.
It's an army.
And also, not to be parenthetically abstruse, but the Jesuits are, of which I went to a Jesuit high school, and that's all I know, from Ignatius Loyola and Ad Mayorum Dei Glorium and the Society of Jesus.
That is something which is another story.
Black popes, and it is so...
If you love...
I don't want to keep saying Harry Potter, but Byzantine mysterious storylines, it doesn't get better than this.
There's nothing like it.
Nothing.
Yeah.
Truth is stranger than fiction, I find anyone.
So, another question, Eric.
By the way, dear friend, thank you for this.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Is there any question or any suspicions as to the cause, if you will, of the death of Bergoglio?
Was that a clean death, as we say?
I think so.
I don't think there's any funny business there.
There were a lot of theories and speculations going around in the months prior.
If you had to...
If you had to handicap, if you were a betting man, is it even possible?
When I see CBS Morning News or somebody saying, who's likely to be?
They don't know anything.
There seems to be an unusual number of African, Black, non-traditional, non-European, non-Italian.
How is that met by more of the traditional folks?
And if you had to pick, Who would be the next pope?
And you were a betting man.
What's the inside skinny?
What does the inside line say?
I mean, you know, in fact, I have a friend who's in Rome.
He's Irish.
He sent me the betting, you know, like patty power, that kind of thing.
Yeah, right, right.
Yeah, just yesterday.
The big frontrunners are two I mentioned last time, Turkson from Africa, he's from Ghana, Tagli from the Philippines, they're both, Tagli is very, he's the second youngest part of the period, and they're both legitimate pre-2013.
Okay, good, good.
But they're both very, you know, people would characterize them as being progressive, liberal, that kind of thing, among other things.
I'll just leave it at that.
Yeah.
The other big frontrunners are the Secretary of State, Parolin, who just got really ill the other day.
There is an American, but he's not a sitting, ordinary bishop in the States.
He's actually in the Curia.
His last name is...oh gosh, I flipped my mind right now.
There were a few days where O'Malley's name...
Where is O'Malley in Boston?
O'Malley's name and Dolan's name.
There's no way they're going to pick an American.
There's no way.
Is that true?
I have a theory that could be very weird but would still not solve the issue.
But because of the geopolitics involved, I started thinking and wondering about it.
I could see where that could make sense given what's happening on the world geopolitically now.
But still, I don't really think it's...
There is a meme, kind of this memetic that's being published, and it's smoke of the rainbow color, meaning they're laughing.
The next pope is going to be another progressive.
We're going to see nuns as priests.
It's going to be complete and total.
What's your take on that?
Probably.
Oh, no.
Where is this coming from?
Where is...
Who is behind?
Oh, and one more thing.
One more thing.
Did you ever hear the story, and I've heard this just maybe as a drive-by, I'm hearing this, that Bergoglio Francis every day called up the pastor or a priest of a Catholic church in Gaza, which infuriated Israeli officials, and there was some kind of a...
Have you heard about that?
Oh yeah.
It's true.
What's the story behind that?
And how does the...
And also, the Bergoglio's past in juntas and death squads and living...
Listen, J.P. Deuce, when he was a young man, you know, this guy, he had girlfriends, he was an actor, he probably killed people.
This dude was not some monastic...
Choir boy, from what I understand, which might be kind of good.
But how much of that affected Francis, and what's the relationship between the papacy and Israel, Middle East, Gaza, Palestinians, as far as you know?
Very tense.
No, from what I understand, Israel itself forbade any...
Diplomats or representatives from coming to Bergoglio's funeral.
Wow.
You know, also people in the...
There's obviously a whole other issue, even though it is related, but you know what's happening in Palestine.
Right, right.
You know, everybody thinks, oh, they're just a bunch of nutty...
I shouldn't say nutty.
They're just, you know, Muslim, Arabs, no, there's Christians there as well.
Because Christians are under attack.
Christians around the world, this is serious business.
I mean, not just necessarily in the Middle East has become kind of a code word for Israel or Palestine or whatever you want to call it.
But Christians, now remember, the papacy deals not exclusively with Catholics, though that is certainly a great force of interest, but the notion of Christians under attack, there's a...
There's a very serious undercurrent of problems here that the Pope or the papacy should or maybe have attempted to address.
Have you heard anything along those lines?
Yeah, well, you can bring China into the mix because this is another big issue.
Just within a couple of years after Bergoglio was elected, installed, he sent...
So you asked also kind of going back to how to, you know, what are some of the motivations or the factors that led to all this in the first book.
So we mentioned the St. Gallen group before.
Yep, the mafia.
Specifically the now deceased Cardinal McCarrick.
Yep, yep.
And Bergoglio made McCarrick his liaison back and forth between the Vatican and the CCP to...
We're going to strike a new treaty with the CCP, which has never, ever been made public, which is another big problem.
Problem how?
Because it hasn't been made public?
What's the problem, per se?
That no one knows what's involved.
No one knows what it's about.
But isn't that good that they're speaking?
Isn't that good that they're...
Sure.
Sure, of course.
But the problem is, number one, it was renewed in 2018.
So I think that's four, five, six years after the first treaty was ratified between the two.
But again, not actually because it's null and void, but whatever.
It was renewed again in 2018.
And so precisely because the contents have not been made public.
Imagine the United States, you know, I don't know, the President of the United States signing a treaty with China and they just say, don't worry about it.
We're not going to publish it.
We're not going to make it public, but we'll take care of it.
But it's almost like Nancy Pelosi who said, we don't know what we signed until we pass the law.
Now, let me ask you another stupid, simple question.
Out of this entire...
There is a...
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, claims to be a Catholic and has always been very, very strong.
He said that...
He's Russian Orthodox.
Now, that's the question.
They said that when he was in the KGB or FSB, he put his badge away.
He accepted.
He was very devout.
The West, we say, oh, no, no, no.
Even Catholics, no, no, no, no.
Don't believe that for a moment.
I've never heard how a lot of people can look into the heart of somebody and determine the legitimacy of their transformation.
What is Eastern, what does that mean?
Orthodoxy.
Yeah, compared to plain old Catholics.
What does it mean?
I mean, it's basically the same thing.
The trappings are slightly different.
The liturgy is slightly different.
The language is different.
Does the Pope preside?
You mean the Pope in Rome?
Yeah.
Well, it's a political.
Over the centuries, theologians and historians are going to be using theology somehow to justify all this, and they can't.
It's all political, and it goes all the way back to the 4th century when...
Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Byzantium, which he named Nova Roma, New Rome, because it has to reflect Rome after his death or as ever after, remembered as Constantinople, the city of Constantine, now Istanbul.
And so it goes all the way back to then.
It was a fight, a battle between the political between Constantinople's new capital and Rome.
And all sorts of theological justifications, ecclesiological justifications have been attempted over several since.
None of it works.
Are they correct?
Because we have, of course, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Eastern, Armenian, we have all of these.
When I was in Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is as holy as you can get.
The individuals, there was something called the status quo.
It was an understanding of who ran the concession because it was not only the site of Christ's crucifixion, but his burial, his tomb where the rock was.
And I saw people with beards and not cassocks, but vestments and hats.
I'm thinking, who are these?
I never knew the flavors and the vision.
It's a sight to behold.
Oh, it is something to behold.
It was interesting also, you'll get a kick out of this, when the Protestants said, hey, listen, can we get in on this?
They said, excuse me?
They said, no, no.
And they came up with Calvary.
Not Gethsemane or whatever.
I don't know.
But they came up with their own version of it.
Because you have, the Coptics have the concession for this.
This one's got that.
And it's almost like a, I don't want to, please, I don't mean to be, it's almost like a food court.
You know, you have different.
And you have people running the show.
And it is, as a person who was a retired Catholic and not in any way spiritual, there was an energy in that place.
Maybe put on from, reflected from the hearts and souls of other people.
But it was something that I shan't forget.
But is it safe to say that Vladimir Putin is a Catholic?
Well, he's Russian Orthodox, so in other words, the problem...
So the split, the split, the first, there's been two schisms, ruptures, within the one Holy Catholic Apostolic Church.
The first was in the year 1054, when the Pope at the time sent his emissary, ambassador, the French Cardinal Hubert, or Humbert, sounds better in French.
To Constantinople to issue a papal bull of excommunication against the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Emperor of Constantinople because of an issue regarding what's called the Filioque Clause.
So Catholics who practice or whatever, when you recite the Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed, Well, that was never in the original ecumenical council, the first council of Constantinople in 381, that issued that proclamation.
It just said, ex patria, or from the Father, out of the Father.
And the Son part was added.
Now, as a logical consequence, theologically, it's a fact.
I mean, in this internal aberrant of theology.
But it was then weaponized politically.
It was politicized regarding the political struggle back and forth between Rome and Constantinople so that everything came to a head in 1054 when this Cardinal Humbert, with the papal bull of excommunication, marches into Hagia Sophia on Easter Sunday while the Patriarch's about to consecrate the Eucharist.
Wow.
And he slams on the altar the papal bull of excommunication.
And the patriarch immediately, it was kind of like an F-me, F-you moment.
Yeah, right.
The patriarch issues verbally, publicly, in front of everyone, Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Istanbul, Constantinople.
We call it a double X communication.
And they immediately justified, both sides agreed to immediately pretend like, well, that never happened.
Why?
Well, because unbeknownst to Cardinal Humbert, it took him two weeks on a boat to get from Rome to Constantinople.
And in the meantime, the Pope died.
Here we are, remember that?
Uh-oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The bull of excommunication he was bringing was null and void.
Right.
On the patriarch's part, they said they never included, they excommunicated the Western Church, meaning the Roman Latin Church, just the Cardinal Humbert, his entourage, and the Pope, who was dead.
So, they canceled each other out.
But on a grassroots level...
It was a little too light.
Sorry about that.
There's a couple of things here.
Just in terms of the trivia and the specifics.
When I was in Catholic school, we did the sign of the cross like this, this, to the left, and to the right.
Putin and Eastern will do it the other way.
Right to left.
That's one thing, which is no big deal.
That's like sometimes a friend of mine who is a Muslim, I say, what's the difference between Shia, And Sunnis, he said, this or this or this.
Anyway, it was something with a hand.
It was a kind of an inside joke.
I didn't get it.
That's number one.
Number two, when you talk about Protestants, because I love to ask Protestants, what is it between you and a Catholic?
What's really the difference?
And they can't answer the question.
And a friend of mine, one time we were at a, I mean, I've told you this, we were at a friend's wake of a friend of mine in a Catholic church.
And my friend who's Jewish said, you know, I've never been in a church before.
So let me show you something.
I said, You can tell if you're in a Catholic church.
Look at the altar.
You see that cross?
If Jesus is on it, it's Catholic.
It's a crucifixion.
If Jesus is off, it's Protestant.
Because Protestants emphasize the resurrection.
Catholics, not focus on, but it's the passion of Jesus and the Christ.
Stations of the cross.
Different emphasis.
Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, or as my friend calls it, Good Friday the 13th, because it was like a snuff film in terms of the horror.
This is also...
Mel Gibson's own mind.
He devoted maybe 10 seconds to the resurrection.
The focus was on the past.
Now, that is an extremely crude version.
But even...
Oh, and one more thing.
Pope, I mean, Mel Gibson's father, Hutton, who's an Orthodox Catholic, hated Vatican II, loathed it, and I think it was...
Ron Colley, 23rd, who removed the perfidy of the Jew or something from the Easter because they had their, quote, anti-Semitism was, from their point of view, it was the Jews.
It was the, they were the, those who fomented the requirement or the demand for the crucifixion versus Pilate, who did it himself, who...
who was told he was basically a governor.
Now I just threw 50 facts at you, all of them wrong, stitched together so stupidly.
But don't you find the little nuances huge in terms of what makes one sect...
Yeah, sure.
You know, I would say between most Protestants...
You know, specifically to that, the Passion of Christ, the emphasis on the crucifix, it has to do, and Michelangelo actually brilliantly, Michelangelo, captures this in the altarpiece in the Sistine Chapel, talking about the Concord, the last judgment scene.
Visually responding to, so he's painting this just a couple of decades after Martin Luther posts his 95 Theses in 1517.
So he's having to respond to the two pillars of what become referred to as the two pillars of progress from sola fide, sola scriptura.
The second one, sola scriptura by scripture alone, the previous one, sola fide.
All you have to do is say, I believe that, you know, Jesus, you're my Lord and Savior and you're saved.
Well, the Catholic Church is responsible because that's kind of a duh, no duh position.
Yeah.
That's like, and?
Yeah.
You just keep it there, or you're going to take the ball and run with it then?
So the idea is that if one wishes to share in the resurrection of Christ, as a disciple, one must share in the life of Christ, which includes ultimately suffering and death.
Precisely.
And you aren't necessarily guaranteed.
You know, it's funny how the...
Sometimes Protestants will laugh at the Catholics and just go in for confession or reconciliation, whatever it's called now, and then that's it.
To which I respond, well, you think that all you have to do is be saved.
Catholics say, that's part of it.
Your life, the addition of St. Peter, are you worthy?
They don't have the notion of purgatory.
They don't recognize Mary.
They don't recognize...
I believe that for you to understand the differences in the faith actually concretizes your faith even better because you have to know what you believe in.
You just can't say...
It's not like being a Yankees fan.
All you gotta do is buy a ticket, show up, and know when to root.
It's not like that for you to connect yourself.
And if those watching, and I forgot to say this, Professor Walters here, He gives the most exquisite tours of the Vatican.
His organization, his site, Vati Land, which we will have here, is look at what he knows.
Have you ever said in your life, I don't know, beats the hell out of me, I don't know.
You've never shown either that or you're just making it up, which I kid, of course, I know you're not.
But you're encyclopedic.
Knowledge of this.
Is this part of your academia?
Your academic studies?
Your academe?
Or is it something else?
How do you know?
No, it's pretty...
Well, I have no life.
You should be a cardinal.
Yeah.
You'd be good.
It's just a lifetime.
You know, I take a cue from Socrates.
The better the teacher, the better the student.
You never stop being a student.
You never stop learning.
You never stop wanting to learn.
You never stop humbly admitting when you're in error, inaccurate, imprecise, and trying to be more so, and it's a constant process.
I think, though, the thing that is the most important is that look at all of the rules.
I always go back to this hypothetical of somebody from another planet who comes here, and I'm saying, listen to this man.
There are scholars, just like in the yeshivas, and there are Jewish scholars studying the Talmud and the Torah, and they spend their lives dissecting questions and hypotheticals.
The amount of lore, doctrinal history, is mind-boggling in terms of just a Catholic church.
And yet...
Just like in our case, it's amazing what you can get away with.
Think about assassinations, think about coup d 'etat, stolen elections, whatever your particular affiliation is.
We believe that whenever there is some type of a blatant error, that somebody rings a bell and it's stopped, that there's some internal dead man switch that says, oh no you don't, you can't do this.
Surely somebody is going to find out and complain and call the papers.
They know nothing about it because they're lulled into this complacency.
You know, it's a fog alarm fire here in Italy.
Again, Cionci, who might be helpful if you want.
I know he'll be fine with it.
He has a lot of, you know, why reinvent the wheel?
He has a lot of good, in English, little mini videos.
There's three in particular.
I can send them if you want.
Maybe you want to attach them to the bottom of this.
Just explaining a lot of graphics, so it's very visually helpful for people because it's a lot to wrap your mind around.
So that might be helpful.
But there's a five alarm fire.
I mean, you know, everybody's kind of panicking and really worried those who existentially care about this stuff here in Italy as we wrap up to Wednesday.
And it's not the end of everything, but it's kind of like, can there be a comeback?
And I'm going to wait.
I was going to do it now, maybe like to drop a last final bomb.
I'm not.
Let's wait and see what happens.
And then whatever does happen, I'll give you an update.
Oh, please.
Where things now would stand.
Would it be important to me to ask you, are you a Catholic yourself?
I was baptized in a Roman Catholic.
Okay.
That's all.
I'm just curious because it would be for me, for example, if I were to be some expert of, let's say, Jewish lore or, you know, somebody says, well, are you Jewish?
No.
But then again, you don't have to be a woman to be a gynecologist as a bad example.
But I'm just curious because I have respect for, I mean, if I can study the history of France and live in this country, it's to study.
It's the naked study of the history, which is so fascinating to me.
What is your expertise?
You are a professor.
What do you teach?
Well, I've taught the courses over the 15 years.
I've taught Latin.
I've taught ancient Roman history, comparative world religions, courses in the New Testament.
But over the past several years, two courses in particular have become very popular.
One is called the Popes of Rome, History of the Catholic Church.
And the other is called Mystics, Saints, and Sinners, studied in medieval Catholic theology.
I mentioned last time my CV, so if your audience didn't watch that previous interview, they can go back to the beginning where you asked me about my CV.
Within all that, my PhD thesis was in something called, well, philology, but the theological aspect is something called ecclesiology, which is the logical, rational principle of This thing we call the church.
The structure of the church, its governance, its formation, its grassroots, everything.
And philology is almost like a love of knowledge.
An intimate love of logical, rational principles communicated via words.
In other words, what does a word really mean?
Why is Latin important?
Why would you advocate learning it?
What does it do?
Yeah, both Latin and Greek, but just for Latin's sake.
I mean, number one, it's what every modern Romance language, but also English, which is now the, ironically, lingua franca of the world, is based on.
It's what allows English to be, in my opinion, the premier language to communicate in the world, phonetic alphabetized language, because it has a vast, vast vocabulary.
And the study of Latin...
Number one, it disciplines the mind to think critically, logically, rationally.
Just going about learning it.
And number two, it suddenly opens up.
Once you understand what a word really means, it completely opens up your horizon and makes you understand things in a very different light.
When I went to a Jesuit high school, I took Latin.
And I found out a number of things.
First, it was, to me, the ultimate F you to my friends with their Spanish and French.
I don't need this.
Everybody else, that's everyone.
Because we also thought we were just different.
There is a sound to it.
There is something.
It sounds almost, everything sounds profound.
And the catalytic orations.
How are we going to put up with it?
But it was an evidently profound.
The Pledge of Allegiance.
Notice I say wexolo, not vexolo.
I don't speak classical.
I'm not that churchy.
What's your phrase for church Latin?
Spaghetti Latin.
And also, I know most people get who and whom incorrect.
This teaches you, when you talk about grammar, in order for you to speak, and when you speak any language where the adjective comes after.
You go through the sentence, and then at the end, it's like, let me get all this stuff out of the way, and now I'll worry about the descriptive.
Right.
The dative case and conjugation of verbs.
And aside from that, I loved it.
I never, ever, ever.
And you don't have to necessarily know something to open up your mind and to stretch it.
I always give the analogy of somebody who's about to run will put themselves into contortions that they will never mimic or replicate during the run.
So I...
Latin is just, it's well worth the effort, as far as I'm concerned.
Maybe I'm biased.
Right.
No, I 100% agree.
My doctoral research was on the, what we call a, well, just an analysis of one word in Latin from the first time it appears in the Latin language until the time of Constantine, the word being unitas, meaning oneness.
And this is how the ecclesiology, the structure of the church comes into play as well as the Trinity, Trinitarian theology, all sorts of stuff.
You know, it's like, it's useless to mow the lawn.
You want to uproot the weeds.
And so that's also part of my approach.
What also, last question, what is the state, the shape, the attitude of Rome to live in Rome based upon what you've seen?
The crime, immigration, the attitude, the flavor.
What's Rome like now?
When in Rome?
Correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but it's not just me.
A lot of friends and colleagues, peers, acquaintances.
Strangely enough, since 2013, and very recently now, I don't like the feel.
Hmm.
Isn't it something how the derivative effects of something seemingly...
It's the old butterfly wings and how something seemingly disconnected can affect, can trickle down, to use a Reagan term, I guess, into effect.
I feel exactly the same way.
We have a thing here in New York, this notion that Rudy Giuliani made it popular was the broken windows effect where Wilson and whatever had this idea that if you have a neighborhood where there's always this one storefront with a broken window and it's never fixed, it gives people the impression people don't care about it.
Whereas you go after little pieces of crime and it shows people they mean business.
That's 100% applicable to Rome.
What about the notion of heterogeneity?
Some people are suggesting that when you have influxes, and they always focus sometimes on African.
I don't want to use the word racist, but put it this way, other non-Roman white Europeans don't catch their attention.
But what happens when a culture, perhaps, by virtue of dilution, Or, I'm not going to use words like contamination, but what happens when the Roman culture and the Italian culture and the way of life, when it is affected by influxes of non-Roman people?
There's a point where you reach what you call supersaturation, oversaturation levels, and maybe it can be repaired, maybe not.
So that's where we're at now.
Well, Eric Thaddeus Walters, Professor Eric Thaddeus Walters, I will have everything in the description portion up to and including the link from last time.
I will put your YouTube channel.
And if somebody wanted to enlist your services for Vatiland to get a...
Because you are, make people understand this, you're just not some dude with a little...
Sign this as tours.
You are certified.
Explain your bona fides when it comes to giving tours.
Yeah, well, again, going back, when you asked me about just how do I have all this knowledge and stuff, and it's number one, I never stopped learning and studying, doing my own research, continue research, trying to publish stuff.
Number two, just because of, you know, all of that, the amalgamation over time of both doing it simultaneously while I'm, you know, a postgraduate student, and it just kind of snowballs forward and never ends.
It's just that so, you know, Vatican Blue Guide does it.
But you are also given some kind of a distinction, are you not?
You have some type of...
Yeah, Vatican Blue Guide does it.
There's thousands and thousands of guides all over Italy.
Here in Rome, there's at least a few.
1000 legitimately licensed guides, because here that's a big deal.
If you want to do it and not have problems, you have to be licensed somehow.
You can be licensed by a province, meaning like a county or a city or something like that.
In this case, it's the Vatican itself.
"Vatican Blue Guide Docents" in Italian.
It's called "operatoridatico" or "didactic operator." It sounds more clear.
So you are a five-star.
I'm not the only one, but yeah.
Still, a five-star platinum, diamond, gold.
Last question.
As you can tell, I'm a perennial liar.
I always say last question for about five or six times.
Are you ever going to come back to the...
Are you permanently...
Do you consider yourself a Roman, an expat?
Where do you fit into this weird world that we live in?
I think I'm a stranger in a strange land wherever I go.
I mean, you know, Rome really is home.
The last time I was physically back, set put in the States, was eight years ago.
That was for five days.
And the time before that was 11 years earlier.
So I don't get back much.
And you couldn't wait to get back as soon as you...
When you first...
Well, people used to ask me...
You know, what do you miss from the States?
And I said, Popeyes.
And then the last time I went back, the last time I went back, I had a layover in the Detroit airport.
And I was in the international terminal.
So I said, I love the Popeyes.
Let's try that out.
And it was not as I remembered.
So I was disappointed.
Yeah, the dirty rice just kind of loses its panache.
I also love to, if ever I make, I have never had the pleasure, and if Mrs. L and I go there, I'm going to call you up whether you like it or not.
But I would always want to say, let me see Rome the way you see it.
I don't want to go to, don't, forget the beaten path.
A lot, no, a lot of, a lot of my friends, a lot of my friends, meaning Roman, you know, friends, I know better, I know Rome better than most of them.
Like they ask me about, you know.
Whatever directions or how to do that.
And I also want to find out things that drive you crazy, like cheese on fish and other...
We'll talk about that some other day.
Professor Eric Thaddeus Walters, again, I will have all of your CV, your bona fides in the list.
Let us talk again after the other shoe or...
Yeah, drops.
And again, I want to thank you.
For your wisdom and your genius and your absolute encyclopedic knowledge, you have made this so incredibly important.
Thank you so much, my friend.
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