Andrea Cionci: Benedict XVI's resignation is null and void: application to Vatican tribunal

An announcement from Andrea Cionci

The journalist Andrea Cionci has requested I republish the following announcement that he has recently made:

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Benedict XVI's resignation is null and void: application to Vatican tribunal

Eleven years of doubts and arguments about the legitimacy of the last papal succession are perhaps a bit too many.  

It is the “Magna Quaestio” the issue that has been debated since that Feb. 11, 2013, the day when Pope Benedict XVI - according to the mainstream vulgate - allegedly resigned with his famous Declaratio.

Thus, on the morning of Thursday, June 6, 2024, the writer, Andrea Cionci, filed with the Tribunal of the State of Vatican City, an “Application for the Recognition of the Nullity of the Abdication of Pope Benedict XVI.” According to the “Rights and Duties” of the faithful Christians, in fact any baptized person, it is possible to submit legitimate requests for clarification to the competent ecclesiastical forum.

It was certainly not a decision that has been taken lightly: it took four years of investigation, (900 articles, 800 podcasts, a bestseller - “Ratzinger Code” - as many as 20,000 copies, 120 lectures) to fully frame the issue and put together a 100-page dossier with a team effort involving five lawyers, including two canonists.

Right from the start, canon law professor Friar Stefano Violi, in the February 2013 Lugano Theological Review, objected that Pope Benedict had never renounced the Petrine munus, as it is required by canon 332.2 that concerns the Pope's abdication: “In the case that the Roman pontiff renounces his munus (office) it is required for its validity that the renunciation is freely made and that is duly manifested, it is not required instead that someone accepts it”. The munus is the office that is given to the Pope directly from God himself as to be performed by him through his service, called ministerium.  

Instead, Pope Ratzinger declared that he would give up the ministerium only, the power to “be pope.” This is the so called “substantial error” in the declaration: the very object that the pope had to renounce for a valid abdication, namely the munus, is missing, and according to canon 188, a renunciation made erroneously is null and void, which is also confirmed by the constitution Universi Dominici Gregis (art.76-77).   

The petition, divided into three sections, is based, in the first two, on the canonical aspect, completely disregarding what the declarant's real intention originally was.   

It is no coincidence, in fact, that there are several authoritative scholars (certainly not admirers of Benedict XVI) who also confirm that the Declaratio is not a valid act precisely because of substantial error, because of the failure to renounce the Petrine munus: they attribute this mistake to Ratzinger's alleged modernist ideas about the papacy. Nevertheless, for the purposes of law, the reason and intention for which Pope Benedict offered an invalid abdication has no relevance here.  

The thing that provides an explanation of what, instead, Benedict XVI actually did is Section n.3: The German pope never wanted to abdicate, he simply declared something else and for a dramatic emergency reason. There is in fact only one case in which the Pope can lose the ministerium by withholding the munus, and that is that of the “totally impeded See,” when the Pope, as can. Law n. 412 illustrates, is a prisoner, confined, exiled, not free to communicate even by letter. In short terms, it is a bit like when a person is in prison, retains a driver's license, the title to drive, but cannot drive a car.  

Section 3 reconstructs how Pope Benedict XVI, cornered by internal and external enemies, and having likely suffered an attack with sleeping pills in March 2012, during the apostolic trip to Cuba, secured the Church by having the Church placed in an impeded seat precisely by the convocation of an abusive conclave, convened on March 1, 2013 when the legitimate Pope was not dead and was non-abdicatory. If the pope is not abdicatory but impeded, the conclave that follows is null and void and elects an antipope, that is, a Pope not canonically elected.  

As it has already happened with all the 40 antipopes that have alternated in the history of the Church, on average one every 8 legitimate popes) everything Bergoglio has said or done must be annulled and the next conclave must be composed only of authentic cardinals of pre-2013 appointment, otherwise another antipope would be elected. In that case, when there are no longer at least three genuine cardinals under the age of 80 to form a legitimate conclave, the Catholic Church as we know it would most likely end.  

After all, the petition is also in Francis's best interest: if he has nothing to hide, a thorough investigation will only dispel doubts about his legitimacy and should therefore be encouraged by him.  

If the petition were to be rejected, it would be an open admission of guilt on the part of Bergoglio himself and dramatic proof that the judiciary, in the Vatican, would no longer be independent of the legislature.  

By November 2023, the writer already sent 11,500 petition signatures to the pre-2013 Cardinals of appointment, who would be bound to take action according to Article 3 of the Universi Dominici Gregis, which imposes on them the duty to protect the rights of the Apostolic See and not to let them fall even to avoid dissension.  

In the absence of their response, of necessity, after six months we had to turn to the criminal court.  

With millions of the faithful Christians in doubt, so many priests suspended, excommunicated who worked for the cause, a final ecclesiastical pronouncement, in accordance with the laws of the Church, can no longer be deferred.   

-Andrea Cionci