The Papacy in Crisis

There is no question that the Papacy is in crisis. The Return to Order Moment and many other podcasters have discussed the various crises of Pope Francis’s pontificate in great detail. Over its 2000-year history, Holy Mother Church has faced and overcome many crises – most of which looked as dire to those living through them as our current crisis does to us. In today’s episode of the Return to Order Moment, long lime TFP member and historian, the late Jeremias Wells tells the story of a time during which three different men claimed to be the rightful pope. This article was published under the title “The Great Western Schism” in the March-April 2002 issue of Crusade magazine. We tell this story in the hope that our listeners will draw encouragement from the historical resilience of the Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ who promised us that He would not forsake her. To read the original article, please go to https://www.tfp.org/magazines/crusade_mag_vol_56.pdf, pages 17-19. Interested readers can read three of the four books that Mr. Wells used as sources of information online by using the following links - Philip Hughes, A History of the Church, Volume III, https://archive.org/details/historyofchurch0003hugh, Louis Salembier, The Great Schism of the West https://archive.org/details/greatschismwest00salegoog/page/n4/mode/2up, and Joseph Gill, S.J., Eugenius IV, https://archive.org/details/eugeniusivpopeof01gill.