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Father Earl Lucian Pulvermacher, OFM Cap (born April 20, 1918) became Pope Pius XIII of the "true Catholic Church" in 1998. The "true Catholic Church" is a small sect based in Montana, which claims to be the "true" Catholic Church, as against all other groups or entities claiming that name. Pulvermacher technically could be considered an antipope by other denominations, although he has far fewer followers than the historical antipopes.

Earl Lucian Pulvermacher was born in 1918. He entered the Capuchin Order in 1942 (where he was given a religious name of Lucian) and ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1948. After an initial period as a priest in Milwaukee he served as a missionary priest in Amami Oshima and later Okinawa. From 1970 to 1976 he served as a missionary in Australia. He left his Order and Australia "without permission" in 1976 and associated with some traditionalist Catholic organizations that had opposed Vatican II.

He claims that none of these satisfied him: he judged them all as too liberal and in error. He gradually drifted away until the 1990s. In the mid-1990s he became convinced that Pope John XXIII had been a freemason, and that thus his election as pope in 1958 had been invalid. Were that to be so, not just his papacy and all his acts such as the calling of Vatican II would be invalid, but so in a chain reaction would be the conclave necessitated by his death, the resultant election of Paul VI and in turn both John Pauls (Albiano Luciani and Karol Wojtyla). According to Pulvermacher's theory, the See of Peter had been vacant since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958.

In 1998, a conclave of conservative catholics, both lay and clerical, in a telephone vote elected Pulvermacher to the allegedly vacant papacy (see Sedevacantism). The new pope has now established his College of Cardinals to provide an ecclesiatical mechanism for the election of his successors.

Though he has adherents, his support is mainly limited to a few people in Montana. Only 28 attended his purported episcopal ordination in a hotel ballroom following his "election". It is noteworthy that he castigates not only what is usually understood as the "Roman Catholic Church" but also (and often with greater fervor) all traditionalist Catholics who reject his claim to be the true pope.

Gordon Bateman was a married Australian layman who belonged to Pulvermacher's circle of friends. Pulvermacher persuaded Bateman to take part in a complicated exercise, whereby Pulvermacher, after being supposedly elected pope, "dispensed" himself from restrictions on his priestly orders, and thereby "consecrated" Bateman a Bishop; thereafter Bateman consecrated Pulvermacher a bishop. As a result, Bateman's marriage broke up.

Subsequently, Bateman fell away from Pulvermacher after he discovered a curious fact: That Pulvermacher, from his seminarian days, had practiced "divining" with a pendulum. Pulvermacher does not deny this, but on the contrary has defended this. However, as a result, Pulvermacher had himself incurred excommunication on account of Pope Pius XII's (rarely obeyed) ban on such practices. Thus Pulvermacher, having previously proclaimed John XXIII's supposed ineligability for the papacy because of his supposed membership of the Freemasons, was himself ineligible to be elected "Pope" under Catholic law. While the claims against Pope John remain unproven and disputed, in the case of Pulvermacher he himself had openly admitted they were true.

Bateman, at the present, is attempting, along with his relatives, to bring the various Sedevacantist factions together into unity. This is the "St. Gabriel's Group" (*)

External links

• The webpage of Pope Pius XIII
• The Vatican-In-Exile - another self-proclaimed pope, the United States-based "Pope Michael"
• Michaelinum: The Catholic Restoration Site

• Capuchins
• 20th century antipopes