So, what happened? Was this just a coincidental twist of fate, with no significance, or is there more to it? Folks, honestly, if this hadn't been the conclave that started the Great Apostasy, I don't think I'd even worry about this. If this had been the conclave that elected, say, Pope Leo XIII or Pope Pius VIII, I don't think this would be an issue. But alas, this is the conclave that, on October 28, 1958, apparently gave Cardinal Angelo Roncalli to the world as "Pope" John XXIII.

    You may be surprised, even shocked, to learn that similar confusion about white smoke or black smoke occurred five years later - at the conclave that "elected" Giovanni Battista Montini "Pope" Paul VI! The confusion about this at the 1963 conclave lasted about 8 minutes, according to The Sheboygan Press of June 20, 1963 ("Fail To Elect Pope On First Four Ballots").

    But the focal point of this essay is the conclave of 1958. In an interview, Sigismondo Chigi, the marshal of the conclave, said that he had seen three conclaves, and never before had the color of the smoke been as varied as in this one on October 26.

    There have long been speculations that Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, the Archbishop of Genoa, was elected Pope on that fateful Sunday, October 26, 1958, and that this was the reason for the white smoke at 6 pm. However good the material was that pointed to the truth of this claim, it was not until last year, 2003, that a former FBI consultant by the name of Paul L. Williams, not exactly a Catholic traditionalist, published a book in which he makes the stunning allegation that certain declassified FBI documents confirm this very fact: that Cardinal Siri was indeed elected Pope that day, and that he took the name "Gregory XVII."

    What's so striking about this is that Williams does not favor the traditional Catholic cause, that he seems to gain absolutely nothing by making this public (and it ought to be pointed out that Williams only makes the observations more or less as a "side comment"; he doesn't dwell long on this and doesn't claim that John XXIII was not a true Pope), and that he cites not speculations or conspiracy theory authorities but declassified intelligence documents from the United States Government! As a former FBI consultant, one would think that he knows what he's talking about!

    The relevant excerpt with these details from his book The Vatican Exposed is posted at NovusOrdoWatch.org. I want to reproduce it here so you can see for yourself what has allegedly taken place:

    In 1954 Count Della Torre, editor of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, warned [Pope] Pius XII of [Cardinal Angelo] Roncalli's Communist sympathies. Other members of the "Black Nobility" expressed similar concerns.[5]

    Nor did Roncalli [later known as "Pope John XXIII"] escape the attention of the FBI and CIA. The agencies began to accumulate thick files on him and the questionable activities of other "progressives" within the Vatican, including Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini (the future Paul VI).

    [...]

    Pius XII had appointed Cardinal Giuseppe Siri as his desired successor.[7] Siri was rabidly anti-Communist, an intransigent traditionalist in matters of church doctrine, and a skilled bureaucrat. . . .

    In 1958 [on October 26], when the cardinals were locked away in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope, mysterious events began to unfold. On the third ballot, Siri, according to FBI sources, obtained the necessary votes and was elected as Pope Gregory XVII.[8] White smoke poured from the chimney of the chapel to inform the faithful that a new pope had been chosen. The news was announced with joy at 6 P.M. on Vatican radio. The announcer said, "The smoke is white. . . . There is absolutely no doubt. A pope has been elected."[9] . . .

    But the new pope failed to appear. Question began to arise whether the smoke was white or gray. To quell such doubts, Monsignor Santaro, secretary of the Conclave of Cardinals, informed the press that the smoke, indeed, had been white and that a new pope had been elected. The waiting continued. By evening Vatican radio announced that the results remained uncertain. On October 27, 1958, the Houston Post headlined: "Cardinals Fail to elect pope in 4 Ballots: Mix-Up in Smoke Signals Cause False Reports."[10]

    But the reports had been valid. On the fourth ballot, according to FBI sources, Siri again obtained the necessary votes and was elected supreme pontiff. But the French cardinals annulled the results, claiming that the election would cause widespread riots and the assassination of several prominent bishops behind the Iron Curtain.[11]

    The cardinals opted to elect Cardinal Frederico Tedischini as a "transitional pope," but Tedischini was too ill to accept the position.

    Finally, on the third day of balloting, Roncalli received the necessary support to become Pope John XXIII. . . .

--Paul L. Williams, The Vatican Exposed (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), pp. 90-92

The footnote numbers included in Williams' text point to the following references (adapted from p. 243):

• [5] Department of State confidential biography, "John XXIII," issue date: no date, declassified: February 15, 1974; see also Avro Manhattan, Murder in the Vatican, p. 31.
• [7] John Cooney, The American Pope, p. 259.
• [8] Department of State secret dispatch, "John XXIII," issue date: November 20, 1958, declassified: November 11, 1974.
• [9] The announcer's words appeared in the London Tablet, November 1, 1958, p. 387.
• [10] Houston Post, October 27, 1958, pp. 1 and 7
• [11] Department of State secret file, "Cardinal Siri," issue date: April 10, 1961, declassified: February 28, 1994.

    Obviously, in light of this, the claims that Cardinal Siri was elected and accepted office as Pope Gregory XVII now carry much more weight-apparently, the U.S. intelligence community confirms it! And, again, what gives this even more weight - in my eyes - is the fact that Paul Williams does not make a big deal about this in his book. He doesn't dedicate an entire chapter to this, he doesn't harp on it, he doesn't claim the "election" of Roncalli (John XXIII) was therefore invalid, or anything like it. He only mentions this as part of historical fact, almost as an "aside," a little historical tidbit that deserves mention but is not of any great consequence. I point this out to make readers aware that Williams is not saying this because he wants to draw attention to it or reap sensationalism from it. No at all. In fact, he goes on to accept John XXIII as the legitimate Pope. Why would he do all this if the information were bogus?

    If we agree that Siri was indeed elected Pope and accepted the office, then we can account for the white smoke that was seen at 6 pm, not just for a few puffs or a few moments, but for a full five minutes (close your eyes and count to 60 for five times to see how long fives minutes is). Then we can account for the calling of the Palatine and Swiss Guards, the joyful waving of the conclavists, and the actions of the governor and marshal of the conclave, who prepared to greet the new Pope. We can even account for the fact that the secretary of the conclave, Monsignor Santaro, who had apparently been inside the conclave, confirmed to Chigi that the smoke was white. Apparently this was reported by Milan's Corriere della Sera ("Evening Courier"), and curiously enough, the edition was quickly withdrawn afterwards, no back issues being available shortly thereafter. Why?

    Vatican insider and former Jesuit Fr. Malachi Martin confirmed the election of Siri, though he speaks of the 1963 conclave (the one that produced "Paul VI"), and though Martin did not think Siri was a true Pope. He thinks that Siri refused to accept the election because he was intimidated by the threat of "the little brutality":

    It is . . . certain that within the 1963 Conclave voting, Siri had garnered the required number of votes to make him Pope-elect. But the law of Conclave is of iron; for any Conclave election to end with a validly elected pope, the Pope-elect must freely accept his election. . . .

    It is certain that Pope-elect Cardinal Siri responded: "Non accepto" (I do not accept). . . . It is also certain that . . . he suggested his refusal was given because of his persuasion that only thus could foreseen possibilities of grave harm be avoided - whether harm to the Church, to his family, to him personally, it is not clear. He did indicate that his decision was made freely and not out of any duress - otherwise any subsequent election in that Conclave would have been invalid. . . .

    What [Karol Wojtyla] would not have known . . . was what [Cardinal] Wyszynski could not permissibly tell him: what forced the hand of Siri to refuse the papacy. . . . He [Karol Wojtyla] would not, out of respect for Wyszynski's oath of secrecy, have asked Wyszynski if the rumors of the "little brutality" were accurate. Without any means of establishing it by notarized statements and duly sworn-in eyewitnesses, the rest of the world is still left with the information that the Siri nomination and election were set aside by what has been called the "little brutality."

(Malachi Martin, The Keys of this Blood [New York, NY: Touchstone, 1991], pp. 607-608)

    This is interesting, as well as confusing. On the one hand, Fr. Martin acknowledges that Siri was intimidated by "the little brutality," since he (allegedly) indicated that the only way to avoid grave harm was by refusing to accept the papacy. Yet on the other hand he says that Siri "did indicate that his decision [not to accept] was made freely." Can he be so certain? Fr. Martin was not part of the conclave, after all. How can it be that it was "the little brutality" that "set aside" Siri's papacy, and yet somehow Siri's refusal to accept was done "freely"? Hello?

    In my opinion, Fr. Martin is trying to have it both ways, and I think the reason is that the consequences of an invalid 1963 conclave would be too grave for him to face. He himself admits that if Siri did not accept the election out of duress, then the entire conclave would be invalidated (meaning that no one else could have been validly elected in that conclave; in this case, this would mean Montini, "Paul VI").

    But if Siri did not accept the office, how come we know his name, "Gregory XVII"? How come we saw white smoke? Note that Fr. Martin is speaking of the 1963 - not the 1958 - conclave, but several "Siri theorists" say that the same thing happened in both conclaves: Siri got elected, then accepted, then was intimidated into either resigning or not exercising his papacy. What gives credence to this claim is that, as I mentioned earlier, the "white smoke" phenomenon indeed is documented to have happened both times, in 1958 and in 1963.

    (Later in this essay, I will give an answer as to why the Freemasons in the conclave would have profited from first electing Siri only to force him to refuse to exercise his papacy moments later.)

    In the event that Siri was elected and accepted and then resigned out of pressure, a look at canon law reveals a scary fact: "Resignation is invalid by law if it was made out of grave fear unjustly inflicted, fraud, substantial error, or simony" (1917 Code of Canon Law, Canon 185). That would mean that Siri, by then Pope Gregory XVII, was the true Pope, and his "resignation" was invalid. Alternatively, if this pressure from the Masons invalidated the entire conclave, then no valid Pope emerged at all.

    Interestingly enough, the Catholic Encyclopedia says the following:

"It may be noted at once, with [the canonist] Wernz, that a papal election held outside of a properly organized conclave is canonically null and void" (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04192a.htm).

    By the way, let me make clear here that the constitution Pope Pius XII promulgated on how his successor be elected does not allow for anyone to "annul" or "set aside" or "veto" or "protest" a valid papal election:

The right to elect the future Pope belongs solely to the Sacred College of Cardinals to the exclusion of any intervention by any other civil or ecclesiastical authority or dignity, or even by a General Council, which, if it is in session at the time, is ipso facto suspended on the death of the Pope until reconvened by the new Pope.

("Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis," December 8, 1945)

    But there is more. The Catholic Encyclopedia reminds us that during a conclave there can be NO communication with the outside:

"All communication with the outside is strictly forbidden under pain of loss of office and ipso facto excommunication. A cardinal may leave the conclave in case of sickness (certified under oath by a physician) and return; not so a conclavist" (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04192a.htm).

    Yet, Fr. Martin continues:

What is firmly stated is that at least one Cardinal Elector did have a conversation - however short - with someone not participating in the Conclave; that the someone was an emissary of an internationally based organization; that no explicit rule of Conclave privacy was violated by the event; and that the conversation did concern the Siri candidacy. (The Keys of this Blood, p. 608)

    This is interesting again. We are to believe that a violation of the conclave occurred (in order to communicate with the outside, there must have been a violation) regarding the election of Cardinal Siri - yet, are we to imagine that Cardinal Siri, upon his election, waited until this conversation was over before he accepted or refused the office? Obviously, the conversation could not be made until Siri had been elected - and then it must have taken some time to get outside the conclave and make that conversation (probably by telephone). I can't imagine Cardinal Siri sitting there, saying, "Oh, yes, go ahead; I won't accept or refuse my election until you're back. Take your time." No, rather, I think that Siri promptly accepted the election, and only then was the conclave broken to communicate with the outside. Only then was "the little brutality" threatened. And if common sense serves me right, the election could no longer have been validly annulled, brutality or not, since it seems to me that as soon as the Pope-elect accepts the office, the conclave, for all intents and purposes, is over.

    At this point I should mention that one witness to the violated conclave doors was a pious layman by the name of Paul Scortesco, who was involved in one of the conclaves (sources disagree on whether it was the conclave of 1963 or 1958). In 1976 he revealed in a letter that the seals on one of the conclave doors had been broken. Scortesco's testimony, which can partly be seen in the video tape "Vatican II: Council of Apostasy," is "ratified" by the fact that he was later found dead in his bed - having been burned alive.

    As you can tell by now, there are a lot of questions here and a lot of issues to go through. This is by no means easy. I am not here to give definitive answers; I am here to raise questions, to show what's going on, what's out there, what's been suggested, what can or cannot be proved, etc. These questions must be raised, and I think as time goes by and the New Church becomes more and more absurd, more and more people are willing to look at these issues. We know from Cardinal Siri's own mouth that "very serious things have taken place." This he said in an interview he gave in 1985:

Some moments later, when we asked him whether he had been elected pope, his reaction was completely different. He started by remaining silent for a long time, then raised his eyes to Heaven with a rictus of suffering and pain, joined his hands and said, weighing each word with gravity: "I am bound by the secret." Then, after a long silence, heavy for us all, he said again: "I am bound by the secret. This secret is horrible. I would have books to write about the different conclaves. Very serious things have taken place. But I can say nothing." (Taken from "The Pope: Could He Be Cardinal Siri?" by Louis Hubert Remy

    So, does that sound to you like everything's alright? Clearly, something very serious has happened here, and I am convinced that the answer to this mess since the death of Pope Pius XII is found in the conclave of 1958! Really, we can see just by the outward fruits that it was that fateful day when Roncalli appeared on the balcony as "Pope John XXIII," that the "New Church" was imposed upon the Catholic world. That is not to say that everything was perfectly fine under Pope Pius XII, but clearly everyone can see a plain rupture between Pius XII and John XXIII before and after.

    There is yet another strange incident that needs to be reported. Just after Roncalli appeared on the balcony as "Pope John XXIII" on October 28, 1958, instead of letting the cardinals disperse to travel back home, he ordered them to remain for a covert meeting that was so secret, apparently, that anyone who interrupted was immediately excommunicated:

After greeting and blessing the cheering throng in St. Peter's Square, . . . Pope John XXIII ordered the Cardinals not to disperse. He wished to meet with them in secret. This was a burden on several of the Cardinals who were in their nineties and in failing health, but in deference to the new Pope they all stayed. It must have been a very sensitive meeting, for when Secretary of State Tardini tried to enter, mistakenly believing the conclave was over, he was promptly excommunicated by France's Cardinal Tisserant. (Mark Fellows, Fatima in Twilight [Niagara Falls, NY: Marmion Publications, 2003], p. 154)

    Now, the source for this information is Paul Johnson's book Pope John XXIII (Canada: Little, Brown, and Co., 1974), pp. 114-115. What's interesting to note is that Johnson says that Roncalli wanted the cardinals to stay for another 24 hours and that this occurred right after his supposed election, while they were still in conclave: "He commanded the cardinals to remain in conclave with him for a further twenty-four hours, so that he would have the chance to consult with them" (p. 114). But Johnson also says that this happened on Tuesday, October 28 (p. 112), and of course that was the same day on which Roncalli appeared on the balcony. So something isn't right here. Johnson gives the impression that Tardini was excommunicated because, thinking the conclave to be over, he violated it (Roncalli lifted the excommunication the next day). But why did he think the conclave was over if not for the white smoke? And certainly the crowd did not have to wait for any unusually long amount of time between the white smoke and the appearance of Roncalli on the balcony. So these things don't add up. When did the meeting happen, before or after the white smoke, before or after the appearance on the balcony? It is not clear. But what is clear is that very strange, serious things took place in that conclave and that ever since, the Great Apostasy (or something like it) has been enjoined upon the Catholic world.

    Just lately, the monthly magazine Inside the Vatican interviewed Fr. Charles-Roux, who was the priest who said the Holy Mass on the set of Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of The Christ. When asked about the Popes he knew, he said the following about the 1958 conclave:

There were certain irregularities about the election during that 1958 conclave, as Cardinal Tisserant has himself acknowledged. Some say Agagianian was elected, others Siri, others some other cardinal, and that the camerlengo then annulled the election. In any case, I'm quite sure John XXIII chose his name, the name of an antipope, quite consciously, to show he had been irregularly elected. (Sept. 2004 issue, p. 41)

    So, apparently, within Roman circles, the notion that something was wrong in the 1958 (and probably thereafter) conclave is not an unheard-of thing. And again, if we look at the fruits of 1958 and beyond, who can fault anyone for pinpointing that conclave and saying, "This is when it all started"? And isn't it too strange of a coincidence that it was precisely at this very conclave that strange things occurred, such as white smoke when black smoke was allegedly "intended"?

    On top of that, the man officially "elected" in that conclave was not exactly known for his orthodoxy under Pope Pius XII. In fact, during the pontificate of Pius XII, the Holy Office had a file on Cardinal Roncalli marked as "suspected of modernism." This should not be taken lightly, especially not since modernism is not merely heresy but apostasy. In other words, the Pope (Pius XII) considered Roncalli (John XXIII) suspect of apostasy. Paul Johnson briefly recounts the story: "Shortly after Roncalli became pope, in 1958, he visited the office and asked to see his personal file. It was marked: 'Suspected of Modernism'" (Paul Johnson, Pope John XXIII [Canada: Brown, Little, & Co., 1974] p. 37).

    My dear friends, I have given you a lot of information here. I do not profess to know the answer, but I know something's wrong here. Fr. Louis Campbell put it well, I think, when he wrote in the Daily Catholic, about one year ago:

Pope Pius had promoted as his successor Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, ardent foe of Communism and defender of the true Faith, who would no doubt have followed through with Our Lady's wishes. At the conclave that followed the death of the old Pope, Siri was elected both on the third and fourth ballots, and took the name of Gregory XVII, a fact which is attested to even by documents recently declassified by the FBI, and cited in a recent book. This should finally be enough to convince the skeptics that the so-called "Siri Theory" is no theory at all, but an historical fact. It is the best explanation why for more than forty years under the "conciliar popes" the Church has been revolutionized, and the true Church is now in a state of eclipse. The Church in Eclipse

    Let me tell you what I personally believe. I believe that at the conclave of 1958, Cardinal Siri was elected Pope, he accepted, and took the name Gregory XVII. I believe that after this, one of the cardinals broke the conclave doors to telephone the B'nai Brith and announce to them the election of Siri. For most cardinals, the conclave was over. Hence the broken door didn't matter. While this was taking place, the ballots were being burned and white smoke was blowing out of the chimney. Hence Msgr. Santaro could leave and announce that the smoke was white. Hence we know the new Pope's name - Gregory XVII. Then the Freemasonic Cardinal (perhaps Tisserant from France) returned and intimidated Siri into giving up his claim to the papacy (perhaps by threatening that the Communists would start to massacre the bishops and priests behind the Iron Curtain). Siri then resigned invalidly (since it was under duress), and the conclave continued. This is why we saw white smoke, then black smoke.

    Perhaps the exact same spectacle took place again in the conclave of 1963. Why the repetition? Simple. The Freemasons are evil but not stupid. They know that if they want to have heresy, error, and damaging laws to come from the Chair of Peter, it cannot be done with a true Pope. Hence, they need to make sure that the man they put on the Chair of Peter is invalid. Therefore they proceeded to elect Siri first, so that he would be the true Pope, which would guarantee that the man they would choose next (in this case, Roncalli) would not be the true Pope and therefore not be protected by the Holy Ghost! And if we look at what happened since 1958, I think it is no stretch to say that none of these claimants, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II have been protected by the Holy Ghost! (If they have, then His protection isn't worth much.)

    Their plan was devilishly clever. By first electing a true Pope, they had a guarantee that the man they would put on the Chair of Peter cannot be protected by divine assistance. How right they were!

    This, my dear friends, is what I think Our Lady of La Salette meant by the Church being eclipsed. The True Pope is not being seen. He is there, fully visible (=able to be seen), but he is not known and not seen by most. Like the sun during a solar eclipse, the True Pope, and thus the True Church, is there and visible, but blocked from vision. Still, a faint outer corona can be seen for those who look hard enough. I believe that the entire Novus Ordo Church with its hierarchy and "Popes" is blocking the vision of the True Church and the True Pope. This can finally explain what has happened to the Church, how all of this can take place, and why there were serious problems with the conclaves of 1958 and 1963. The Catholic Church is eclipsed, eclipsed by an apostate body of clergy who are bringing upon the world the Great Apostasy.

    That, at least, is how I see it.

    Now just lately, Novus Ordo Watch has revealed a stunning excerpt from Cardinal Siri's own little-known writings, which is just for the first time ever being translated into English. Writing about Matthew 16:18, Cardinal Siri (Pope Gregory XVII?) wrote:

The Church provides security because it is the "roccia" (rock), not thick, and not sand. It deals with a significance that goes beyond the material sense of the metaphor: in fact the rocks of the earth crumble in time, due to the effects of the elements. This "roccia" (rock) will never crumble, nor flake, given that its solidity is guaranteed in the text of Matthew until the end of time. The "rock" remains and no one will scratch it, implicated as she is in a divine undertaking. But on occasion some men may take from others the vision of the rock. Other things may be made to seem like the rock, other things that may appear to all as such. The distinction is a profound one, even if the errors of these men are capable of veiling the reality (truth), they cannot destroy it. The question, easy for all, that presents itself is one of the visibility of the rock. If then situations should occur, that took from certain men the visibility of the "roccia" (rock) in the Church, the consequences would be grave. (The Rock (La Roccia) by Joseph Cardinal Siri

    Folks, whom are we kidding? Siri is tacitly saying exactly what I think is going on here: the true Pope is being blocked from sight! Siri himself wrote it! Coincidence? Again?

    Too much coincidence is no coincidence.

    By the way, Cardinal Siri, or Pope Gregory XVII, died in 1989. Some think that his successor was Bishop Arrigo Pintonello, though he too passed away, in 2001. At this point there is no known or even rumored successor to either man, as far as I know. Nevertheless, the Novus Ordo Church is still there, blocking the vision of the True Church.

    For your further information, here are a few more links you may wish to check out:

• Freemasonry Watch's page on the Siri Thesis: http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/siri_thesis.html
• Excerpt of Chapter 1 of the book "L'Eglise Eclipsee," French for "The Church Eclipsed": http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/post/roncalli.html
• Cardinal Siri Page at Novus Ordo Watch, updated continually: http://www.novusordowatch.org/siri.htm
• "The Siri Thesis," an exhaustive collection of facts: http://www.dipmat.unipg.it/~bartocci/siri.html

    May Our Lady of La Salette intercede for us, and may God have mercy on us!