Pope Michael

I thought it would be a fitting time to share this documentary I watched a week or so ago.  “Pope Michael” claims to be the true Pope and head of the legitimate Catholic Church (which happens to consist of about thirty followers scattered across the globe, most of which, have never met the man, but watch his "sermons" streamed through Skype.) "Pope Michael" has never been ordained a priest, although he did attend a seminary tied to the ultra-traditionalist SSPX (Society Of Pope Pius X) and was expelled, for reasons he leaves suspiciously vague. 

The documentary is however well worth watching. There is no analysing director’s god's-eye, just the camera, filming the often mundane everyday life of Pope Michael, his mother, his first and only young seminarian, (Phil) living on a drab farm in Kansas. “Pope Michael” didn't seem as violent or hysterical as some of the sedevacantinist nuts I have came across on the internet, but I did find him dull and narcissistic. When he had Phil give a presentation at a religious department in a Kansas University, they spent the whole time trying to justify his claim that he is the legitimate Pope, while completely neglecting their actual doctrine. Which struck me as a characteristically narcissistic trait, a fixation with his own importance at the expense of everything else (including anything to do with first century Palestine). 

Phil, Michael’s thoughtful, sheepish seminarian, who gave up an engineering degree and a girlfriend because he thought “Pope Michael” was the only to redemption, is by far the most likable and impressive person in the documentary. One memorably scene had Phil taking oaths of chastity and obedience as part of his training to be a “priest”, and, when Phil prostrates himself in front of Pope Michael and kisses his hand (after swearing absolute obedience to him), you can’t help thinking Phil needs to be “saved" all right, not from the Devil, no not at all, he needs to be saved from this creepy megalomaniac dressed in a chasuble.