Month: January 2026

Antonio Possevino’s Writings, vol. III: Il Soldato Christiano (1583)

Antonio Possevino’s Writings, vol. III: Il Soldato Christiano (1583)

This book, edited by Dr Andreas Mazetti Petersson, constitutes the third volume of Antonio Possevino’s Writings, published in the Uppsala Studies in Church History ebook series. The volume is divided into two parts. The first part contains the transcription of Antonio Possevino’s (1533–1611) Il Soldato Christiano. The second is a study by the editor to help the reader understand the rhetorical tools used in the text.

The full title of Possevino’s book is Il Soldato Christiano con l’istruttione de’ capi dell’essercito catolico. Composto da Antonio Possevino della Compagnia di Giesù. Libro necessario à chi desidera sapere i mezi per acquistar vittoria contra heretici, turchi, & altri infedeli.

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The Alternative Pope Project

The Alternative Pope Project

In 2015, I started the Alternative Pope Project. The goal was to identify and study individuals who, during the 20th and 21st centuries, claimed that they, and not the more well-known figure in Rome, were the true leader of the Catholic Church. To refer to them, I coined the term alternative popes.

I soon realized that it would be difficult to find sources about many of the claimants, as little material is found in research libraries. To solve the problem, I created this website. Initially, I wrote brief posts on the papal claimants I knew, asking for more information.

I was amazed by the feedback. Over the past almost ten years, several thousand people have contacted me.  Many have asked questions, wanting to know more, and many have helped me access source material or shared their experiences as (former) members of these groups. With their help, I have been able to amass considerable material, and I have been able to publish several more substantial texts that, in their turn, have led to new contacts and even more sources.

This project’s final outcome will be a sizeable monograph: Could the True Pope Please Stand Up: 20th and 21st-Century Alternative Popes. Hopefully, I will be able to finish it in 2026, thus ending a decade-long project.

To date, I have produced five monographs, five group profiles, and more than a dozen research reports listed below. I have also published ca. 50 blog posts, including brief studies on alternative popes and scanned sources.

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New Book on Catholic Traditionalists and the Papacy

New Book on Catholic Traditionalists and the Papacy

My new book Is the Pope Catholic? Variations on a Traditionalist Theme is a translation of a book I wrote in Swedish in 2024. It is part of the ebook series Uppsala Studies in Church History, available open-access (see link below).

‘Traditionalist Catholics’ rarely call themselves traditionalists. In this study, I still use the concept to refer to individuals and groups who, to varying degrees, oppose the decisions of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and the post-conciliar developments in the Catholic Church. The term is thus analytical and almost universally accepted by scholars.


The ‘traditionalists’ see themselves as Catholics, or traditional Catholics, and emphatically claim that it is the church leadership, or at least its majority, that has departed from traditional Catholic doctrine, not them. They adhere to the so-called Tridentine Mass, the Roman Rite of 1570 (albeit in revised versions), and oppose the new Order of Mass, promulgated in 1969 and commonly called the Novus Ordo, which they consider to include substantial changes and therefore unacceptable. For them, Traditionalist Catholicism is just true Catholicism.

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