Bishop Francis K. Schuckardt (1937–2006), founder and leader of the Fatima Crusaders, the Tridentine Latin Rite Catholic Church, also known as Tridentine Latin Rite Church (TLRC), and the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen of the Universe (CMRI), was an important figure in early U.S. Catholic traditionalism. Without a doubt, he was also one of the most controversial.

Schuckardt condemned the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and the post-conciliar developments in non-uncertain terms. Towards the end of the 1960s, he publicly declared Paul VI (sed. 1963–1978) an antipope and that the Holy See was vacant, the position that was later referred to as sedevacantism. Schuckardt founded a small religious community in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 1967, which soon attracted larger groups of followers. In 1971, he was ordained a priest and consecrated a bishop by an independent Catholic prelate.

The group expanded from Idaho and moved its headquarters to Mount Saint Michael in Spokane, Washington state 1978. TLRC was the organization’s official name incorporated in Washington state, as they could not register as either the Catholic Church or the Roman Catholic Church, even if they asserted they were nothing less. Thus, they rarely used the name TLRC, and the adherents usually called their group the Mary Immaculate Queen of the Universe Community, of which the Fatima Crusade was the apostolate. In contrast, outsiders, especially after moving to Spokane, often called them the Tridentines.

I have recently published a substantial entry (some 30 pages) on Pope Michael which forms part of the important World Religions and Spirituality Project (WRSP), an online resource focused on new and emergent religious groups, edited by Professor David G. Bromley at Virginia Commonwealth University.

David Bawden (1959–2022) was elected Pope Michael I in a 1990 conclave in Kansas.  He was neither the first nor the last man to become an alternative pope during the twentieth century. There have been dozens of others who claimed that they, not the vastly more recognized pope in Rome, are the true leader of the Catholic Church. Generally, they argue that we live in an era of general apostasy and that the modern church, particularly after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), has nothing to do with true Catholicism. Several of the latest Roman pontiffs were antipopes and leaders of a new non-Catholic religion. Most alternative popes assert that they were elected through direct heavenly intervention, and David Bawden was the first elected in an alternative conclave. He claimed the pontificate for thirty-two years, leading a small group of followers.

My text is found here

For a new version, see https://magnuslundberg.net/2022/01/17/the-pope-of-eddystone-pennsylvania/