The 50th Anniversary of the Order of the Carmelites of the Holy Face

Today, December 23, 2025, marks the 50th anniversary of the Order of the Carmelites of the Holy Face, the congregation that today forms part of the Palmarian Catholic Church, based at El Palmar de Troya, an apparition site in Spanish Andalusia. The Church was founded in 1978, when the superior of the Orden, Clemente Domínguez y Gómez (1946-2005) proclaimed that he was true pope of the Catholic Church and the Holy See was transferred to El Palmar de Troya/Seville. Still, the foundation of the Order was an important step.

Throughout the last decade, I have published much about the Palmarian Church, and the following is an extract from my book A Pope of their Own: El Palmar de Troya and the Palmarian Church (1st edition 2017, 2nd edition 2020)

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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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Franz Engelhardt: The Fourth Seer of Fatima and Future Pope Peter II

Some compilations of twentieth-century alternative popes include a Julius Tischler, who asserted that he was Pope Peter II. Joachim Bouflet,who briefly described the case in his Faussaires de Dieu, is the only
researcher who offers some details. Bouflet stated that the claim was made in 1972, that Julius Tischler was a pseudonym, and that he was not a papal claimant in the strict sense but a claimant to a future papacy; he would be the last pope in history.

The person behind the pseudonym was Ferenc Egerszégi (1908–1982), a Hungarian Catholic priest who had lived in West Germany since the early 1960s. There, he officially changed his name to Franz Engelhardt. Apart from stating that he would be the pope of the End time, he made other far-reaching spiritual claims. He had been mystically present at Fatima in 1917, thus directly receiving the most known Marian apparitions of the twentieth century. Apart from the three Portuguese children, known to many Catholics, there was a “fourth seer”–himself. Unlike the other seers, Engelhardt received another, more important message from the Virgin in 1923. It was a continuation of the Fatima message and the starting point of his End time mission.

These claims are almost unknown today, even in apparitionist circles. If Franz Engelhardt is known at all today, it is probably as a sexual predator who was sentenced to prison for the abuse of minors. This
report will address Engelhardt’s background and apocalyptic teachings, as well as his life after the mystical claims in 1972.

Engelhardt report 2025 Download

New Edition of My Book on the Palmarian Church

I published the first edition of A Pope of their Own: El Palmar de Troya and the Palmarian Church in May 2017. By then, Palmarian Pope Gregory XVIII–Ginés Hernández–had left the papacy and the church and married a former nun. These events made El Palmar de Troya known again. It had been four decades since the Spanish press devoted this much interest to the Palmarian Church.

Since then, the Palmarians have attracted even more attention. They became front-page news in Spain as the ex-pope and his wife were tried for the armed robbery of the Basilica in Palmar de Troya. The interest in the Palmarian Church was also sparked by best-seller writer Dan Brown’s Origin (2017) that included it in the plot. That made the existence of the church known to many outside of Spain, too. As my book was the only recent monograph on the Palmarians, it has been downloaded tens of thousands of times. To reach such a vast readership was undoubtedly an unusual experience for me.

Taken into account the rapid development during the last three years, I decided to write an enlarged version of A Pope of their Own, which follows the Palmarian Church until today. The updated parts are mainly found in chapter 9 (pp. 189–200), covering the current papacy of Peter III. However, I have also included some new sections about earlier history and about rituals (see pp. 20–22, 99–102, 112–113, 118–119, and 226–229).

The second edition of A Pope of their Own is available here (free of charge).Download

New Interview with the Palmarian ex-Pope

On February 19, 2020, the Spanish newspaper El Confidencial published a long interview with Ginés Jesús Hernández. Between 2011 and 2016 he was Gregory XVIII, the pope of the Palmarian Catholic Church. In April 2016, he left the papacy and the church and moved to his girlfriend Nieves Triviño, whom he later married. Shortly after leaving El Palmar, he publicly claimed that the church was a hoax (see my summary of the events).

In June 2018, once again the couple made front-page news when the Spanish press reported that they had climbed over the high wall of the church compound in an attempt to rob the very centre of the Palmarian Church: the Basilica in El Palmar de Troya. In a subsequent fight, both two Palmarian bishops and the couple were wounded. Ginés Hernández was very severely injured, being stabbed in the chest. Still, he recovered and both he and his wife were prosecuted for armed robbery. In May 2019, they were sentenced to prison for six and five years respectively, but directly released on probation (see my summary of the events).

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New Documentary on El Palmar de Troya

There are several TV-documentaries about El Palmar de Troya and the Palmarian Church, but by far the most ambitious and well-researched is the new series, “El Palmar de Troya” that is broadcasted in February 2020 on the Spanish Moviestar+ Cero Channel. The series is produced by Movistar+ in collaboration with 100 Balas (The Mediapro Studio) and 93 Metros directed by Israel del Santo and with Daniel Boluda in charge of the research.

“El Palmar de Troya” includes four 55-minute episodes following the Palmarian phenomenon from the beginning in 1968 until today. It includes testimonies by former church members including ex-Pope Gregory XVIII (Ginés Hernández) and his wife Nieves Triviño, who used to be a Palmarian nun. But there are also testimonies by other ex-bishops and ex-nuns as well as former lay members. Apart from them, some outsiders, including me, talk about El Palmar and the Palmarian Church.

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Palmarian Internet Presence

Until very recently the Palmarian Catholic Church had no official internet presence at all. Even for those actively searching, it has been difficult if not impossible to find a phone number or an email address. This was highly unusual even in the world of Catholic traditionalism. Still, in the 1990s, the church maintained a very rudimentary internet site, but it was not updated and eventually disappeared.

In December 2018, however, the Palmarians suddenly launched a professionally looking multilingual website: www.palmarianchurch.org. The site includes basic information about the Palmarian Church, the Order of the Carmelites of the Holy Face and pope Peter III. On the site, one finds a lot of images and films, mainly documenting important religious feast and the basilica in El Palmar de Troya. There is also a growing number of texts: general overviews of the church’s history and teachings, apparition messages, extracts from official documents (including the catechism and the Palmarian Bible) and hagiographies as well as diatribes against the media and people considered enemies of the church.

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A Robber Ex-Pope and his Wife: From the Beginning to the End

On June 10, 2018, began a new, bizarre chapter in the history of the Palmarian Catholic Church. The Palmarian ex-pope Ginés Jesús Hernández (earlier known as Gregory XVIII) and his wife, Nieves Triviño climbed over the high walls of the church compound at Palmar de Troya.

They were masked and armed, apparently planning to rob the cathedral, but were discovered by a Palmarian bishop who was outside the basilica. According to testimonies, they beat Bishop S with a hammer and threatened him and another bishop, J, with a knife. However, in the subsequent fight, Hernández was severely injured, while the others escaped with less serious physical injuries.

It was on April 22, 2016, Gregory XVIII (sed. 2011-2016) resigned the Palmarian papacy. He later claimed that he had lost the faith and that the whole church was a hoax. He left to live with Nieves Triviño, whom he later married. For details, see my book A Pope of Their Own.

Here is a brief description of the events from June 10, 2018 to May 17, 2019.

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Palmarian Photos

As a part of my extensive documentation and study of the Palmarian Church, I publish a sizeable collection of images that were published digitally by the Church ca. 2002.

The first document includes pictures of the apparition site at Palmar de Troya, the first chapel that was built there and not least the construction of the enormous Palmarian Basilica. It includes 129 images. See Palmar de Troya and the Palmarian Basilica

The second document includes pictures of Palmarian chapels around the world. It includes 197 images. See Palmarian Chapels worldwide.

Dan Brown and the Palmarian Church, Or What is this Thing Called Research?

A religious group known as the Palmarian Church plays a quite prominent role in Dan Brown’s most recent book Origin (2017.) Though Dan Brown’s Origin is a work of fiction, as in earlier works in the Robert Langdon series, he claims that the book is based on thorough research. Based on my long-time research into all things Palmarian, I have written an evaluation of the factual claims that Dan Brown makes about the Palmarian Church.

In the text, I first give a very short introduction to the history and teachings of the Palmarian Church to know what we are talking about. Then, I will say something about what “research” is or can be before I turn to my appraisal of Dan Brown’s assertions. There are statements that, indeed, are correct, while there are many claims that are wrong, half-wrong or at least very questionable. My conclusion is that there is nothing that indicates that Brown has done any individual research on the matter, let alone any thorough investigation, and has misunderstood several things in even the most easily available online sources.

Here you can read my text “Dan Brown and the Palmarian Church. Or What is this Thing Called Research”

Magnus Lundberg

Church and Mission Historian

Category: Palmarian Catholic Church