Category: Uncategorized

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.

Continue reading “The Alternative Pope Project” →

Images of the Celestial Messenger. Part 7.

Images of the Celestial Messenger. Part 7.

This is the seventh and last part of the series of images from the archives of Italian-American Giuseppe Maria Abbate (1886-1963), the Celestial Messenger, who claimed to be divine. For more pictures and studies, see the Celestial Messenger page.

The focus of Abbate’s Church, the New Jerusalem Church, was his claims of divine status and his role in salvation history. From the early 1910s, he was known as the Celestial Messenger. Later, his title became Padre Celeste. Still, he also referred to himself as the Universal Protector, St. Michael the Archangel rehumanated, the Prince of Peace, God’s Vicar on Earth, and the Celestial King. Thus, Abbate claimed to be something of a combination of a pope, an archangel, a prophet, a king, and God incarnate.

In his interpretation, each first letter in his full name and title, “Giuseppe Maria Abbate di Carmelo, Padre Celeste”, had a symbolic meaning in Italian, summarizing his mission on earth. In English translation, it was: Jesus, Incarnate, Made Human, Most Holy Immanuel, Eternal Prince of Peace, sent to be reincarnated in Abbate to Bless Everybody Eternally. Divinity Incarnate. Celestial Angel, King, Immanuel, the Messiah Arrived, the Ordained Angel. The Door to God. Elected Religious. Christ, Immanuel, Eternal Light, the Sound of the Seventh Trumpet.

While he believed he possessed supernatural powers already from the beginning of the 1910s, in 1923, Abbate claimed that Christ had appeared to him, showing him the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. From that moment, Abbate was convinced that he was “Jesus rehumanated.” His face was the true face of Christ in the modern era. At the same time, Abbate began to claim that he had lived on Mars before coming to Earth in 1886.

Continue reading “Images of the Celestial Messenger. Part 7.” →

Images of the Celestial Messenger. Part 6.

Images of the Celestial Messenger. Part 6.

This is the sixth part of my series of images of Giuseppe Maria Abbate (1886-1963), the Italian-American Celestial Messenger. See part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. It includes photos of objects found in my collection related to Abbate and his New Jerusalem Catholic Church. These objects include a trumpet, two processional swords, and a box containing relics (mainly hair, beard, and nail clippings).

Continue reading “Images of the Celestial Messenger. Part 6.” →

Images of the Celestial Messenger. Part 4.

Images of the Celestial Messenger. Part 4.

This post is the fourth part of my series of images of Giuseppe Maria Abbate (1886-1963), the Italian-American Celestial Messenger. They are part of my collection of documents related to Abbate and his New Jerusalem Catholic Church. See part 1, part 2, and part 3.

However, in this part, the focus is not on Abbate, but on a girl, Grace, whom he and his Church believed to be the reincarnated Virgin Mary. Grace was born in Chicago in 1915. Both her parents were born in Italy and had recently emigrated to the United States. When she was newly born, Abbate became convinced of her true identity.

Just as Abbate, the reborn Virgin Mary, took a prominent place in religious services, both sitting on thrones. Grace left the church when she was about 18 years old, but her image remained on the church’s altars until the 1980s.

Continue reading “Images of the Celestial Messenger. Part 4.” →

Images of the Celestial Messenger. Part 2.

Images of the Celestial Messenger. Part 2.

This post is the second part of my series of images of Giuseppe Maria Abbate (1886-1963), the Italian-American Celestial Messenger. They are part of my collection of documents related to Abbate and his Church. See part one.


In 1917, Abbate founded a formal church organization. It was called La Chiesa Cattolica di Nuova Gerusalemme del Messaggiero Celeste (the New Jerusalem Catholic Church of the Celestial Messenger). In Italian, the word is usually spelled “messagero,” but, for some reason, the Church always used “messagiero.” At about the same time, Abbate also established a male religious order, the Order of the Celestial Messenger.

Continue reading “Images of the Celestial Messenger. Part 2.” →

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

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 2025Download

New Book on Polish-American Pope Adam II

New Book on Polish-American Pope Adam II

In 1927, a suspended Roman Catholic priest, Adam Anthony Oraczewski (1883‒1973), published a 60-page booklet in Kansas City, Missouri. It had a bold title: All in One True Faith. The front page features a photo of the author dressed in the papal white, declaring that as of August 7, he was Adam II, Pope of the Holy Catholic Church.

Oraczewski’s pamphlet scathingly criticized the Roman Catholic Church and proposed a drastic ecclesiastical reform that, according to the author, would lead to greater piety and human unity. The publication was the climax of fifteen years of conflicts between Oraczewski and Catholic church representatives in a long series of U.S. dioceses, parishes, and seminaries.

Among the twentieth-century alternative pontiffs we know of, Polish-American Adam II is one of the earliest and least known. In the book A Polish-American Pope:  Adam Oraczewski ‒ Adam II, I reconstruct Oraczewski’s biography by studying his own writings, newspaper articles, public records, and, not least, abundant files from ecclesiastical archives.

Oraczewski’s life story is very unusual and undoubtedly a part of the eccentric part of church history: an account of a pontiff in the periphery. It is a bewildering and tragic story, and it is worth telling.

A Polish-American Pope:  Adam Oraczewski ‒ Adam II is published as volume 19 in the ebook series Uppsala Studies in Church History and freely available here:

Uppsala Studies 19 LundbergDownload

Pennaspergilens historia

Pennaspergilens historia

I Kyrkohistorisk årsskrift 2024 har jag publicerat en artikel med titeln “Pennaspergilens historia” (se nedan för fulltext). Där jag kombinerar mina intressen för kyrkohistoria och äldre reservoarpennor

Kyrkohistorisk årsskrift ges sedan år 1900 ut av Svenska kyrkohistoriska föreningen och inkluderar såväl vetenskapliga artiklar som recensioner. För information om föreningens verksamhet och om hur man blir medlem, se föreningens hemsida.

I synnerhet under 1920- och 1930-talet, men i viss mån fram till början av 1960-talet tillverkade flera pennbolag i Förenta staterna lätt omformade reservoarpennor som salufördes som aspergiler: Holy Water Sprinklers. Tanken var att präster enkelt skulle kunna ha med sig dem i fickan när de gjorde hem- eller sjukhusbesök. Jag kallar dessa föremål pennaspergiler.

Till det yttre såg pennaspergilerna ut som ordinära pennor, om än försedda med kors på kolv eller huv. Den stora skillnaden fanns under huven. Aspergilen hade inget stift. På kolvens topp satt istället ett skruvbart perforerat lock och genom hålen kunde vigvattnet spridas vid behov.

Det är inte enkelt att ens inventera pennaspergiltillverkare och -modeller, vilket är målet med min artikel. Aspergilerna inkluderades sällan i pennbolagens kataloger och annonserades knappt, men det finns enstaka separata broschyrer och manualer. Den viktigaste källan är föremålen i sig själva. Som underlag har jag använt aspergiler från min egen samling, men också tagit hjälp av andra samlare. Dessutom har jag gått igenom försäljnings- och auktionskataloger.

Studien är kronologiskt disponerad. Den inleds på 1920-talet då de första modellerna kom ut på marknaden. 1930-talet var något av en guldålder, medan enstaka modeller tillverkades efter kriget. Minst åtta företag, samtliga i Förenta staterna, producerade pennaspergiler. De inkluderade såväl mindre bolag som några av de riktigt stora aktörerna: Parker och Waterman.

Artikeln är tillgänglig i fulltext här:

Pennaspergilens historiaDownload

För min omfattande allmänna översikt av reservoarpennans historia, se denna avdelning.

För fler bilder av pennaspergiler, se denna sida.

Recensioner i Kyrkohistorisk årsskrift 2007-2023

Recensioner i Kyrkohistorisk årsskrift 2007-2023

Under de senaste två decennierna har jag recenserat ett sjuttiotal böcker i facktidskrifter och kanske ytterligare ett dussin i dagspress. Recensioner är en genre som inte väger tungt i den akademiska världen. Oftast tillerkänns de inget värde överhuvudtaget. Det är inte karriärmässigt smart för en oetablerad akademiker att lägga mycket tid på att recensera böcker.

Det är synd. Jag menar att recensioner är en väsentlig del av vetenskapandet. De innebär, i den bästa av världar, ett en läsare på ett seriöst och rättvisande sätt introduceras för en annan forskares vedermödor. Ingen, ens specialisten, har möjlighet att ha överblick över allt som publiceras inom ett fält, om det inte är extremt smalt. Läsaren kan alltså uppmärksammas på böcker som hon inte kände till tidigare, men hon kan också få kunskaper om ämnen som ligger långt ifrån hennes vanliga intresseområden utan att ha möjlighet, tid eller lust att ta sig an boken i sig.

Att på ett noggrant och eftertänksamt sätt referera andras tankemödor är inte det enklaste. Det är en mer kvalificerad verksamhet än vad som ofta påstås. Att skickligt och ärligt, och med egna ord och infallsvinklar, redogöra för vad någon annan skrivit är en svår konst som kräver träning.

Visst kan, och bör, recensioner innehålla kritiska anmärkningar, men det är min erfarenhet att recensioner i specialtidskrifter ofta tenderar att bli för gnälliga. Ibland kan recensentens käpphästar bli så många att de helt döljer vad boken överhuvudtaget handlar om och mängden detaljanmärkningar kan få närmast komiska proportioner.

Continue reading “Recensioner i Kyrkohistorisk årsskrift 2007-2023” →

Hovmålaren och bruksarrendatorn Laurens van der Plas (1579-1629)

Hovmålaren och bruksarrendatorn Laurens van der Plas (1579-1629)

I Personhistorisk tidskrift 2024:1 har jag publicerat en artikel med titeln “Från Antwerpen till Axbergshammar: Hovmålaren och bruksarrendatorn Laurens van der Plas”.

Gustav II Adolfs regeringstid (1611–1632) innebar en snabb ökning av invandringen i Sverige, inte minst från Nederländerna. En del av dessa invandrare inriktade sig på järnframställning eller exporthandel. Andra rekryterades som till exempel skeppsbyggare eller fick betydande positioner inom den statliga förvaltningen. Mindre yrkesgrupper – vetenskapsmän, arkitekter, musiker och konstnärer – rekryterades också från utlandet för att stärka, eller etablera, det svenska kulturlivet.

Studien behandlar en nederländare som var verksam inom båda områdena. Han var såväl konstnär som bruksarrendator. Laurens van der Plas (1579–1629) föddes i Antwerpen och verkade i Rotterdam, Breda och Dordrecht innan han blev hovmålare i Stockholm. Under sina sista år i livet drev han en hammarsmedja i Närke. Även om detta är en detaljerad källkritisk studie av en individ är det viktigt att inte frånse från ”det unikas generalitet.” Jag placerar alltså genomgående Laurens van der Plas i bredare historiska sammanhang och betraktar hans roll i professionella och sociala nätverk.

För att läsa texten i sin helhet, se Personhistoriska Samfundets hemsida https://personhistoriskasamfundet.org/1999-2/

Bildkälla: Östergötlands Museum