False Pope Dies Before Real Pope

The world’s best-known pretender to the throne of St. Peter — one Clemente Dominguez y Gómez of Spain — died on March 21 at age 59 — eleven days before the real Pope expired in Rome, according to Deutsche Presse-Agentur. The secretive cult he headed has not revealed the cause of Dominguez’s death.

A former insurance accountant ordained by a dissident archbishop in 1975, Dominguez declared himself the true Vicar of Christ following the death of Pope Paul VI in 1978.

Dominguez styled himself Pope Gregorio XVII. Popularly known as “Papa Clemente” — and sometimes as the “Pope of Seville,” after the town of his birth — Dominguez presided over a small band of followers from a church in El Palmar de Troya in Spain’s Andalusia region.

He claimed that, “Satan is governing the Vatican” and that John Paul II was an “anti-pope” — knowledge allegedly revealed to him in visions. Dominguez opposed the liberal policies of Vatican II, promoted the Latin mass, and accused John Paul II of allowing Marxists and Freemasons free rein to infiltrate the Vatican.