Is Pope Leo XIV a Valid Pope?

In my article “No, 133 Cardinals Cannot Participate in the Conclave,” I argued that the 2025 Conclave, which has now elected Pope Leo XIV, took place in a canonically illicit manner due to the participation of 133 Cardinals when Universi Dominici gregis clearly sets the maximum number of Electors at 120. Since then, every time I have brought up this topic, people have asked, “So do you believe Leo XIV is a valid Pope?” The answer there is yes—or at the very least, if there was some invalidating factor, this particular problem would not be it.

As I explained in the original article itself:

Nevertheless, unless the relevant parties were to willingly acknowledge their lack of voting rights and step away from the Conclave of their own accord, the faithful will ultimately have to grapple with the question of whether the election of the next Pope will be valid if the Cardinals proceed with allowing thirteen non-Electors into the Conclave. Given John Paul II’s rather threatening words at the end of his Apostolic Constitution, in which he declares “completely null and void anything done by any person, whatever his authority, knowingly or unknowingly, in any way contrary to this Constitution,” the faithful would have every right to be concerned. This passage, however, gives no explicit provisions for determining how an entire election could be invalid; on the contrary, the same Constitution even addresses a case in which certain ballots may be declared null without having to annul the entire session of voting.¹ Thus, John Paul II clearly shows that if the entire election were to be rendered invalid, there would have to be the commission of specific acts named in the law itself that the law states result in nullity. For this purpose, we turn to No. 76, which is the only part of the document that addresses this:

“Should the election take place in a way other than that prescribed in the present Constitution, or should the conditions laid down here not be observed, the election is for this very reason null and void, without any need for a declaration on the matter; consequently, it confers no right on the one elected.”

Here, the phrase “take place in a way” indicates that No. 76 speaks of the election procedure itself as discussed in Chapter V of UDG, and not necessarily any and all acts and events surrounding the election. Thus, if the voting process takes place in a way other than what is legally prescribed in Chapter V, the election will be invalid. According to No. 54, the election process is only considered to have begun after the oath taken by the Cardinals following their arrival into the Sistine Chapel. This logically happens after all those who desire to vote have arrived, which indicates that an error in the determination of legitimate Electors, having taken place before the process spoken of in No. 76 begins, would not render the election invalid. Given the maxim that burdens are to be restricted and favors multiplied,² strict interpretation ought to be applied to invalidating and disqualifying laws: because UDG is silent on whether having more than 120 ballots produces an invalid election, it must be concluded that, even if all 133 Cardinals erroneously insist on participating in the Conclave, the election would not be rendered invalid solely on that account.

Despite the fact that I was very clear that the illicit participation of 13 non-Electors would not invalidate the Conclave, it nevertheless does not surprise me in the slightest that people immediately jumped to asking whether I believe Leo XIV is a valid Pope. The mind of the average Catholic who has not studied canon law in depth tends naturally to assume invalidity as the result of flagrant violations of procedural law, and when the issue is as serious as a Conclave, one can hardly fault these individuals for preparing themselves for the worst possible scenario. If anything, the antinomianism which has dominated canonical practice and the general ecclesiastical atmosphere for many decades—and which is finally starting to recede into the background—has set the faithful up to assume and fear the worst possible outcome.

Most people are not going to be cross-referencing the Regulae Iuris and defaulting to the principles regarding broad and strict interpretation I mentioned in my article because most people are not scholars of jurisprudence, and they should not be expected to be such. It is perfectly reasonable for Catholics who have already been too scandalized and demoralized by countless ecclesiastical scandals and the anarchy that has reigned for decades within the Church to finally snap and say, “Wow, I can’t believe this major problem is not being properly addressed. I guess we’re not going to have a valid Pope now!” It would be unreasonable to expect them to say, “Well, given that the law has to explicitly state that a certain violation will produce invalidity, and UDG 76 is silent on whether the wrong number of Electors or ballots produces a invalid election, we must conclude that the Conclave will be only illicit, not invalid.”

One Catholic writer even linked to my article with the following commentary:

The author of this Substack makes a good case for what Archbishop Vigano had suggested last week – that the number of cardinal electors entering the conclave might invalidate the whole thing.

Did I ever say that the illiceity of including 133 Cardinals “might invalidate the whole thing?” On the contrary, I very clearly wrote: “…even if all 133 Cardinals erroneously insist on participating in the Conclave, the election would not be rendered invalid solely on that account.” At least this particular author thought to clarify, following the rather bizarre claim linking my canonical argument with that of Archbishop Viganò:

I’m not saying the is the case, simply that it seems a cogent case could be made that, at the very least, the result could be illicit.

Now that’s more like it! But notice how the distinction between validity and liceity, while acknowledged and understood on paper by Catholic writers, tends to be misapplied to actual circumstances.

Looking at this particular blog, it seems that the author believes that Francis was not a valid Pope either. I won’t rehash that decade-old controversy here—suffice it to say that I’ve never subscribed to the “Benedict never resigned” theory of separating the ministerium from the munus myself—, but this raises another question: most of the Cardinals in this last Conclave were appointed by Pope Francis, and if one were to believe that those Electors were never really Cardinals, would it follow that Leo XIV would not be valid either? If I may quote myself again:

According to No. 54 [of UDG], the election process is only considered to have begun after the oath taken by the Cardinals following their arrival into the Sistine Chapel. This logically happens after all those who desire to vote have arrived, which indicates that an error in the determination of legitimate Electors, having taken place before the process spoken of in No. 76 begins, would not render the election invalid.

We could debate whether UDG is well-written law—and for my part, I maintain that it is not, and that the upper age limit of eighty established first by Paul Paul VI, renewed by John Paul II, and maintained until the present day leads to an absurdity. The idea of a non-voting Cardinal is nonsensical, as the College of Cardinals literally exists to elect the Pope, and while the non-voters still participate in certain aspects of the election (and canon 349 covers this absurdity by stating that the College “provides for the election of the Roman Pontiff according to the norm of special law,” thus referring us back to UDG itself!), they are excluded from the Conclave itself. It makes no sense to say, “Happy birthday, Your Eminence. Thank you for your service. Now you no longer have the right to vote!”

So in my opinion UDG is not very well-written law, and everyone is free to debate this question, but there is no question that it is the only operative law we can really work with at the moment, and that it indicates that an error in the selection of legitimate Electors does not, in fact, invalidate a Conclave. Anyone concerned about the fact that 133 Cardinals participated in the Conclave can at least stop worrying about Leo XIV’s validity, and even those who deny Francis’ validity don’t have a reason to continue in their sedevacantist position in May 2025.

Maybe this whole scandal will blow over: the media never had any interest in it to begin with (I personally reached out to quite a few outlets in the days leading up to the Conclave and received exactly zero replies), and I haven’t seen anyone talking about it since then. If it blows over, everyone is free to laugh at me in a couple of years. But if Leo XIV does something controversial in the coming months and years, it will be all too easy for someone with an online following to say, “Well, he’s not even a valid Pope! 133 Cardinals voted when the law clearly says that there can only be 120!” And such a person, if he has a big enough platform, just may set off another sedevacantist controversy, because on the Internet, content expressing outrage and jumping to conclusions tends to get more clicks and views than well-reasoned, well-founded analysis.

On another note, our new Pope is a canonist, so perhaps this will be an interesting papacy…

1. “If during the opening of the ballots the Scrutineers should discover two ballots folded in such a way that they appear to have been completed by one elector, if these ballots bear the same name they are counted as one vote; if however they bear two different names, neither vote will be valid; however, in neither of the two cases is the voting session annulled” (UDG 69).

2. Boniface VIII, Regulae Iuris, 15.