WHO WAS ELECTED POPE? TEBALDESHCHI OR URBAN VI?

The pope is the rock that Catholicism says it is built on. The pope claims to stand in the place of Jesus over the Church - a claim that is totally absent from early tradition and the Bible. One would think that if Jesus gives us the pope he could protect the Church from electing a false pope or from having two or more claimants to the papal throne at the one time!

The medieval Catholic Church elected the unsuitable lunatic Urban VI as pope and regretted it so much that it tried to elect another after claiming that Urban's election was fraudulent.

At the time the cardinals elected Urban VI, they were under pressure from a violent Roman mob to choose a Roman or at least Italian pope that would please them. They even presented Francisco Cardinal Tebaldeschi a Roman to the crowd as pope to placate them. How tricking the mob in such a crude way was supposed to do any good and be a solution is impossible to see and makes it seem that Tebaldeschi was the real pope. Tebaldeschi went crazy on being presented to the crowd as pope and began ranting about demons and pronouncing curses on everyone. It was no wonder the cardinals took him away. They must have known he was mad before they presented him which adds fuel to the theory that they did elect Tebaldeschi.
 
It seems then that Tebaldeschi was pope and when he proved himself insane the cardinals lied about the election and tried to elect another and they came up with Urban VI. The cardinals said they had already elected Urban VI by then. But there is no evidence that this is true. The online book by Catholic apologist Richard L Cure available on www.prayforthepope.net called Pray for the Pope A Study of the Papacy and Sedevacantism 1998 is interesting. It tells us that the mob was delighted with Urban VI and that he was elected before they put out the fake pope. The mob would have known for some of them had invaded the conclave and were taking the roof off. Obviously they didn’t really have another pope when they presented Tebaldeschi as pope at all. They lied afterwards that they elected Urban VI. Is it possible that both Urban VI and Clement VII were antipopes? Some would surmise that they were. Others would say that since Tebaldeschi didn’t make any claim to the papacy – which doesn’t mean he wasn’t pope at least for a while - that the way was clear for Clement VII to be elected the true pope a few months later. Whatever the truth is, Clement VII was the real pope.
 
So Tebaldeschi was the pope and Urban VI the fake. Tebaldeschi didn’t hold on to the papacy but he was pope during the election of Urban. This we can be sure of.
 
The online book makes a point of declaring that Urban VI was accepted by all. The Church always seems to think that makes a fake pope to be a real pope! Strange that that could help when the people aren’t in a position to judge. And the Church doesn’t regard the fact that virtually all Catholics see no problem with contraception as significant so why should public opinion matter in relation to the people just going along with an allegedly valid papal election?
 
Urban VI didn’t hear that he was the choice of the conclave until two days later! By no means could they be trusted that they really elected Urban VI. Why not just announce that they chose Urban VI? What if the mob preferred Tebaldeschi and forced them to say he was the real pope and not Urban VI? They must have feared that. We certainly have an invalid election in relation to Urban VI for the cardinals were evidently insane with fear.
 
The Catholic Church thinks Urban VI was the real pope and not Clement VII because if the cardinals had fiddled the election of Urban VI they would have chosen Tebaldeschi instead of him for that would have pleased the mob better.
 
But the mob liked Urban and Tebaldeschi was a disaster.
 
Urban VI never was a valid pope. Accepted by all or not, he proves that the whole church can err about the identity of the pope.

And like it or not, the cardinals who elected Urban were the Church in the sense that they represented it and were working in its name. For the same cardinals to claim the election was a deception and then to attempt to elect a new pope when Urban was still reigning means the whole Church was responsible. Unless you want to believe that at the time Urban was the only canonically valid Catholic, the whole Church apostasised.