True Catholic Church

The true Catholic Church (tCC) is a small Montana-based Roman Catholic sedevacantist movement that argues that Pope John XXIII¹ and his successors were all antipopes and that the See of Peter was empty since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958. In 1998 it held a telephone conclave to elect a valid successor to Pope Pius XII. The Tridentine priest chosen, Reverend Father Earl Lucian Pulvermacher, OFM Cap, proclaimed himself Pope Pius XIII.

The true Catholic Church rejects the reforms within Roman Catholicism of the Second Vatican Council and regards the Council as a Latrocinium or invalid council. While in the Catholic Church in communion with Pope John Paul II the use of the Tridentine Mass needs a special dispense and most masses in latin are celebrated according to the Roman Missal approved by Pope Paul VI (called by its critics Novus Ordo, that is new order), the tCC continues to use the Tridentine liturgy.

While it claims a worldwide membership, all available evidence suggests that it has a small largely Montana based membership. On his election to the tCC papacy, Pope Pius XIII's raising to episcopal office (Roman Catholic theory suggests that someone not possessing the rank of bishop if elected pope would have to be first consecrated as a bishop before his installation as pope), which took place in a hotel ballroom, was attended by just twenty-eight people.

Footnote

¹ It argues without much evidence that Pope John when Angelo Roncalli joined the Freemasons in 1935, an act which earned him automatic excommunication, thus invalidating his election as pope. It argues that Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul I and Pope John Paul II were not valid popes because (i) their election followed a death of an invalid predecessor, thus invalidating the conclave, and (ii) that their policies and support for Vatican II broke fundamental beliefs laid down at and since the Council of Trent and thus could only have been performed by an antipope.

External Link the webpage of Pope Pius XIII (http://www.truecatholic.org/pope/)