The 40 ANTI-POPES.

     
 1. There were more than 40 anti-popes.
     Historians made the list. They had no way of finding out the true list. Saints pointed out during their time who was true Pope and who was not. But the saints never made their own list. So the list of Popes at present is not reliable. To attempt to purify the list is possible but it could be tedious. 

2.  As of lately, some considers Pope John XXIII up to the present, Pope Francis, as anti-popes. This claim is made mostly by Protestants. What is their basis for saying so? St. Robert Bellarmine says that this conclusion comes from the Protestant’s own erroneous beliefs. 

3. Most of those who wrote saying John XXIII up to Pope Francis  are anti – Popes  do not base their conclusion on the only acceptable and valid norms, i.e. the four visible signs found in the Nicene Creed.  Nor on the expanded versions of the four visible signs written by St. Augustine or Vincent of Lerins, both Fathers of the Early Church.  
     Most, if not all, made their own personal, private judgments; the basis of which is acceptable only to themselves while unacceptable to the rest of the world.

4. St. Robert Bellarmine wrote; most look for signs that their sect already have and then declare that those are the signs of the true Church. Hmmm. Very convenient. They, alone have those signs.   
     The Catholic Church did not do it that way. The Fathers studied Divine Revelation and the lives of Christ and the Apostles.  And from such study they chose what were the signs that the early Church had;  and incorporated them into the earliest Creed, the Creed of Nicea and Constantinople. There were no other christian heretical sect at that time. It was God’s way of pre-empting all the other Protestant sects. In other words, in the beginning, all Christians believe that the four visible signs found in the Nicene Creed were the only way to prove which is the true Church. 
     Having decided what were the four visible signs  that points to the true Church which excludes all other religions, the early Church incorporated the four visible signs, One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic,  into the Nicene Creed. This Creed had been  recited in the Mass since then……..until recently it was abbreviated into the Apostles Creed; which is shorter, which is still the Creed but which does not describe the four visible marks of the Church. This is the reason almost nobody knows how to check which is Catholic and which is not.
      
5. The only proof of Catholicity are the four visible signs and as they are expanded by the saints. One of particular interest is the expanded 15 signs mentioned by St. Robert Bellarmine, Jesuit saint and doctor of the Church.  
     I have applied those four visible signs and further confirmed them by applying the 15 Marks by St. Bellarmine, first, on Popes John XXIII up to Benedict XVI. They all passed with flying colours. The five Popes are indeed Catholics in that they had all the visible signs; both the four signs of the Nicene Creed and the 15 Marks of St. Robert Bellarmine. These signs were applied on their writings, on their autobio