Papal election of Giuseppe Siri theory

On 25 October 1958, 51 cardinals entered the papal conclave, which was held to elect a successor to Pope Pius XII.

[2] At 11:53 a.m. on the morning of 26 October, the first day of balloting, white smoke was seen coming from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, a traditional signal to the crowds in the square outside that a pope has been elected.

[7][8] Sometime in the late 1980s, an American traditionalist Catholic named Gary Giuffré began to expound the belief that Siri was the true pope, and that he was being held against his will in Rome.

Giuffré speculates the main threat was that Rome would be destroyed with a thermonuclear weapon, effectively wiping out the entire hierarchy of the Church in one blow.

[9] With the electors unsure of how to proceed, Roncalli, who they claim was a Freemason, supposedly offered himself as a compromise with the promise that he would call a synod soon after his election to regularize the unusual situation.

[1] The theory further claims that a similar process occurred at the 1963 papal conclave that followed John XXIII's death.

[1] The assertion that Siri's 1963 election had been set aside after the intervention of the B'nai B'rith was contained in an article written in 1986 by Louis Hubert Remy in the French publication Sous la Bannière and translated into English in 1987 for Dan Jones's newsletter The Sangre de Cristo Newsnotes.

In his apocalyptic 1990 book The Keys of This Blood, Irish-American Catholic priest Malachi Martin said that in the 1963 conclave Siri received sufficient votes for election but refused it.

He argued that Roncalli was known as the "pink priest" because of his ties with both the French and Italian Communist parties, while Siri was "rabidly anti-Communist".

[1] The Catholic magazine Inside the Vatican has referred to adherents of the Siri theory as "sede impeditists", meaning that they believe there was a true pope but that he was "impeded" by outside forces from taking his office.

[22] He was appointed president of the Italian Episcopal Conference by John XXIII in 1959, and remained in the post under Paul VI until 1964.

[26] He was Archbishop of Genoa from 1946 to 1987, and at the time of his retirement he was "the last remaining active cardinal named by Pope Pius XII".